There's a thread about our FReep today over here ^.
Posted on 10/06/2003 4:58:16 AM PDT by The Anti-Democrat
The mini-muffins, chocolate-chip cookies, bottles of water and a carafe of coffee still waited for takers Sunday afternoon, but the line outside The Happy Bookseller was long gone.
In a little more than an hour after doors opened at 1 p.m., about 200 people — mostly women in their 40s — coursed through the store, all to pick up Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new book, “Living History.” The $28 purchase also buys a numbered place in line for Clinton’s book-signing between 2:30 and 4 p.m. today.
It was fewer than the 500 store owner Andy Graves had estimated last week. “I was driving in today,” Graves told a customer as he took her check, “and I had this great trepidation that there would be thousands of people waiting.”
He laughed.
“Oh, I’m not disappointed,” Graves said later. “It’s the kind of thing that’s good to have some play, especially with Yom Kippur and with the State Fair and all that’s going on.”
The good news, he said, is that there will probably be tickets available today. Only 500 will be sold.
Maria Walker, a 46-year-old auditor with the state, called not long after 1 p.m. and found that they were already issuing ticket No. 75.
“I got dressed right away and came down,” she said. “I thought there was going to be an after-church crowd.” Walker looked around the store, which by 2:30 p.m. had about as many employees as customers.
The copy of “Living History” Walker bought Sunday is not her first. She’s given two or three of them as gifts. This purchase is for posterity, in a way.
“She was the first lady, and if I have a chance to get it autographed, I will,” said Walker, who will be No. 207 in line today.
No. 205 didn’t realize she had a number. “Oh my gosh,” said Mary Vaughn, 45, “I have a number?”
Vaughn, a social work therapist, will be at the book-signing for her mother, who died last year of bladder cancer. Betty Ann Mullins Vaughn, 67, was a fan of Sen. Clinton.
“I know she would want me to be here,” Vaughn said.
I bet all 13 members of the local Coven were there.
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