COTTAGE GROVE – Next week’s 50th Anniversary celebration of The Bookmine will serve as a reminder to many residents that the iconic outlet is more than their favorite bookstore, gift shop and garden center. To some, it’s their go-to gathering place. To others, it has become sort of like a second home.
And to some inquisitive types, it kind of doubles as a historical museum.
“I consider this to be like the real City Hall of Cottage Grove,” City Council member and former teacher and historian Dana Merryday said. “Whenever I need to dig up something, I usually just call up Gail. The Bookmine is an invaluable place to run down local history.”
It’s going to be quite a week. Gail Hoelzle – who was two years older than her sister Birdy when they became business partners three days before her 25th birthday – is turning 75 on Wednesday, April 23. The store’s actual 50th anniversary will be three days later, on April 26, but it will be rolled into one big Art Walk celebration on Friday, April 25.
Gail said she would like people to stop by and share their favorite memories of The Bookmine, whether it was 50 years ago or 50 days ago.
“We’ve learned so much about community, being part of this community,” Gail said. “It’s amazing – that’s all there is to it.
“Stop in and say hello, and if you have a memory–even if it’s a gripe–if you have something interesting to say, we’ll probably have a book out that you can write something in.”
“Connecting with this community has been and is still quite wonderful,” Birdy said. “We’ve seen so many people grow up, go away, come back, and die. It’s like one giant family.
“I love books, I love cats, and I love plants, so this is a good place for me to be.”
Firey experience
Practically since Day 1, one thing The Bookmine has been known for is its amazing house plants. Through the years, though, not every memory has been a bed of roses.
Perhaps the worst time of all was Christmastime of 1989. It had been a joyful occasion in Cottage Grove. Catharine Filmer – known to many as “The Covered Bridge Lady” – had been at The Bookmine celebrating the holiday, and Gail walked the longtime artist and popular art teacher back to her apartment that evening.
The next morning, Gail received a call that still haunts her when she is reminded of it.
“Birdy’s ex-husband Ed called around 6 a.m. and said, ‘Are you guys OK?’ and I said, ‘Ed, what are you talking about?’
“He said the front page of today’s Register-Guard said a fire had destroyed the McCoy’s (Pharmacy) building and a block to the east, which would be this direction, and I said they would have called us if The Bookmine had burned down.
“So I hung up, shaking and terrified, and I called the police department, and the officer said they got it wrong, it was actually burning to the west, not the east. He also said that Catharine was missing because nobody had found her body. … We had our birds in here and they were fine.
“I had walked Catharine home that night, and she was in a good mood. She was a spunky lady; she was still driving herself around town all the time. She was driving to Pine Cliff, Maine, every year and wasn’t sure how long she was going to be able to do it.”
Filmer, who was 86, has a “Catharine Filmer Park” mural painted by the Art Guild on the 600 block of Main Street to help commemorate her legacy.
A collection of the city’s historic Covered Bridge cards, which she designed, is available at The Bookmine. Most are not on display, though, so you’ll have to ask for them.
Famous guests
The Bookmine has often hosted book signings by prominent authors, including the likes of Howard Zinn, Lois Barton, Alan Siporin, Elenor Corey, and Mary Clark, to name just a few.
But nothing created a spectacle around Main Street like the time Benjamin Hoff was in town 30 years ago to promote his book, “The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: The Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley.”
“There was a line out the door all the way to the library (about two blocks away) for his book signing in 1995,” Gail said. “That was pretty exciting.”
Another favorite memory for Gail was being the bookseller for the famously satirical humorist Molly Ivins after she wrote “Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America” in 2003.
“A gentleman who went to school with her knew she was going to be here, but he said he was too shy to ask her to sign his yearbook,” Gail said.
“Molly was from Texas. She was very sick and she was dying, but she was still doing a book tour. There was a line of people, and her assistant said they had to cut things off after the last person in line.”
Clearly, an exhausted Molly was just ready to go home.
“Molly sighs, but we had it all arranged to surprise her,” Gail said. “She sees a letter sweater along with a yearbook, and she was dumbfounded. Then she says, ‘This is the best gotcha ever!’
“She wound up writing a column about it for the Houston Chronicle. Then she died two weeks later.”
Community support
Contributions from the community have significantly aided in the charm of The Bookmine.
Jerry Buskirk, who sells metal art, agreed to leave his large metal archway at the store for rent or sale.
“He had this huge metal archway that was like $900,” Gail said. “We rented it out several times, then Jerry told me that he wanted to donate it to the store.”
“He said, ‘I want to thank you because you’ve sold more of my stuff in this store than any of the other stores in Eugene, including Oakway Mall and all of these other places, and I just want to thank you,’” Gail said. “I was completely blown away. So we’re going to bring it down for our anniversary celebration.”
Both walls of the bookstore are adorned by Alex Mosieur’s riveting Native American art.
“It was during Covid and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died,” Gail recalled. “We sold one of Alex’s paintings to Eugene art collectors for $450. So I called her and told her, and she said, ‘Great!’ She gets 400, and we just keep $50.
“Then she said she had a picture of Ruth Bader that could fill that spot if we wanted it. And I said, ‘Are you kidding? Of course we do.’ She brings it in, and we put it up. There were people with masks on watching with tears in their eyes. It was very emotional.
“I said, ‘What should we sell it for?’ and she said, ‘Whatever you want. This is a gift.’
“I said, ‘You can’t do that, Alex. What are you talking about?
“She said, ‘I can do it. I’m the artist. I just wanted to thank you for showing all of my art for all these years. It’s a gift. So sell it for whatever you want.’
“Then I said, ‘We’ll never sell it.’
“She said, ‘I knew you were going to say that.’ Then she reaches into her pocket and takes out this artist’s disclaimer form, which says, ‘I’m the artist of this work, and this is my permission to have this art reproduced.’ Then she said, ‘If you want to make prints, fine.’
“Right after that, our Blackberry Pie Society group was canvassing for Val Hoyle the first time she was running for office, and Val was in here and Val really admired the picture. She ended up winning, andW we decided we wanted to give her a print, so we went over to DirtCheapCopies and he made some beautiful prints for us.
“So now there’s a copy of the painting hanging in Val Hoyle’s office in Washington, D.C.”
Sisters act
Gail and Birdy have experienced interesting lives – even before they set sail on their Bookmine journey.
Both graduated from the University of Oregon. Gail planned to be an English teacher, and Birdy wanted to be a dance teacher.
They shared a place in Eugene on the corner of 10th and Jefferson, three houses away from where Ken Kesey owned his film house.
“That was a time when nitrous oxide (laughing gas) was a big thing, but it wasn’t my scene so I usually stayed away from those kinds of parties,” Gail said.
“Well, my friend comes over and says you have to come over to the film house – they were making a movie called “Atlantis Rising” – and there’s a really good band playing.
“Is there a tank?” I asked her. And she said, ‘Yeah, but it’s in the house.’ And I said, ‘No. I’m not interested.’ And she said, ‘No, you need to come and see these guys. They’re really good.’
“So I quit washing dishes and walked down the street and they were really good. I didn’t realize who it was at first. … It was Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.”
Soon thereafter, pretty much on a whim, the sisters decided to buy a bookstore, first moving into a much smaller building across the street for the first year. Then, in 1976, the owners of The Plantique – an antique and house plant store in The Bookmine’s current location – agreed to rent their building to Gail and Birdy while they went to Alaska for two years. They were fearful that someone else would swoop in and open another houseplant store, as houseplants were a hot item at the time. “They called us after about a year and a half and said, ‘You know what, we really like it up here. We don’t want to come back to Cottage Grove. Would you consider buying the building?’ And we bought the building. Lucky for us. And now we’re on the National Historic Register.”
All are welcome
A play area has always been set up for young children in the front of the store, and there is also a changing table and a crib that have not been used for the last few years. Back in the day, however, diaper changes were common occurrences.
“I get a kick out of people who bring in their new spouse or their new little kids and ask, ‘Is it OK if I change my baby’s diaper because I know that my mom used to change my diaper in here?”
The Bookmine has an iconic bathroom, as the walls are entirely decorated with magazine covers dating back to the 1970s from Book People, a book distribution company based in Berkeley, Calif., which originally supplied The Bookmine with its original inventory. A picture of the bathroom now sits on the boss’s desk at Book People.
“When we first moved into this building, there was a staircase and an upstairs bathroom, and the desk was set up on the other side,” Gail said. “So one day I thought the sink had overflowed. We had a potty chair up there, and this woman comes down and says, ‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry, my little boy missed,’ and there was little boy urine dripping all over my desk.
“Banks started telling people they couldn’t use their bathrooms, but we kept ours open. Art Huebner finally brought ours downstairs for us. That was maybe 30 years ago.”
Rebecca Hill worked at the store in the early 1980s.
“Both of my daughters were babies here,” Hill said. “They asked if it still smells the same way, and that’s a good thing! Karin and Kristen grew up in here – it still feels very homey for all of us.”
Hopefully, it will still have that “homey” feel for many years to come.
“We don’t have a retirement plan at present; we want to keep going for now,” Gail said. “But we also have to face the facts: We’re not as young as we used to be. And there are other people who have expressed interest in the place.”
Of course, people are interested. The Bookmine is a local goldmine.
