Our literary hero

 Our literary hero





     A stuffy, smoke-filled storefront in South Gate educated myself, Greg and Bill Hogan more than any classroom or professor in all of our higher education. Einsels Used Books popped up at 3933 Tweedy boulevard in 1965 and offered a huge collection of classic literature along with a mountain of trashy guilty pleasures. The place was run by an interesting couple, mostly wife Cathelene who chain-smoked while reading thick novels like 700 pagers by John Jakes or Harold Robbins. Her husband Lee worked at Firestone on night shifts but ran the bookstore as a sideline. It was about the time that Billy and I got a lust for reading just in time for Einsel to give us anything we wanted for a quarter. I found Raymond Chandler, read all of  Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dos Passos and got classic editions of 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies along with Candy by Maxwell Kenton (Terry Southern). We were regular customers since we had very little money and Einsels had a cool vibe which included advice from these lifetime readers. Lee, whose reall name was Gail Leroy Einsel had another life we never knew about until much later. He was a Korean War vet and fought overseas for four years. He and Cath had three kids and lived right on San Luis ave. in the Gate. The ultra-conservative fascist front in the Gate went on a rampage of repression in 1969 all about a head shop on Tweedy and ended up catching Lee doing some under the counter sales involving reels of porn which had Bill and I known about would have probably purchased. The fascists actually put the hero in jail but he managed to get back on Tweedy and sold books until August of 1981. Greg being an avid reader and mentee of the Gate literati bought plenty of mind-expanding fiction at Einsels including his own USA Trilogy and the stories of Edgar Allen Poe. In the Summer of 1967 I read 27 novels all purchased at Einsels which expanded my horizons toward actully believing I could study literature in college. Einsels was really like our B.A. before we got B.A.s. Lee and Cathelene managed to move forward after giving up Tweedy blvd. and made it to 2017 and 2018 before taking their business in books to paradise. Lee left us with  words to live by which he laid on Billy Hogan one day when discussing fiction as opposed to the non-fiction he preferred "it's all bullshit" he told the young Hogan who had kept the thought to this day.






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