'Excuse me, what time do you close?" asked the lady as she stepped into the narrow storefront. "4:30," said the man with the big grin, sitting at the table by the front window, "but if you buy a lot, I'll stay here with you.
Two dollars is a lot." That's Dick Daughtry, proprietor of Daughtry's Old Books, who's been striking up conversations and joshing customers from his front-of-the-store station for the better part of two decades. "Yeah, I got dancin' girls comin' in at 4:30," he added to a guy in a My Chemical Romance T-shirt, who was staring in, a bit tentatively, at the stacks and stacks of former best-sellers and old encyclopedias.
"You're free to hang around." The ambience of Daughtry's - used books at bargain prices, plus tall tales and a perpetual standing talk show - has drawn a loyal clientele to the cramped little shop on Wilmington's North Front Street, next to what remains of the Bailey Theater's multi-colored facade. This downtown institution is about to change, though, at least a little.
On June 1, Dick Daughtry is officially selling the store. "It's sort of like losing a close relative," he said. "I kind of hate to do it, but I'm 87, so I figured it was about time.
" Still, he's keeping the business in the family, so to speak. The new proprietor will be Gwenyfar Rohler (who prefers to go by her first name). "She's been coming in here since she was 14," said Daughtry.
"I've had plenty of offers to sell out, but I know her and I know her daddy (Lloyd Rohler, a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington), so I feel like they'll carry it on." Not that patrons will notice much difference. Gwenyfar said she made Daughtry promise to keep coming in the store, to help out, and he seems to have needed little persuasion.
"Mr. Daughtry is one of the world's greatest storytellers," said Gwenyfar, "but you're not sure how much of it's true. If he's talking to a pretty girl, he might tell you he's 57, but if he's talking to a man, he'll be 92.
" As if to demonstrate, Daughtry chimed in with another walk-in: "Yeah, this business will starve you. See, I was 7 feet tall when I started this place. Now, I'm 5-7.
" "I say that a lot, joking," he added, pointing at the wood table that serves as his counter, "but sometimes people will bring me a hot dog and leave it right here." Hanging on a shelf in the window, for example, are enough good-sized bronze and gold medals on red, white and blue ribbons to decorate a fair-sized army. Those are the medals Daughtry has won over the years in the state and local Senior Games.
He still competes in the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints. "It's easy for me to win," he said. "When you get in my age group, most of the others are dead.
" Daughtry has been running at least since high school, when he was on a state champion track team from his hometown, Goldsboro, and later at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the Class of '42. Tacked on the side of a bookshelf is a vintage Sports Illustrated cover showing Jim Beatty, the UNC track star who became the first person to run a 4-minute mile on an indoor track. "He and I had the same coach," Daughtry said, "20 years apart.
" Hang around a while and Daughtry will tell you about attending the 1936 Penn Relays up in Philadelphia, where he happened to brush against a then-unknown runner named Jesse Owens - months before Owens won his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics. Just under the Jim Beatty cover is a picture of a P-47 fighter plane. Daughtry flew one of those in World War II: "Ninth Air Force.
We accompanied Mr. Patton's left flank all the way across Europe." Settle in, because you're about to hear about the Battle of the Bulge and being bombarded by German V-1 "buzz-bombs" at the U.
S. Army Air Force base at Maidstone, England. "Wasn't there one time you ate grass, Mr.
Daughtry?" Gwenyfar asked. "No, it was raw turnips," he replied.
"We crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth, got over there and couldn't eat that English food." The postwar years were comparatively quiet for Daughtry, who settled into a career with Sears. "Retiring" at age 55, he used his profit-sharing money to buy a series of old houses in the area, refurbish them, then sell them for a profit.
At this point, in the late '70s and early '80s, Wilmington's population was starting to boom. "Made more money in seven years than I had in my entire life," he said. About 25 years ago, Daughtry and his wife, Lucy, decided to downsize.
To dispose of surplus furniture, curios and some 3,000 books the couple owned, they opened an antique shop in the former Walgreens space at 226 N. Front St. "I noticed people were coming back, and they were coming to see the books," Daughtry said.
Thus, he decided to specialize in used books. Five years later, Daughtry's moved to its current location at 22 N. Front.
Over the years, the stock expanded; Daughtry guesses it now holds about 25,000 volumes. Many of these books seem to be in almost random stacks, 10 feet high or more, lining the walls. Somehow, Daughtry can find whatever a customer wants.
Earlier this week, a lady wandered in, looking for fly-fishing books as a present for her husband. "Look down that aisle, to where it says 'Hunting,' " Daughtry said. "Bend down real low.
" A girl in a black T-shirt came in, a few minutes later. A big fan of Watership Down and The Plague Dogs, she wanted to find other books by Richard Adams. "I used to have a copy of Maia," Daughtry said, pointing directions.
"If it's still here, it'll be right over there." The store has drawn its share of notable customers. Daughtry remembers coming to work one morning and finding Gene Hackman and Dom DeLuise standing at the door.
The two actors, in town to film a picture called Loose Cannons, were seeking shelter from autograph hounds. "The movie industry has been really good to me, and to the rest of downtown," Daughtry said. "If it weren't for them, I probably wouldn't be here.
" Location crews have frequently stocked up on books for backdrops and occasionally rented out the store itself for scenes - some of the few times Daughtry has given himself a vacation. Other customers, if not movie stars, have been nearly as colorful. "Chief" Steve Silverheels, a mail carrier, evangelist and the son of Lone Ranger co-star Jay Silverheels, often stops by on his lunch break to swap jokes and stories.
"This business is a people thing," Daughtry said, "and the people who read are really good people."
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