Unmapped Forest of Used Books Beckons : Exploration and Serendipity Delight the Adventurers Who Brave Its Swaying Stacks

Given its stock in trade, it is fitting that Smith’s Acres of Books resembles a kind of second-hand forest, with narrow paths winding through tall, swaying stacks, shelves branching out wildly across aisles and the silhouettes of dusty volumes looming in the front window like slightly frayed birds.

The huge bookstore’s most remote region--the Fiction Room--grows so dark on overcast days in Long Beach that the staff loans flashlights to adventurers headed that way.

“All we have is skylights back there,” manager Jackie Smith explained with a laugh. “The Fire Department said the wiring in that room wasn’t legal, so we took it out, and it can get a little dark. Some customers are a bit taken aback when we suggest a flashlight.”

Maps might help too. Acres covers about 13,000 square feet, making it the largest used-book store in Southern California and one of the largest in the nation. No one has ever counted the books; there may be 500,000. In its back room alone Acres has 30,000 volumes waiting to be priced and shelved--enough to fill a small store.

“I thought I had a husband in here . . . somewhere,” said a customer one recent morning, moments before disappearing into the War Room.

Kafka, Camus and Eliot

Even Smith, the third generation of her family to operate the 53-year-old landmark, admits to occasional puzzlement over where things are.

Aisle B-9, for example.

“Once I asked why Kafka was there, and I was told that anyone who’ll read Kafka will read Camus,” Smith said. “He (Camus) is there--also Ayn Rand, T. S. Eliot, Emerson and Hunter Thompson. It’s a weird aisle.”

The general layout of the store could cause a Kafka-esque reaction of disorientation as a visitor bounces from, say, Shakespeare to Rich People to Dog Stories to Russia to Sports to Women’s Nonfiction.

But the challenges of exploration, the possibilities of serendipity, are chief among Acres’ delights, its fans say.

“I was on my way back to Literature when I spotted these art books,” said Jeannie Daugherty, an English major at California State University, Long Beach, who visits once a week. “They’re wonderful.”

In the B aisle of Fiction, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert P. Samoian was trying to hold seven murder mysteries in his arms while making notes in a small spiral notebook. He was not working on a case, however.

‘Fabulous Collection’

“I collect and sell mysteries in my spare time; I have more than 20,000,” Samoian disclosed. “They have a fabulous collection here. And they aren’t gougers. They list a $2 book for $2, not for $20 hoping some sucker will come in. I’d love to stay longer, but my lunch break is over.”

Samoian departed but got only as far as C before pausing to browse some more.

Acres’ faithful rose to its defense in 1982, when it was threatened by a downtown redevelopment project. After city officials were bombarded with hundreds of letters and petitions, plans for an office complex on the premises were dropped.

One woman wrote: “Many people go (to Acres) when they are lonely, and it makes them feel as though they are with friends.”

The store had been forced to move once before--in 1964--when its original location was turned into a parking lot. Its current residence at 240 Long Beach Blvd. was formerly a country-music dance hall, which explains the horseshoes imprinted in the cement at one entrance and a 20-foot-wide Western painting that hovers over Rare Books.

“(The painting) was too big to take out when we moved in, so we just left it,” Smith said with a shrug.

Regular Customers

Regulars range from author Ray Bradbury and disc jockey Gary Owens to a Torrance professor who shops in History every two weeks, a Florida bookstore owner who drops by twice a year to add to his stock of nonfiction and a Virginia man who orders Westerns by mail.

Frank Cotton, who has worked at Acres for 51 years, said that he is too busy to do much reading on the job but that he has met his share of real-life characters. There was the author of a best-selling memory course who stepped up to buy two books. They got talking and, after a while, neither could remember whether the author had paid for the books. After the matter was settled, the memory expert left--only to return a few moments later.

“He’d forgotten his umbrella,” Cotton said.

Then there was the late actor/author Sterling Hayden, who used to lumber in, all 6 feet, 6 inches of him, and bellow: “Well, what do you have new for me today, Cotton?”

To ensure steady arrivals of something new, Acres not only buys books, it buys bookstores--or at least their stock. Smith recently purchased 35,000 volumes from two San Diego stores that went out of business.

Book scouts are the other major source of replenishment--self-employed scavengers who know what Acres is likely to buy. (The store turns down about one-third of what it is offered.)

“We’re always looking for Western Americana, Civil War, World War II, metaphysics,” Smith said. “Funny thing--we can’t get enough golf books. They sell so fast, but we can’t give away skiing.”

Scouts are secretive characters who do not like to divulge their sources, which include (but are not limited to) garage and estate sales and thrift shops.

“I knew one scout (who) said his life had been ruined during the Depression,” recalled owner Eugene Smith (Jackie’s father-in-law), with a laugh. “He’d had a chance to buy a first edition of ‘Tamerlane’ by Poe at an estate sale in Tennessee. He didn’t have the money, and when he returned the next day, it was gone. He was still talking about it 30 years later.”

Eugene Smith, like his father, Bertrand--the founder of Acres--used to travel to Europe each summer and mail back thousands of books to add to the store’s supply. Bertrand Smith died in 1962, and Eugene Smith, 77, is in semi-retirement.

“A lot of these (books) represent bad guesses,” Eugene Smith said, chuckling again, as he quietly went about shelving books in Fiction. “We thought they’d sell, and they didn’t. We have some that’ve been in the store almost since it opened--at their original price.”

He pulled out a dusty hard-bound copy of “Cousin Jane” by Harry Leon Wilson, published in 1925. Price: 60 cents.

“Bad guesses,” he repeated.

One such case stuck in Smith’s mind.

“An old fellow who’d written one novel in his life used to come in here,” Smith said. “We had a copy of it on the shelf for years. He’d check to see if it had been bought, and it was always here. I often wondered if it wouldn’t have been kinder to take it off the shelf and tell him it was sold.”