57. Ex Libris

Seriously,  our work is indeed valuable.  But I must admit this opinion comes from a book lover.  I still remember my Mom taking me on my first visit to the Public Library when I was in the fourth grade.  And I won’t forget the very first book I checked out of the library.

It was a real novel called “Billy and Me,” meant for young readers, about a boy and  his best friend who joined  the Boy Scouts and had all kinds of neat adventures riding horses, paddling canoes and raising money.  I forget what the charity was.  Anyway, what really impressed me were the descriptions of, for example, the hot dusty trail rolling out ahead in the bright sunlight and the snow-white moon coming up over the hill on a crisp October evening.  I had never realized  such vivid pictures could be drawn with  words, excepting of course the Baltimore Catechism’s description of the Fires of Hell.


The Children’s Room librarian was an older grey-haired woman who had a clipped manner and a disapproving look sewn on her face.  Later in the summer, when I discovered I could check out books in the main lobby from a younger pretty woman,  I found one excuse or another to do so.  I love librarians …. always have.


The sign on the young woman’s desk said her name was Melinda and I thought it was just the most beautiful name anyone could ever have, even if it wasn’t a saint’s name.  As a bonus, she seemed to smell slightly of ink.  I  handed her a book for older children called , ”You Can Get It Free!” and to make conversation  I looked around the library  airily and declared, “Yes, I’ve finally found the secret the adult world has kept from me all these years.”  I was told later to check out all my books in the Children’s Room.


On a rainy September morning some years ago,  as I nosed my way along the great smelling shelves in the comfortable little village library in South Paris, Maine, I came across the book that had changed my life.  “Billy and Me,” misplaced by some errant child into the New Releases section, stared back at me.  Seriously, it really had changed my life!   It opened the world of the community library to me and thereby a public sphere of ideas and thoughts and arguments and discourse far beyond what I would have experienced  in the dungeons of  most small school libraries of the 1950’s.

Once my life of  libraries and reading had begun, Mom had a few misgivings over the nerd she had created.   She found herself constantly telling me to get my nose out of the books.  “Find something else in the world  more interesting,” she would say.   But that took a few years and when it happened, the girl in the 3rd row, 8th seat back  didn’t smell at all like ink.  She smelled delicious.  It's a wonder I became a monk.

 








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