Patricia Mason of Five Points Book Shop
Star Profile
Story and Photo by John Temple Ligon

Patricia Mason

A one- block stretch of Santee Avenue in Five Points between Harden Street and Blossom Street that begins with Yesterday's and ends with Groucho's parking lot was under construction for more than seven months a couple years ago. The construction activity and the restrictions on traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, almost killed the Five Points Book Shop.

The Five Points Book Shop, a member of the Antiquarian Book Dealers' Association of South Carolina, began in 1999 next door to its present space. Owned and operated by Patricia Mason and her husband Don Rosick, the shop carries books from $3 and up.

Patricia Mason was born in Berwick- on- Tweed, England, near the border with Scotland. Her father worked with Exxon, then Esso, as a distribution foreman. She had a younger brother and a younger sister.

After the tenth grade, Mason moved with her family to North Shields, a suburb of Newcastle, where she finished high school. She played varsity field hockey, but she was better known as a student always in the top ten percent.

At the University of Bristol, Mason majored in Spanish. She was able to spend a summer in Spain as part of her undergraduate studies.

With her BA in Spanish, Mason entered the Lady Spencer- Churchill College of Education at Oxford University to certify as a teacher. Finishing Oxford's certification course, Mason took a teaching assistantship at the University of Virginia, where she earned her master's in Spanish.

She moved from Charlottesville, Va., to Ithaca, N.Y., to complete her PhD in linguistics at Cornell University. Her dissertation was on Old French.

After Cornell, Mason took a post at Auburn University to teach French and Spanish for three years. Following Auburn, in 1979, she moved to Columbia to teach Spanish and linguistics at USC. She organized a summer Spanish language immersion program held in Cuernavaca, Mexico, for USC in 1986, and Don Rosick signed up. Three months after her return from Mexico, she was married to Rosick.

Rosick grew up in Fort Worth, Tex., where he went to college and obtained a master's degree in education at Texas Christian University. He retired from South Carolina's Department of Social Services.

After 18 years with the Foreign Language Department at USC, Mason pulled out of education and entered the book business with her husband.

To learn the trade, she started selling books at the Antique Mall on Pulaski Street. In 1999, she and her husband began The Five Points Book Shop on Santee Avenue.

Until the good word got around town, Mason and her husband worked the yard sales to build inventory. Upon attaining a high profile, the shopkeepers began to get books brought to them.

Working the shop with Mason and Rosick is Mr. Hobbes, their Siamese cat. Mr. Hobbes charges 25¢ per rub.

Not surprisingly, the Internet plays a major role in sales at The Five Points Book Shop. About onethird of sales are over the Internet.

The shop's high reputation rests a good bit on its sections in archeology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and the military. Recent best sellers aren't stocked much because they can be found most anywhere else. The hard- to- find is the shop's stock in trade, which helps to explain why so much is sold over the Internet.

Mason keeps her flat in North Shields, and she tries to visit once a year. On her off hours, she teaches shelter operations as a Red Cross volunteer.