Customers at Reed Books and The Museum of Fond Memories in the heart of downtown Birmingham don’t always come here looking to buy a book.

Oftentimes, they’ll be walking along Third Avenue North and see that “A Christmas Story” leg lamp or that Piggly Wiggly costume head in the front window, and curiosity just gets the best of them.

Once inside, they’re greeted by the shop’s proprietor, Jim Reed, a kindly gentleman with a white beard, a sneaky sense of humor, and a distinguished voice that belongs on public radio, which, come to find out, he once was.

Then they’ll start roaming the narrow aisles between shelves crammed with books on everything from the birds of Alabama to the history of France, Winston Churchill to Sigmund Freud, gardening to fly-fishing.

Soon, they’ll get lost in another time, leafing through old copies of The Saturday Evening Post and Life magazine, Dick and Jane readers and Classics Illustrated comic books.

Dennis Earley discovered the eclectic bookstore after he moved back home to Bessemer about 10 years ago and drops in when he comes downtown every so often.

“I rarely come in here looking for anything in particular,” Earley says while he browses through a section that includes historical biographies, pop-psychology books, science-fiction and horror novels.

“I just come in here wide-open,” Earley adds. “Open your brain and come in and start looking.”

Reed Books and The Museum of Fond Memories is one of Birmingham’s hidden gems, a treasure trove of old books and forgotten memorabilia where it’s easy to wander in for a few minutes and end up staying a couple of hours.

For the 78-year-old Reed, who first got in the used-book business in 1980 after 15 years in the corporate world, it is his sanctuary.

“This whole place is for my entertainment,” he says. “I have to make a living, but I have to also be happy. Because I was in miserable jobs parts of my life, I want a job where I’m happy every day.”

Some people rescue animals, Jim Reed rescues books.

He salvages them from trash piles by the side of the road and finds them at flea markets and estate sales.

“I don’t go bin-diving,” he says. “I did a lot of that when I was young. I don’t do that anymore. Nothing could be worse than seeing the headline: ‘Old book dealer found diving in dumpster.’”

Occasionally, he will arrive at his store to find a cardboard box filled with old books that have been left on the doorstep by someone who knows they will be going to a good home.

“It’s a sin to throw a book away,” Reed says. “I’m not even religious, but I know it’s a sin.”

Jim Reed is the proprietor of Reed Books and The Museum of Fond Memories in Birmingham, Ala. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)

A family of readers

The second of five siblings, James Thomas Reed III was born and raised in Tuscaloosa, where he grew up in a bungalow across the street from the old Northington General Hospital, near the current intersection of McFarland Boulevard and 15th Street.

His father, Tom Reed, was first a coal miner and later a carpenter, and his mother, Frances Reed, worked as a clerk at Woolworth’s before she stayed at home after her children were born.

“I was raised in an imaginative era with lots of books,” Reed recalls. “My parents, even though they didn’t finish high school, they were well educated people. They knew a lot because they had read a lot.

“Books were everywhere,” he adds. “Little books, big books, comic books, you name it. They were in the bathroom, in the bedroom, out on the front porch. So, I was always comfortable with books. The worst thing you could do was interrupt me in the middle of a chapter.”

In elementary school, Reed would save his lunch money to buy paperbacks at the nearby drug store, devouring adventurous tales from King Arthur and Robinson Crusoe to Robin Hood and Superman.

Around the fourth or fifth grade, he had an epiphany when he had to get up in front of his class to read a poem.

“I was a shy little kid and was not athletic in any way,” he says. “Our teacher assigned us to recite a poem. I picked a poem that I thought was exciting and would rev up everybody. I was filled with emotion, and when I stopped, the classroom applauded. And I thought, ‘Holy moly. Wow. I just got attention.’”

Encouraged, he began appearing in school plays and in community theater productions, and after he graduated from Tuscaloosa High School at 17, he enrolled in the University of Alabama, where he studied broadcast and film communication.

He broke into broadcasting by accident, when a friend suggested that he apply for a job pushing a camera around the studio at the public television station.

“So, I walk in, they hear my voice and say, ‘No, we need an announcer; go next door to the public radio station and audition,’” Reed remembers. “I was on the air the next day. It was too easy. It just happened. Then I had to start learning the craft, but I already had the voice. Voice runs in the family.”

After a few years in radio, Reed went to work at upstart Tuscaloosa TV station WCFT/Channel 33, which launched in 1965. He was a reporter and hosted a noontime interview show.

“I was the first voice on the air, probably,” Reed says. “I go back that far. Even the old-timers at Channel 33 don’t remember me now.”

Jim Reed, the owner of Reed Books and The Museum of Fond Memories in Birmingham, Ala., rescued this vintage sign from a dry cleaners in Birmingham's Five Points South neighborhood. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)

From Don Draper to book dealer

Reed loved radio and TV so much that he says he would have worked for free if he could have afforded it, but he couldn’t. So, in 1969, he moved to Birmingham for a higher-paying job managing the news bureau at UAB.

He later worked in public relations, six years for Baptist Medical Centers and then another six years for Children’s Hospital.

“I was Don Draper,” he says, referring to the 1960s-era New York City ad man played by Jon Hamm in the popular AMC television series “Mad Men.” “I was skinny. I had hair. I had horn-rimmed glasses, a three-piece suit. No track record like him, no looks like him, but I was that guy.”

It was during that time that Reed met Liz Gaunt. They both were divorced, and although Jim didn’t have any children of his own, Liz was raising three kids while working as a life-insurance salesperson for Mutual of Omaha.

“I could say things and she knew what I was talking about,” Reed says of his attraction to her. “Somebody who can engage and who is bright – and preferably, brighter than me – that’s the kind of people I like to hang around. She was bright and pretty, too.”

After a courtship of less than two years, they got married in January 1978.

Meanwhile, Reed had grown increasingly unhappy with his public-relations job, and he was looking for a career change.

His wife could sense he was miserable and encouraged him to pursue his passion.

He placed a small classified ad in The New York Times Book Review supplement, advertising hard-to-find and out-of-print books.

“I bought the least expensive want-ad that they ran,” he recalls. “People started sending me letters and faxes and (making) phone calls, telling me there were books they were looking for.”

Reed continued to run his mail-order book business as a sideline until he left the PR world for good in the mid-1980s.

He found inspiration in his favorite author, science fiction-writer Ray Bradbury, whom he had been a fan of since he was 13 years old.

“I decided the only thing left to do was to try to -- as Ray Bradbury always said -- jump off the mountain and build your parachute on the way down,” he says. “So, I said, ‘OK, I’ve got to become a book dealer.’”

The shelves at Reed Books in Birmingham, Ala., are crammed with thousands of used books, including these old Dick and Jane readers. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)

A shop of his own

Reed eventually accumulated so many books that he and his wife had to install steel support beams in their basement to keep the floor of their Southside home from sagging under the weight of all those words.

“Me, I can’t stop buying books,” Reed says. “At some point, my wife said to me, ‘I want my dining room back.’ And I looked around and realized what I was doing, that my obsession was taking over the house.”

Around 1987, Reed moved his business out of the house and opened his first shop in the Wooster Lofts building on First Avenue North, where the antiques and collectables store What’s On 2nd is now located.

Ten years later, he packed up all his books and moved into a second-floor shop above the former location of Scott’s Koneys on 20th Street South.

Liz Reed, who helped her husband with the move, recalls the elevator wasn’t working and they had to lug boxes of books up a flight of stairs.

“I wish he had collected post cards instead of books,” she says. “That would have been easier to move.”

In 2007, Reed settled into his current digs in the O’Neill Building at 2021 Third Ave. North. Built in 1890, it had most recently been home to a government bookstore, so it already had some bookshelves.

“I’ve been in three locations in a five-block radius the whole time I’ve been in business,” he says. “I’ve stayed downtown because I like downtown.”

As his little shop has gotten more crowded, Reed has reluctantly come to realize that he can’t rescue every book.

“There are some things in here because I believe every good bookstore should always have a copy of this book, even if no one ever buys it,” he says. “A good bookstore, like a good library, should have certain books always.

“And lots of things that -- even though I love them -- they won’t sell,” he says. “So, I have to leave ’em alone.”

Jim Reed, owner of Reed Books and The Museum of Fond Memories in Birmingham, Ala., believes it's a sin to throw away a book. (Photo by Kesley Freeman)

A mutual love of books

When he is not reading books, Jim Reed is writing them.

He has published 13 books, including such magical titles as “Dad’s Tweed Coat: Small Wisdoms, Hidden Comforts, Unexpected Joys” and “Christmas Comes But Once a Day,” and is editor of the quarterly Birmingham Arts Journal.

Liz Reed, who now runs a small publishing house called Blue Rooster Press, is her husband’s biggest cheerleader, and he is hers.

“Thank goodness she was willing to jump in,” Jim says. “She’s a saint. I owe her lots. She supported us for a good while until I figured out how to start making money out of this. So, she is my right hand and my left hand.”

Liz has gotten her dining room back, but theirs is a home that is still teeming with books, everywhere they turn.

“We have always lived around a lot of books,” she says. “I will never be caught without anything to read.

“I just like the idea of being around books,” she adds. “It’s a good thing, huh?”

Reed Books and The Museum of Fond Memories is at 2021 Third Ave. North in Birmingham, Ala. Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. The phone is 205-326-4460, and the website is www.jimreedbooks.com.

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