When I turned 8 years old, my parents sold our house in the “ghetto” of Indianapolis and moved the family to a rural area about 40 miles west of the city.  In the blink of an eye, I went from being a poor city kid attending a strict Baptist “academy” to a poor farm kid attending a public school in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere.  Through it all, I remained insatiably curious about … well … everything.  I delighted in the wonders of the natural world and especially in the arcane business of adult human interaction.  ”Old” people fascinated the hell out of me.  My father was keen on involving me in the affairs of the adult world, usually by insisting that I put on some sort of intellectual show for my parents’ friends or for family members (math problems, spelling, etc.). 

Soon after moving to the country, I discovered whole new vistas to explore, made new friends, and got settled into the relatively more relaxed public school setting.  Baptist education left its physical marks on me, but it also furnished me with super-duper reading skills.  Never without a book, that boy, my grandfather used to say.  Books, to my young self, were like portals to new worlds … Every time I cracked open a book, I felt as though I were taking on a new identity, becoming a different person, taking up citizenship in a different society.

Acknowledging my fondness for reading, my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Knight (bless her soul) one day told me that there was a public library around the corner from the school (Mill Creek Elementary). “What’s a public library?” I queried. “It’s a place with thousands and thousands of books, and they let you borrow them,” she patiently explained.  ”For free?” I asked, incredulously of course. (Note: One of the aphorisms of my rearing was “You get what you pay for.”) “Yes, it’s free. They give you a ‘library card’ with your name on it, and that card lets you check out as many books as you want as many times as you want, forever.” An orgy of books! For free! I was beside myself with joy — I might even have been aroused. Hard to say.

That night I asked my mother if she’d allow me to go to the library after school, ALONE, and pick me up from there a couple of hours after the usual school closure time. “Sure,” she said. We were in the “transition” period defined by moving residences … and we had yet to move into our rural house, so she was driving 80 miles round trip to get me to and from my new school.  No doubt the extra couple of hours, and NOT returning to the city in rush hour, came as a gift from the sky. 

The next day I couldn’t wait for the bell to ring. When it did, I was ready to go. I raced out the door, around the block and stopped in front of the Clayton, IN town “library.” I use quotation marks here because, looking back, I had no way of knowing just how very different THIS library was from all the others I’d see in life. In a word, the library was a house. Not just A house. It was someone’s house. It belonged to the Head (read: only) Librarian.

Gladys and her husband Leo had lived in the house for more than 50 years. They’d been married 55 years. Soon after moving into the simple wood frame farm house, Gladys realized her lifelong dream of becoming a librarian by installing a library in the bottom floor of her house. She and Leo lived upstairs. I wish I had a picture of the place. You would find it charming. As I did.

Gladys welcomed me warmly as I cautiously gained entry through the creaky screen door. I moved cautiously because aside from the sign, “Clayton Public Library,” there was no indication that I was in the right place. This was someone’s home, for the love of soup! “Come on in, honey,” she said in a whisper of the richest luster ever experienced by human ears. “What can I do for you?” she asked. I explained the deal — that Mrs. Knight had told me about the place and that I loved books, that I couldn’t get enough of books, that I still couldn’t believe it possible to “borrow” as many books as I wanted. “Well, it’s all true,” she winked, “except that there IS a limit on how many you can borrow.” Confused, I asked, “What’s the limit?” 

“Well, you can only borrow as many as you can manage to carry out of here, so unless you’ve got a wheelbarrow parked outside, I’d say you’re gonna be taking hom about a dozen books of average size.”  My heart soared. My mind exploded with possibilities. But at the end of the day, I took home only one book, the book that Gladys told me to read.

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

“It’s about a society where no books are allowed. And the hero is a guy, whose name is Guy, and his job is to burn books.” Gladys nicely summarized the greater part of the plot. “WHAT?” I couldn’t fathom this. How in the world could there be such a society. Suddenly I wondered if my little town were some sort of cabal — a small society of outlaws who were hellbent on reading books that were banned. “It’s ‘Science Fiction’,” Gladys told me, “but if you’re gonna read one book, and if you’re a lover of books as I can see you are, then this is the on you’ll take home.” Phew. Fiction. Thank goodness.  But what the hell? (My favorite expression from ages 6 to 14, to my parents’ chagrin.) A society that burns books? The hero is a book burner?

“Yes, but he becomes a hero because he bucks the system, though I shouldn’t say any more about it … don’t wanna ruin it for you,” Gladys offered.

I took the book home, and I had an affair with it. Bradbury’s fictional society (which in my teen years looked far less fictional as our ultra conservation PTO attempted to ban a number of books, including To Kill a Mockingbird). I fell in love with F451 … I loved the protagonist. I loved everything, except for the very last period. I resented that punctuation mark with all my might. 

If I could … which is to say, if Gladys were still alive … I would very happily make a special trip to the Clayton Public Library and give a big giant hug to one of my favorite librarians of all time. Sometimes I believe that Gladys taught me everything useful I’ll ever need to know. I treat her as my own special patron saint of the written word. Thanks to her, I have a spiritual, albeit secular core and a cornucopia of texts to support it (not least of which is the ouvre of Kurt Vonnegut).

Speaking of Vonnegut …

In A Man without a Country (2004) Vonnegut entreats us to honor the librarian. Any librarian. Doesn’t matter. Just pick one. Or several. Honor the Gladys in your life. Why celebrate those among us who stand sentry at the portal to collections—meager to vast—of the printed word? Vonnegut explains: “… I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, their powerful political connections or great wealth, who, all over this country have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.” The so-called “Patriot Act” slickly enshrouds all manner of sins, a veritable cornucopia of civil rights transgressions, and it has made us all into potential enemies of THE STATE. A good and wise friend of mine—a lay philosopher who’s wisdom comes in part from 20 years tattooing a luciously diverse procession of customers who’ve come into his shop—recently told me that the biggest difference between most European countries and the U.S.A. is this: In those countries, the government fears the citizenry, whereas here the citizenry is terrified of its government. Granted, this sweeping generalization is … well … a generalization. But no sooner had he finished this sentence, I felt a surge of resonance roll through my mind. “Yep, that’s about right,” I replied. And I meant it. Just as we are not all treated equal, Constitution notwithstanding, we feel varying degrees of fear vis-a-vis THE MAN. For the most part, I can’t honestly say that I believe in the very notion of “the hero.” I believe firmly that stoking the embers of hero-worship distracts us from actually doing truly heroic things, like being kind to one another, defending an underdog, or standing up to a government agent hell-bent on burning “treasonous” books and confiscating information about the library patrons who’ve checked out those books (whether or not they actually read them, or for what purpose was never relevant). Across the country, thousands of librarians — stereotypically meek, nerdy perhaps, maybe a bit persnickety (Dewey Decimal System?) — stood up to THE MAN. In so doing they breathed some of the long-lost life back into the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They protected us, defended us, and they did so without our asking. They knew what was right and they took action accordingly. At no point was or is it clear that they won’t suffer adverse consequences for their heroism. In my book, this makes them heroic. In a word, the librarians were acting patriotically, inspired by a commitment to democracy and in opposition to fascist tactics designed and executed by our very own government, the monolithic juggernaut that frightens us so badly. I hereby pronounce this date “Hug a Librarian Day.” Go find one of these patriots and express your gratitude, thank them for defending you against the thought police. Let me know how it goes. I look forward to hearing from you.

* I dedicate this blog post to Gladys, all the other librarians who’ve ushered me into variously creepy, hilarious, thrilling, suspense-filled, dark, bright, and otherwise NEW worlds since then. In particular, I write this in honor of Jessica Speer, one of my very favorite people of all time, a new friend whose noble calling paves her way into my personal pantheon of patron saints.