Cicero said, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.
” Well, for this week’s reading issue, I have a whole building full of books for you. That’s a lot of soul. Book Traders on Second Street is a gem of a place, a two-story affair literally packed to the ceiling with more than 250,000 books of all types. I’ve been a customer since their location on South Street, where I, as a budding lesbian, found myself furtively rummaging in the LGBT section. It’s the kind of place where they remember your name and what book you were looking for on your last visit.
As I was setting up my computer, store-owner Peter Hiler started right off …
PH: I was just thinking about how, when I first came to Philadelphia, I had a night job at the Philadelphia College of Art Library and I used to walk home past the Engineer’s Club. Now it’s the gay community center. We never had anything like that back then. It’s a whole other world now.
PGN: I can imagine. Where did you come here from? PH: I was born outside of Boston before our father dragged us west to Dansville, a little town in upstate New York which I had a hell of time with. When I was 21, I ran away to Cape Cod and got a taste of the real world and from then on, I spent my summers there. I love the Cape; I still have friends that I met there back in the day. Then around 1966, I came to Philadelphia. I had a gay roommate from college who’d moved here to study and I came to visit and never left.
PGN: Where did you go to college? PH: Holton College, a small liberal-arts college. I majored in English and history.
PGN: So being a bookstore owner makes sense. PH: [Laughs.] What else would you do with an English degree?
PGN: So why did you have a hell of a time with Dansville? PH: It was pretty restrictive. I think there were only three known gay people and I wasn’t one of them! It was tough but when I moved to Philadelphia, everything was better. To give you an idea of the small-town climate there, when we had a 20th-anniversary reunion, my mother begged me not to come. She knew that they knew and she was worried about how I would be received as an out gay person. So I didn’t go. But that’s how things were. Here I felt all of the liberality, but there was still a fear there.
PGN: What were you like as a kid? PH: My mother’s version or my version? My mother would tell you I was the perfect kid until I turned 13! I was pretty quiet. I went to a WMCA camp where I met lots and lots of people of all sorts, which helped bring me out of my shell.
PGN: What did the parents do? PH: My father was a teacher, my mother was a housewife.
PGN: Any siblings? PH: I had two brothers, one of whom was gay. He died in 1987. He was living here when it happened. My other brother is married and living in Florida with a couple of kids. I’m the oldest of the three.
PGN: Any hobbies back then? PH: Not really, I still don’t. People come in the store and say, “You must have read so many of these books,” but I haven’t. They say never ask a bookseller what they’ve read because they’re so busy selling them, they don’t have time to read. I try to buck the system and read what I can but I don’t always make it to the end of the book! I have this store on Second Street and I also have a second store in Cape Cod.
PGN: I didn’t know that! PH: Yes, it’s in Wellfleet, about 13 miles from Provincetown. I bought it in 1992. It’s only open for a few months each year but it gives me a way to stay connected up there, to keep my feet in the water, so to speak.
PGN: When did you first figure out that you were gay? PH: Like so many of us, I think I always knew. I told my mother when I was 20. My father of course thought it was a phase, but they were both kind enough. I never had any of the awful experiences so many of us have had.
PGN: And your brothers? PH: I didn’t even know my brother Steve was gay until he came here to help me with the store and he announced on the eve of his arrival that he was having an affair with someone in Washington and that it was a man. I’d always thought he was straight and when he said that during my dinner, my steak went right off the table! I was shocked. I didn’t tell my brother Neal until I was about 65. It was so different for us, you didn’t discuss it. I had a friend who was in therapy for several years and never once told his therapist that he was gay. We were so afraid. It’s hard to see people so liberal now, like in Provincetown; you see couples go hand-in-hand and it’s a little startling. You smile and think, Oh my, this is so different than it used to be. And better. Once I did tell Neal, it was fine. Like my parents, he was very kind. PGN: How did Steve die? PH: He was a war veteran and had a lot of injuries, mostly from shrapnel, and his heart was not strong. He died at 38. He was such a wonderful person who, as my mother put it, only got to live half his life. But he made an impression. He was very kind and made a lot of friends at the store.
PGN: What’s a historical moment that stands out for you? PH: I remember the night of Stonewall. I was right down the street and heard a commotion but didn’t know what it was. I could have easily been in the middle of it.
PGN: Wow. And what was your early time in Philly like? PH: Well, in the early ’70s, I was working for Steve Poses at the Frog, which was the first nationally recognized restaurant in Philadelphia and was the start of the restaurant renaissance in the city. They had a lot of artists working there, some gay, some straight, and it was a fabulous place to be. The place was cool, the people who worked there were cool and I was a part of that! We still all know each other.
PGN: And when did you start in the book business? PH: I got started in books back in 1975. For the first 29 years, we were located on South Street.
PGN: I lived on Pine Street and remember fondly sitting in your upstairs window leafing through books. PH: Oh yes, we have a lot of good memories from that store — people gathering when Elvis died and again when Lennon died. We had a whole cast of interesting characters who used to hang out at the store.
PGN: What do you think made it such a destination for so many people? PH: The freedom to be yourself and the fact that we were open all the time. South Street was the place to be back then and we’d hang out at the store at all hours. I’ve made sales at 3 in the morning. It’s different now, we close at 10 p.m.
PGN: What was your best celebrity encounter at the store? PH: One day Susan Sontag came into the store and she was with her companion — I didn’t know she was gay at the time, not that it mattered — and she needed to make a phone call. This was way back before cell phones or Internet, so she and her friend used my office for about three or four hours. I didn’t mind at all, she could make whatever calls she wanted to make, she was my hero! That was a thrill. And when Fred Oster from the Philly Folk Festival was at The Main Point, he booked Allen Ginsberg to recite poetry. My friend, Ralph, who at the time was the manager of the store, got to pick Allen Ginsberg up from the airport. He picked him up in an old Volkswagon and Allen was in the back seat with his lover Peter Orlovsky. They were in the back playing an accordion that Allen used as he was doing readings. Before the Internet, if you wanted to find a particular book, the only way to do it was through a bookseller, so we had quite a correspondence with him and other people over the years helping them find certain books.
PGN: OK, you said never to ask a bookseller what they read, but I’m going to do it anyway! What’s a favorite read? PH: Well, I always recommend Tolstoy but I love children’s stories. I love the simplicity of them, so I’ll say, “Wind in the Willows.”
PGN: And do you have a partner? PH: Yes, the store! It’s my longest-running relationship. My friends used to tease me because after an event they’d ask, “Can we drop you off at home?” and I’d say yes and have them drop me at the bookstore.
PGN: I read they filmed a movie here. PH: Yes, it was called “The Answer Man” with Jeff Daniels. It was fun, they closed the bookstore for nine days.
PGN: Did you get a cameo? PH: No, no. But when I went to see the film, there’s a scene where he mentions our name. I’d assumed they’d make up a fake bookstore for the movie but in one scene he says, “I’m here in the Book Trader, the best used bookstore in Philadelphia.” I practically fell off my chair!
PGN: Well you certainly are the best in town. PH: Thank you. With so many bookstores going out of business, we’re proud to be going strong. Even with all the Kindles, etc., people still like to hold a book in their hands and there’s something especially compelling about an old book. A librarian once told me, “Don’t worry about it, people have been holding books for 2,000 years; it’s part of our genetics and it’ll be a while before that desire wears out.” I love it: You sell books and you never know what they are going to do for people, and it’s amazing to hear how they can influence people. People will tell us about adventures they’ve had or careers they’ve started all because of our books.
PGN: Something else you’re proud of? PH: Starting Philly AIDS Thrift — both the first incarnation and the current one. We’re doing fabulously,
PGN: I had no idea. PH: Yes, I’d lost a friend to AIDS and wanted to do something. I joined MANNA and was chopping vegetables. I was terrible at it and thought, There has to be something else I can do. I saw the idea for a fundraising thrift shop in New York and thought, We could do that. So I called Michael Axelrod and got a place rent-free for three months. I got a board together with people I knew and some college friends, and we did very well for a time. Then we had some management problems and eventually had to fold. In 2005, I called Christina and Tom from the original crew and said, “What do you think about starting again?” They were both on board so we opened up the place I’d just vacated on Bainbridge. It’s done so well, we’ve now moved into a larger place around the corner on Fifth Street.
PGN: Random questions. What book or story would you want to live in? PH: Oh jeepers, well, Emily Dickinson, her poetry just makes my head pop. Over the years I’ve had the most fun with her work, there’s just something about it that … well, it’s hard to describe but it’s fun.
PGN: Something people don’t know about the store? PH: We have a very large LGBT collection here. Most people in Philadelphia don’t seem to know it, it’s mostly people from out of town that buy our LGBT books. I’m always thrilled when someone does.
PGN: And special holiday memories? PH:I believed in Santa Claus until I was about 12!
PGN: You said your brother served in the war; were you ever in the military? PH: No, I got out of it. My mother had me take a letter down to the recruitment center, and I was excused. I always felt guilty about it but I don’t think I would have survived in the military. Steve got snapped up in the draft, and he had to go. It didn’t destroy his spirit — he was always a wonderful guy, but it changed him irreparably. It was terrible. So sad, because he came back at a time when no one wanted to talk about it. It was like, “You’re home now, let’s just move on.” I was one of those people who wanted to gloss over it. I tried to make up for it later when I realized how much it had hurt him. He was a gay man on the front lines and had to deal with his friends dying in his arms. Thankfully, I got to spend the last years of his life with him and he was able to be himself. He made a lot of friends working at the bookstore. We had the memorial for him upstairs.
PGN: What kind of letter did your mother give you to get you out of service? PH: She’d sent me to a shrink. It wasn’t her intention, but she realized that if the therapist gave me a letter saying I was a homosexual, I would be ineligible for service. I remember that day well, I didn’t go in drag like many of my friends did, but I had this yellow-and-black checkered coat which I wore to the induction center. The intake person read the letter and said, “Is this true?” I said “yes,” and he looked at my coat and said, “OK, you can go.” He was kind about it and I remember thinking of the line from the movie “Going My Way”: “If this won’t happen, I’ll get by.” I put my coat over my shoulder and walked out. It was bittersweet, I was embarrassed but I also knew I’d never make it in the Army. I have a friend whose brother is serving in Afghanistan and on his last trip home he confessed, “When I go back, I hope I step on a bomb. All I want to do is die.” It’s too awful.
PGN: Agreed. And finally, something people would be surprised to find out about you? PH: [Smiles.] That I’m much more competent than I appear to be. I was a little kid from a small town and I came here and got this started on my own. With Philly AIDS Thrift, I got the board, the location, the first donations — everything to put my idea in motion. I’m so proud. And I’ve been sober for about 25 years, which I’m very proud of. If everybody would take care of just one issue, we could change the world.
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