Conspirator
- Brian
- I went out there in search of experience To taste and to touch and to feel as much As a man can before he repents.
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Ode to the Library
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The summer before ninth grade I got my first library card. We lived in a small town in western Oklahoma at the time (approx. 700 people); we didn't actually have a public library. The closest town to us--Anadarko--had a library and, as we did much of our grocery shopping there, it was not inconvenient to access its books. Strangely enough, my parents were relunctant for me to have a library card. It took a little bit of convincing. Not a lot, but a little bit. By that point in time, I was reading a lot, often staying up for hours in my room at night with a desklamp in order to keep reading. I think my parents were wanting me to do something else, but I think it also bothered them that I preferred Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton to Laura Ingalls Wilder.
The first time I walked into that library I felt a freedom that nothing would surpass while a teenager. Not even when I turned sixteen and got my driver's license did I experience the feeling and independence that I felt when I got a library card.
The first book I checked out was, sure enough, a Stephen King book. Pet Semetary.
We'd move to the Oklahoma City area 18 months later; within two weeks of relocating to our new home, I got a library card at the public library in our new hometown. I haven't owned a library card since graduating high school, but last week I went to the >Metropolitan Public Library and reconnected with my childhood sense of awe. I wanted to read something new--something not on my shelf at home. I didn't want to spend money on a new book, though. Even the cheap books are expensive these days. On Saturday, we all went to Chick Fil-A for breakfast and then stopped by at the library where I checked out my first book on my new library card: Robert Service's biography of Vladimir Lenin. I knocked out a 106 pages over the weekend; it is truly a magnificent piece of work. (I suspect there aren't many of you reading this who are all that interested in the Russian Revolution, but Service is one of the premier scholars of Soviet/Russian studies, and our library has his many of publications!!!)
The public library is an amazing thing. If there is anything that makes me happy to pay taxes, it is the library. I can't wait to go back and get a new book!
The first time I walked into that library I felt a freedom that nothing would surpass while a teenager. Not even when I turned sixteen and got my driver's license did I experience the feeling and independence that I felt when I got a library card.
The first book I checked out was, sure enough, a Stephen King book. Pet Semetary.
We'd move to the Oklahoma City area 18 months later; within two weeks of relocating to our new home, I got a library card at the public library in our new hometown. I haven't owned a library card since graduating high school, but last week I went to the >Metropolitan Public Library and reconnected with my childhood sense of awe. I wanted to read something new--something not on my shelf at home. I didn't want to spend money on a new book, though. Even the cheap books are expensive these days. On Saturday, we all went to Chick Fil-A for breakfast and then stopped by at the library where I checked out my first book on my new library card: Robert Service's biography of Vladimir Lenin. I knocked out a 106 pages over the weekend; it is truly a magnificent piece of work. (I suspect there aren't many of you reading this who are all that interested in the Russian Revolution, but Service is one of the premier scholars of Soviet/Russian studies, and our library has his many of publications!!!)
The public library is an amazing thing. If there is anything that makes me happy to pay taxes, it is the library. I can't wait to go back and get a new book!
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