Heavyweight - #49 Another Roadside Attraction

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

When Stephanie was in high school, a bookstore seemingly dropped out of the sky into her small Texas town. Then, just as quickly, it was gone. Credits If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, dial the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. Those outside the US can find your local helpline at befrienders.org. Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein. This episode was produced by senior producer Kalila Holt, along with Mohini Madgavkar. The supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Production help from Damiano Marchetti. Special thanks to to Emily Condon, Sanya Dosani, Lauren Silverman, Caitlin Kenney, Brendan Klinkenberg, and Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.  Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Michael Hearst, Blue Dot Sessions, Chris Zabriskie, Angular Wave Research, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, can I ask you a question? No. When we were back in elementary school, because we go way back, would you have ever thought that one day I would have a podcast? Yeah, no, I would not say that I foresaw a future for you, Johnny. Did you just say I didn't foresee a future for you, or I didn't foresee that future for you? Oh, I meant that future. Did you really think I didn't foresee a future for you or I didn't foresee that future for you? Oh, I meant that future.

Did you really think I didn't have a future at all? I was a good eater, stayed out of trouble, pretty good at tetherball. The kid I remember. From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, another roadside attraction. Right after the break. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do.

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day. Crypto is no different. It's new, but like email, it's also revolutionary. With Kraken, it's easy to start your crypto journey with 24-7 support when you need it. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. If you're like me, the mere act of being in a bookstore fills you with the kind of wonder and overwhelm that comes with looking at the stars at night. You feel the vastness. You feel your mortality. How much of this can I possibly read in a lifetime, you ask, gazing at the shelves? And yet, there's also this feeling of coziness.

Books grant you access to the secret lives and thoughts of people you'll never meet, but whom you grow to care about as you would close friends. And so, in this spirit, I present to you a book in three chapters. Chapter One, Stephanie. So I grew up in this little town outside of Austin called Dripping Springs. We all call it Drippin'. Drippin' for short. Drippin'. There's a spring that drips.

It's a very conservative, religious town. When I was growing up, this was a tiny town, like going out to people's land to hang out in the woods. As a teenager growing up in Drippen, there really wasn't much to do. So Stephanie started going to church multiple times a week and reading all the books she could get her hands on. Church and books became her two great loves, and the two coexisted peacefully for years, until the day her beloved church decided to ban one of her beloved books, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

The reason they were trying to get it banned was one scene in the book, maybe two paragraphs long, and it is explicit, and it is an assault scene. And their reasoning was that young boys would be aroused. Nobody had read the book who was trying to get it banned. I took it upon myself to write a speech, like a manifesto against the censorship of The Handmaid's Tale. At her high school, Stephanie went from classroom to classroom reading her essay. And this got the church very,

very, very mad. And they became convinced, some of the leaders, that I was more or less being taken over by the devil. The angrier the church got, the more Stephanie started to realize that she didn't agree with a lot of what the church believed. I got into a pretty big argument about homosexuality in the Bible at the church. And at the time, I did not know that I wasn't straight, but I knew that I didn't agree with the church. I was questioning everything I'd ever known about religion and God, and I started having panic attacks multiple times a day. It was during this uncertain period of searching that while out driving in her neighborhood,

Stephanie noticed something new. A small house surrounded by lush gardens and a pond. And most strikingly, atop the house's roof sat large-scale replicas of books. It felt like it fell out of the sky. I just remember when the sign went up, I was very curious. What did the sign say? Another roadside attraction. Another roadside attraction, it turned out, was a bookstore tucked within a tiny house.

Stephanie began to frequent it regularly, spending her babysitting money on Salinger and Vonnegut and Poe. There were no other bookstores in Dripping Springs at the time, barely any stores at all. It was as if the bookstore appeared in answer to some secret wish Stephanie had made. It almost felt like magical realism, felt like opening a curtain and going into another world. And like the moment I stepped inside, it just felt like, I don't know, it just felt like I belonged there. I never felt like I fit in.

And I think it was the only place that I didn't feel judged. And it was the only place that I didn't feel panicked. It felt like a chapel almost. There was always incense burning inside and music playing that reminded Stephanie of the kind you'd hear in a spa. It all added to the feeling of dreaminess. And I would always kind of like shuffle past the register back to the fiction section, which was behind the comic books.

All the books were wrapped in plastic practically, even if they were like a dollar. It was always empty. I think I can recall maybe one time when someone else was in there besides me and the owner. The owner. The owner was a quiet, stoic man.

Always seated behind the counter. Always the only one on duty. He became a source of fascination for Stephanie. I admired him in a way because I just thought, like, anyone who has the guts to open a bookstore like this in a little town off this little road must be interesting. Did you ever speak to him? Not really. I would, like, put my book up on the counter and put my money up and then, like, run out.

I felt so nervous, but not in a bad way. Crush-like, but not romantic. I don't know if he knows like how important that was to me, just to have these little moments of peace. I don't know. It's hard to explain. It just felt... It was a thing at a time where I really needed to feel like there was going to be a world outside of the one I was living in, where I was going to be able to live a life separate

from my hometown. It made me feel like the world was bigger and that there was something beyond what I was going through. Stephanie visited the bookstore all through the summer of her 16th year. And then one day, without warning or notice, another roadside attraction just vanished. notice. Another roadside attraction just vanished. Drove by and there was like a closed sign in the in the window and just remember being like devastated. It was so fleeting. It was just like it's gone. Stephanie's now in her mid-30s. She's gotten beyond the world of Dripping Springs. Stephanie's now in her mid-30s. She's gotten beyond the world of Dripping Springs.

In fact, she just recently moved to L.A. to pursue a career as a writer. But she continues to think about the little bookstore that served as her teenage refuge. And about the man who opened it. Did you get the guy's name? No. You don't even know his name. I don't know his name. What did he look like?

It's sort of like when you have a dream and you see someone, but you just see like a figure. That's my memory of him. Who was this man who opened a perfect place in a tiny town, who carefully placed each book in a plastic sleeve to keep it safe? What led him to opening the bookstore? Why was it open and closed so quickly? I just want to know, like, why dripping? Like, why this little tiny town? Because she doesn't know the owner's name, Stephanie has tried Googling the store over the years, but nothing much ever comes up. In the process, though, she's realized that the name Another Roadside Attraction is the title of a book by Tom Robbins, an author she's come to love as an adult. And then I thought, maybe we have the same taste in literature. The only other clue

Stephanie's research has turned up is an old business listing. It shows the store's address, she says, but not much else. She pulls the page up to share with me. Um... Wait, there's a name here. And in so doing, Stephanie notices something at the bottom of the page. What is it?

Chet. And there's an old phone number too. Have you ever tried phoning the phone number? I haven't. Well, you know what we got to do, huh? Are you going to find him? Well, we have to. Yes. I mean, I don't know. I'll try to, but why don't we try to phone that number? Okay. Okay, here we go. I'm nervous. that number. Okay. Okay, here we go. I'm nervous. Hello. Hello. I'm not sure that I have got the wrong number. Is your name Chet? Nope. Nope. Nope.

Nope. Wrong number. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. He was giving me the bum's rush. He was. He sounded like a Texan.

And so, with our one lead deader than Texas buzzard bait, I let Stephanie go, telling her that once I'm able to learn more, I'll be back in touch. But I won't be back in touch for another year and a half, because as it turns out, the story of another roadside attraction would prove to be far more complicated than any I could have imagined.

After Stephanie and I dialed that wrong number, I found an address for Chet and sent him a letter, but I never got a response. So I kept digging, and in the process, I found another roadside attraction's old business registration. It was there that I learned the store was actually listed under two names, Chet's, but also his wife Pam's. I figured that through Pam, I'd be able to reach Chet.

So I found a mailing address for Pam and sent a letter to her home explaining the situation. And this time, I received a response, an email with the subject line, the story behind another roadside attraction. But the email wasn't from Pam. It was from a woman named Megan. Hi, Megan wrote. Where do I begin? We'll be right back. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated.

19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Chapter 2. Megan. Hello, this is Megan. Hi, this is Jonathan Goldstein. Hi, Jonathan. Megan's a close friend of Pam's and wrote me back on Pam's behalf.

In my letter, I'd asked how I could get in touch with Chet. I wanted to ask him about the magical appearance and sudden disappearance of his bookstore. But Megan corrected me on this point. The bookstore was not Chet's, she said. It was Pam's. That place was her baby. Over several emails and a long phone call, Megan would tell me the story of another roadside attraction.

In her telling, it's the story of Pam, a chronicle of her dream and its loss. Megan says she wishes she had a happier story to share. But it turns out that five years ago, Pam died by suicide. Megan begins the story many years earlier, back when she first met Pam. Megan was only 21 at the time, and Pam about a decade older. The two worked as bank tellers together. It was a funny little bank.

You know, it was a single wide trailer that had been rocked in. We didn't wear shoes. You know, we would go back behind the teller line and not put shoes on. And sometimes we would walk out into the rest of the bank without shoes on. Megan was raised in Dripping Springs by strict religious parents,

and so was very conservative. Pam, on the other hand, was the kind of person who didn't mind rocking the boat. She was unlike anyone Megan had ever met. She was just really punk. She always wore sort of long kind of hippie dresses with tribal patterns on them and a lot of dark velvets and embroidered, you know,

things that you might see women wearing at a Tom Petty concert. As different as they were though, Pam and Megan became friends. Megan endeared herself with imitations of their co-workers, Debbie's southern drawl, Cheryl's obsession with pens. She cracked Pam up. And she had this laugh where she would, she smoked, so it was a very unique laugh for one thing, and then she would bend forward and kick her foot. And that's when you knew you really got her was when she did that. when Pam was younger, she spent many years working in bookstores. It was her dream to open one of her own someday. Megan remembered the bookstore

fondly. The little fish ponds on the porch, the garden in the back, the incense burning inside. It was almost like a little tropical oasis with this tiny little cave of a bookstore and she just always was trying to make it

a more enjoyable and more welcoming place to to visit so if like megan says pam was the one behind the bookstore why was it that stephanie doesn't remember ever seeing her there why was it only ever chet behind the counter according to megan pam had to work at the bank to provide the cash flow necessary to keep the bookstore afloat. And while she was at the bank, Chet was living her dream in her beloved bookstore, surrounded by her beloved books. She loved everything about books. She loved the way they smelled, the way they felt. She loved organizing them on a bookshelf. And I swear, sometimes it was a meditation to just hold them.

Sometimes when she would show them to me, she just kind of pressed them for a second before ever describing them. Her favorite book is Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. She had her favorite authors. And of course, another roadside attraction, the name of the bookstore is an allusion to her favorite author, Tom Robbins, I believe. Books were her life. To the question of why the bookstore had closed so abruptly, it seems that in spite of how hard Pam worked, she couldn't afford to keep it operating. She was immensely proud of it,

and it was such a painful experience for her to lose it. And that was just the beginning of her losses. The store's closing happened among a slew of other tragedies in Pam's life. It's hard to remember what came first because it was really just a whirlwind of other tragedies in Pam's life. It's hard to remember what came first because it was really just a whirlwind of loss for her. Her father was very ill. And then pretty soon after that, her younger brother, he went in to have an abscess looked at. And it turned out he

had cancer all over his body at that point already. Her younger brother died, her father died, at that point already. Her younger brother died, her father died, and then Pam's mom fell very ill. And Pam was the only one left to deal with that, and she felt helpless and scared and small, and I just remember there being a tone in her voice that I had never heard before. And the person who should have been there to support her,

her husband, Chad, was instead pulling away. Pam related to Megan a story about a Thanksgiving dinner from around that time. She got drunk on red wine because she was sad and drank a little too much red wine. And so when she went to go back in to get something

with her wine glass in her hand, she ran into the sliding glass door and cut her head. She was hand, she ran into the sliding glass door and cut her head. She was bleeding. And she turned around with an astonished look on her face. And one of her friends ran to help her. And Chet stood there with what she described as a disgusted look on his face. And she said that was the moment she knew that their relationship was over. Shortly after that, Chet and Pam divorced. And Chet leftet left town leaving pam alone she'd lost chet her family and her dream she didn't seem to ever recover from that i mean when i met her she was

sarcastic and kind of had a dark sense of humor but after all of the loss that she sustained it became like a deep cynicism you know and it just got deeper and loss that she sustained, it became like a deep stenticism, you know. And it just got deeper and deeper. And she would describe it as the dark, slimy hole. With me trying to convince her that everything could be okay, and her trying to convince me that it couldn't. And that went on for 10 years. For 10 years, Megan tried to be a positive force in Pam's life. She was young and in over her head, but she'd go over to help fix things around the house or to mow the lawn. She'd

spend time with Pam, watching movies or listening to music with her. Pam tried going on a few dates. She tried therapy briefly. Nothing seemed to help. I can say that I was frustrated at certain points that my attempts to bring her some kind of peace never worked, but it wasn't a frustration with her. And then, you know, sometimes there are frustrations involved with a person who is very depressed. Sometimes she would speak harshly to me. And I remember telling her one time, you know, spending time with you can sometimes feel like cuddling a porcupine. And she immediately apologized. She knew what I was talking about. And I said, I know you don't have to apologize. I just need you to know I'm on your team. On top of everything else, Pam had lived her

whole life with a degenerative eye disease, which meant that, as time went on, her great love, reading, was becoming increasingly difficult. She bought a Kindle so as her eyesight worsened, she could keep increasing the font size. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, it was on her Kindle that Pam read massive amounts of news. It provided her with further confirmation of the things she already knew. The world was a terrible place to be. Pam stopped leaving the house, spending most of her time shut in.

A warning that from here, Pam's story deals very explicitly with the topic of suicide. Take care when listening. For many years, she wasn't open about her desire to die. But there came a time where she felt like she couldn't not be honest about it anymore, and she started telling her friends.

There was a progression to the way Pam talked about taking her own life. Initially, she spoke of it in an abstract way. I just can't believe the world is the way it is. Who wants to live in a world like this? And then it was, I really don't think I can do this much longer. And then it became, I'm not going to do this anymore. And so for a couple of years, she worked on getting her affairs in order. She figured out how she was going to do it. Pam did extensive research online about the best way to take her own life. She was methodical in her planning. She talked to an attorney and took care of her banking.

She didn't want to cause any unnecessary logistical stress after she was gone. And of course everyone was saying, we love you and we want you here and you just stick around, you know? Did you feel like she meant it? I knew she meant it, but I also knew that she was scared. And I thought, I was hoping that the fear would keep her around long enough for there to be something that would come along. That would be the thing that would pull her out of that hole. I think I found the journal here. While on the phone with me,

Megan had been searching the house for a journal Pam was keeping around this time. October 27th of 2015, so this was a couple of years before she passed. Like everything else I've ever written, this will just be a rambling, incoherent mess. But at the urging of a couple friends, I'm going to try to put my thoughts during this final time to paper. I want to be very clear that this is the most well thought out thing I've ever done in my life. The most sensible, logical, and rational.

There are those that will disagree with that. Looking at you, friend, I won't say her name. I do not yet have an actual exit date set. I kind of want to stay through the election just for its epic train wreck value. I'm thinking roughly a year or so from now. Megan reads me another journal entry from roughly a year and a half later. On February 19th of 2017, she says, still always said that she didn't want to die at the house for fear it might scare her dog and cat. So on the weekends, in what came to feel like a fire drill, she'd ask Megan to come over to Pet Set. And she would kind of make it seem like I needed to stay with the animals because maybe she wasn't going to be coming back. But then we would

just spend time together. And that weekend would go by and there would be other weekends, you know. So then when the weekend of July 31st, 2017 came along, it was the same story. You know, I need you to come stay with the animals. The only difference this time was she wanted to go to the store and buy some food and stuff for me for the weekend. And while we were there, she went down the aisle where the adult diapers and things like that are. This is the level of research that she had apparently done. She knew what was going to happen in the moments after she stopped breathing. And she did not want to make any extra work for anybody. She didn't say anything to me. She just got a big package of adult diapers and brought them back over to me.

And she kind of mumbled to herself, 14 bucks and I'm only ever going to wear one of them. And I had to think quickly because I knew that I couldn't respond with surprise or disgust or anything like that because it would really upset her. She'd already told me, if you go against me on any of this, I will take it as a betrayal of our friendship. And so I said, well, I guess you could just put several of them on at once. She laughed. She did the kick forward, bend over laugh. And I almost cried.

I had to turn around because I hadn't seen her do it in a while. After the grocery store, just like usual, they spent the evening at Pam's watching movies. That night, one of Pam's favorites, Night Mother. In it, Sissy Spacek's character explains to her mom why she wants to kill herself, and ultimately, she does. Megan slept over. In the next day,

Pam hugged her goodbye and walked out of the house. You know, I was supposed to wait to hear from her, and it was the police that I heard from on, I think it was Sunday afternoon. And they asked me, do you know why we're here? And I said, is Pam dead? And they said, yes. She ended up picking this hotel called the Knights Inn Hotel. Pam chose a ground floor room so that it would be easier to carry her body out.

She left a $100 tip for the hotel staff. And I know that the last thing that she did from the history on her Kindle was watch the Peter Gabriel music video for Salisbury Hill. You know, and it says, they've come to take me home and my heart going boom, boom, boom. Megan received my letter

because she's now living in Pam's house. Pam left it to her. And along with the house came the shelves and shelves of books inside. Thousands of them, with little notes explaining which ones Megan should read and why. Among them was the journal. Stuck to the cover was a small burnt orange post-it that read, For Megan. Megan reads me the final entry.

On 7-29-17, she writes, My darling sweet Megan, I hope this is all not too much of a burden for you. And I hope this gives you a little financial freedom. Try to have some joy and fun. Quote, listen, being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger, end quote.

And that's from the Poisonwood Bible. You've been a good friend to me, Megan. Maybe the best friend I've ever had. I love you, honey. I don't have any more words of my own. So I will end this with more of Barbara Kingsolver's. Quote, listen, slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Think of

the vine that curls from the small square plot that was once my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the light. And then she wrote, love always, Pam. And then there's just tons of pages behind that that are blank. Sorry. That just hurts my heart.

After speaking with Megan, I reached back out to Stephanie to relay what I learned. I don't even know this woman, and I just feel for her deeply, and I feel for everyone around her. It's about, it's almost exactly one year of me losing someone to suicide, so. Megan isn't in touch with Chad, nor does she know anyone who is. She says his split from Pam was pretty complete.

But she sends me some photos of the two of them from around Pam's house. Pam and Chet on their wedding day. Pam and Chet on vacation in Mexico, his arm around her waist. Once I know what Chet looks like, I'm able to locate him among the dozens of Facebook profiles bearing the same name. And from there, I find an email address. So, I write the stoic man behind the bookstore counter, the man Stephanie's been wondering about for two decades. And he responds, with his own version of the story of another roadside attraction. Chapter 3. Chet.

Hello? Hi, Chet. Hello? Hi, Chet. This is Jonathan Goldstein speaking. Jonathan, nice to meet you finally. Nice to talk to you. When I first reached out to Chet by email, I mentioned Pam's death. It turned out that my telling him was the first he was learning of it. I'm crying as I write this, Chet responded. We were married for nearly ten years. That news has hit me very hard.

Give me a few days and I will get back to you. It's now been about a week. Chet asks me to tell him what I know about the circumstances surrounding Pam's death. And so, I do, explaining it was a suicide. And as I speak, Chet is silent. I haven't seen her. I hadn't seen her since I left Dripping Springs when I divorced her in 2005. So I called her once about a couple of months or so after I left, and she wasn't very happy with me, so I knew that it didn't make any sense trying to call her again. I love Pam dearly.

I mean, I can't even put in words. I can't even put in words how much I love her. Like Megan, Chet begins the story of another roadside attraction with the story of Pam, how she first entered his life in 1997. The way Pam and I met was about as happenstance as it gets. When I first moved to Austin, I wanted to go out and check out 6th Street.

Now, 6th Street, if you don't know anything about it, is a big place that a lot of the UT students hang out at. It's a big college town here again. So Chet got a beer on Sixth Street and started chatting with a guy at the bar. But after a while, they began to feel out of place, too old among the student crowd. And I noticed two women walking across the street going in the opposite direction, so I yelled to them because they looked like they were around their age. The two women were Pam and a friend of hers. It was their first time on 6th Street too. The group all headed to a club together, and Pam and Chad got to talking.

And we wound up talking until the bar closed. We wound up going to her hotel room, we wound up talking there until about 4.30 in the morning. It was very easy to talk to. I didn't feel like I had to try to impress her, and she didn't feel like she had to do that with me. It was really natural. Chet called Pam the next day, and very soon after that, they started dating. Eight months later, he moved to Dripping Springs to be with her. And a month after that, they were married. So it was a bit of a whirlwind. Yes. Yes. Chet says he knew immediately that this relationship with Pam was destined to be different than anything he'd experienced before.

I think we all have this void in our lives where we get into relationships and they're really nice, we fall in love, but we're always missing something. We're always like, well, no, that person's just not feeling this void. And then they go to another relationship and you're like, no, they filled that void, but now they're missing this. Babs seemed to come into my life, and I came into her life at a point where we were able to fill that void for each other. The void I've always looked to have filled, she did it. She fit right in there, and it was like a glove. Even though she and I were polar opposites in a lot of ways, we didn't like the same music, didn't like the same foods, didn't like the same dress, didn't like me.

That one aspect of our relationship outweighed it all. We had a great rapport. And an important part of that rapport was their shared love of books. The title of her favorite book was Barbara King Solver's book, The Poisonwood Bible. Right, right. And I read that book, and I swear to God, I fell in love. And it now is my favorite book as well, even though her favorite author was Tom Robbins. Right, and isn't the bookstore named after—

Yes, named after the title to his book. That was her favorite author. It was her idea to come up with a title. I thought it was brilliant. Huh. Pam was an avid reader. When I say avid reader, I'm talking about three with a title. I thought it was brilliant. Huh. Pam was an avid reader. When I say avid reader, I'm talking about three books a week, easy, sometimes more. Absolutely loved books.

And we would find ourselves going to the store all the time to buy books. Unlike Megan, Chet doesn't talk about another roadside attraction as a lifelong dream of Pam's, so much as a project he initiated. He explains it this way. After being deployed to Granada and Beirut with the Marines, Chet returned home suffering from PTSD. He'd always worked in restaurants, but his doctor told him he needed a break from the stress.

So when he arrived in Dripping Springs, he was at a loss for what to do. At first, he tried building a model railroad set. After I finished the model train thing, I just, I got bored. And that's when I threw the idea at her. Hey, how about if I build you a bookstore? We don't have to go out and buy you books anymore.

I just wanted to do whatever I could do to make her happy. In Megan's telling, the store was a monument to Pam's love of reading. In Chet's telling the store was a monument to Pam's love of reading. In Chet's telling, it was a monument to his love of Pam. Did Pam ever feel frustrated that she didn't get to work in the bookstore more? No, not really. She was glad that I had something to do, and that was more.

For Pam, the bookstore was just a place where she could get any book she wants to read when she wants to read. Chet explains how Pam liked working at the bank, liked her boss and the customers. And of course, she must have loved seeing Megan every day. Because according to Chet,

Pam did not need the money. This is a very different story than the one Megan presented of a woman single-handedly trying to keep her little bookstore in the black. Her mother was a financial genius. Pamela was a millionaire, but you wouldn't know it to meet her.

I didn't know it when I met her. Speaking with Chad and Megan is like reading two different authors, each with their own take on the same beloved main character. I wonder if the truth lies somewhere between both their takes. Although Pam's dream had been to have her own bookstore, maybe that dream evolved over time. Maybe another roadside attraction came to be a place she valued for the refuge it offered someone she loved. had offered someone she loved.

Chet was the one who built the bookstore. He added the deck, repaired the termite damage, and constructed the shelves and counter. Each day, he opened the store at 10 in the morning and closed it at 9 at night. Chet was there all day, every day. He maintained the garden and the fish ponds and kept a recliner behind the counter where he could watch football on a little TV

when there weren't any customers around. Chet only stepped away from another roadside attraction when his marriage to Pam ended. Was there anything working against you guys that just sort of ended up being destructive or lead to a divorce? Yeah. Pam had some vices, as do we all.

But these vices were becoming dangerous. She drank an awful lot. She was a wine drinker, but she drank other things as well. There was a lichen inhabit there. Initially, they weren't a big issue with me. The positive in our relationship far outweighed any of that. But, Chet says, as Pamela's tragedy stacked up, her vices grew worse. After the deaths of her family, these things began to increase, and that's when it began to get difficult.

He says that when he tried to talk to Pam about cutting back, she refused to engage. Pamela was very strong-willed. You couldn't get her to do anything she didn't want to do. Period. Period. And it was clear to me at one point that there was nothing more I can say or do that was going to help this issue.

And my fear was that I would wake up one day and find her lying in bed next to me, dead. And that there was someone trying to blame that on me. Why did you think that you would be blamed?

Well, I don't know if you know or not, but Pamela and I are an interracial couple. I'm black, she's white. And Derby Springs is an all-white town. There are no black... I was the only black person that lived there. And a lot of the reason why I heard through the grapevine And Derby Springs is an all-white town. I was the only black person that lived there. And a lot of the reason why I heard through the grapevine from other regular customers why we weren't getting as much business as we should have

is people didn't like to come, didn't want to do business with us because we were an interracial couple. Chet says there had been one other black person in town, a woman who worked at the gas station. But she'd moved away because she couldn't take the kinds of things people would say to her. I used to have people come to my store and just say right to my face. It was insane. What would they say to your face? Oh, I had a woman come in once. She called me. It was in Christmas time. It was just

five o'clock in the evening. The sun was just going down. And she called and asked for a certain book. And I said, yes, we have it. She says, okay, I'll be on my way there. And when you open the front door to the bookstore, you see the front counter right there to your right. I'm looking right at you. And she looks at me and she don't even come inside. And it was clear to me she was sloppy drunk.

You know, her eyes were bloodshot. You can smell the alcohol in her breath. She goes, what are you doing here? And you can tell by the way she said it what she meant. And then she just closes the door and walks right back out again. All those books, carefully wrapped in plastic, weren't enough to keep the world of Dripping Springs from encroaching. Moments like these were what colored Chet's fear, what made him worry that he might be the one blamed

if Pam died. And I can see it easily happening because these sorts of things happen all the time in this country. Yeah. You know, they were just going to say all those black guys want to take her money

because she's a millionaire. I mean, there's so many ways they can try to put it all together and say I had something to do with it. So, and I tried to explain that to her in those exact words, and it just didn't seem to click. I just couldn't watch her kill herself anymore. Let's just put it that way. And that's when I realized, you know, my life's at risk, my freedom's at risk. I can't

do this anymore. I have to get out of here. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make in my life because I promised her that I would never leave her. And I still suffer from having made that decision. Even though I stand by the reasons I was forced to make that decision, I wish I had made another one. And I say these things not because I'm trying to come off as saying Pam's a bad person. She's not. And she did nothing bad at all. Nothing. Nothing. You know, I just, I was forced to make a decision that had to do with my freedom versus my love for her. And my freedom won out.

Hearing all this, I recall the story Megan told me about Pam getting drunk on red wine and cutting her face. That look Chet had given her. Maybe it wasn't one of disgust, but rather the look of a man realizing the impossible situation he was trapped in.

After the divorce, Chet, like Pam, never had another serious relationship. Never anything long-term. Never anything real. I've always, in the back of my mind, had it in me that I was going to drive up there and see if I could find her and talk to her. I guess in a way I was kind of reserving myself, saving myself for one day, maybe running into her again

and having things get back together again. And when I read that she had died, I felt like, okay, well, that's never going to happen. Time to move on. At the end of our call, I tell Chet about Stephanie, the person who set me off down this path to begin with. Chet tells me he remembers her, the teenager who came in all the time that summer. Back when I spoke with Megan, I told her about Stephanie too.

She said Pam would have been moved to know what the store had meant to her. In spite of Pam's passing five years ago, Megan says she still speaks to her all the time. I talked to her immediately and was like, see, people loved you. You made a difference. You really did do something that made life better for someone else.

Should I open it? So, yeah. I'd asked Megan if there might be something in Pam's house she could send to Stephanie, a keepsake to prove the bookstore had once existed. And so, Megan mailed Stephanie an envelope. It's a

mail ASMR. Stephanie pulls out an old bookmark with maroon lettering. It reads, used, unused, and unique books. Oh, my God. Another roadside attraction. Oh, wow. No way. In a bookstore, you'll find page after page, book after book,

of people trying to make meaning, trying to parse through feelings you thought were yours alone. Like you, these books tell us, I too have felt trapped. I too have felt hopeless. A bookstore is where you can seek refuge from the world. But if you're lucky, it can also offer a way into it. Stephanie's writing a solo show

while shopping around TV scripts in L.A. In a small way, she's carrying on the legacy of that strange little bookstore that appeared out of nowhere and felt as though it had shown up just in time. And just for her. Thank you. Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit,

take this moment to decide if we meant it, if we tried, or felt around for far too much for things that accidentally touch. This episode of Heavyweight was produced by senior producer Kalila Holt and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Mohini Midgauker. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Production help from Damiano Marchetti. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Sonia Dosani, Lauren Silverman,

Caitlin Kenney, Brendan Klinkenberg, and Jackie Cohen. Thank you. This song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com. We'll be back with a new episode after Thanksgiving.