THE LIBRARY

It was Saturday afternoon, and the small town would be crowded with people coming into town to do their “trading,” as it was still called. It meant a glorious two or three hours to look in stores and see friends. Mother would see relatives and friends and catch up on all the news. She would get a few special things at the grocery store for Saturday night’s supper and Sunday dinner. Daddy would congregate with other overall clad farmers at Tillman’s Hardware, or other hangouts to swap jokes and anecdotes.

As soon as Jenny’s family reached the main part of town, she looked for a tiny blue coupe parked along the street and upon spying it exclaimed, “Look! I see Uncle Wilmer’s car. I hope Susan came to town.” Susan and Jenny were both 8 years old and were best friends, as well as first cousins. Their fathers were brothers.

After the eggs and cream were taken to the produce station, and they found a parking place, Jenny eagerly got out of the car and started looking for Susan. She went into each store and finally found her in the Five and Ten Cent Store with her mother and sister. Susan’s face lit up when she saw Jenny.

“Hey kid!” she said and put her arm around her.

It was early in December and the Christmas things were on all the shelves and counters. The store was decorated with red and green Christmas rope. Hand in hand, the girls looked at all the Christmas things. The toy section was best, of course.

“Watch out! There comes Mr. Stoops,” said Jenny. Mr. Stoops was the wary storekeeper who warned children not to touch things, but they always did when he wasn’t looking. After they were finished looking there, Susan said, “What do you want to do now?”

“Let’s go to the library. It will be cozy in there.” It was a cold windy day.

“Mother, may we go to the library?” asked Susan.

“Yes, but remember to take your books back. They’re in the car on that little ledge by the back window.”

Together they went to each of their family’s cars so they could return their books and check out
another week of magic.

The library was in the basement of the community hall. On their way down down Main Street they
passed by the jewelry shop, where they looked at the window display of sparkling diamond rings, bracelets, gold watches, and expensive clocks. They stopped to admire the wedding cake in the bakery window. Next there was Attwood’s Style shop, an exclusive women’s clothing store, where the richest ladies and young girls bought fashionable clothing. There was a long dark steep stairway that surely led to some mysterious place. “Old Nigger Vince,” the town’s only black man, could be seen sitting on the bottom step, watching the people pass by. There was the post office, a big dimly lighted place that smelled like cigars and had many rows of numbered mail boxes, and a window where you could get stamps and mail packages. Next was Tillman’s Hardware, where both of their fathers were sitting around on barrels and pails and chairs with about six or seven other fellas. Jenny and Susan stopped to say “hello,” where they knew they would be fussed over and kidded. They passed the Center Cafe, another favorite hangout for men. It was the biggest restaurant in town. The smell of roast beef and frying hamburger and coffee wafted through the door as people went in and out. On the corner was the First National Bank, where Daddy did his banking. Jenny loved going into this nice building with Daddy on a hot summer day because it smelled like good paper and had a big fan and a water cooler where you could fill a little cone- shaped white paper cup with ice water to quench your thirst. They crossed a street carefully, remembering to look both ways and not to run across the street as they had seen some foolish children do.

They turned a corner and walked on a side street, passing by the newspaper office, where the local folksy newspaper was published once a week. Next there was the pill doctor’s office. Some called him the pill doctor, because his usual remedy was a little envelope of pink or white pills. Next was the creamery which had a chimney that seemed to have steam coming out of it. It smelled of rancid cream. Their specialty was butter and ice cream. Mother said that creamery butter wasn’t fit to eat. She churned her own out of cream that wasn’t
“aged.” There was a large vacant grassy lot, and at last the community hall. They went down a flight of worn wooden steps into the library, which was warm, cozy and quiet. No one was allowed to speak above a whisper and librarians were serious about enforcing this rule. It made the library seem more special, almost sacred. Jenny liked the scent of well-read books and the feel of the library. She and Susan took off their coats and put them on a chair and returned their books and went straight to the juvenile section where they fairly pounced upon the Bobbsy Twin series, each finding one they hadn’t yet read, and eagerly anticipated the next adventures of Bert and Nan, Freddie and Flossie. These children were the two sets of fraternal twins in the Bobbsy family, who were upper class enough to have a colored maid named Dinah, a lovely home and money to spare for frequent vacations. Some weeks after they finished the Bobbsy series, they would discover The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, dog and horse books, mysteries, and sometimes they even would venture into the adult section and find something they liked there. The selection of books was limited, but to Jenny, whose home contained only their text books and a couple of Bibles, it seemed vast. Susan was lucky to have in her home a bookcase in the living room with at least 20 books that their family owned.

At the front of each book was a cardboard pocket containing two lined cards. On one were the names of former readers, signed by the reader in his or her own handwriting . They scanned the list for familiar names, but didn’t find many. They did often find the name of a girl in their Sunday School class, whom they admired for her pretty clothes and full head of brown hair, which was sometimes braided into thick braids tied by narrow ribbons that matched her dress and sometimes frizzed by the beauty shop so that it surrounded her head like a big halo. They felt happy to be reading the same books as she had read.

Next they went to the children’s magazine section where Jenny selected a “Children’s Activities.” magazine which was later to be renamed “Highlights for Children,” and Susan selected a “Child Life.” At the check-out desk the librarian took out the two cards from the front pocket. One was signed by the reader, so after Jenny and Susan each signed her name on the book and magazine cards, the librarian put these in a file box and stamped the due dates on the others with a rubber stamp, which she rolled to a new due date each day and put these back in the pocket.

“Let’s go to the car,” whispered Susan, as they put on their coats. This week they chose the tiny blue coupe. In the car, they turned first to the hidden pictures and found them all , and then to “Goofus and Gallant,” where they giggled over the opposing antics of the “G” twins and the cartoon of “Tommy Timbertoes.” There were original contributions by children of their drawings , poems and stories and pictures they had taken with their own Brownie cameras. Jenny envied the lucky children who had their own cameras. She had asked Mother if she might have one, but Mother said one camera in the family was enough, and that when she got a little older, she could use the Kodak. They looked at the Child Life” magazine and then at the two or three pictures in glossy color in the Bobbsy Twins books. They felt very satisfied over their library selections, armed with the knowledge that ahead of them was the promise of a week of entertaining reading.