Editor's Note: Catfish plate at the Dairy Queen

People looked at me like I was crazy. It was understandable. I was taking a weekend trip, but not to any of the places Las Vegans commonly go to escape the neon tangle. Not to San Diego or Sedona or a rustic cabin in southern Utah.

No, I was headed to Archer City, Texas, pop. 1,848, two hours outside Dallas. Why, friends and colleagues reasonably wondered, was I going to such a godforsaken place?

Answer: Archer City is home to the nation's largest used bookstore.

This, of course, begs another question: Why is the nation's largest used bookstore located in tiny, remote Archer City?

Answer: Archer City is the hometown of best-selling author Larry McMurtry, and it's his store.

As an avid reader and minor book collector, I've had McMurtry's Booked Up Inc. on my mind for several years. My desire to visit the place was piqued by McMurtry's 1999 book, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, which, in part, is a memoir of his secondary career as an antiquarian book collector and used bookstore owner. McMurtry describes his Archer City store as "an anthology of bookshops past--remnants of 22 bookshops now reside there with, I hope, many more to come."

McMurtry used to operate Booked Up in Washington, D.C., but he and his business partner encountered the same problem that hundreds of other used bookstores in big cities have faced: rising rents. Moving the operation to Archer City solved that problem.

In recent years, bibliophiles have trekked great distances to see what McMurtry hath wrought in northeast Texas. (There is no substitute for physically going there, since the books can't be bought online.) I finally went last weekend, accompanied by another book fanatic, Scott Dickensheets, whose name might be familiar from another free publication circulated in these parts.

The pilgrimage started easily enough with a flight to Dallas. We had to laugh at two things from a conversation we had with the young woman who handled our rental car. We asked her to suggest something we might want to do while in Dallas. She suggested y'all check out the gun show. Of course. We also asked how far Crawford was. She'd never heard of it. (That's where the Leader of the Free World has a big ol' ranch).

The drive to Archer City was a bit more involved. MapQuest was no damn help: Its insistence on the shortest-possible route made the directions way too complicated. As a result, we got lost, missing a turn that didn't have a sign. But in the process we learned of a considerably simpler route.

You notice four things while driving across Texas. First, it's flat as a flapjack. Like Nevada, the landscape is sparse; unlike Nevada, there are no mountain ranges to put the vistas in perspective. Second, you notice the ubiquitous roadkill. There's a squashed skunk or some other varmint splayed beside the highway every couple hundred yards. We didn't see any dead armadillos, but we believe we saw a few badgers (or were they possum?). Third, every so often you are overcome by the fumes from a recently sideswiped skunk. And fourth, you can't help but notice that the largest and most prominent building in every little town is a Baptist or Methodist church.

* * *

There isn't much to Archer City. It lives up to its reputation as the hardscrabble wide spot in the road of McMurtry's The Last Picture Show and Texasville (as well as the movie versions). A couple of small restaurants, an old hotel (more on this in a minute) and the world's most famous Dairy Queen. And, of course, Booked Up, which is actually four storefront buildings in separate parts of the downtown. Fortunately they are all within easy walking distance, and they are numbered so you can keep track of what kind of books are located in each one.

We had a reservation at the Spur Hotel, built in 1920. A beautiful place, small but elegant. We soon learned that we would be the only two staying that night. The proprietor handed us the key to the front door and went home early. We had the run of the place, which sounds more interesting than it is. We did enjoy watching cable reruns and munching snacks in the downstairs lounge, but that was about the extent of it. No Animal House-like toga parties for these focused book scouts.

Booked Up is incredible. An estimated 500,000 books covering every subject imaginable (except for books by McMurtry, which are verboten). We came prepared, seeking specific authors and titles that we had been unable to lay our hands on in the greater Las Vegas area. We found many of them. My prizes included an excellent hardcover edition of Gilman Ostrander's Nevada: The Great Rotten Borough, 1859-1964. This book, which I quoted from in this space a few months ago, no doubt will make another appearance in the near future. Scott found many long-sought books, including a novel by Mark Jacobson.

* * *

McMurtry opens his memoir describing himself sitting in Archer City's Dairy Queen, drinking lime Dr Pepper (a local concoction) and reading German philosopher/critic Walter Benjamin's Illuminations. We visited this fabled DQ at an inopportune time. It was evening, and a rival high school basketball squad had invaded the place after, we presumed, a game against Archer City's vaunted Wildcats. As a result, it took a while for the flustered teenage employees to notice us standing in front of the register. We waited patiently, amusing ourselves by considering the implications of ordering the "catfish plate."

We didn't get our food for a very long time. This, the manager explained, was because they had to make fresh gravy for my chicken fingers. (As you cooks know, making good gravy is a delicate process.) This, too, amused us, considering I could have settled for ranch dressing or even ketchup, the common chicken finger condiments west of Archer City. While we waited, we admired the McMurtry-centric signage on the walls, including a color copy of the Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen book cover.

The manager, a very nice lady who called everyone "hon," "sugar" or "darlin'," lamented the slow service we`d received and promised free ice cream after our meal. By the time we'd finished, however, the employees who knew our situation, including the manager, were preoccupied with packing up to go home and had forgotten us. We weren't really worried about it, though, and started for the door. The manager, noticing us slipping out, promised free Blizzards the next time we came in. We'll hold her to it.

* * *

Here's the breaking news: Booked Up is closing Dec. 31. There is a typed notice, attributed to McMurtry, posted by the register announcing this. McMurtry doesn't really explain why he is closing the store, but he suggests it may be temporary. When we quizzed the employees, they said Larry wanted to do some traveling. This didn't satisfy our curiosity, since McMurtry doesn't exactly run the day-to-day operation anymore, if he ever did. He lives in Arizona now, though he apparently keeps in almost daily touch with the women who run the place and still buys books to add to the stock.

Whatever the reason, the store is closing at year's end. Who knows what will happen after that. If I were you, I'd hightail it to Archer City soon.

* * *

For the record, these are the books I bought on the trip:

Nevada: The Great Rotten Borough, 1859-1964 by Gilman M. Ostrander; The Earl of Louisiana by A.J. Liebling; Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell; Who Lost an American? by Nelson Algren; The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton; The News of the World by Ron Carlson; Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley; Howard Hughes: A Biography by John Keats; A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America by David Armstrong; Nevada Highways and Parks, Special Centennial Issue 1964.

They may not seem like much (Scott bought more), but these 10 tomes made the trip worthwhile for me. Call me crazy, but this was a fine, productive little vacation. Next up: The legendary Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver.

--GEOFF SCHUMACHER