Books and conversation

Tom Connelly was always interested in owning a bookstore in Spokane, and now he does. He just took a circuitous route to his dream.

Connelly operates the Pilot Book Store, his second used-book store with that name, in the city’s Hillyard neighborhood, at 3108 E. Olympic Ave., just a few steps east of Market Street.

“One of Spokane’s great historic districts,” he is quick to point out.

A frequent visitor to Spokane while growing up in Moses Lake, Connelly prepared for a career in retail sales by graduating from the University of Washington with a major in German.

That took him to a dozen years as a teacher in Waterville and Mattawa school districts and during that period he earned a master’s degree in German from Northern Iowa University.

“I was never on the Northern Iowa campus,” he laughs. “I spent several summers in southern Austria where the school had established its German Teachers Institute at a place called Klagensfurt.”

The real preparation for bookstore ownership was accomplished much earlier, during Connelly family visits to Spokane from Moses Lake.

“My mother would give me a couple of dollars to spend, and I would visit Inland Book on Sprague Avenue and my eyes would pop out,” he said.

Inland Book was a one-man operation with Dean Gilbert in charge. Right next to the Review and Chronicle buildings in those days, Inland Book was often full of browsers from the newspapers’ offices and various other nonbuyers.

Regardless, Gilbert, a loquacious fellow often preoccupied with getting his pipe lit, always had time to discuss books with visitors regardless of their intent to purchase. He was an Anglophile and loved talking about his most recent trip to England. Anyway, folks from the adjacent buildings loved to visit and wondered why he didn’t serve coffee.

Connelly has acquired Gilbert’s conversational attributes and outgoing manner and established them in Hillyard. Gilbert sold out and retired several years ago. His bookstore has morphed into Defunct Books on South Wall Street, making it less convenient for newspaper people to loaf there.

Anyway, young Tom Connelly enjoyed the bookstore visits and Gilbert. “I told Dean I wanted to be him when I grew up,” he said. He also “apprenticed” at the Spokane Book Company with owner Bill Folger on North Monroe Street just across the Spokane River.

Folger, a quiet man with a wry sense of humor, shut down that store about the time the Monroe Street Bridge was closed for renovation a few years back.

After leaving teaching – “12 years in the trenches” – Connelly operated his Pilot Book Store in Moses Lake for eight years, moving to Spokane in 2003. He began working at the Hillyard store, then known as Pages From the Past, with the intention of buying it. He took over about 16 months ago.

The store has about 5,000 volumes, Connelly said, in about 1,200 square feet. The focus is on hardback books. “Classics, from Shakespeare to Dickens, Hemingway to Kipling,” he said.

Connelly is particularly proud of the recent acquisition of Americana when Ye Galleon Press in Fairfield closed following the death of owner Glen Adams. “I went down there and came back with a truckload of books,” he said. “Americana is vital in a bookstore.”

And biographies.

“I don’t think anybody in town has a better selection of biographies,” Connelly said. Many of them are on consignment from Dr. Van Veene, a retired physician and bibliophile whose book collection outgrew his home. “Because of him I also have a good collection of vintage medical books,” Connelly added.

Roy Shiosaki is another frequent visitor. The building that houses the store was formerly the Hillyard Laundry and Shiosaki’s family owned it for 96 years. “We discuss military books and his Army experiences.” Connelly said. Shiosaki was a member of legendary all-Japanese 442nd Regimental Combat Team that fought in Europe. “I’m always all ears,” Connelly said.

Connelly jokes about being a Washington transplant. His family moved from Fargo, N.D., in 1955, fleeing the North Dakota winters. “My dad said there were a lot of smart people in Washington. The smarter they were, the faster they got here,” he laughed.

The store is open seven days week.

“You never know with a bookstore when somebody might slip in and make a big difference in your income,” he said.