Jared Criswell
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Going to the actual library as a child didn’t transform me.
As a matter of fact, my memories of the library are rather glum. I remember lots of gray. And I couldn’t find the book I wanted.
I fondly recall a scene from the 1996 film Matilda in which the title character enters the library, a wonderful world perfectly catered to her interests where her mind is almost instantaneously expanded by a plethora of books and a helpful, grandmotherly librarian.
I don’t really recall any kind of experience akin to that when I first went to the library. Not at all. In fact, I was kind of disappointed.
You see, my first several “library” experiences occurred on the Book Mobile that used to traverse Wayne County. I was spoiled. The actual brick and mortar library building, an austere and unwelcoming place in the early nineties, at least from the perspective of a small child, couldn’t compete with that amazing library on wheels. Not only was the Book Mobile so much “cooler”, but I feel like we rarely came into town when I was younger, at least not often enough to frequent the library every other day. So, the Book Mobile was ideal.
My memories begin, as so many of my childhood memories do, with my Mamaw Vonda. She was a voracious reader when I was a kid, and even though her fare tended towards romance novels and books I had zero interest in, she very effectively modeled the love of reading. We would read together, me with my picture books or large text editions and her with her beaten up paperbacks. Even when I couldn’t actually read and could merely recite from memory while staring at pictures, this was a time we spent together.
So, imagine my delight when I discovered the library! But, to me, the library wasn’t the actual building. No, it was that white truck, almost like an armored car in my mind, that would roll to a stop on our rural road once every week or so. Glenna Burke was in charge of this behemoth of a book cart at the time, and I remember her very fondly.
The Book Mobile was so very special to me. Each week, it seemed, it was loaded with new and exciting treasures that I had never seen before. I felt like Mrs. Glenna tailored some of the selections specifically to my interests, and maybe she did. I checked out books on ghosts and vampires and mummies and pyramids and castles. I got books on puzzles and spies and World War II. As I got a little older, I began getting short “chapter books” that I could actually read and enjoy.
It’s funny how we remember things, things like the Book Mobile. For me, such a large part of the memory is a particular smell. I can almost imagine it right now, a dusty smell, but a pleasant smell. A smell like cinnamon and dried flowers and, maybe, beneath it all, a subdued smell of engine oil and exhaust hidden beneath Pine Sol. Quite the potpourri! It boggled my childhood mind and still mystifies me as an adult.
It was the smell of knowledge, I think.
I’m so grateful that I had the experience of the Book Mobile as a child. It definitely has a place in my development and helped shape me into the adult I became. I was intensely pleased when I recently beheld the newest incarnation of the Book Mobile in the Christmas Parade; it’s a fancy thing but I’m certain its young patrons feel the same way about it as I did back in the day. They’re fortunate to have it and a fun, child-centered library to go along with it.
But, there’s still a special place in my heart for that big, boxy, lumbering van full of books that I’d clamber aboard back in the early nineties. It was wood and carpet and diamond plate and there was nothing like it anywhere else. It was mine.
Or, at least, it felt like it.
