The Metro Bookstore at 415 Broadway is a Cape Girardeau institution, a long-running husband-and-wife operation that sells fix-it manuals alongside "The Iliad" and can take care of your razor repairs as well.

Jackie Anderson and Myron Anderson have owned the bookstore for the past 35 1/2 years. The previous owner ran magazine and newspaper distributorships out of the space, and sold a few books and office supplies and even some fishing tackle.

"When we bought it, it had three little spinner racks of books," Jackie Anderson said. "We made it into a bookstore."

Fortunately, paperbacks became a popular alternative to hardbacks just as the Andersons got into the business. The store's narrow length now houses 4,000 to 5,000 titles, most of them paperbacks.

"People in Cape Girardeau don't read hardbacks," she said.

There are exceptions, of course. Books by Rush Limbaugh and the new one by O.J. Simpson have sold well.

Many other bookstores have come and gone since the Metro's been open. Having the university's outside reading business until Books N Things came along in 1975 helped get them established.

"One year there were 2,000 freshmen and every one had to have the "Heath Handbook" (an English text), she said. "They would be lined up down the block."

But Anderson thinks their hands-on approach has made the difference.

"My husband and I have been married to this business," she said. "We did not lay out at the country club. We were here."

Keeping an open mind has been important, too.

In the early days, she panicked the first time her husband ordered 95-cent paperbacks -- high-priced at the time.

"I'm more conservative," she says. "He kept pushing me and buying different kinds of books."

The Andersons kept the store's original spirit of diversification. They continued to sell business supplies for a long time and still are a service center for Norelco and Remington shavers.

Magazines and greeting cards are other important ingredients in the mix.

But Anderson thinks timely handling of special orders and the diversity of titles keep the book-readers coming back.

She herself enjoys books about crime and finances, and both she and her husband love reading about golf.

Of the stores doing business in the 400 block of Broadway when they started back in 1959, only their bookstore and Lueders Studio remain.

"We're probably one of the few ma and pa stores left in Cape," she said.

When they began, they were open two or three nights a week, with Myron unlocking the doors at 6:30 in the morning. Now the pace is more leisurely, but she says, "I still do all the office work and ordering. My fingers are on everything."