Hatch's Bookstore 1984 / Hatch's Bookstore 1996

I started managing the Hatch's Bookstore at the University Hills Mall in South Denver back in 1981, and after getting married and finding that working 6 days a week (7 days a week during the Christmas season) was not helping the relationship, I applied for and was hired as the book buyer for the University of Denver Bookstore (and afterwards found I would be the Assistant Manager, too). The very day I started at DU, in July of 1984, I realized college bookstores were a very different animal, and I really missed my old job at Hatch's - stocking all the new titles, helping customers find books, and just the camaraderie with the staff. But there was no going back. The photograph on the left was taken of me at the upstairs cashier counter just before I left for DU.  

At the time, the U-Hills store and the Hatch's Bookstore chain were still doing well. Hatch's was owned by Bob Hatch, and consisted of bookstores in 5 Denver area malls, as well as stores in Craig, Colorado and Lawrence, Kansas. Hatch also owned a chain of card and gift shops. There were two additional bookstores owned by Hatch's sister. As I recall, Amazon was not a factor back then, but most of the Hatch's bookstores were located in malls with only one department store anchor, and when the department stores began consolidating, those smaller malls often lost those anchors and their traffic flow as well. The growth of the Tattered Cover Bookstore, with their giant stores in Cherry Creek and Lower Downtown (LoDo) didn't help either, and the chain started to go downhill. The photograph on the right, by the way, shows me entering the U-Hills Bookstore in my usual grandiose style.

I took the photograph on the left of what was left of Hatch's Bookstore at the U-Hills Mall back in 1996. If I didn't realize it when I first started at DU, the sight of the mall being torn down made me realize that even though it wasn't as much fun, working at the DU Bookstore, with the benefits the university offered, was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I was able to retire comfortably at age 66, which I would almost never have been able to do if I stayed on at Hatch's. A while back, a popular saying was "do what you love, and the money will follow." No doubt that is true for the lucky few, but not for most of us, I'm afraid. Reality sucks.