Turning the page

Dickson Street Bookshop keeps magic alive

In the cacophony of Fayetteville’s Dickson Street, often referred to as the city’s entertainment district, a quiet retreat awaits bibliophiles.

The Dickson Street Bookshop is a bit like Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley in that its glass-door, street-corner entrance really provides no clue to the magnitude of the magic, mystery and mayhem that can be found beyond.

Even after taking a few steps inside, it’s impossible to grasp the labyrinth of books shoppers are about to discover. It’s the kind of place that offers new discoveries with every visit. Finding them is part of the fun. Maybe that’s why this bookstore belongs there, in the entertainment district where it’s been for 46 years.

We don’t often write about businesses in this space. Maybe the behemoths like Walmart, Tyson or J.B. Hunt from time to time, but it’s fairly rare for a small business like this one to make its way into the newspaper’s editorial. But the Dickson Street Bookshop is more than a business. It’s a cultural institution. It’s one of those unique outlets that supports the accuracy of bumper stickers declaring a need to keep a certain funkiness in Fayetteville.

Oh, sure, there are other bookstores and we appreciate every one of them. But none of them match the personality and intimacy, if that’s the word, of the ol’ bookshop on Dickson. Walking through its stacks leaves the shopper feeling a bit miniature, as though caught in a broadcast of WonkaVision. The books are simply everywhere, side to side, high and low. They say it adds up to 100,000 volumes. And they’re organized, although how the shopkeepers manage it, we have no idea.

It would be overpowering if it wasn’t so … wonderful.

This business, this gift to the community, is the creation of Don Choffel and Charles O’Donnell, who partnered up in the 1970s. O’Donnell died in 2019. Choffel and staff kept the shop going.

Choffel, who was 90, died April 7, a day after going home from the store because he wasn’t feeling well.

Was this The End for the Dickson Street Bookshop?

Thank goodness, it’s not. Suedee Hall Elkins, according to reporter Bill Bowden, took a job with the bookshop back in 2010.

“I think this place, it sounds silly, but I think that it really does hold all kinds of magic,” Elkins said recently. “People come in and they’ll ask for a book. And if we don’t have it, I’ll say, ‘Call us tomorrow or the next day because now that you’ve come in the store and you’ve said out loud what you wanted, it will come to us.’ And I mean, it’s amazing how often that happens. I mean the book will walk in that day or the next day so often. It’s like the universe hears and it answers.”

And apparently, Elkins’ arrival 14 years ago was an unexpected answer for Choffel. A few years back, he surprised her with a casual comment: “When I die, this business will go to you,” he told her. He had made the arrangements without her knowing.

“I love this place, and I know that Don knew that,” Elkins said. “I don’t think I took a vacation for the first six or seven years. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t take a sick day and doesn’t take a vacation because I want to be here. And Don is very much the same way. I think that he saw that in me. I don’t know what he saw in me, but he saw something, I guess.”

We’re thankful he did. The incredible adventure Choffel started continues. Fayetteville is fortunate to be the setting for it.