"Dad decided, 'Well, we've got to go into business,' '' Sam said.

After four years of working in factories, Gustau opened a junk shop on 2800 East and 100 South in Salt Lake City in 1929. Among his beginning inventory were miniature typewriters he bought for $2 and resold for $5.

"Then one day someone called," Sam said, "and said they had some books they wanted to sell and Dad said, 'Hmmm. Books. Well, I'll take a look at them."

Gustau didn't have the money to buy the whole collection, but worked out a consignment deal with the owner. And suddenly, books became his main business. In August, the store Gustau Weller built, now called Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore, will observe its 77th anniversary.

Sam, the third of Gustau's 12 children, said he never wanted to inherit the family business. When he came back from fighting in World War II, he planned to attend college at Utah State University in Logan.

"I wanted to get into the background of movies, music in the background of movies," he said. "But my dad had other plans."

Gustau had actually moved away in 1939 and left the store in the hands of Sam's sisters. Sam took the reins in January 1946.

"And the rest," he said, "is history."

It is history that still lives at 254 S. Main St., where Sam's only child, Tony, now runs the bookstore. Tony Weller gets his name from a character in Charles Dickens' book "The Pickwick Papers." The book also features a character named Sam Weller, but Sam said his name comes from the Bible. Tony's love of books came from being around them all the time. His father says the same is true about him. Also like the elder Weller, there was a time Tony didn't expect to take over the store.

"During his teenage years he didn't think he was going to be interested," said Lila Weller, Tony's mother and Sam's wife of 53 years. "He was interested in sports and girls and cars, not especially in books."

By his first year of college, however, Tony had changed his mind. He took over the day-to-day operations of the store in 1997.

"By then I had recognized that books had had an immense impact on me and the people I had met as a result of the book environment of our family were the most interesting, extraordinary people I knew," he said.

Through the years, some interesting and extraordinary people have made their way to Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore, which moved to its current location on Main Street in 1961, one year before Tony was born. There was the autograph party for Ansel Adams, and the time Butch Cassidy's sister came in. Wallace Stegner and Dylan Thomas also stopped by. As a member of the American Board of Book Sellers, Sam traveled to Washington, D.C., and met Presidents Nixon and Carter. Rosalynn Carter even gave Sam a peek at the White House library. Sam said his own library was better.

The Weller's home in the Avenues is filled with thousands of books, many of them Sam's favorites: Western history, war history and biography.

Even though Sam has been blind for nine years, he still gets his fill of books. Lila reads aloud to him almost every day, and Sam loves every minute of it.

"I do enjoy a good book," he said.

Slowly, son Tony is going through the couple's collection, Lila said, and taking some of their books to the store to be sold.

The rare book trade has become Tony's favorite part of the business. The technical definition of rare books has to do with scarcity, he said, not necessarily value.

"Some rare books are worthless and we don't talk about those very much," he said. Some factors that influence the value of a book are the influence it had on the world and it's physical condition. Early editions of books, even common books like the Bible, are also usually worth a lot of money. Just a few weeks ago, Tony sold a first edition copy of "The Holy Scriptures," LDS Church prophet Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible, for $2,200.

With the advent of large chain bookstores in the 1990s, the rare book trade became even more important. Large chains put about 40 percent of independent book retailers out of business, Lila said, and the mid- to late 1990s were a particularly hard time for the store. To stay afloat, the store made strides in online sales and launched a separate LDS book Web site. Changes were made to the physical appearance of the store. It now boasts old-fashioned ladders that move along the bookshelves, and plenty of nooks and crannies and furniture for comfortable reading.

Sam Weller's also teamed up with other local businesses. The Coffee Garden has a branch inside the bookstore.

But mostly, Sam and Lila said the key to the store's success is its tradition of hiring book lovers to be booksellers.

Tony's wife, Catherine, is in charge of ordering new titles.

"Obviously they [big chains] have to have people who love books in there somewhere," Tony said. "But I don't know how much authority they have."

Being familiar with the local scene also helped, Sam and Lila said. One of the first chains to open nearby went out of business in about five years.

"They came to Sam and asked if he wanted to buy it," Lila said. "He said, 'No, thank you.' ''

Sam, who turns 85 next month, said it wasn't hard to give up his own bookstore, but Lila disagrees. Sam admits he misses the customers, especially one who has been visiting the store since Gustau Weller ran it.

"People," Sam said, "That's the fun part of selling books."

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Close-Up Correspondent James Mellor contributed to this story.