Library memories, Multnomah County Central

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.