I used to say I went to the library from before I was born. True enough, my mother certainly went to the Campbell Branch while expecting me. I cannot remember a time when I did not go there in a week.
The imposing brick edifice, the concrete steps though heavy dark doors into a pamphlet filled entryway. The floors were brown, a smooth, undulating surface that seemed to absorb noise. I loved it all, the racks of paperbacks in alluring temptation, the oaken desks where the director sat alone, and the checkout desk with towering librarians and their rolling date stamps. To the right, the heavy tables and lumbering armchairs with the kind of waxy surface that would take a fingernail impression, all the adult books without pictures. To the left was paradise. Colorful wooden benches to slide across while choosing picture books. Joke books back in the corner, the first Dewey number I memorized. The tall, narrow windows of innumerable panes of wavy glass, open for a wet breeze on humid summer days.
For a while, there was a habbitrail, with gerbils, or hamsters. A plastic world of tunnels and rooms, wheels and stairs. The children's librarian must have been an animal lover, because there was also a library cat, a aloof ginger creature. The hamster was allowed out in a hamster ball, and the cat would take an interest in the rolling phenomenon. I sat on the floor, back resting against books, and watched.
I got a job there, the summer I was 17, with one more year of high school to go. I loved having access to the bathroom key, even though it was to a dank toilet next to the mop closet in the tiny basement. I loved the staff lunch room, windows high in the wall, more heavy wood, an inner sanctum. Three Barbara's worked there at the time, the Clerk, and both librarians, which amused me. I shelved books, filed catalogue cards, checked books out and in, and took overdues, 20 hours a week. I can't say I always loved the work, but I never stopped loving the idea of working in a library.
I kept hoping they would get more hamsters, or a cat, so I could help take care of them.
4 comments:
I had a Saturday job in a library between the ages of 16 and 18 - though we didn't have the in-house menagerie that you did.
It was my first "job". When I crossed it I crossed a line. A bit of me became an adult.
Penultimate sentence: When I took it I crossed a line.
This reminds me of libraries I haunted as a girl and teenager. There was magic for me in those places...worlds and universes on the shelves. And they always seemed to have a different light than other buildings, they processed the sunlight differently.
Working in a library now, I realize that cats and hampster balls would be as rare now as a card catalogue. And it's a shame.
I made a refuge out of libraries, and plundered them for all they had to offer. I think it must have been an excellent place to work, if only for the massive exposure to knowledge and information.
lj, you just need to find the right book store. Preferably, one with L-space.
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