We left Manhattan in June to move to a small suburban county about half an hour north of NYC on what I persist in referring to as "the wrong side of the Hudson". In early September, I voted for the first time in my new town's primary election. Yesterday, I got my first town library card.
I grew up on Long Island, and idea of the town library as sanctum sanctorum is nothing new to me. When I was a child, I practically lived in our town's library. I was one of those bibliovores who would lug home a bag of books nearly the size of myself a couple of times a week, always to my mother's cries of, "Put those things back in the grown-up section!" A sort of Matilda-in-training, as it were - minus, sadly, the extrasensory telekinetic powers that would have livened up my early years to a considerable degree.
My first career ambition was to be a librarian. The other kids on my block wanted either to be the garbage man (as sanitation engineers were known back then), because it looked like such subversive fun to ride on the outside of the truck - the kind of job that would really get a rise out of your mother - or to drive the Good Humor Ice Cream truck and then, of course, be your own best customer. I'm not denying the allure of either of these career paths.
But the idea of being surrounded by books all day long, in a hushed atmosphere imbued with an overall aura of reverence for the printed word? That prospect put access to unlimited Strawberry Shortcake Bars and Rocket Pops into perspective. No question about it - I'd rather have the books.
I also had the charmingly muddled notion that a librarian's sole duty was read to books all day long and get paid for it. I'm still looking for a job of that description. And don't tell me college English instructor, because I happen to know better.
After college, I worked in a number of bookstores, and then eventually wound up owning a bookshop, which finally cured me of the notion that all I had to do to make a living was sit behind a desk reading books and collecting money, occasionally swapping literary chit-chat with people on the other side of the desk. It didn't work out that way at all.
I did have access to an unlimited supply of books so inexpensive as to be practically free, and so I built my own personal library into what once was referred to, in a somewhat different context, as a "large, loose, baggy monster". Moving the saggy, baggy elephant to the wrong side of the river was, as you may imagine, a project. I've never actually counted my books, because it would take far too much time. I estimate it at about 4,000 volumes - and that, of course, is after the obligatory purge of stuff I hadn't looked at in years and reluctantly consigned to the local thrift shop, after considerable nagging on the part of my husband, who was not at all enthusiastic about transporting my darlings, ten boxes at a time, in the trunk of the Saab.
Yes - as I say, originally, there were about 4,002 volumes. Surrendering the fantasy that one day I was going to get around to reading Simon Schama's Citizens and, after having done exhaustive period research, write a prequel to Jane Eyre about the adventures of one of Mr. Rochester's discarded mistresses was accompanied by the kind of tears and hand-wringing one associates with the biblical mother who was casually instructed by King Solomon to chop her baby in two and go halfsies with the other nice lady.
All the time I lived in Manhattan I had a library card. But I never used it. The inexpensive copies of good books flowed like tap water - there was always something interesting on the tables of the sidewalk vendors, or at the thrifts, or even at the big library fundraising sales. I think the only time I ever took out a library book was when I was studying for the GRE and didn't want to shell out $22.95 for a new copy of the exam practice book at the B&N.
But now it's different. Now the Local Used Book Pool is neither as freshly-supplied nor as widely variegated as what I've been accustomed to. And so, I got a library card.
I tell you, Gentle Reader, it's just like riding a bicycle. Right back in the saddle. It's as if I'd never stopped doing my Library Card Cardio. After ten minutes of intensive speed-stacking (similar to speed-dating, but with fewer potentially catastrophic results if you happen to select a dud) I joyously skipped over to the check-out desk with a teetering stack of Five Big Fat Books and drove happily homeward for an orgy of novel-reading.
I could have taken a lot more, but I didn't want to seem greedy.
Not yet.
