The valuable books that once attracted collectors and sold for thousands of dollars are gone. What remains are assorted hardbacks, now going for $1, and the memories.

When the shelves are empty, Hawthorne Boulevard Books, tucked away at 3129 on the street that bears its name, will close. The books provided the fascination, but the owners of the shop provided the heart.

They came up with the idea for a bookstore on a whim and made it happen with thousands of used books they bought from the Communist Party of Los Angeles.

Roger and Ilse Roberts lived in the house attached to the store. One of them was always sitting at the corner desk in the front of the shop until Roger died two years ago.

Ilse Roberts kept the store going. But she recently decided to sell the remaining stock. She'll live in the home but will rent out the space to another business.

"I'm 85," she said. "It's too much."

The couple opened the store in 1984 after a life that took them from Germany, to New York City, back to Germany, then to Minnesota and California, where they were living when their oldest son was admitted to Reed College. They drove him to the college and stopped for lunch in Ashland.

"We were walking around and found a used bookstore," said Ilse Roberts. "The owner told us he'd once been a grocery clerk and had never been happier than when he owned the store."

Later, the couple talked about the bookstore and decided to do the same thing in Portland because their youngest son also planned to go to Reed and the family could be together.

They had always been willing to embrace the unknown. The two met, at 26, on a boat sailing from Germany to New York City.

On the second day at sea, Roger, who was from Michigan and returning to America after traveling in Germany, proposed to Ilse, who was from Germany. She accepted. After getting married, they lived in New York for two years and then returned to Germany.

Four years later, they moved from Germany to Minnesota to raise cattle on a 60-acre ranch. Then, with their two sons, it was off to rural California in a Volkswagen Beetle to start a building maintenance company and manufacture carpet cleaners.

After getting their first son settled in Reed and returning to California, the couple reached out to Portland real estate agents to look for a building to start a bookstore. In time, an agent found the perfect building: a home attached to a vacant storefront that had once been the site of a dental office. The couple came to check it out.

"Hawthorne was very seedy," Roberts said. "Empty storefronts, bars and an X-rated video store."

But this was the place.

They knew nothing about running a bookstore but needed books. While still in California, they scoured garage sales and flea markets. They hit the big time when they learned the Communist Party in Los Angeles was having a garage sale at a warehouse.

"There were books donated by Hollywood people," Roberts said. "Excellent and many collectibles. We bought everything except the Communist books."

They sold their home and business in California and moved north, shipping 30,000 books. Their sons both eventually earned Ph.D.s in math and moved to the East Coast. When the couple visited their boys, they'd bid at auctions and search the area for books not available on the West Coast.

"This was before Amazon," Roberts said. "We'd ship the books back to Portland. It was a good life."

Once, while Ilse Roberts was babysitting her grandchildren back East, she received a telephone call from her husband who was in Portland running the store. He said he'd just bought a book for $15,000.

"I couldn't speak," Ilse Roberts said.

Her husband explained it was a first edition of the Lewis and Clark diaries.

Ilse Roberts still wasn't sure.

Soon after, though, a collector bought the diaries for $25,000.

Last week, the lone customer in the store was Michael Powell, owner of Powell's Books. He came to see if he could find things to add to the shelves in his store.

This little store, Powell said, had added to the diversity of the city. He carried a stack of books to the front counter to pay for them.

Roberts took his money.

"I'm not sad it's over," she said, as much to Powell as to herself. "All things come to an end."

Just like a good book.

--Tom Hallman Jr.

thallman@oregonian.com; 503 221-8224

@thallmanjr