The Prehistory of the Library

My father took me to bars at a young age. At a barbershop he gave me a copy of Penthouse Magazine to read. Did they not have Sports Illustrated? When he fathered another child I took that baby (perhaps I have mentioned her) to the library.

One year later when she could walk I took her to the park. This was the only place I took her unless I walked her in the stroller around the neighborhood. Children go where they are taken. There were always school libraries. They are okay.

National Library Week has come and gone. Every week is "Library Week" for me. When I travel; libraries are a place worth visiting. Downtown Houston had little to see except a grandiloquent library.

And Shipley Donuts. It was so long ago I flew Continental to visit Houston. Gordon Bethune improved the airline. None of which has to do with my earliest library recollections.

I felt better in the school library than I felt in class. It was an appetizer. My father took me to a wrestling match at George Mason University. I was in third grade so it would be many years until learning I had no business on the wrestling team.

This was something different and he stopped at the Fairfax City Library on the way home. It was larger than any library I had visited. In the same era my mother brought me to a library in Georgetown. It was pretty far uptown; well north of Prospect.

In here I had my first desire to open a library card. She said it was too far away. Fair enough. Washington DC has a great library system. I don't cross the river enough to take advantage of it.

Also, I don't need two piles of books. One is almost too much. My mother was right- the next time I was in Georgetown was that fateful Monday night a few years later.

In seventh grade I received my own library card. I did not take on a credit card until an age where I would not rack up debt. That proves I never went to college. I opened the account and walked to my nearest library. It was a mile from home.

School was two miles away at this point and I could visit anywhere within a four mile radius. I walked my sister to the library. That seemed inconsequential at the time.

Her job entails reading. One has nothing to do with the other. Since I read to her opposed to plopping her in front of the television she was introduced to a culture of reading. The library has many resources.

As I visited shopping centers by myself (in the time it took to ask a parent to drive me anywhere and they hesitated with "I'll think about it" I could get up and go) bookstores intrigued me. Why buy books when I could check them out for three weeks and return them?

It's a way to cut down on clutter, save money I did not have and explore different possibilities. If I check out an item not to my liking- take it back. It cost nothing and I know it was not to my liking.

As fate would have it; I am writing this at the library. At a time when I could not comprehend the internet there were many good options at the library. There always will be. This is your tax dollars at work with more value than any oil subsidy ever.