It's Library Lovers Month!
Here’s to Library Lovers Month -- although fellow library lovers would agree our affair is year-round…
When I was a kid, I was a loyal patron of the Longfellow Library. An old yellow house modeled after the writer’s Massachusetts residence, it had been retrofitted into a library and was situated on grassy parkland next to Minnehaha Creek. (By the shores of Gitche Gumee.)
If memory serves -- and sometimes it doesn’t -- the staircase leading to the second landing was always roped off and the librarian’s desk was perched in front of it. Here she would welcome your returned books or check out your new ones, a process that involved taking a little card out of an envelope glued to the book’s inside cover and stamping a due date on it. While not exactly a holy ritual, it was one that threw a sprinkle of fairy dust at all bookworms standing on the other side of the desk, eager to get their hands on their weekly stash.
Entering the library, I always swerved left, into the former enclosed porch that housed the children’s section. There I discovered friends whose personalities, adventures, hopes and dreams I still remember: Betsy, Tacy and Tib, Caddie Woodlawn, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ginnie and Geneva.
In the summertime, I tried to plan ahead, first visiting the pavilion in the nearby Minnehaha Falls park to buy a slab of handmade taffy wrapped in wax paper. Tucking this brick of butter/vanilla/sugar goodness in my book bag (backpacks were used by hikers then, not kids), I’d race across Hiawatha Ave., to the library.
Book selection was always leisurely, interrupted by leafing through copies of ‘Highlights for Children’ (I loved Gallant, but related more to Goofus) or whispered conversations with friends (these were the days when librarians ‘shushed’ all and any noisemakers).
When I finally checked out my books, it was off to the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that rose in the middle of the park property. There at the poet’s feet, I’d unwrap my taffy and open a book, transported by words, and a little bit of sugar.
When I was a kid, I was a loyal patron of the Longfellow Library. An old yellow house modeled after the writer’s Massachusetts residence, it had been retrofitted into a library and was situated on grassy parkland next to Minnehaha Creek. (By the shores of Gitche Gumee.)
If memory serves -- and sometimes it doesn’t -- the staircase leading to the second landing was always roped off and the librarian’s desk was perched in front of it. Here she would welcome your returned books or check out your new ones, a process that involved taking a little card out of an envelope glued to the book’s inside cover and stamping a due date on it. While not exactly a holy ritual, it was one that threw a sprinkle of fairy dust at all bookworms standing on the other side of the desk, eager to get their hands on their weekly stash.
Entering the library, I always swerved left, into the former enclosed porch that housed the children’s section. There I discovered friends whose personalities, adventures, hopes and dreams I still remember: Betsy, Tacy and Tib, Caddie Woodlawn, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ginnie and Geneva.
In the summertime, I tried to plan ahead, first visiting the pavilion in the nearby Minnehaha Falls park to buy a slab of handmade taffy wrapped in wax paper. Tucking this brick of butter/vanilla/sugar goodness in my book bag (backpacks were used by hikers then, not kids), I’d race across Hiawatha Ave., to the library.
Book selection was always leisurely, interrupted by leafing through copies of ‘Highlights for Children’ (I loved Gallant, but related more to Goofus) or whispered conversations with friends (these were the days when librarians ‘shushed’ all and any noisemakers).
When I finally checked out my books, it was off to the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that rose in the middle of the park property. There at the poet’s feet, I’d unwrap my taffy and open a book, transported by words, and a little bit of sugar.
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Jonna
(new)
Feb 03, 2012 10:29PM
I relate. I still have my very first library card, and it is among my most treasured possessions. I still behave this way in libraries--that trip to the temple of books is my favorite thing!
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