Getting lost in the stacks

I got a package from my mom today, it contained a pair of pants I left behind when I visited, some sugar free cider packets for Ang, some stamps (yay!), and a few clippings. I love that my parents send me clipping from the paper. Sometimes it's coupons or cartoons or stories. One of today's was a story about the statue and plaque they put up at the Howell Public Library in honor of one of the librarians, Martha, who passed away several years ago. It was a lovely article and it reminded me of one of my favorite parts of summer when I was growing up: the library.

I never remember a time when we didn't go to the library. It was within walking distance when my dad was at work and there was only one car. It's where I first saw Pinocchio and got so scared I had to call my Grandma MacDonald to come and get me before it was done. (They get swallowed by a whale, that's terrifying when you're not much bigger than the wooden boy!) It's where I spent hour upon hour browsing the shelves, sitting in first the children's section, then the teen section and finally, the adult fiction section. (My Grandma Boutell introduced me to Danielle Steele at a very young age.)

We'd always arrive with stacks of books to return and more often than not Martha would be there to check us out. She knew my dad well, his library card had a hole burned in it he used it so much. She'd comment on our selections, give an approving nod and off we'd go, until the next week. We rarely had overdue books at our house, usually we ran out of books before they were due.

I still get lost in libraries. When I lived in Olivet I was fortunate enough to work in the library building for a year and I loved it. How quiet it was, how everyone there had a purpose, whether it was serious research or finding out the sports scores or getting lost in eighteenth century England. In Kalamazoo there was a gorgeous, fairly new library that I spent many days in researching information for my newspaper articles, reading screenwriting books, scanning the magazines. But nothing compares to those early days when I learned to love books in Howell.

This summer Angela, Dad and I trekked to the library in search of some Sue Grafton books we were missing from our collection. We found what we were looking for and then some. We came home with a DVD tour of Taiwan, where my dad was stationed when he was in the Air Force. And we all found a few extra books to read during our vacation.

I wonder what it would be like to live in a place with no libraries. To live in a world where no one wanted to share what they read or wrote. On second thought, no I don't want to know that world.