jean-lucien, lucynell, and myself all grew up in the same small town with the same public library. and thank christ it was a good one. jean-lucien and i didn't know lucynell until we accidentally met in high school many years later. but if i had any money, i'd bet she checked out a lot of the same books from that same library. i have no doubt she remembers the way it looked before they moved and renovated it. i can still walk the children's section in my sleep. and then there was entire world down those steep stairs. all the non-fiction. all the fiction. all the 'young adult' novelettes... all the 'grown-up' books. i cannot even begin to estimate all the hours i killed in that place. i even remember details... like the smell of the disrepaired public ladies' room, and the fact that the air conditioning units would become wet with condesation in the summertime. i remember the beanbag chairs in the children's section. i remember the sound the device made... (i think it was some sort of camera) when they checked out my parent's thick books upstairs. a sound not unlike a polaroid. the women behind the counter would quickly shove a book under there... then a flash of light, that sound, then off to the left, for the ride home. i never in my wildest dreams would've thought i'd work at that library... with many of those same books, in a different and more modern house. i've never loved a job the way i loved that one. but i left it standing at the altar. to this day, i don't know what i was thinking. i could've run that ship.
3 comments:
I love that ode to the HP P Library! I can picture everything in that old library and I love that you mentioned the weird book scanner thing. I always the loved the noise that thing made and the whole that whole "check out" process. My parent's business was right down the street, so I grew up spending hours upon hours there. And then when I got my driver's license I think that was literally the first place I drove to on my own. I loved the media area where you could actually check out magazines. They had Rolling Stones dating way back into the 70s. And of course microfische (sp?) This was so pre-digital. Another funny thing I remember is how all the U2 books had a bunch of pictures cut out of them. Somebody beat me to it. Wonder who?
i'm gonna have to claim a big 'not guilty' on that one. i wasn't into u2 in that way, and i don't think they showed up in any collage work. now, the movie and filmmaking books, i'll have to take the 5th.
Hahaha. I wasn't necessarily accusing, I just thought that it was funny that some other teen, prolly a girl, was having the same thoughts as me. I re-checked out a certain U2 book that had a hot pic of The Edge with his then wife, Aisling with full intentions of cutting out that picture. When I opened the book, someone had beat me to it. Now I laugh about it. Then I was pissed.
I also checked out the Rolling Stone with the Blues Brothers on the front. Put it in my purse and walked out. I walked into the parking lot and felt guilty. I turned it back in.
I did steal a book on Charlie Chaplin from there when I was really, really young. I told my mom I lost it at school and I think she had to pay for it. I don't know why I was so obsessed with Charlie Chaplin.
Post a Comment