Hobart Book Village and Don Dales' Novel Approach to Rural Revival

Transcription by JK Kazlauskas

[00:00:00] Don Dales: No one is going to go to the remote wilds of the Catskills for one bookstore. Well, maybe somebody would, but it couldn't succeed without the numbers, but when there are seven bookstores in one location, then they say, "Oh, this sounds interesting. Let's go!"

[00:00:24] Brett Barry: Delaware County's Hobart, New York, incorporated as a village in 1888. More than a century later, Diana and Bill Adams opened a small bookshop in what had become a bit of a ghost town. Then, in 2005, entrepreneur and hometown boy, Don Dales, opened a couple of bookshops of his own not to compete with the Adams' shop but in an attempt to revitalize and rebrand the village as a destination for book lovers. Now, Hobart is celebrating 20 years as Hobart Book Village with seven independent bookshops and even a Book Village Inn and Bar. Stay tuned for our interview with Don Dales, who took inspiration from a town in Wales that he's never even visited and breathed new life into his small Catskills town.

[00:01:18] Campbell Brown: This episode is supported by Hanford Mills Museum. Explore the power of the past and learn about the ingenuity of the historic milling industry. Watch the waterwheel bring a working sawmill to life! Bring a picnic to enjoy by the millpond. For more information about scheduling a tour or about their 2025 events, visit hanfordmills.org. Kaatscast is sponsored by The Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like The Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call (518) 763-6854 or email mountaineaglenews@gmail.com.

[00:01:58] Don Dales: My name is Don Dales. I live in Hobart. It's the Book Village of the Catskills, and I have lived here for 25 years.

[00:02:06] Brett Barry: We met up with Don Dales at his home on Main Street in Hobart, New York, and that's "Hoe-bert", not "Hoe-bart."

[00:02:13] Don Dales: Yes, we call it Hobart with the accent on the first syllable, and, of course, new newcomers call it Hobart, and I don't blame them. After all, there's Hobart College, which is not here, by the way, and the manufacturer of kitchen equipment is Hobart, but this is Hobart.

[00:02:37] Brett Barry: And even though Don wasn't the first person to plan a bookshop in the village, he's credited with creating and branding Hobart Book Village, a destination for book lovers far and wide.

[00:02:50] Don Dales: Yes, well, during the nineteen-forties and fifties, that's when I grew up, and it was very different. At that time, the farming industry was the predominant industry, mostly cattle, but also chickens, and I grew up on a chicken farm. My father had chickens, so most of my fellow classmates in school were children of farmers, which always in retrospect strikes me as a little funny because most of us were not rich. We were poor, and, you know, our house did not have central heating, and most of us had plumbing, but none of us thought anything about it because we were all in the same boat. We didn't realize that other people lived differently. That was the area when I was growing up. It was pre-television, and I don't regret a moment of it.

[00:03:50] Brett Barry: And were the towns more vibrant then in terms of what was available and being able to kind of take care of all your needs right here locally?

[00:03:58] Don Dales: Absolutely, now to be clear, I didn't grow up here in Hobart. I grew up in Stamford, which is three miles away. It's a slightly larger village, and yes, for the most part, we could get everything we needed in the village. We usually made one, sometimes two trips a year to the big city, Oneonta, mostly for either dental work or an optometrist, that sort of thing, but other than that, there were, of course, in those days, many more stores in the small villages, including Hobart. One of the differences between Stamford and Hobart, which is kind of interesting, is that Stamford was a tourism town, and Hobart was a farmer's town. Stamford was known for its hotels, and it, you've probably heard this, Stamford was called the Queen of the Catskills, and it had 30/31 hotels. During the summer, the population grew, sometimes up to 10,000 people that stayed the summer because, of course, New York City pre-air conditioning and easy access to cars and roads was very hot, and so many times the mother and children would be sent to the country for the summer and the men would come up on the train, which reminds me, of course, during those days, we had a train that came through on a regular basis up until the 1950s. Passenger service stopped in the fifties and freight in the sixties, but even Hobart [who catered to the local farming population] had many, many stores that had two or three grocery stores, which gives you some idea of how active the community was, but in addition, there were all the stores you might suspect ... shoe stores and appliance stores, and, of course, multiple farm equipment suppliers. There were two or three car dealerships, of course, beauticians and liquor stores, and whatever you needed was here in the village for the most part.

[00:06:19] Brett Barry: What happened? Why did it change, and how did it change?

[00:06:23] Don Dales: Well, big box stores primarily and the easy access to cars and reliability of cars. People started going to Oneonta for their groceries because it was cheaper and had more selection, the same thing with shoes and clothing, and so, of course, all the local stores went out of business.

[00:06:46] Brett Barry: Were there other industries here that no longer exist?

[00:06:50] Don Dales: Yes, there was, of course, a creamery. Every tiny hamlet had a creamery. Also, we had a large chicken business here in Hobart in terms of chicken hatchery, not so much eggs and meat, but hatching chickens. A family called the Rich's—there were two brothers. They both had large chicken businesses, and they would ship out little chicks by the thousands, including to Europe, so it was a very big industry here in Hobart. Many of the farmers, not all, God knows, not my family, but many of them were doing fairly well up until the dairy industry suffered from competition from Wisconsin and other places. At that point, the dairy industry began to die, and then the creameries died, and then the railroad died, and then people went to Oneonta, and the stores died, and so it was kind of a sad few years.

[00:08:08] Brett Barry: And so when you came back, you had left the area for a while, and then you came back to Hobart, and can you tell me what the state of the town was?

[00:08:16] Don Dales: It was pretty much a ghost village.

[00:08:18] Brett Barry: Yeah.

[00:08:19] Don Dales: Well, there was a diner, the post office, and a pizza place, and that was pretty much it. All the other stores were vacant and very dilapidated and ugly-looking and dirty, and it was pretty depressing, actually, and, of course, you'd say, "Well, why did you move back?" And the truth was I had no intention of moving back, but my 40th high school reunion came up, and an old high school friend called me. I had never gone to a reunion, and an old high school friend called and said, "Donald, you've gotta come to this one. It's your 40th year," so I said, "Okay," and I came up, and I looked around. "My God, this is the most beautiful place in the world." The Catskill Mountains and everything, of course, when you're a kid, you don't see it, so anyway, I began to appreciate where I grew up, so I said, "Well, what the hell, I'll move to Hobart, which I did." For years, I had been renovating apartment houses and owned income property, so that was one of my goals was to own something that would pay for itself in terms of rent.

[00:09:39] Brett Barry: And you bought some buildings here in town with the goal of...

[00:09:43] Don Dales: Didn't really have much of a goal. They were dirt cheap because no one wanted them, and they all had apartments in them, and just to backtrack a little bit, in the past 40 years, a company had grown here in Hobart, Mallinckrodt, which is a drug manufacturing company, and they had grown to 600 employees, and I thought, "Well, at least I'll be able to rent apartments," so I bought several buildings. Coincidentally, they all had storefronts [vacant storefronts], so I offered the storefronts free—free rent for a year with a business plan—and had almost no takers, but also in the meantime, a storefront that I did not own—Bill and Diana Adams, by a fluke, showed up here and wanted to open an antiquarian bookstore. Now, they were busy in New York City. Bill was a physician, and Diana was a lawyer, but they wanted to open up an antiquarian bookstore on weekends, and so they rented this store from the owner at the time and opened up a bookstore, which I thought was the craziest idea in the world. Here we have an antiquarian bookstore in the middle of nowhere. Who's going to patronize it? But nonetheless, they did it, and they were charming people, and we became friends. There was also a bookstore about four miles from here in South Kortright that was doing fairly well for itself. It was called Bibliobarn. Linda and H.L., they owned it, and at one point I was complaining to the Adams' and to Linda and H.L.—my difficulties renting the storefronts—and they asked me if I had ever heard of Hay-on-Wye, which is a book town in Wales. It's a very big book town. It's got 20 or 30 bookstores in it, and I said, "No," and so I googled it and found out what it was, and I thought, "Well, geez, we got one bookstore. What the hell! Let's try it."

[00:12:20] Brett Barry: Our conversation with Don Dales continues right after this...

[00:12:25] Campbell Brown: This episode is brought to you by Briars & Brambles Books, the go-to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path, open daily! For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call (518) 750-8599, and by listeners like you! Join us as a monthly member listener or make a one-time contribution at kaatscast.com/support. Thank you!

[00:12:59] Don Dales: Luckily, my actual business all these years has been cabinetmaking and furniture restoration, antique restoration, and I made a hell of a lot of bookcases, and I went out and bought a lot of books. I like reading. I've always read, but not very seriously, so I'm not a book person really, but I'm kind of used to business, and I'm not afraid of it, so I opened up two bookstores in two of my stores, and then before you know it, I enlarged one of them, and the other was taken over by someone who was interested in a bookstore. Then the one that I had enlarged was purchased by another person that wanted to own a local bookstore, and then things just began to roll along with people coming in and either buying or opening up their own bookstores. Now, we have seven bookstores. We've never looked at it as competition. In fact, the village is very cooperative. We have monthly meetings—all the bookstore owners. We pool our marketing money to make a bigger impact, and we do try to keep the same hours. There are slight differences. They change during the winter, so be warned that we're only open on weekends during the winter, but from Memorial Day till Columbus Day, we are open every day of the week.

[00:14:30] Brett Barry: And what else would someone expect to find here if they came in from a long distance? Are there places to eat and stay, or is it really spend the day shopping and then kind of continue on to the next town?

[00:14:42] Don Dales: Well, it's a little of each. It is a very small village. Hobart is only about 400 people. However, we have a restaurant opening up. It's going to be called The Book Village Inn. It used to be called The Bull & Garland, which was a very popular restaurant here in the village, and now it's going to be opening this summer as The Book Village Inn. We do have a small diner that is available during mornings for breakfast and a little lunch. However, only three miles away we have Stamford, which has a lovely diner and a couple of restaurants, and so people can certainly find food there. In terms of B&Bs, there are multiple B&Bs in the area, including the Book Village Inn has five rooms that they are already renting, and you can rent them online now. By the way, the Book Village is celebrating 20 years this year, but for the first 10 or 15 years there was some local resistance because a lot of the local people said, "Bookstores? Why bookstores? You know, why don't we have a shoe store? Why don't we have a liquor store? Why don't we have a clothing store? Why don't we have a grocery store?" And I said, "Look, if they could sustain themselves, they would be here, but you people shop in Oneonta, so let's try bookstores." I think now, because of the publicity and the success of the bookstores, they're beginning to understand why we have bookstores. We have the Festival of Women Writers every year that is done by the two ladies that have the Blenheim Hill Books, Barbara and Cheryl, and that's a wonderful event that takes place in June. They have readings. They have receptions for the attendees and for the authors. They have seminars, and everyone that I've heard that has attended it has been so pleased with it, so it's a lot of fun. It is very educational. You meet some well-known authors, and maybe you'll learn something.

[00:17:17] Brett Barry: You've been featured in The New York Times with The Guardian, CBS Sunday Morning... Have you seen an impact from that in terms of the people coming up here?

[00:17:25] Don Dales: Oh, absolutely, absolutely there's a tremendous impact. One of the biggest impacts was a small piece on TikTok, a young lady put on TikTok.

[00:17:39] [TikTok]: "... That is filled entirely with bookstores, and it's every book lover's dream. It's called Hobart Book Village. There's even a little..."

[00:17:46] Don Dales: I don't have a cell phone, so I wasn't able to see it, but apparently it wasn't very long, but my goodness, the impact that made was absolutely tremendous, not to say that CBS and the rest of them didn't have an impact. They had a large impact too, so we can hope that that sort of thing will continue.

[00:18:07] Brett Barry: You're an influencer, Don!

[00:18:09] Don Dales: Oh yeah, right. I barely know how to get on Facebook. I think one of the things to understand is that a lot of the people that came to visit the Book Village—they usually do some other things in the Catskills: food and lodging, and then they find out maybe about the Arkville Railroad or Hanford Mills Museum or some other place, so they may come for the Book Village, but they spend their money in the Catskills, which I've often said that our goal is to bring people here and empty their pockets, and we're doing the best we can.

[00:19:01] Brett Barry: So how have you seen activity change in the past 20 years in this town from that kind of dismal scene that you painted at the beginning of this conversation where it was kind of a ghost town? Has it revived to a point that you feel there's life and energy here?

[00:19:17] Don Dales: Absolutely, I mean, it's obvious that the bookstores bring a certain amount of life and energy, and mostly on weekends you can see the number of cars and people walking up and down the streets, which is really nice. The number of people that have moved here, especially during the 2008 recession to get away from New York City, and then the reason they bought in Hobart or near Hobart was because of the Book Village, and we're talking about a demographic that is affluent and well-educated. I mean, they came because of the Book Village, so it's had... quite an effect on the area.

[00:20:10] Brett Barry: And do you still own a bookstore here in town?

[00:20:12] Don Dales: Not any longer. Up until last year, I did own a bookstore, mysteries and science fiction, but I finally, since I have reached advanced old age... I've decided to retire. I got rid of all the apartment houses. I got rid of the restoration business and the bookstore, and I'm finally well over 80, and I'm retired.

[00:20:40] Brett Barry: So how do you spend your time now?

[00:20:42] Don Dales: Practicing the piano, and I do have a shop downstairs, and I restore my own furniture. I've got a mess of broken furniture throughout the years I've gathered, so I work on that and, you know, goof off. What the heck!

[00:21:00] Brett Barry: How would you define your role in the establishment of the Book Village?

[00:21:05] Don Dales: Lucky. I'm not sure there was much intent involved in the whole thing. I mean, I enjoyed establishing the bookstores, and I enjoyed owning a bookstore all those years. As I said, I'm a casual reader, mostly of mysteries and sci-fi, so that was kind of fun, and, of course, it was fun having bookstore owners to work with. They're a well-educated group of people, and that's stimulating. I didn't really see it all happening. It was—it was only semi-intentional, but it certainly was lucky.

[00:21:54] Brett Barry: And how do you see it continuing into the future now that you've stepped back from an active role in the bookshops?

[00:22:02] Don Dales: That's a very good question. If you're familiar with the history of the Catskills [you know very well that various industries come and go], I talked a little bit about the dairy industry, lumber industry, charcoal industry, cauliflower industry, chicken industry... I could keep going. None of them are here anymore, so it's a cautionary tale that the Book Village may not be here. It's very dependent on who the bookstore owners are and how much they want to keep it going.

[00:22:46] Brett Barry: Does this town have the capacity for another bookstore or two?

[00:22:51] Don Dales: We could have lots of bookstores. I'm not sure we have the space anymore. I'm not sure where they would go, but if somebody came in, we would certainly try to find a space for them.

[00:23:05] Brett Barry: Have you achieved celebrity status in this town?

[00:23:08] Don Dales: [Laughs] Well, I'm not sure whether you would call it that or not. People, no one has asked me for my autograph yet.

[00:23:23] Brett Barry: For information on Hobart's bookshops and their specialties, including Adam's Books, Blenheim Hill Books, Creative Corner Books, Liberty Rock Books, More Good Books, New York Books & Ephemera, Quarry Books, and more, head over to hobartbookvillage.com, and if you'd like to participate in this year's Hobart Festival of Women Writers, you're just in time. The 2025 festival takes place June 6th, 7th, and 8th, and you can sign up at hobartfestivalofwomenwriters.blog. Kaatscast: The Catskills Podcast is a production of Silver Hollow Audio. Transcription by Jerome Kazlauskas is available at kaatscast.com along with a searchable archive of all our shows. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter, and if you'd like a Kaatscast sticker or tee-shirt, there's a place for that too. I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.