Jack's Corner Bookstore (Plymouth)

I don't know the difference between Goethe's Faust and Doctor Faustus himself but I can flip this for an Abe Lincoln (actually it's an Alex Hamilton but after fees and shipping costs it becomes a fiver) on eBay with minimal effort on a dime store budget and that counts for something. More important is the ephemera in the book from Jack's Corner Bookstore which came with this tome. 

If you know Plymouth, Michigan and Kellogg Park then you probably knew Saxton's, which was a garden supply store kiddie corner to it on the southeast side of Ann Arbor Trail. I believe that all remnants of the buildings have been torn down and replaced by a parking lot but at some point there was Jack's Corner Bookstore and a train shop next to Saxton's in the original structure that once housed the business.

Next door to that was a house split into several apartments. The bottom corner one was occupied by an ex-girlfriend and I frequently stayed there. She was always concerned about undressing in the bedroom facing the building because the lofts above the stores looked directly down into the slats of the Venetian blinds and there always seemed to be somebody milling about it.

Jack Gunsaulus has long retired from the book business and likely has passed on now as has my sentiment towards the aforementioned story. Thus, I'll remove the ephemera from the book and cheat some idle-minded archivist from rekindling the past and the story will end there as well.

The Community Crier, February 14, 1990

As for my part in this docu-drama, I know that I visited Jack's at least once sometime in the early 1990s, a year or so after he opened shop. I can recall that I was reading Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America by Jared Taylor during this time period and was unable to get past a few chapters, still being in the E. E. Cummings phase of my early book mania. I don't recall purchasing anything from the store but do recollect parking in front on many occasions. The book shown in the post was purchased second hand at some unremembered thrift store 5 or 6 years back.

Plymouth Observer, September 10, 1990

I also recollect that Jack's was on the corner, as the name would indicate, and the train shop, which went through a few names, was right next door to Saxton's itself, but I could be mistaken. The story above concerning Barbara Grob's untimely demise in 1990 seems to confirm my remembrance of the location.