The Library, Part I

I do volunteer work at the library. My love of libraries has been a lifetime affair ever since my dad and mom first took me to the local library all those years ago.  If you have read my TBR post, you know that I was a reluctant, slow reader, and that this greatly concerned my dad, a lifelong, voracious reader.

Every day, after supper, my dad and my mom would retire to the den where they would read for the next several hours. They each had their own comfortable chair, each bookending  the pot belly stove which was doing double duty as the fireplace. My mom would pull a magazine off the magazine rack and leaf through it backwards. A strange way of reading, but it worked for her. For years I copied her, leafing though Mad Magazine backwards, wondering how one read this way. It was only later, when someone pointed out you can't read that way, that I realized my mom was only looking at the pictures. She loved magazines like House and Garden and Better Homes, because the pictures of the houses and rooms looked so elegant, so snazzy, and nothing like ours. Ours looked like a cyclone hit it.  

My mom was a hoarder, a woman who embraced clutter the way others embraced lovers. In her mind, clutter was synonymous with frugality.  She would save everything — rubber bands, used tin foil, shrink wrap from packaged meats, string (balls and balls of string), door knobs, old ice boxes, kids toys, and anything and everything broken, even if it could never be fixed.  “You never know when it might come in handy,” she’d say.  Trust me, it never did.  The only magazine a picture of our house would appear in would be Clutter Magazine, if there were such a magazine.  

Of course no one could find anything in the muddled heap, so when we, and this included my mom, needed a rubber band or string or anything, we would buy it, and after fulfilling its purpose, it too would end up on the ever growing pile of flotsam. We once lost the family cat to the pile. He extracted himself several months later, but like the proverbial husband lost at sea, upon returning home he found himself replaced by a younger, more energetic model.  That didn’t go over well.  But the new cat, being the smartest person in the house, used the clutter to give birth to her litter. She was the only inhabitant to find a use for it.  Thus the clutter grew, never diminishing, until finally we moved into a bigger house, clutter and all.

Clothes were another item my mom wouldn’t part with. But that didn’t stop her from buying more and more clothes until the closets busted a gut. Unperturbed, mom started hanging clothes from doorways.  Entering a room required some delicacy: bend at hips, part clothes like curtains, and shoot through the gap to the other side before it closed back up and swallowed you. We all got quite good at it, and the hanging clothes did add an element of privacy, so it wasn't all bad. Mom and dad never needed to worry about attending to guests.  Who would invite anyone to our house?  Not my brother, my dad, or me.  I didn't even know what a guest was until I was 18 and my roommate at college had some chums over for a chat.  What a concept.

But enough about my mom and her obsessive-compulsive behavior.

My dad, upon finishing with the newspaper, would move on to a book, always non-fiction. There, sitting in his chair next to the fireplace, he would while away an hour or two reading a book and smoking his pipe. I can honestly say, in all the years I knew him, I never saw him read fiction, not once.  He liked biographies and history, but wouldn’t buy the books, not ever. No, my dad was a library man through and through.  

I once gave him a biography of President Truman for a Christmas gift, and upon unwrapping it, he looked at me and said, “Stupid!  Why buy something you can borrow from the library for free?” My dad, a sensible man, if not a tactful one, having lived through the Depression era, knew the value of money and how to save a penny.  Boy did he know how to save a penny. When we returned home after dark, we would find him sitting in a chair in the dark, not a single light on in the house. “Who needs lights to think,” he would say.  If I left a room for even a moment — say, to go to the bathroom or grab a bite to eat — upon returning I would find the lights turned off.  The man was a hawk, pouncing on lights, TVs, radios, and anything else that used electricity, the second they were abandoned. And sometimes he didn't wait for you to leave the room.  I guess dad had a few obsessions himself.

One day, given my dad’s concern over my reading habits — comics and Mad magazine — he said to the family, “Let’s go to the library and get some books.”  What an interesting idea, I thought.  Do they have comics and Mad magazine?  No.  The library being but a couple of miles away, my dad, ever in search of saving a penny, suggested we ride bicycles rather than drive.  So there we were, pedaling down the streets to the library — me, my brother, mom, and dad — a true family affair, and all my school chums guffawing up a storm at the ridiculousness of it all.  You just weren’t cool if you hung out with your parents, and when you added to the family outing bicycles, you had the ingredients to a spicy soufflé of lasting ridicule, one which you had to graduate and leave for college to escape.

Our local library was a sharp looking shack, a library that wasn't funded before it was popular not to fund libraries. Still, I was amazed by all the books, and having lost my way in a maze of shelves had no idea which books I should read. Having no internet back then, I had no way of finding recommendations, and my friends, being all dogs and generally considered by the teachers at school to be the students most likely to end up in prison, were of no use. My dad, having exited the womb reading philosophy, wasn’t much help either. I think his suggestion was, “Go find something you like,” which wasn’t of any use at all, since I didn’t know what I liked.  Don't bother dad when he's reading.  So I picked books by their covers.  If the art work on the cover enthralled me, I chose it.  Yes, I judged a book by its cover.  This might explain why I read so much science fiction when I was young.  Covers filled with spaceships, spacemen, ray guns, and aliens, kickstarted my imagination.  And, hey, science fiction is a lot like comic books.  

Soon I got into the habit of going to the library regularly and of asking the librarians for recommendations. With everything so well organized and so uncluttered -- such a pleasing and unusual sensation to me -- I wanted to move in. “Adopt me, please!  I’ll work for room and board.”  Thus began my love affair with libraries.  Wherever I have lived, one of the first things I did upon moving there was to scope out the library and get a library card. Over the years, I’ve charged out hundreds of books and owed hundreds in fines. Fines are just another way of saying, “I support my local library,” even if late returns means torquing off the person waiting to read the book next. Once my fine was so big, they sent the cops after me. But I just barricaded the front door with overdue books, and they couldn't get at me.  I did give up the bike, though.  Ever try riding a bike with a bag filled with books hanging from the handlebars?

So it should be of no surprise to anyone reading this that upon coming across a request for volunteers while searching the local library’s website several months back I jumped at the offer.  Interview required. I showed up in T-shirt and jeans, my standard attire for job interviews. I wear something more informal when actually working — shorts, sleeveless T-shirts, old sneakers, a crumpled hat, and a day old beard. One must be comfortable when working.

So I enter the library for my interview and am ushered into the employee lunch room where I am met by librarian number 1 and librarian number 2.  We sit, and they interview me while employees are eating their lunch.  They are wearing T-shirts and jeans too, so already I'm liking the informality of the place.  Once seated they bore in on me with their eyes and ask, "Can you work on Saturdays?"  They wait on the edge of their seats for my reply. "Sure," I say.  They sigh in relief, smile, and we talk about books for the rest of the interview.  Not another question passed their lips.  Turns out they like science fiction too.  We're bonding. Good.  Everything is moving along fine, when 15 minutes into the interview the say in unison, "Well, it's getting late, and we've got to go."  It's 3:00 in the afternoon.  "Hang around if you'd like.  We have a couple more interviews, and then we'll let you know, say in a week or two."  And they are gone.  I don't even know how to get out of here.

Two weeks later, I am offered the job. Turns out that as long as I said I could work on Saturdays, they didn't care if I was illiterate. But I wanted to finish the interview, so I ask, "What's the job I will be doing?  "Oh," librarian number 1 replies, "you'll be working the holds.  We'll explain it all to you when you come in Saturday."

End of The Library, Part I.

Coming Soon:

 The Library, Part II, where I explain what a library volunteer does and discuss the patrons.

AND

Las Vegas, Part II, where I explain why living in Las Vegas is a lot like never having left New York City.