Tell Us Your Library Stories

My childhood library was in an old brick building, converted from who-knows-what. The children's book section had large cut-out storybook characters on the walls. I remember vividly the Owl and Pussycat in their beautiful pea-green boat, larger than life, floating above me. I remember going with my mother, taking along a plastic bag to hold my treasures and being barely able to fit them in. Who could choose only a few from so many unread books?

Gah, I love libraries so.

If you go anywhere I've lived, you can go to the library and they'll know me by name. Librarians like me.

I spent every Saturday of my childhood at Finney library. I was taken there when a wee lad by me mum, and when I was old enough, 8 or 9, I used to take the bus.

Now that library is boarded up and abandoned. Sure, they build a brand new, bigger one down the road, but it still chokes me up to see that tiny little red brick building all alone and forgotten like that.

What memories do you have of libraries? Your first time?

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My very first? Elementary school, when I was a kiddo and I failed to return the book for the deadline as I wanted to read the novel again. It was a damned funny pirate story which was translated to my language. The original title was El pirata Garrapata (I don't know the title in English) from the Spanish Author Juan Muñoz Martín. That was a funny book. Although it contained two novels, this one and a second one, but I always read only the first one many times.

There was an old librarian who sat behind a large wooden desk, with (I imagined in my pre-school years) cobwebs sprouting from her gray hair that was in a bun on top of her head. She never smiled, just grunted. Years later she was murdered while on vacation. It was even reported in Time magazine.

Though I was scared of this horrid lady, I still went to that library twice a month or more, since it was only a few blocks away and had a children's room. And I loved books.

That library is still there, looking quite the same. The good thing--wonderful librarian and aides. The bad--hardly any books in the non-fiction section, and the fiction needs serious updating. We're not part of the county system. Just a small town library with a fireplace and wing chairs. It's cozy but lacking.

I remember the first time I went from the YA section to the adult section. I stood there in front of those rotating shelves looking at all the thick paperbacks, waiting for a grown up to tell me I wasn't allowed to be there, that I had to stay in the kid's section.

No one did.

So I took some books. John Saul, I think. Definitely horror, anyway. And I walked up to the counter. They knew me, knew I came in regularly, by myself. But they didn't say anything either. Just scanned my card and my books and smiled.

I never went back to the YA section.

Me and my friends would go in the upstairs part of the library to see if we would find any ghosts, as it is supposedly haunted. It's an old turn of the century brick house that was donated to my hometown by the original owners to be used as a library. Then, they had to ruin it by adding a modern addition to the back that doesn't match at all the rest of the building, and looks rather lame. I still like that library though, it always has a strange creepiness to it, and smells of old books.

Here's a link to a picture of the library.

http://putnamlibrary.blogspot.com/

My brother and me went alone one time when we were very young. Rode a mile in sweltering heat on my banana seat bike with my brother in tow excited to sit in air conditioning. I wanted to read to him as his big sister and play games besides my mom bribed us with Slushies from Circle K if we left for the afternoon. We were about two minutes into our fun when we were severly shushed by a mean, old, fat, bald libarian lady-man.

Haven't been back since.

Hey! Linestealer!

(I don't mind really).

When I was really little the library in my home town was in this old gray stone building with a big flight of steps right up the front so that the entrance was into the second floor. In spite of the way it sounds it was a very, very small building. Inside there was a tiny set of stairs going back down to the first floor. A nice librarian lady would gather all the little kidlets on those stairs (since there were no rooms - just two open floors) and tell us stories in sign language. I think I was a toddler but I still remember that.

A couple years later they moved the library to a bigger building (which seemed huge at the time but now seems small) and the sign language librarian was replaced with a stern, gray haired old lady who glared at all the kids. I don't think I ever spoke to her. Once when I was an early teen I asked the general librarian if I could volunteer shelving books, as I spent half of my summer in the library anyway. She said no!

I'd just started working at a library when somebody with whom I'd been playing a round of "Assassin!" (a live-action RPG where you take contracts out on each other) came in and "killed" me. Loudly.

... probably not good of me to recount this, or to even be remembering it, but here goes:

Local library was crowded, on the day in question: about 50 people, which is a lot for the small building that it is. Suddenly an apparently homeless person (Nothing wrong with being homeless. Anyone could find themselves there, particularly these days.) ... a homeless person walks into the place who reeked to high heaven. Within seconds the library smelled as bad as an outhouse on a summer day. Nearly everyone cleared out and left the library at once. I tried to bear it out, but even when the librarian opened the windows it was still too much, and I got up and left.

As I said, up top, it's not something I should be recollecting, and it reflects badly on me for recounting it. So if there's anybody to be jeered at, here, tis I; sigh :-(

The Gunn memorial library here in CT. I love this place.

The front.

The (I wish) librarian.

... wow. I'd never guess it looked like that on the inside, going by what it looks like on the outside. (Outside = dull. Inside = Cool!)

... if she lifted her leg up more and tucked it under her skirt she might pass for an amputee

VV pretty good joke below VV

I want her to "check me out"



Get it? Check me out

This title just made me smile. I have always loved libraries. When I was a kid, we had such a rinky dink library, but at the age of 10 they bulldozed it and built a new one down the street. Loved that library, it even had genre sections like a bookstore. My father and I would go every single Sunday, it became a tradition. I got my love of reading from him. Sunday morning we would watch The Three Stooges, then off for some books. I would get more than I could carry. I remember the first time I picked up Watchers by Dean Koontz (still one of my favorites to this day), and the time I was introduced to Piers Anthony and fantasy stories (yes, he was my first, still adore him). On nice days we would go to the park afterwards, read and feed the ducks. I miss those days.

Ken said:

... wow. I'd never guess it looked like that on the inside, going by what it looks like on the outside. (Outside = dull. Inside = Cool!)

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The tallest part hangs over a cliff. It's a cool building.

Wayne K said:

I want her to "check me out"

Get it. Check me out

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I like her shoes. Don't think anyone will get any reading done with her there though.

Wayne K said:

The (I wish) librarian.

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It's this picture that makes me realize that I am a bad, baaaaad man.