Readers, those of us left, often bemoan the loss of independent bookstores and complain about the department store atmosphere of most chains, while continuing to buy from chains and Amazon, voting with our pocketbooks for convenience over style and substance. This is about the last of that dying breed, and as much about its owner, also the last of something more valuable than we anticipated -- the oral tradition of story-telling.

I have known Tom Chaney, owner of The Bookstore in the hamlet of Horse Cave, Kentucky, for 43 years. He is the finest raconteur I have ever known. Everyone who enters his vicinity will get a story, usually humorous, and many, including me, can park on a nearby chair or sofa or spot on the floor for hours, as long as Tom keeps telling stories (and he has enormous gusto for this).

Tom is also a prodigious eater. Once we shared a family Thanksgiving meal together and at the end of it, Tom clasped his hands over his ample girth and pronounced: "Thank God for capacity." This came after he managed to refuse a fourth helping of everything.

Tom taught in colleges for a while, sometimes English, but mostly in theater departments, and I only took one class from him during all the years we've known one another, something about plays and playwrights that I have forgotten.

Horse Cave is an odd sort of hamlet, especially for Kentucky. Not only does it support a fine independent bookstore of the kind we are all going to miss sorely when the last one disappears, but a well-known and highly-respected reparatory theater company, the Horse Cave Theater, which happens to be about fifty yards away from The Bookstore and, as it happens, was founded by Tom Chaney with an actor friend named Warren Hammack. I was honored to attend the grand opening of the theater a couple of decades ago, and while watching a rehearsal took note of the guy sitting across the aisle from me -- Jon Voight, fresh from winning an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy.

Without Tom, I am sure neither the bookstore nor the theater could be supported in such a small town.