Remember those afternoons?
Inside the library on the Base
Bombers rattling the metal shelves
I leaned against the industrial aluminum window sill
The memory of hot glass baked by the sun
And I shaded my eyes while I read the Hardy Boys
My chin tucked on my chest
Elbow anchored against the metal making a sweaty spot
Leaning back slightly in my chair
Kicking my foot against the wall
Pausing occasionally
Looking up
Watching for Mom to return from shopping
Only to meet the Texas glare
Shining windshields in the parking lot
Returning happily to turn the pages faster.
After dinner tonight, I laid down for a moment on the bed. Oof! It was hard to get back up.
I muttered to myself, "I am getting old!" But, I stopped and amended it, "No, I am getting oldER". I became a little internally confused at this point, because five hours of yard work and running around wore me out more than I thought it would. But, I also felt young enough to mentally smack myself in the back of the head once I realized was complaining like an old man. Yet I was still tired.
In situations like this, I find it helps to grab a beer, sit on the deck and throw my feet up on a chair. Twenty minutes later, perhaps one more beer as well, and my subconscious and I come to some sort of understanding. Or at least a compromise. On a really good day, I'll remember to grab my laptop and see what my fingers can dowse out of the keys.
So, library? Hmmm. Don't ask me, ask the strange guy several layers beneath my cerebral cortex. Excuse me while I take a deep swig out of my beer. The nice thing about sitting on the deck when it starts getting cold is that your beverages stay cold a long time. Nice... Maybe you lose some feeling in your nose, but then, that could be the beer, right?
Anyway, I have good memories from libraries. I hated food shopping as a kid. The commissary was a monstrosity of torture and madness. The library was right next door, so I would enjoy two hours of reading on the huge squishy shiny blue cot-chair-blob things they had in the kids section. Every once and while, like all kids, I would meander over to the water fountain and take long lingering drinks. Funny how all kids seem to do that with water fountains. Drink noisily, all bent over with big pursed lips, getting the water all over their shirt; looking around, wiping their mouth and then taking another godawful long drink. Depending on the season, easter jelly beans or christmas cookies or candy canes would be sitting on the little greeting table close to the door. Although, if you began to graze, the head librarian's desk was right there too, and she didn't hesitate to glare and bustle over to start "straightening" the table and shoo you away.
Looking back at it, while I had plenty of private time in my own room at home, the library was my first experience of independence. For two hours, I was on my own. I could go any where, read any book, even run away if I wanted too. Usually I just found a book I hadn't read and got lost in it for a couple of hours. Sometimes though, I would wander the stacks and just note how the books were organized. Every once and awhile, a title would jump out at me, and I would haul the book off the shelf and placing it on one of the big shiny tables, pore through the pages. I never was a master of the card catalogue, and I hating asking the librarian for help. My explorations eventually gave me an intimate knowledge of each discipline, and so I never need Dewey's decimal system. Sometimes, I would just flip through all the phonograph records, looking at the album covers. My favorite was H.G. Well's time machine. It was the indistinct figure of a man sitting on a box holding a steering yoke with a strange mushroom like umbrella behind him; surrounding him were what looked like lines of magnetic force, like the the whorls of fingerprints... then, just empty and terrifying blackness. I remember staring at it a long time, imagining how it must have felt to be alone in absolutely nothing, no matter, no air, not even time. I figured sound itself would not even possible. I distinctly recall thinking that he must not have been able to even breathe, and worrying that he didn't even have an oxygen tank, and that as soon as he threw that switch he was pretty much done for- lost in a flat, non-echoing limbo forsaken by even lost souls, not alive nor dead, just a strange hiccup of unreality sandwhiched between time and no-time, mouth open in an eternal scream. (lol) Like I said, it made a strong impression on me.
In the end, small as it was, this libary became a book chapel of sorts to my small soul. It was the last homely house in the wood between the worlds. A place that I could properly say was my secret kingdom, and I knew every nook like a native American recognized his territory. It was my refuge on payday, and a castle only a twenty minute bike ride away. Eventually , with my drivers license, I progressed to university libraries, the city public library, but I never lost the love for the small library with the old fashioned aluminum window sills and the rickety metal shelves.
Years later, I returned to Dyess Air Force Base specifically to check out my old spot. I parked, walked up the sidewalk under the metal awning, and then stopped. The library had been demolished, and I had been so distracted, I hadn't even noticed until I was halfway up the sidewalk. There was nothing but an empty patch of dirt and a couple pieces of concrete rubble poking up through the ground. Walking over to where the kid's section used to be, I stood there a minute, watching the people leave the commissary, just as I had glanced up from my book years ago. I was genuinely very sad.
Whether we are old or just getting oldER, and even if we are young, sometimes we just need our own space for an hour or two. So I will finish sitting here in the cold late October air, toasting the planet that hangs right above my tree while I finish my beer. Good night everyone!
I'll close with a pleasant fantasy:
He sits in a chair outside
Framed by a patch of ground.
It is afternoon
The sun shines brightly;
Its heat touches his face.
His eyes close,
He remembers the lost books
The books that he read.
He understands but is sad-
Like when the Norse gods walked quietly the day after Ragnarok
Picking their golden chessman from the dirt.
