"Have
Books, Will Travel"
By
Pamela
Perry Blaine
©
August 2004
“When I get a little
money I buy books;
and if any
is left, I buy food and clothes”
-Erasmus
“It’s
here!” I heard my friend say as I picked up the phone.
“Be there
in 10 minutes,” I said as I hung up and went flying out
the
screen door as only a twelve year old can. My mother
yelled
after me, “Don’t slam the door!” but it was too late.
I hurried
down the road to meet my girlfriend. It was summer break,
school
had been out for a couple of weeks, and now the bookmobile was here!
Like
opening the doors of the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series,
so it
was to enter the huge enclosed bus-like vehicle and reach
up to
the shelf, open a book, and enter another world.
The bookmobile
came to our town during the summer and it was
always
parked next to the curb, sideways, taking up several parking spaces in
front
of the Baring Hotel. There were bicycles along the curb also as
children
showed up to check out books. I would usually see people
outside
visiting with each other as they waited because there wasn’t room for
everyone
to be inside at the same time. It was a social event as well as
a chance
to check out new reading material. The bookmobile had air-conditioning,
at least
when it wasn’t on the fritz, so most people weren’t in a great
hurry
to leave anyway since nobody in our town had air conditioning back then.
We had
books in our home and a library in our small school but the bookmobile
brought
a variety of books on almost any subject you could think of,
from
biographies to historical novels. If you wanted a book that wasn’t
there,
the
librarian would write it down and try to bring it on the bookmobile’s next
trip.
Many
people in rural areas had very little access to books unless
they
traveled to a larger town. In the 1950s there wasn’t a Hastings,
Barnes
& Noble, or even a Wal-Mart with a book section nearby like there is
today.
My love
of books probably came from my parents who liked to read and
my mother
being a schoolteacher may have had a lot to do with it too.
She
began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse and finished her career
as a
school librarian so books were always around our house.
It wasn’t
long until I had read most of the books that were at home
and
in the classrooms at school. Some of us were hooked on reading from
the day
our
first grade teacher, Miss Marie, taught us “See Spot run! Run! Run!
Run!”
After
the Dick and Jane books, I had moved on through all the series books
such
as Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, and Little House on the Prairie. We yearned
for
more
reading material and I remember my cousin once managed to borrow
her
sister’s book, Gone With The Wind, and we both read it when we were
only
12 years old. Now that we had the bookmobile, we knew we would
be able
to read more such books.
Although
we think of the bookmobile as beginning in the 1950s, the idea
had
been around a long time. I have been told that books were once distributed
to schools
and communities by horse-drawn wagons. After World War II
books
were sometimes carried in the trunks of cars to different areas.
Later,
before
specifically designed bookmobiles were in existence,
school
buses were converted for that purpose.
The bookmobile
no longer comes to town but we still have libraries.
Books
are always better than the movies they create from them because
there
is a lot more detail than can be put into a two-hour film.
As author
John Le Carre once said, “Having your book turned into a movie
is like
seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.”
Years
ago, before television and video games, families would
have
“reading time” together. This summer why not turn off the TV, get out
some
of the classics like Tom Sawyer or Little Women and read
with your
children
or grandchildren. If you don’t have the books, your local library does.
You may
not have a magic wardrobe or a bookmobile but if you just open a
good
book and begin to read, the book has a magic all it’s own to transport
you
to faraway places even though you have not moved from where you sit.
I've traveled the world
twice over,
Met the famous; saints
and sinners,
Poets and artists,
kings and queens,
Old stars and hopeful
beginners,
I've been where no-one's
been before,
Learned secrets from
writers and cooks
All with one library
ticket
To the wonderful world
of books.
-Unknown
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