My buddy, Bags, had a flood in his basement for the first time in 17 years last weekend. He has a sophisticated electronics system, wires running all over the place, TV connected to the internet. His PC went on the blink for a couple of days. He brought it to a local repair shop and it cost him only ten bucks to get it running again. When he tried to plug the entire system back in, there was a loud humming noise. Today I helped him isolate the problem. Basically, this amounted to holding a flashlight and lending moral support. He sorted through the dust and maze of wires, and tested each one by one, searching for the source of the problem. It came down to two possibilities: the graphic equalizer and the sub woofer. It was the latter, which had sat on a thin rug on the floor and whose bottom four inches was submerged. Of all the items, it was the one he used least. After unplugging wires from it, he had to figure out where to plug them in to get sound from his stereo, which isn't easily solved unless it's done regularly. That's where I left him when it was time to open the floating bookshop. I would have been no help, having no affinity for the electrical. On the recommendation of his Asian neighbors, he will be buying a pump. It's always best to be proactive. As was the case here, government services usually arrive long after the damage is done.
Jack, employee of the Chase Bank at Bay Parkway and 85th Street, purchased William Goldman's Magic, which was made into a movie released in 1978, starring Anthony Hopkins in one of his breakout film roles, long before he portrayed everybody's favorite pyscho, Hannibal Lechter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). He had done a lot of BBC work prior to that.
Jack has stacks of the thrillers he has bought from me on his desk. His presence attracted two other customers: a Russian gentleman who bought books for his seven-year-old grandson, and an Asian woman with two adorable daughters, who recognized a steal when she asked about the books on knitting and crochet. Thanks, folks.
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