David Hess, owner of the Bookman book shop in Orange, shares the treasures he discovers between the pages in his weekly video series, “Things Found in Old Books.”
The rows and rows of books, shelved from floor to ceiling and along every wall, are a book lover’s dream. You’ll find ever genre here, from leatherbound classics to popular contemporary novels and nonfiction reads. And hung up around the Orange shop is a collection of memorabilia once found between the pages of old books. Since opening the used bookstore in 1990, David Hess has uncovered countless treasures while processing books donated by customers. Once a week, he sits down in front of a camera and talks about a few of these discoveries. The online video series, aptly titled “Things Found in Old Books,” was born out of Hess’s desire to share his finds with friends and followers of the shop, and acts as an archive for the found objects and the histories that they reveal.
What made you decide to start sharing your finds online?
I was kind of new to Facebook, and I was just taking pictures of stuff. And some guy in Florida, he saw it. He was doing kind of a podcast, but visual. And he wanted me to come on his show and share some of the stuff I’d found over the years. I had so much fun doing it that I decided to start my own series. I’m not viral by any means, but I think there’s a small core of people who find it quaint. Just simple, low-tech—purposely low-tech. I know how to make good-looking videos, but I purposely have gone with just the single shots showing the stuff, talking about it, keeping them as short as I can. Sometimes I wonder, “What am I doing? No one’s watching.” But I guess I got enough people watching that it keeps me going.
What has been one of your favorite finds?
My best finding was in an old family Bible. So I’m leafing through it, and I see this kind of thin blue paper. I take it out and I open it up, and it was a handwritten letter from a Civil War soldier, written home. Chatty, a little bit. But stuff about the camp life, mentioned a few generals, and stuff like that. It took a long time to decipher it. They wrote weird in those days, you know? But I got it all deciphered. And they have those things in family Bibles where they write births and deaths. So under “births,” the guy who wrote the letter—his name was there. When I turned it over to the deaths, his name was also there, and the day he died was one of the big battles in Atlanta. And you can tell how old he was by looking at the dates. Nineteen-year-old kid. I know it’s not a cheery story, but that was one of the neatest things I’ve ever found.
Do you ever put the items you find back in the books, or do you keep them all?
I keep them, and I’ll tell you why. I think a lot of people would just say, “Oh, it’s an interesting sort of trash.” And maybe that’s where it belongs, I don’t know. But I used to work with a guy—and we’re talking forty years ago—a guy who’s been in the book business for a long time. We’d go through the books, and he’d find stuff, and he’d just throw stuff away. At the time, it didn’t bother me. Then, as I started going through books and finding stuff, I just couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. So now I have a shoebox in my office, and after every show I just go up and stick it all in the shoebox. And the shoebox is filling up.
You’ve referred to what you do as “book archeology.” What do you mean by that?
I kind of see myself as an archaeologist, looking through books, finding stuff. Ultimately what I enjoy—what I find interesting—is that the stuff in books is basically bookmarks. People just grab what was on the desk to mark their book. I get insight into people and into the life and times of their era by studying the small minutia of their life. It’s not big, splashy stuff. It’s just the small stuff that paints a picture of everyday people. Tickets—you think, oh, it’s just a ticket. But it’s actually a piece of our lives that is kind of vanishing. I imagine they still have some (paper) tickets, but they are disappearing. I find stuff that reminds you of a different time. Things that are no longer with us.
Watch “Things Found in Old Books” at youtube.com/@55David and visit ebookman.com to find out more about Bookman used book store.