The library life

LOVE THE LIBRARY LIFE

          I inherited my library love from my mother. She loved books. She learned to read at an early age. Her mother, a Yiddish speaker from someplace in Poland, learned English too at the Seward Park branch library on the lower east side opened in 1909.  My mother always had books in her house. My mother Florence used to say when her last days were upon her, she wanted to spend them in a library. She also said that about Barnes and Noble. Or maybe Macy’s. Or the best bakery.  For a short time we both wanted to be librarians.  We played library at home. We created our own Dewey Decimal system look-alike. We lent each other and the neighbors books.

          But the library, the wonder of the library! The oldest library ever I read about was in Nineveh, the Ashurbanipal Library built in the 7^th century. The first one created in the USA was the Darby Free Library in 1743, in Pennsylvania. And the largest is The Library of Congress, created in 1800 and the smallest, the Back Valley Public Library in Tennessee with 75 books. 

          But the first one I visited was in the Queensbridge Projects, Long Island City, NY, in the 1940’s. It was a tiny room with children’s books, little tables and even smaller chairs. It had pretty drawings on the walls. It was quiet. There was also an adult section with grown-up books where my mother went with her friends to borrow their own books.  But when I went with my mother, it was to that little children’s room.  FIVE CHINESE BROTHERS, DICK AND JANE and Golden Books, and my favorite, THE SECRET GARDEN, books I eventually I got to own. The library wasn’t a go-to destination on its own, but a stop at a place when we were doing other things like shopping or taking a walk.  It didn’t matter; we were there. I got a library card that I treasured as soon as I could sign my own name. I even tried to memorize the numbers which wasn’t really necessary.

          The next library I remember going to was in the “mountains” which for my family meant Monticello in the Catskills in N.Y. Everyone who went away for the summer in the 1940-1960’s went to those local libraries. I was expected to read in the summer, books I brought from home or school as well as those I borrowed locally. Going there to that building in town was also an adventure. I never knew who I might meet at “the borrow” as well as “the return.” I could find a new summer best friend and share books or, even as I grew up, meet a boyfriend?

          In the 6^th grade, in 1954, I lived in the Bronx, in Marble Hill and the little library west of Broadway on 231 Street was a wonderful place to visit, and it is there still, but now a day care center. It was a little house, several floors, children’s areas and adult sections that I needed permission to enter.  My teacher in class 6-2 had us doing book reports and other assignments that required us to go to the library. In the adult section I encountered my first Holocaust literature. I had read THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK and wanted to understand more about the time of the war.  HOUSE OF DOLLS, the librarian said, was a book about horrible things done to women then. I was surprised my mother signed the permission slip to let me read it but only in the library.  Over 60 years later I still vividly remember it.

          A good library for me was the Fordham Library in the Bronx, a very long walk or a #20 bus ride with my bus pass. It was huge with many rooms and open spaces and lots of people and lots of boys to meet. After all, if a boy was in the library, it meant he was smart, yes? or no? or maybe he was just looking to meet smart girls. 

          I remember finding books for my report of explorers of Africa there, I MARRIED ADVENTURE by Osa Johnson, 1940 and THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA by Elspeth Huxley, 1959, and getting even more involved from then on in anthropology.  I never did get to be an anthropologist, girls didn’t do that then, but I learned so much about different cultures and their art and their way of living. And when I was grown, and yes, I am very grown now, I got to go to Kenya and Tanzania and although it wasn’t the same so many decades later as it was in those books, I loved the experiences there on safari.  

          I also loved a book on bees. I remember the many kinds of bees and the dances the bees did.  Funny the things that remain buzzing around in your head!  I read lots of books about birds too. I learned a lot about nature and the outdoors in the library. And I still learn. (And I am not a bee-watcher but a bird-watcher, maybe a “tree-hugger”.)

          In college, on-campus libraries were very important for my grades and my future. I frequented them, using the microfilm and microfiche, and loved staying there for hours even reading my own textbooks and other books, in awe of all that knowledge and power in the books.  I would probably have slept there if I could. There was something very exciting about it all.

          I felt that same excitement going to the main library on 42 Street in Manhattan and the smaller ones nearby.   Beaux Art style.  Two lions greeting visitors at the entrance. Patience and Fortitude. Words to live by. The magic of the grand reading rooms with millions of volumes felt like the foreign places I eventually would visit. And those pneumatic tubes for call slips that went into the bowels of the building and remarkably brought up the book I desired. 

          So many people of all kinds were in those libraries. I cannot explain how amazing it was. Everyone seemed to have a purpose. Everyone wanted to learn. People read not only books but newspapers and magazines and journals. Some were reading rare books and huge art books. There was no end to what could be found.

          I continued the tradition of visiting local libraries with my children. Their experiences paralleled my own when they were young but soon the world-wide-web replaced buildings to visit. Soon libraries began closing. Some even became day care centers. Libraries became story telling venues and locations for book talks. End of life sessions by famous people. The silence in the library disappeared. So many people crowded in to just sit and rest or even live part of their lives there, using facilities to wash and sleep and grumble. The whole experience changed. Everything changes…I changed. Now I sometimes read on line; I read on a phone; I listen to books. In just one second in my own room without a librarian, I can find any information I desire. And more. But I miss the smell and feel of books. I miss sinking into the huge library chairs. I miss thinking who I might meet or be.  I miss who I was too when I was there in awe of it all so long ago...