John / Billybob
This is fabulous!!!
Thanks so much.
Great reminiscence, BillyBob.
Our kids see our humble local library, a mile’s walk from home, through parental eyes as a place of wonder. Soon after we moved down here the librarian said, “We’re getting used to seeing parades of Smedleys coming through here!”
This brings back fond memories. I share your affection for the written word, and libraries have always been favorite haunts of mine.
Terrific story! How many people just like you did Enoch Pratt light the way for by his endowment? Pretty amazing to imagine!
I am now wallowing joyously in memories of the Sheboygan Public Library. A marble temple, where I moved from the children’s section. to Greek mythology, to biographies of great Americans, to English novels, to Dostoyevsky and Kafka and Thomas Mann.
It was a magic place.
Pratt Institute? NY
I won’t try to compete with your story, but I know what you mean. I too owed a lot to libraries when I was growing up.
Sad to think of what a fine city Baltimore once was.
It was only a mile, and children regularly and safely walked the streets alone back then. . . .and a sadness here for our cities, with the loss of a child's safe walk, alone, going anywhere. . .
It reminded me our the Saturday Walk to the Library I and my siblings took every week as we grew up. The Library has been replaced with a shiney new one, but I clearly remember the "book smell" and the slightly slanted wooden floors and sturdy wooden tables and chairs. I could draw a floor plan of the whole building...furniture and all...telling you where each section was located and where some of the actual books were usually placed.
Nice for us...after my much-younger baby brother began school, Mama became a librarian in that same building. Thanks for the shared memories and for the reminder.
I was about 10 years old when our small town got a “library”.
I put library in quotes because it was extremely small by my standards today but at the time I was in hog heaven.
Nice...brought back a lot of good memories...books have always been a part of my life too.
Had a teacher that lead her class of grade-schoolers on a field trip to the local library many, many years ago (I believe it was the third grade). Thanks to that field trip, I have had a love of books that knows no bounds all my life. To this day I prayerfully thank that teacher.
Thanks for bringing back some wonderful memories. ;-)
This brought back memories of the Calgary library my parents took me to when I was a kid, almost 50 years ago. It was a squarish building, built in cedar log style, with the second level raised up over a semi-submerged basement. On Saturday mornings, in the winter, we would go there all bundled up in our parkas and heavy boots (this was pre-Global Warming), and then leave our winter clothes at the door to descend to the very warm basement for weekly story time.
It wasn’t the same when they opened up the new branch library 10 years later as just another glass storefront in the local shopping mall.
The other day my 20-year-old daughter (home from college) and I went to the Tempe library. As a member of the first fully digital generation, she sees no reason to ever again buy a physical recording of music or even a physical book. She sees the clutter that books and CDs and videotapes and DVD have created in her parent’s life, and wants no part of it. She’s perfectly happy to download almost all the information in her life. As we approached the building, she asked me, “What will happen to libraries when everything is digital?” I mumbled something about people still needing a place to visit to share knowledge, but one thing I know, it will never be the same.
Much obliged for the great story. As a kid in Decatur, Ill the Bookmobile would show up during the summer about every two weeks. I would go and get my two books faithfully. Then wonders of wonders a branch opened up not to far away and it almost become a home away from home for me and my best friend that summer.
As a matter of coincidence I now live a mile away from one of the original Carnegie Library’s. To my knowldege it is the only functioning Carnegie Library west of the Mississippi River.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Mrs. Hazel Dwyer Fish. An English teacher. She took over our minds in our Junior year. She told us we were going to be treated like college students. Little did we know that meant homework every night. She forced us to write every night for almost the entire school year.
We wrote about every thing we could think of and she graded us ruthlessly. We learned there is no such word as “irregardless” and the red ink flowed on our writings like blood on stones. Tautology, trite and other cutting notes made us learn the saddest words of toungue and pen are “Rewrite and rewrite again”...
I don’t write these days for much of anything but work, however, my writing is clear and to the point not needing much clarification of what I am saying.
Thanks Mrs. Fish.
Thanks to you for the memories. I’d write more, but it seems my contacts are fogging......
Maryland “Freak State” PING!