The building that once housed Coleman Library.
I love library stories.
In the same way that I love birth stories and love stories.
So I was delighted to see Kate Rados’ little post about libraries, with an accompanying cute picture.
I commented–about my memories of yummy musty book smells and the wonderful sound of the card-stamping machine–but then couldn’t get the library thing out of my head.
So I looked up images of my first library, Coleman, which was funded by the Callaway Foundation.
The library wasn’t public. It was, actually, overtly racist–a fact I didn’t fully understand until I was in high school. (As a private library they could keep out anyone they wanted, they said, even in the 1980s.)
But before I knew about race and segregation, when I was just learning to read, this library was the most magical place I had ever known.
As if to prove its magical abilities, one afternoon as my grandfather and I walked outside, rain came down on one side of the building while the sun shone on the other. The library was the dividing line of the universe.
All the knowledge in the world, good and bad, up for grabs.
I loved that place.
If you have a library story, head over to Kate’s post and share it in the comments.
[Update, 4/29/10: I changed shined to shone, yo. Because when re-reading I knew something wasn’t right.]
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