Great Littleton's biggest used bookstore closes

Stutts is closed for the summer, but life goes on in Great Littleton—by which we mean it continues to get worse. Last week, local bibliophiles were saddened to hear that Shabby’s, the campus’ legendary used bookstore, was closing after 40 years of service to the local community. The move wasn’t a surprise; the future of the warren-like retailer had been in doubt ever since the recent passing of its larger-than-life owner. In March, Bill Shabby suffered his nineteeth heart attack, and decided to succumb to it, just to punish a customer for asking if there was a restroom.

“That was Bill,” said Sharon White, 57, a longtime Shabby’s customer and one of the few who could decipher Shabby’s rapid-fire barrage of swears. “It wasn’t about money to him. But it wasn’t about selling books, either,” White said. “I’m not exactly sure what it was about. Vengeance?

“He said to me more than once, ‘I want every moment in this store to be as unpleasant as possible.’”

Sales had been slumping for years, never having recovered from October 1997’s lethal shelf collapse. Nevertheless, for four decades, Bill Shabby was as much a part of Great Littleton as summer malaria. Looming over his shop like a sweat-sour, shirt-sleeved volcano, Bill fostered friendships: students and townies bonded in the high-stress environment forged by the owner’s incomprehensible patterns of abuse. Booklovers flocked from all over New England to hunt for bargains at Shabby’s regular “Water Damage Sales” (there was a Turkish bath directly upstairs), only to be disappointed when Bill insisted everyone still pay full price. And pawing through the “Moldy--Read at Own Risk” boxes outside the front door became as much a Stutts ritual as throwing up food from the dining hall.

Generations of Stutts students won’t forget spending hours pawing through Shabby’s dust-rimed, vaguely alphabetized stock. Many also recalled nestling in the rotting easychairs scattered randomly throughout the store. “You did that exactly once,” said Kevin Kleiman ’02. “The chairs put a funny smell in your clothes. I had to burn my favorite shirt.”

Tests are still being done to determine the nature of the smell, but many believe it came from the cats that prowled the store. “Usually, I like a cat or two in a bookstore,” said Tracy Gilbert ’88, “but these cats were scary. They were feral, incontinent, and I swear one was rabid. I remember being trapped by a big tabby, and having to fight my way out with the Compact OED.”

Sharon White laughs at the memory of the cats. “I don’t know whose they were,” she says. “Bill always denied they existed. I’d say, ‘There it is, Bill, mauling that girl,’ and he’d just grunt and keep watching that TV of his.”

On an average day, one could find Bill behind his desk, surrounded by piles of books, watching TV on a small, wavery black-and-white held together with tape. One student remembers, “He had to hit it about every five minutes to make it work. I was there the day it finally broke. That was scary.”

Indeed, fear seems to be the commonest reaction to Bill Shabby, who was at least 300 pounds, and perpetually enraged. “I saw him pick up a Girl Scout--she was selling cookies--and throw her out into the street,” said Fanton Mandrake, head of the University Museum and one of the few administrators brave enough to go into the store. “I think all that mold and dust and cat urine did something to his brain.”

“He was perpetually throwing up into his mouth, and it dribbled onto his beard,” said Constance Cornish, owner of The Lonely Scone next door. “He believed that burdock and dandelion soda made it better, so he was always coming over and stealing some. I couldn’t fight him, so I went over and stole books in recompense.”

The only people Bill Shabby ever got along with were “the two old guys playing chess in the reference aisle,” White said. “And when I say ‘get along with’ I mean, he didn’t hit them. At least I never saw him hit them.”

In the 1960s, Shabby’s was a center for the Free Speech movement at Stutts—at least until Bill Shabby found out. “He literally chased us out of the store,” said David "Che" Rodriguez, ’69. “He kept calling me ‘John [effing] Steinbeck’ for some reason. There was a big sign in the store: ‘I will NOT sell you any John Steinbeck!!!’, just like that, multiple exclamation points and everything,” Rodriguez remembers. “I think he was insane.”

So while there is nostalgia, the passing of the man and his store has an unmistakable undercurrent of relief. “In this era of online bookstores and antiseptic corporate behemoths,” Mandrake says, “Shabby’s was a real, old-time used bookstore. Bill was a true Great Littleton original, and having said that, I’m truly glad he’s dead.”