Bookmarks Evoke Memories of Past Adventures

by admin | February 6, 2026 7:47 am

An old beer stein with a weathered wooden handle sits on the built-in bookshelf behind my desk. Grammy Bourque, my maternal grandmother, gave it to me more than 30 years ago when I traveled to New Hampshire to visit. I have no idea of that stein’s age, but I would guess it is nearly as old as I am. She and my grandfather, who died at 67 of a heart attack in 1972 while shoveling snow off the roof, kept a set in their basement bar, which also featured a pool table, and a small woodshop.

I imagine my grandfather — a quiet, talented man who built their small house in the country outside Hopkinton in the 1950s — pouring a Carling Black Label into that beer stein, after a long day running the Shell gas station he owned down the street from the state Capitol in Concord. It is a fond memory, even if it might not be exactly true. I have no idea if he used the stein I now own.

Since I worry about cracking or dropping the stein, I use it for something else. It is filled with bookmarks collected from bookstores and museums over the decades. The latest came from the Myth and Marble exhibit at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, which my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I visited the weekend after Christmas. There are many others, from Recycled Books in Denton; Harvard Book Store in Cambridge; Powell’s City of Books in Portland; Sundog Books in Seaside, Florida; Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver — and many more.

Other bookmarks are placed within the pages of a small stack of books I am using in my research, as well as whatever I am reading for pleasure at the moment. I do not exactly collect bookmarks. When one gets too worn and soft to be effective, it heads to the back of the stack. I am mighty fond of that beer stein filled with bookmarks.

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As usual, thinking about bookmarks sent me down the rabbit hole of research. Turns out there is an International Friends of Bookmarks, “a community of bookmark lovers with members all [1]over the world who are interested in bookmarks, such as passionate readers, bookmark collectors, librarians, illustrators, blog editors, product designers, bookshop owners, bookmark producers, and others.” IFOB’s website[2] claims 355 members from 44 countries. It features a bookmark-swapping page for serious collectors. That is not me. But I was interested to learn that the 10^th annual World Bookmark Day (WOBODA) is coming up on Feb. 25.

A member from Poland, Jacek Hałuszkiewicz, recently announced plans to create the first bookmark museum in Chojnice, a town of about 39,000 in northern Poland. An online virtual bookmark museum is available at bookmark-museum.com[3]. A few years ago, in Fine Books & Collections, Allison C. Meier published A History of Collecting Bookmarks[4]. She observed that bookmarks had been entwined with books for centuries, often a ribbon or thread attached to the spine. In the 19^th century, with the improvement in printing production, the bookmark became an object separate from the book. It became transportable from one book to another.

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I pulled out my Powell’s City of Books bookmark, slightly frayed at top — the part that sticks out above the book and gets banged up in my satchel. That Portland institution takes up an entire city block, with more than a million new, used, and rare books. It is the world’s largest independent bookstore. We have visited there twice. The first visit to Portland in 2023 was to visit our dear friend Glenn McCutchen and his grown children. Glenn was my mentor during my newspaper career. We all remained close after he retired in 2008 and eventually moved to Portland. It was a happy visit, fondly remembered. I bought a couple of novels on that first trip.

The second visit was considerably sadder. It came about a year later, after Glenn died of cancer at 80. We flew in for his memorial service and visited Powell’s on that trip. It seemed fitting to visit Powell’s once again, drink coffee in its shop, and recall our times there with our buddy. I think of Glenn every time I use that bookmark.

Other bookmarks evoke fonder memories, of vacations taken here and yonder, of the books enjoyed, the adventures taken. Perhaps I am a bookmark collector after all.

Source URL: https://garyborders.com/pages/bookmarks-evoke-memories-of-past-adventures/

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