I love to read so much that my childhood nickname was “bookworm,” so I’m pleased libraries, schools and other places promote love of reading for children and adults.
Nobody had to push me to read. I took to it like a duck to water. We kids would play outdoors all the time, in all kinds of weather, but in the midst of our games, I sometimes couldn’t wait to get home to put my nose back in a book.
Books, to me, were almost as magical as Aladdin’s Lamp; with one touch, astonishing worlds would appear: Tom Sawyer’s sly hi-jinks at the white-washed fence; Alice’s following a white rabbit and then falling down, down into a rabbit’s hole; young Jim Hawkins’ narrow escape from murder during the pursuit of pirates’ buried treasure on Treasure Island.
Ah, the pleasures of reading, then and now.
Quite a few people I know never read books, not even one. They do read newspapers, they watch TV, they stay informed and connected, so I guess it doesn’t matter. I used to tell them they don’t know what they’re missing, the way I used to try to convince people who claim Bob Dylan can’t sing that not only can he sing in his own expressive way but that, at his best, he’s one of the greatest singers of all time. They will never agree, so why argue? Oh well . . . poor things.
Growing up in south St. Cloud, we kids were so fortunate because we could walk or bike to anything and everything. We had three movie theaters (Hays, Eastman and that magnificent picture palace The Paramount – still magnificent). We had green parks nearby and down along the river in which to play. And, last but not least, we had the Dale Carnegie-style public library on Fifth Avenue South, just eight blocks north of our house.
We’d bring home armloads of books from that happy place that smelled so good of paper, book glue and floor wax. We had a reading contest, and for every book we read, we’d get stickers of the faces of the presidents of the United States to affix onto a master sheet. Then we’d win prizes for reading a certain number of books.
The children’s portion of the library was in the basement of that wonderful old building. The librarians were, to our young minds, crabby old-maid ladies – their graying hair up in buns, always putting their index fingers to their lips and trying to make us be quiet with fierce sounds (“Shh, shh, shh”), like hissing snakes. But beneath their rather forbidding exteriors, they (even the one with the wart on her chin) could be kind. Sometimes they actually smiled.
That venerable library, long gone, is today in memory as vivid as the days it stood so solid and proud just south of downtown. On a winter day, inside the library, radiators pushed out waves of warmth into the reading room, which had racks of many newspapers affixed to their long wooden “spines.” In the hushed room, you could “hear” the concentrated quiet of people reading them. On two sides of the reference room, there were creaky wooden stairways leading up to alcove rooms, one of which contained long-playing vinyl records of musicals, plays, folk songs and classical music – the kind of recordings I would not have had access to without that library. On some hot summer days, thunder rumbling, lightning flashing, I remember us (brothers, neighbor pals, me) leaving the library with our books and standing by the two granite pillars at the front door, waiting for the rain to stop so we could walk back home down Fifth Avenue.
Later, in high school, I vividly recall thumbing through the wooden-boxed card catalog or the fat green magazine-index book looking for research material for term papers.
Those days, so long ago, seem like yesterday. Today’s libraries offer so many services besides books, magazines, newspapers and vinyl records. It’s such a different world, but as they say, the more things change, the more they remain the same. I’m told, for example, that actual books (not e-books) are still the most popular checked-out items in all the 32 branches of this area’s Great River Regional Library system.
Every kid in every town should have a public library within walking or biking distance. It’s a shame some don’t.
