I
am jumping around a bit now, because there are some things associated with the
college years that I want to leave for next week.
Before
my mission my jobs mainly consisted of food service and retail, with the
occasional odd sports job thrown in the mix. Coming back I just really wanted
to have evenings and weekends free, like a normal person, which is how I ended
up at Clear Connections. That is how I met some people, and it is how I got the
phone experience that led me into the tech sector, and where I had my first
experiences using a computer, but for the purposes of today's blog, it was the
first thing to get me regularly into downtown Portland.
Actually,
I worked near the Barbur Transit Center, but I would take 57 into
downtown, then 12 out to work, and on my way home I would often spend a little
extra time in downtown. Loyalty to Aloha aside, I've always liked the energy of
downtown Portland.
At
the time, they were renovating the Central Library on 9th and so the library
was in a temporary location conveniently located next to a bus stop. How could
I not go in, and look around, and get a card and start checking out books?
The
thing that must be understood about the Central Library is that the book you
were looking for was almost never on the shelves. Even if it showed as checked
in, and you carefully checked the location, it just wasn't there.
With
the Cedar Mill Library now we request everything online, and then Maria picks
it up, and this has been beautifully convenient. At the time, though,
especially after the location moved back and I was not always sure when I could
get there, I didn't like to commit to having someone find it for me, trusting
me to pick it up promptly.
There
were frustrations with that, but there were good things too. I looked for Little
Women, and it was not there, but some short stories from when Alcott was
writing her more sensational stories was there. And, yeah, they weren't that
lurid. If that's the kind of thing Jo grew ashamed of, she could have afforded
to have lightened up a little.
I
was looking for The Stranger Beside Me and it was gone, but Dead By
Sunset was there. Although we did eventually read the Bundy book, and many
more by Ann Rule, Dead By Sunset was really the best introduction. We
knew the officer who reported to the scene, we were familiar with the
locations, and it is a really well-written book.
(I
also did eventually find and read the unabridged Little Women, but I
kind of liked the abridged one better.)
There
was a sort of chaos to that library, I guess, and it was a chaos I understood
better after a brief stint in library work after I returned to college, but it
was also a chaos that allowed for surprises, and many of the surprises were
good.
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