Library memories, part 1

Yes, I am stalling. Still, I did want to talk about this.

The Bookworm post got into some of my memories from the Chehalem library, but and I think I have even written about some of my comfort books there before (one on pets and one on Dinosaurs). What I have not mentioned yet is how often that library shows up in dreams.

There are few default set pieces that my mind seems to use when dreaming. One is a stretch of road on the way to the coast, and but the one that gets used most is probably my grade school library.

I'm sure it doesn't even look that way anymore. I haven't been inside for ages, but when driving by they have added so many portables and things that it would be hard to imagine that anything still looks the same. I still have that picture though. Grades 1 through 4 were in the upper half of the school, and then you would go down past the office and the cafeteria, and there was a ramp leading down into the library. The 5th and 6th grade classrooms fanned out around it. I went down that ramp and into those book shelves so many times that they are a part of my subconscious now.

Chehalem is where I discovered Pern. It was where I read lots and lots of Newberry Medal books, without realizing yet that it was not a coincidence that those were the books on display, and also the books that made up so much of the Scholastic and Weekly Reader order forms. It was where I was delayed in my love for L. M. Montgomery, because the librarian at the time referred to them as Gothic romance, which sounded unappealing to me. It's okay, she was right about other things.

My book access expanded three times in elementary school. The first one happened in 4th grade, when I entered the Talented and Gifted program. For that first year they held in at Mountain View junior high, and we were allowed access to the library.

In the midst of a Greek mythology fixation, I found Heraclea and a book of how Greek myths influenced words we use today. I also found a book on how to draw different dog breeds, and spent a lot of time on Pugs, and I read many Nancy Drew mysteries.

I guess that was the first year of the program for the school, the it did start in 4th grade anyway. They bussed us over to Mountain View for one half-day a week, where we had a single classroom with one teacher and one assistant, and it was all Chehalem, mixed ages but only 4th through 6th. I don't know if they worked with other schools on other days.

The next year they moved the program to C.E. Mason. It was still Wednesday for about half a day, but we were separated by grades now, and with students from other schools. Also, C. E. Mason had its own library.

It may not have been as impressive as the Mountain View one, and they didn't really give us a lot of time to check it out, but I managed. From there I mainly got books of fairy tales and ghost stories. I adapted one on White House ghosts into a short play. I played the ghost of Andrew Jackson. His ghost is mainly known for swearing, so I held up a sign with the comic profanity indicators and said "Bleep bleep bleep, bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep." Still loving Greek mythology, four of us also did a scene from The Trojan Women. I was Andromache and Gabby was Hecuba. I can't remember the names of those who played the soldier and Cassandra, but I can still picture them.

As nice as the expanded library options were, sometimes I just still couldn't find what I wanted. Specifically, when a picture in the Junior Encyclopedia Brittanica of Jean Valjean giving Cosette the doll made me want to read Les Miserables, and the school libraries did not have it, I went to the Beaverton library and checked out it and also Pyewacket, a book about some very independent cats. If one was more age appropriate than the other, that was rarely the sort of thing that I let influence me.

Because I did pretty well with the school libraries I didn't go to Beaverton much, but whenever I wasn't finding what I needed, it was backup. I remember finding more Nathaniel Hawthorne books there, when I chose him as the author I would report on. And whatever I went there looking for, I always found something else as long as I was there.

Books lead to more books. True now, and true then.