My Mom and Walter Powell

Originally Posted Oct. 26th, 2007.

After returning from an extended stay-over in Europe and Asia, my mother returned to Portland nearly penniless but instilled with the vim and vigor traveling abroad puts in one’s world-view. She was strolling downtown Portland one afternoon and came across a tiny bookstore. Yes, it was Powell’s, but not the monolithic mega-store it has become today, but a modest, intimate building several blocks away from the current location. Inside, she found a wonderful coffee-table book about hiking destinations in the area, filled with lush photography.

Since her stint in Europe, my mother had become a shrewd bargainer, and was still teeming with the same confidence she left behind at the Spanish marketplaces and Parisian vendors. She inquired to the older gentleman running the store what it would take to get the book at a discounted price, hoping to talk him down to slightly above wholesale cost.

“I’ll tell you what” said the man, “I’m a little short-staffed today, and the shelves are a mess. If you help me for a few hours, the book is yours.”

My mother, having already mastered the vagaries of the dewey decimal system as a part-time librarian in the university library, felt as if she would be up to the task. She accepted his offer and had the shelves ship-shape in no time.

Years later, after beginning to see this man more prominently in the press, she would realize that this man was the store owner, Walter Powell, which leads me to wonder if I unconsciously lied in the job interview that I am indeed related to a Powell’s employee.

Emily Powell; Depending on what happened during those 3 hours, may also be my cousin