I hope Rhoda means it when she tells me that I still have a job waiting at Maple Street. You never know. I have done it before. In late ’77, after leaving for law school and then dropping out of law school three months later, Rhoda signed me back up to work at the book shop at a time when having the shop to go to was what I needed most. And when I went off again, first a few days a week and then for good, to Crescent House, Rhoda once again stood behind me.

   Every time I make a big change–from New Orleans to Chicago to New York or from the book shop to the Battered Women’s Program to Tulane, IIT, and then Columbia–I think about whether I would like to forget about it, stop complicating things and come back to Maple Street Book Shop.

JERRY BROCK, New Orleans, Founder of WWOZ-Radio

   Working in the Maple Street Book Shop was my first part-time job when I came to New Orleans in early 1978 to start WWOZ. One day, Rhoda wanted me to make a delivery to the other shop that was then on Jackson and Prytania. I told her that I didn’t have a driver’s license on me, and she said, ‘No big deal. You won’t get caught.’ So I said, ‘Well, if I get pulled over, you have to come get me.’ I was driving her little blue VW–with an expired brake tag. Of course, I got arrested–and, of course, she had to come get me.

SUSAN BRILL ROSENTHAL, Durham, North Carolina, First Vice President, Merrill-Lynch

BETTY PAULIN, New Orleans, staffer in charge of Clean and Neat, mother of The Paulin Brothers Band, cookbook collector, and author-to-be

   I’ve worked in the shop for thirty years–since Mary was there. As someone with 13 kids, I don’t think anyone uses as much Pine Sol as I do. Most people who come in the book shop or work there love the smell of Pine Sol. But if, occasionally, ladies come in and cough when dust comes up or fuss about the smell of Pine Sol, I don’t let it bother me. I just go work in another room. I’ve never let myself be in the middle of things. Working at the shop has been very interesting over the years, I can tell you.

CHRISTINE WILTZ, New Orleans, novelist, whose most recent book is The Last Madam

   James Kirkwood came down to New Orleans to sign American Grotesque. (The late Kirkwood also wrote Chorus Line.) It was Clay Shaw’s story told from Clay Shaw’s point of view. Kirkwood was the first big author I’d met; I hadn’t even met Walker Percy. Later on, Jim Garrison told me that one night he heard someone outside his door. Kirkwood. Garrison invited him in. They were enemies, Garrison said, but they found common ground in books, and they liked each other. It was exposure to such people that I remember so vividly from the early days at Maple Street.