A few months ago, I wandered into my local branch library and found myself growing increasingly irritated. So irritated, in fact, that I later wrote a rather pointed Google review. As I walked through the building, looking from one area to another, a question kept surfacing in my mind:
Where are the books?
At the time, I just allowed the irritation to rile me up. As is often the case, I go to the power of the pen to vent. Looking back, I think I was mourning something else. The more I reflected on that question, the more I realized it had little to do with changing library policies or the growing presence of technology. After all, the building itself is a spacious, modern facility with ample room. Reams of empty shelves signaled a repeat: Where are the books? Reflecting later, my memory took me back to a different library, a different time, and a large reference room in the small Pennsylvania town where I grew up. I have no photographs of that room. No floor plans. No architectural drawings. Yet I can still walk through it with astonishing clarity in my mind.
The Reference Room always felt warmer than the rest of the library. Light from the tall windows fell across the tables where massive encyclopedias waited patiently to be opened. Some afternoons I sat there for hours, not looking for anything in particular, content simply to wander aimlessly from shelf to shelf. The room occupied a large space on the second floor. Even now, decades later, I can picture the long wooden tables, the towering shelves, and the afternoon sunlight stretching across the room. I don't remember what I was looking for on most of those visits. I only remember wanting to be there.
I wonder about that reference room today. Where is it? Where are the afternoons I spent there? Where is the kid whose curiosity could keep him occupied until something or someone finally called him home?
Technically speaking, the room is still there. The delightfully historic Community Building in Johnsonburg remains standing, and I'm grateful for that. The rooms that once housed the library have long since been repurposed. Years ago, the town’s library moved to another location. Those rooms have evolved into something new. Many buildings from the town of my youth were not so fortunate and met very different fates.
Yet the room I find myself searching for no longer exists in quite the same way. I'm not looking for walls, windows, or shelves. I'm looking for a place preserved only in memory, a room that seems somehow larger and quieter.
But that isn't the room I'm searching for.
The room I miss exists somewhere between memory and imagination. It is made of afternoon sunlight, towering shelves, the scent of old books, and a young boy's curiosity. No renovation can erase it, and no preservation effort can fully restore it. It survives in a different kind of architecture. The room still exists in echo. The books still exist in influence. The ideas still exist in consciousness. The experiences still exist in the person they helped create.
It’s a cold November evening. The darkness arrives even before dinner time. Before the 5 o’clock whistle from the Paper Mill…whose presence is the economic heartbeat of the town. In fact, it was the generosity of the Paper Mill that created the building, the room. An early snowfall blankets the intersection viewable from the large windows. I wait in the Reference Room on my father…who will pick me up on his drive home from the neighboring town where he works. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go home…even though I know my mother will have a hot meal waiting for us. I just want to spend more time with the books.
My frustration with my local library branch had little to do with shelving decisions or changing priorities. Some books are still there. Some actually remain on library shelves. Others live on digital screens. Many have found their way into my own home.
What I was really searching for was a room, an afternoon, and a boy who never seemed to run out of questions.
The room has changed. The shelves have changed. The town has changed. So have I.
Yet something remains.
The echo of those afternoons still calls to me. Perhaps that reference room survived after all. Not in brick and mortar, but in a different kind of architecture.
Maybe this is the Google review I really needed to write.
(Johnsonburg Community Building, My photo. April, 2013)
