In 2007, Corey and Cheryl Mesler moved their bookstore to South Cooper. The building had originally opened in 1924 as a Piggly Wiggly self-service grocery store.
The headline for his 1911 obituary read, “Old Ball Player Dead.” Most readers of The Commercial Appeal knew Walter Burke: After all, for years baseball fans considered him the best first-baseman in the city, “having played that position for the Memphis Reds in their palmiest days.” After retiring from baseball, he opened a little newsstand at 182 North Main Street. No one reading that obituary, though, could have dreamed that Burke’s name would endure for 150 years — not for his prowess on the diamond, but for the shop he opened in 1875, which has survived to this day as Burke’s Book Store.
Chapter One
Few photographs have survived of the old bookstore when it was located on Main Street. In the 1960s, developers bulldozed that entire block to make way for the new Civic Center complex.
Born in Ireland in 1854, according to a tribute in the newspaper, Burke “was left motherless and fatherless at the tender age of two, buffeted about by strangers.” Nevertheless, “the boy came of the brave old stock of the Emerald Isle, which grows stronger under trials. ... Little by little, unaided, he became the head of a thriving business. And as his prosperity grew, so his charity grew.” Burke played an active role in St. Mary’s Church and chaired the annual picnic held at St. Peter’s Orphanage.
The bookstore was a family-owned (and -occupied) business — nestled into an old building near the southeast corner of Main and Poplar. Even though it’s usually described as a one-story building, company lore has it that the entire family — wife Emma, son Walter Jr., and daughters Lily, Violet, and Evelyn — all lived upstairs; the younger Walter had been born there.
The year before he died, Burke announced plans for a three-story, rather elaborate brick structure costing some $10,000 (the equivalent of $340,000 today), to replace the smaller shop. He didn’t live long enough to see the new building finished, but his death didn’t end that venture. His son, Walter Burke Jr., who had assisted with running the bookstore for years, took over the business.
Chapter Two
Walter Jr. expanded the offerings of books, local and out-of-town newspapers, journals, and other publications. At the same time, he began to sell items not usually associated with bookstores. A 1920 newspaper ad announced “Dolls! Toys! At 50% Discount! This is a jobber’s sample line closed out to us.” The ad explained, “Dolls worth $6; our price $3. Wheel Toys, $3, $4, and $5 value, complete assortments 50% off.” That’s not all: “We also have a full line of Bibles, Testaments, Infant Sets, Smoking Sets, Manicure Sets, and Xmas Box Papers.” Within a few years, the store would offer “fabulous metal toys from Japan, Germany, and many places overseas.”
During this time, Burke’s also stayed active in the community, by sponsoring baseball teams and organizing a company bowling team in the Knights of Columbus League. Both teams competed against local businesses, such as Rex Billiards, Bannon Coal, Chickasaw Foundry, and others. The store also became a ticket-seller for community events, such as the annual St. Patrick’s Day Picnic and the Irish Society Picnic, held each year at Rainbow Lake on Lamar, which brought hundreds, if not thousands, of Memphians into the store.
Under the management of Walter Jr., in 1946 Burke’s contracted with the local school system, and this arrangement played a major role in the firm’s longevity. Public schools here provided textbooks at no charge to elementary and junior-high students, but high-school students and anyone attending parochial schools were on their own. Burke’s stepped up and began selling textbooks. This enterprise was very profitable, though at times it was overwhelming, when the schools waited until the last minute to select their textbooks.
In 1947, The Commercial Appeal reported, “School Turnout Sets Record — Then Book Store Is Overrun.” On the afternoon of September 3rd, some 5,000 students came to Burke’s to buy their textbooks, and “turned it into a temporary mob scene.” Police were called to control the crowd, which stretched as a double line for two blocks in each direction down Main Street. Walter Jr. told reporters the number of customers was “almost double” what he had seen the prior year. The store remained open after hours, “with the staff of 11 clerks busily selling books,” and then reopened the next day, to serve yet another crowd, “which had diminished somewhat to 3,000 students.” Such business was obviously welcome, though one unnamed employee told a reporter it was “too much trouble for what it was worth.”
It was certainly an unusual situation. At the time, Burke’s faced competition from half a dozen other bookstores, but they were the only one selling textbooks (though later joined by a variety store on Madison, called Kuhn’s 5, 10, and 25 Cent Store). Walter Jr. told reporters, “We are having trouble getting some books, such as solid geometry and ninth-grade science books. Some of those have long been on order, but we are making efforts to obtain them.”
Even after hiring more staff, the following year at Burke’s was even more chaotic. According to The Commercial Appeal, “Three new clerks were like straws cast before the flood. Burke’s was jammed from morning until night.” Walter Jr. told the reporter, “It’ll continue like this throughout the week, and I can’t hire more clerks because they’d get into each other’s way.”
Chapter Three
Change came in 1953, when the third generation of the Burke family took over the business. Walter’s son, William, known to everyone as Bill, had joined the service during World War II after graduating from Christian Brothers High School, where he was a standout on the Brothers’ baseball and football teams. When he returned to civilian life looking for work, he showed little interest in the store’s textbook sales. That was just as well: The same year the Memphis public school system began offering books to all students, so a big part of Burke’s business vanished, though the store continued to offer books for parochial school students.
But Bill was truly interested in other books of all kinds, the older the better, so he settled in. He began working alongside his father, but when the older man’s health began to fail, his son took over the business. Walter passed away in 1958 and was buried in the Burke family plot at Calvary Cemetery.
The location at Main and Poplar brought many walk-in customers, though parking was always a problem. After so many years at that location, an unexpected change took place in 1963. City officials acquired several blocks along Main Street and announced plans to pull the old buildings down to make way for the modern Civic Center, a complex that would include City Hall and office buildings for the county and federal governments. Burke’s would have to go.
Looking around town for a new location, Bill came across a vacant lot on Poplar, “between two ramshackle boarding houses, and so tiny one wouldn’t think it was a real estate parcel.” He talked with the two sisters who owned the property, agreed on a price, and soon erected a one-story building, red brick with a white Colonial Revival-style entrance. The new store at 634 Poplar doubled the display area, and a newspaper account said “the store is now an interesting mixture of slightly organized piles and cases of very old and very new books.”
But Bill wanted more and began acquiring collections and former private libraries. “The glamor, the excitement, the interest, the possible big strike, is found in the old books,” according to a 1967 feature in The Commercial Appeal, which called Burke’s Book Store “a rarity. It’s a place where browsers can browse, and browse a lot, through more than 20,000 books of varying ages, with prices ranging from 75 cents to $75.”
“Things changed with The Firm. We were shocked at the reception and the fans were remarkable. I wouldn’t stand in line for one hour to see Mark Twain, but those fans were so loyal.” — John Grisham
Described as “a smiling, congenial man with thinning sandy hair,” Bill told the reporter that many customers are looking for “that elusive thing, the rare book that will bring them a fortune.” The only problem with that quest, said Bill, was that he had personally reviewed and priced every book lining every shelf; if a book was particularly valuable, he would have already noticed it.
At the same time, he admitted that he probably wouldn’t have taken it home. “I can’t afford to collect them,” he said. “I would like to save the books on Southern history and the Civil War, but this is how I make my living. I can’t afford to have it as a hobby.”
Even so, he admitted that’s part of the appeal, as he contacted people he knew with high-quality book collections. “That’s the hope — one that’s mighty faint,” observed the reporter. “But it’s part of the game that keeps him at a fading business, that of buying and selling old books.”
One challenge in selling old books was pricing them. “Some people think a 100-year-old book is something of value,” Bill said. “It may be, but” — and here he took down a handsome volume printed in England in 1685 — “look at the price.” It was $40. Then he reached up for another book, not as fancy and printed in this country in 1915. The price: $50.
By this time, Burke’s offered a rather eclectic collection. Gone were the cheap dolls and toys. Instead, buyers could find “everything from a 1917 University of Tennessee annual to the latest biography of Pope John XXIII.” And the store had resumed selling textbooks. Whatever customers found was rung up “on an antique silver cash register, sitting on a counter scarred with the penciling of 80 years.”
Settled into the new building, a minor crisis developed in August 1963 when Bill Burke had surgery at Baptist Hospital and had to recuperate for a while. The solution: “Clerks who are the family and friends of the store owners came in to volunteer.” The only problem was “there’s now no shortage of clerks, but just how intelligent they are is another matter,” said Bill’s wife, Patricia. “If someone wants a particular book, he’ll just have to go down and look for it.”
During this period, Burke’s embarked on its own publishing ventures, producing high-quality editions of local histories. One of the first, promoted as “the most sought-after history of Memphis” was Biography of a River Town by Gerald Capers. “Certain to become a collector’s item” and “an ideal Christmas gift,” this limited-edition version was a bargain at only $7. Other, more expensive books, would follow: a two-volume slipcased edition of J.M. Keating’s History of the City of Memphis and Shelby County, considered “the most accurate and complete source covering the early years in Memphis,” and Memphis: A Pictorial History, by J. Harvey Mathes. Both would be limited to 300 copies, and Bill told a reporter that he did this “to gain a little prestige for my bookstore.”
Bill Burke passed away in 1978, ending the family link to the business that had lasted more than a century. Shortly before his death, he estimated that the shop now housed more than 60,000 volumes, many of them old and rare.
Chapter Four
A month after Bill Burke’s death, a Commercial Appeal headline announced good news for local book lovers: “Longtime Patron To Continue Venerable Burke’s Book Store.” Diana Wallace Crump, who first visited the store to buy her schoolbooks when she was a student at Snowden, had purchased the company.
“People really wanted this store opened, and it needed to be opened,” she said. “We’re still in business, but it’s a period of transition. Our main goal is to retain the character and policy of Burke’s Book Store, although we’ll miss Bill Burke’s warmth and graciousness.”
Diana said she planned to keep selling textbooks and historical society publications “but we want to expand the section of rare books and first editions.” She also told reporters she was thinking of adding old maps “since there’s no one in the area who does that. Later, we hope to have workshops on how to handle and preserve old leather-bound books. I think people feel the same way as I do about browsing here. It’s like a discovery to find an old or obscure book on your own while looking around.”
Diana Crump kept the store until 1984, when she sold the property to Harriette and Fred Beeson. Harriette managed the store, and her daughter, Meg, worked there, along with a half-dozen longtime employees — book-lovers all.
By this time, Burke’s had established a reputation as the bookstore that offered the old, the odd, and the unusual. “Six old books resting on a back shelf at Burke’s Book Store vividly bring home the point,” wrote Fredric Koeppel in The Commercial Appeal in 1986. “Ranging in date from 1608 to 1809 and religious in texture, their bindings possess the smooth texture and creamy color of old sheepskin vellum.”
But these books weren’t bound in sheepskin, he noted. “They are bound in human skin.” How they came to be that way was a mystery. It seems former store owner Diana Crump had acquired them when she purchased the personal collection of world traveler and big-game hunter Berry Brooks. “By chance, a college professor from Wisconsin was in the store and guessed the nature of the bindings,” later confirmed by laboratory tests at a California university.
Chapter Five
In 1988, Burke’s moved east from its Poplar location, but remained on the same street. “We don’t want to lose our downtown customers, but we want to attract more customers farther out,” said Harriette, announcing the move to 1719 Poplar. The brick building at Poplar and Evergreen originally opened in 1924 to house the Evergreen Pharmacy. It had most recently been home to the Danciger Equipment Company. Jodie’s Printing occupied half of the structure, but Burke’s would move into that space, too, a few months later.
The new location “will put it in the company of Circuit Playhouse, Squash Blossom, and Cafe Society,” according to the newspaper, adding it will “say goodbye to its pawnshop neighbors downtown, where it will open in late December in more congenial surroundings.”
Dogs are always welcome at Burke’s and are often featured on the bookstore’s Facebook page.
Harriette told reporters that “we hope to get more walk-in traffic here. Down here [at the former location] they have to want to come here.” At the same time, the newspaper reported, “The store hopes to keep its motley assortment of longtime patrons. They included Billy Gibbons, guitarist with ZZ Top, Adrian Belew, guitarist with King Crimson, a New York writer working on a book about Beale Street, and a local nightclub owner. Lately, it’s also been visited by crew members from the [Jerry Lee Lewis] movie, Great Balls of Fire.”
In August 1989, the store owners sledgehammered the concrete wall separating their space from the printing company, almost tripling the sales floor to 3,200 square feet. Sales had increased dramatically since the move to Midtown. “I wouldn’t say business has been good,” Meg Beeson told reporters. “I’d say it’s been great.”
She said their most popular books were “anything Southern and anything local.” The collection had increased along with the space, now offering rare William Faulkner first editions, a first edition of Catcher in the Rye, and a four-volume Life of Johnson by James Bosworth published in 1799. “We sell a lot of obscure books to pretty obscure people,” said manager Corey Mesler.
In the 1980s, Memphis was home to some two dozen bookstores. One of those independently owned shops, opened in the 1960s, was the Book Shelf in Poplar Plaza. Mesler was the manager and Harriette Beeson was a longtime sales clerk. Their roles soon reversed. In 1984, Harriette left when she and her husband purchased Burke’s. Four years later, Corey closed the Book Shelf and began working for Harriette, first as a sales clerk, soon promoted to manager.
Crowds line the sidewalks at the 1719 Poplar Avenue location, waiting for the latest John Grisham book signing. “After The Chamber in 1994,“ says Grisham today, “we decided we could no longer endure 10- to 12-hour marathons.”
Chapter Six
Burke’s Book Store was doing a steady business in new and used books. Then a lawyer from Southaven, Mississippi, put Burke’s on the literary map. Harriette Beeson had met John Grisham in 1989 when he was trying to sell his first novel.
“Burke’s was one of the first stores to sell A Time to Kill when it was first published in 1989,” says Grisham today. “Most of the other bookstores ran for cover when I knocked on their doors, but Harriette and Fred, and later Corey and Cheryl, were enthusiastic and welcomed another local writer.”
That book still didn’t sell well, at first, he says, “but things changed with The Firm. We were shocked at its reception, and book-signing lines grew even longer for the following books. Looking back, 30 years later, we had a ball. The regular customers brought enough food for an all-day feast. The Rendezvous sent ribs. And the fans were remarkable. I wouldn’t stand in line for one hour to meet Mark Twain, but those fans were so loyal.”
According to Corey, “I think the longest signing we had was in 1994 for The Chamber [Grisham’s fifth novel], We didn’t have any rules in place, so if you got in line, you could buy as many books as you wanted.”
The event began at 10 a.m. and continued for 13 hours, finally ending at 11 p.m. “John had to soak his hand in ice, and we brought in a chiropractor for his back,” Corey remembers. “One guy at the very end of the line was concerned we would close before he got a chance to see Grisham. Well, John heard about that and decided, ‘Let’s give him a book.’ So we walked practically to the Mapco station and gifted it to him, and that’s become part of the John Grisham lore.” Another customer ordered a pizza to be delivered to him in the line.
“Corey and Cheryl Mesler are still behind the counter, selling books, encouraging readers, and opening doors to new writers. Happy Birthday, Burke’s.” — John Grisham
For years, Burke’s remained one of the few bookstores in America where Grisham, the author of more than 30 best-selling novels, held personal book signings. To keep things from getting out of hand, Corey says they came up with “Grisham’s Laws,” restricting the number of customers.
Other celebrities who have come to Burke’s for book signings and readings have included Anne Rice, Richard Ford, Ann Beattie, Ralph Abernathy, Peter Guralnick, Archie Manning, Bill Wyman, and many others. The store has also attracted celebrity shoppers — none perhaps more famous than one day when Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, newly married, paid a two-hour visit. Other VIPS have included Mary Louise Parker, Hal Holbrook, Courtney Love, Benicio del Toro, Joel Cohen and Frances McDormand, and members of the band R.E.M.
Chapter Seven
Corey and Cheryl Mesler, co-owners and co-managers of the oldest bookstore in Memphis.
Corey hadn’t been working at Burke’s very long when he noticed a new customer. Cheryl Hodges, born in Indianola, Mississippi, had earned a business administration degree from Ole Miss in 1990. “I had no idea what I wanted to do after that,” she says. “I often drove to Memphis to shop at Burke’s and found out they had an opening. So I applied and got the job. I was just a lowly bookseller, and it wasn’t my intention to stay in Memphis, but I met Corey and we started dating two weeks later.”
Corey insists there was more to it than that. This sounds like a scene from a rom-com, but he saw that she was purchasing the collected poems of Leonard Cohen.
“So I made sure that I waited on her,” says Corey, “and when she came to the counter I actually said this: ‘I see you’re reading Leonard Cohen. Would you marry me?’ I was lucky that she didn’t think that was creepy.” Apparently not. They began dating — and she did marry him, in 1992.
In 2000, the Meslers bought the business from Harriette and Fred Beeson, who retired and moved away to Ann Arbor, Michigan. “When we first came to the Poplar location, it was great because the store was so much bigger than the previous one, and we did great for years,” says Cheryl. “But two things hit at once. Amazon and 9/11 really screwed us. People stayed home and they didn’t need to buy books from a bookstore. We felt we were stuck and dying.”
It didn’t take long for the couple to decide the 1719 Poplar location wasn’t ideal. Cheryl told The Commercial Appeal that “it was like being stranded on an island,” and “the area just didn’t grow the way we had hoped.” At one point, when business declined after 9/11 and a national economic downturn, “when people weren’t buying anything,” she says they even considered closing. Instead, in 2007 they met with two commercial real estate agents who were upgrading the Cooper-Young neighborhood, James Rasberry and Jimmy Lewis, who showed them an empty space at 936 South Cooper.
The narrow building had originally opened in 1924 as Piggly Wiggly #5 and housed many other businesses since then; in the 1940s, it was home to Jimmie’s Sandwich Shop. It was basically a one-room shell, with bare plaster walls and scuffed oak flooring. The two developers offered to fix it up, but “we thought it was perfect just the way it was,” says Cheryl. “We liked the funky walls and the patina on the floor, and they uncovered the skylight.” So, with a team of volunteers, they hauled bookcases, shelves, counters, and hundreds of boxes of books to the new location.
For Corey Mesler, it makes sense that this prolific author would have his own bookstore. Corey’s literary talents were evident at an early age, when he won the $500 top prize from Memphis Title Company’s “Believe in Memphis” essay campaign. The 1973 graduate of Bartlett High School attended Memphis State University before entering the world of bookselling, beginning with a stint at Waldenbooks in the Raleigh Springs Mall.
At age 19, Little Poems Press published his first poem, and in 2002, he published his first novel, Talk, written entirely in dialogue. This was quickly followed by some 40 other novels and poetry collections. Last year, Livingston Press published what is essentially his greatest hits collection: The World Is Neither Stacked for You nor Against You: Selected Stories. And every week, Corey posts a “Poem for Monday,” his own and from other poets, online.
Meanwhile, though she confesses, “I can’t even write a grocery list, but I’m a reader and admirer of writers,” Cheryl has expressed her creativity in more visual ways. For years, she’s decorated the eye-catching show windows at Burke’s — with floral arrangements, Christmas trees, and even a giant Scrabble board, the tiles spelling out the names of famous authors. She recently created a miniature version of Burke’s, complete with a detailed interior showing rows of book shelves and customers, a monthlong project using more than a thousand Lego pieces.
Perhaps “charming clutter” best describes the interior at Burke’s. In the old days, sales were scribbled on pencil, but in recent years, the Meslers have gone online with a very user-friendly website and a computerized list of the thousands of books they have on hand — with more coming in all the time as the store acquires private collections.
The Meslers both maintain the store’s active social-media presence, and have created a uniquely inviting atmosphere with posters, reading nooks, book and magazine displays, a special area for rare and collectible editions, and other categories, and the store’s colorful collection of Royal, Remington, Underwood, and other vintage typewriters. “We didn’t know that customers would find them so charming,” says Cheryl. “Corey brought a couple in, and then all of a sudden, customers were donating them to us.” One of them, an IBM Selectric perched on a chair, is the typewriter Corey used to write his first novel.
The store’s appeal, says Cheryl, “is the constant rotation of stock. We carry new titles and concentrate on backlists and classics and some hot-off-the-press titles. But the used stock is the really interesting part, and we hope that encourages folks to come browse often. That’s one of the fun parts of this job — seeing what gems are going to come in every day.”
Another gem is the original wooden counter where customers pay for their purchases. “That’s 150 years old,” says Corey. “As old as the store itself.” It’s been moved to all four locations over the years — just another part of the history that makes Burke’s unique.
The battered wooden sales counter is “as old as the store itself,” according to Corey. Used in the original store on Main Street, it’s been moved to every location during the store’s 150-year history.
Coda
When Harriette Beeson passed away on September 20, 2018, Corey wrote a memorial for this magazine about “the always-smiling face behind the counter”:
Working with Harriette was a rich and rewarding experience. The store we developed was a success and we gradually built up a clientele, some of whom are still friends and customers. There are so many good memories from those years: the gracious dinners Harriette hosted at her house, where the food was to die for; the dinners out with Fred and Harriette and Cheryl (and sometimes authors); the signings and readings, including some with the finest writers of our day (where Harriette’s homemade brownies were often as acclaimed as our guests). It was a heady experience, and, at the heart of it was Harriette’s Southern sociability, her gentle authority, her charm, her ability to remember a person’s name and particulars after only one meeting, and her knowledge of books, new and old.
He concluded his tribute in this way: She was a beautiful woman, generous, warm and wise, and fun to be with. She taught me a lot. When she hired me I felt like I joined her family.
Perhaps that’s the key to the enduring success of Burke’s Book Store. It’s never been just a group of separate owners, only in it for the money, but families involved in a personal venture that they embrace with a passion. Walter Burke, “the old ball player,” would be proud that his little Main Street newsstand is celebrating 150 years — with more to come.
