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Whitlock Farm Booksellers
Not Just a Store, An Experience
By Heather Gunnoud

The Whitlock Farm Booksellers is set off the beaten path in rural Bethany. There is no mistaking it for one of the cookie cutter chain bookstores found in every suburban shopping mall. When driving down the twisting back country roads, you are left with the feeling that civilization and modern society is being left in the dust.

The Whitlock is an anachronism and the new owner, Norm Pattis, wants to keep it that way. (See the accompanying article on Pattis.)

The entrance to the bookstore is flanked by two white wooden posts that support a swinging metal gate that appears to never be shut. The property boasts four barns. The two front barns contain the bookstore. The two rear barns house the farm’s remaining livestock.

The Whitlock Farm Bookstore has been open since the 1890’s. Originally owned by the Whitlock family, the bookstore has recently passed into the hands of Norm Pattis. The bookstore’s first incarnation was even more informal. The two barns, which had housed sheep and turkeys, became a storage area for books. The doors were left unlocked and people were encouraged to just come in and browse. If they found something that they were interested in, there was a tin can where they could deposit money. This is difficult to imagine for the contemporary book connoisseur used to the elaborate security systems in bookstores. While the customer trusting spirit of the bookstore has not changed, it has been updated.

When you enter the lower barn you are greeted by the comforting smell of old books, tinged with the smell of alcohol and glue used to fix the effects time has wrought on these treasures. The warm overhead lighting illuminates the massive collections of books. Books occupy every imaginable surface. In the background classical music plays softly and you can hear people chatting about recent acquisitions. The antique cash register by the front door adds to the nostalgic charm of the store. The staff is quick to point out that although the register is missing its casing, it is far more reliable than its modern counterparts.

The three person staff is warm, friendly, and inviting. Elaine Sargent and Audrey White, are each willing to expound upon their particular area of interest. Sargent is a librarian who specializes in the repair of old books. She is eager to explain the differences between books that can be saved and those that can’t. She also points out that even pages from books that can no longer be contained by their bindings have merit. Illustrations can be salvaged and framed, giving new life to an old book.

As you wander around the store, it is never far from your mind that this is no Borders or Barnes and Noble. The ever-changing nature of the stock requires that you carefully inspect the books in each row. While navigating the rows of rough wooden book shelves you become aware of the uneven scarred floor masked by throw rugs. The windows are made of an antique glass that warps the outside world, giving the feeling that either the customer has landed in a secluded haven of books or the world outside has morphed into a Monet painting.

Teeming with literary treasure, the upper barn contains an odd combination of old new and books. Here one can find everything from a 1990’s Danielle Steele novel to an early 1900’s Horatio Alger novel. Equally diverse is the clientele. Conversations from Yale students mix with conversations of book collectors. The students look for books to read for pleasure while the collector asks if any new books old ones have been acquired.

The bookstore has become an ever expanding enterprise and Whitlock has now ventured into the world of antique maps. Although during our visit some of the maps were out at a fair (along with the in house map expert), it was still an interesting collection. One advantage of viewing the maps is the vista to be enjoyed from the small porch outside the map room. The extensive property stretches out before you and you can’t help but be grateful to Norm Pattis for saving this landmark. Where else can you look out over a bookstore and a field, while in the distance watch a young woman receiving a horseback riding lesson.

The store blends old and the new. The historic integrity of the store is maintained while subtle quiet modernizations lie on the fringe.
The tin can has been abandoned for a cash register but the basic feeling of trust and honesty remains. The upper book barn is not monitored and there is an implicit faith in each customer’s honesty. There is trust that customers will bring their purchases to be rung up and paid for. The only visible computer is surrounded by so many books it is hard to find. In an age where the written word is being submerged by the electronic word, the written word seems to be fighting back here. Walking through this store isn’t like the mass market experience in one a soulless chain store; it’s more like wandering through a friend’s library.


The Whitlock's New Owner A Man of Many Parts
By Joseph Glad

“My stance is that we all stumble into the world by chance, find something we truly enjoy and do that until we stop enjoying it and start something else,” says Norm Pattis, former philosophy major and journalist, then lawyer and farmer, and now also the new owner of Whitlock Farms Booksellers. For Pattis, a life-long love of the written word developed into the pursuit of reason and personal truth through philosophy. He then decided to take a more active role in reaching people and became a journalist, but he ultimately felt that to be “too derivative.” He wanted to create events rather than merely report them. Ultimately he decided to put his reasoning abilities to use defending the little guy as a civil lawyer.

Pattis, a man who finds pleasure in challenging the status quo, didn’t want the Whitlock Property in Bethany to be bought for its land and turned into “another McMansion,” so he consulted with his wife about buying the business. He was pleasantly surprised when she agreed.

“From that point on, there really wasn’t any turning back,” he admits.

Owning a bookstore has been a life-long dream of sorts for Pattis, who spend much of his youth in a public library. He believes that everybody who loves to read would dream of owning a bookstore and surrounding themselves with books.

“The thrill of owning a bookstore is selling whatever I like,” Pattis said. He also plans to open a small press as “a venue for unpublished poets.”

Pattis describes his own life as simple, but busy. He maintains a wide-array of work between his law practice, his small farm, and the bookstore. But he says he doesn’t get too involved in social circles. Although his busy law practice prohibits him from taking part in the daily activities at the bookstore, Pattis plays a role in procuring new books through making house calls when people invite him over to look at their books and attending estate sales.

“You never know what you might find,” Pattis said, there’s always a chance of finding a book that could change your life. Having recently started collecting himself, Pattis is on the lookout for the works of John Milton and intends to hold onto those copies.

Pattis says he gets a thrill just from offering an alternative to the big bookstore chains. Pattis, who in his law practice has dealt with everything from reverse discrimination cases to preserving an inmate’s basic liberties, is used to taking on large establishments and even challenging the government’s authority. The bookstore is another of his ramparts against the status quo.

NEW WORLD FOUND IN OLD BARN

Terese Karmel
Features Editor
The Willimantic Chronicle
Saturday November 12, 2005

We were an eclectic bunch that gathered there this golden fall afternoon. But writers and readers are often that way: they may write on a wide assortment of and they may read a variety of different works.

This day I am seated at a picnic table on a lovely old farm in Bethany, Connecticut, just over the Woodbridge border in a part of the state known for its writer population and which, to my own discredit, I am far too unfamiliar with.

My friend and colleague Andy Thibault has invited me to read from my recently-published book on the UConn women's basketball team at Whitlock Farm Booksellers, a generations-old family-run used and rare book shop, owned by Norm Pattis and Judy Rosenkrantz. It is vaguely reminiscent of something that would be more at home on Charing Cross Lane in the heart of London. In that area of the West End, hundreds of booksellers in dusty old shops straight out of Dickens compete to sell one priceless 17th century map of "the colonies." Typically, a crusty, dusty old man waits on you, but at Whitlock that couldn't have been further from the truth. The staff was friendly and appreciative, much like the cast of  writers Andy Thibault had assembled that afternoon: political writer and editor Priscilla Buckley, slam poet Elizabeth Thomas and myself. In fact between organizers and guests of honor, we nearly outnumbered those who had come to hear us, but that didn't matter. They were an enlightened appreciative audience who would rather spend time opening and closing pages than clicking a remote control.

But the most intriguing part of the afternoon was the harmony that masked our differences.

Priscilla Buckley is William Buckley's sister. A grand woman in her 80s, she was the managing editor for her brother's National Review, the truly first conservative magazine for intellectuals, for 43 years, giving up a reporting job in Paris for (then) United Press. She has written several books but the latest, "Living It Up at National Review," (the title an intentional oxymoron, I'm sure), is as funny as it is political. Buckley alternates  tales of the inner (sometimes hilarious) workings of the magazine with her adventures traveling with her brother and large family to Gstaad, Angkor Wat and other exotic places. This day she reads chapters about the "the young fry" at the NR and then one about what she termed "a typical day at the office," about a Miss Valpolicella (the name changed to protect who knows) who takes very seriously the theory of cellogy which is the belief that people in close proximity exchange cells and, in effect, become each other or something like that. In this excerpt, she is trying to convince Priscilla B. that, having spent time in the same room with Bill Buckley, she and he are, in effect, in each others' bodies. "If, at this very moment, your brother is choking then I, too will ch...." Both Miss V. and Miss B.'s voice trail off at this point and I am laughing heartily, thinking of the kooks one meets in the publishing business.

After a brief break, during which the Bethany Elementary School PTO woman sells banana bread and cider for half a buck, I am up next and take a seat in a elementary school-chair directly in front of the picnic table, wondering how I could ever dare to follow in Miss Valpolicella's footsteps. Given the average age of the people gathered there (70-plus), I read excerpts about the history of women's basketball at UConn (when muscles and surgery scars were frowned upon as "unladylike"), a passage about the illnesses and deaths of the mothers of well-known players and one about how various tall players came to terms with their height. While I am reading, people laugh and sigh and I am relieved.

Next comes Thomas, who has worked tirelessly with young people to encourage them to write and perform poetry. She does both - very well. Her concerns are far closer to home than skiing and sailing and Final Fours. She performs a poem, "Lies My Mother Told Me," which is full of the advice a girl gets from her parent: "If you're mean to your younger brother, I'll know/because I have a special eye/that watches you when I'm not home;" "If you keep crossing your eyes/they will stay that way/until the wind changes direction" and so forth. Preposterous advice, but always with a kernel of truth so that I'm quite confident even Priscilla Buckley's mum would have agreed with a part of it. Certainly mine would have. Thomas, who is from Columbia, has a rap quality to her poetry and thus it contains swear words (the real extreme ones) but Buckley is smiling despite whatever class she brings to bear on the afternoon. She is, after all, a newspaper woman.

In the end, we buy each others' books, including the PTO lady, whose daughter goes to Geno Auriemma's summer girls basketball camp. Priscilla Buckley bought my book and had me sign it for a niece, Kate, who is 6-1 and proud of it.

And now I'm dying of curiosity. Will William F. Buckley wander into that great library in the family compound in Sharon and become engrossed in the history of Shea Ralph's knee problems? Will Priscilla Buckley, an avid golfer, sailor and hunter, show up with her face striped blue and white at a UConn women's game?

Who knows. For me, this was the first of what will be similar experiences, probably a bit more crowded and formal. But a small part of me will always hold dear that sunny afternoon in November, when Mother Nature gave us a day in May and when three women with three distinct voices gathered around a picnic table in a large field, surrounded by a larger field of grazing horses -- concentric circles of space and time -- and I entered a new world.

WHITLOCK FARM BOOKSELLERS

BARGAIN

HOLIDAY SHOPPING

AT BOOK BARN

BETHANY, CT -- Author and radio host Diane Smith tops a strong lineup as Whitlock Farm Booksellers concludes its fall series of appearances by poets and writers Saturday, Nov. 19 at 1 p.m.  Joining Smith will be novelists Rand Richards Cooper and Dan Pope and poet Tonya Hegamin.
  
Smith is the co-host of the top rated Morning Show on WTIC-AM News Talk 1080 with Ray Dunaway. An Emmy award winning TV journalist, she produces programs for Connecticut Public TV, based on her very popular series "Positively Connecticut. "Positively Connecticut" searches out the inspiring, warm, funny, and sometimes downright strange stories that give Connecticut its character. Her book by the same name has been a best seller for The Globe Pequot Press. The sequel Absolutely Positively Connecticut was published in 2000. One reviewer called her book Christmas in
Connecticut “the comfort gift of the season”.  Her latest book is Summer in Connecticut.
                                                                  

Rand Richards Cooper
Cooper is the author of two works of fiction, The Last to Go (HBJ) and Big As Life (The Dial Press) and has taught at Amherst and Emerson colleges. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, Esquire and many other magazines, and on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. His story, “Johnny Hamburger,” was featured in Best American Short Stories 2003, and The Last to Go was produced for television by ABC.

  
A travel writer, Cooper is a contributing editor for Bon Appétit and winner of a 2002 Lowell Thomas Gold Medal award from the Society of American Travel Writers. He is a film reviewer, book reviewer and essayist for Commonweal Magazine, and also writes frequently for the Hartford Courant’s Northeast Magazine, where his cover feature on three distinguished Connecticut professors won a first-prize award from the Education Writers Association of America. Rand and his wife, Molly, live in Hartford, Connecticut with their beloved English bulldog, Bert.

“An enticing and haunting work... A thorough and often wrenching investigation of a family -- its history, its progress and its dissolution... A wonderful book.”    —New York Times Book Review

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR In The Cherry Tree

Dan Pope’s brilliant novel chronicles a childhood summer lived beneath the rumblings of an unhappy marriage. An ethnography of American suburban boyhood circa 1974, In the Cherry Tree takes you back to when you could name every actor on “The Big Valley,” wield dialogue from The Poseidon Adventure as a secret code to baffle the uninitiated, sing “The Night Chicago Died” from start to finish verbatim, and pronounce with absolute confidence that Elton John ruled and John Denver sucked. In lucid, deceptively simple prose, Pope explores childhood’s ardent faith in things worth knowing, just because. And in the necessity of judgments, the endless listing and rating of athletes, pop stars and movies — creating systems of order and value by which to live, while the Mom and the Dad, as Pope’s narrator calls them, battle it out in the next room.

  
Tender yet unsentimental, raucously funny, In the Cherry Tree evokes not only a time and place, but a kind of imagination that adulthood almost inevitably extinguishes in us all. You may not realize how much you’ve forgotten about being twelve years old until this novel reminds you. Anyone who was young in the suburbs a quarter century ago will be transported instantly back — for better and for worse — to familiar ground. Thought you’d left 1974 behind forever? Ready or not, here you go.

  
In the manner of Alice McDermott’s That Night, or Evan Connell’s Mrs. Bridge, Dan Pope’s small, deft novel turns suburban malaise into both comedy and elegy. It’s a gem.

Hegamin currently resides at Soul Mountain Writers Retreat in East Haddam as program director and assistant to Connecticut Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson.

Before receiving her MFA from The New School University, Hegamin worked as a sexual assault educator and counselor. She has also taught poetry workshops to at risk and incarcerated women. She is  a graduate follow of the Cave Canem Retreat for African American poets.

Two of her books are forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin. Most Loved in All The World is an illustrated poem;  M & O 4Ever is a novel for young adults.  Hegamin is a frequent contributor to Black Issues Book Review magazine.

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