Air conditioning must rank near the top of the list of
the best inventions of the 21st century. At least that’s how I feel in the midst of a
characteristic summer heat wave like the one we’ve had this month.
Home air conditioning was rare when I was growing up –
some people had noisy, rattling window units, but we didn’t. Commercial establishments that had “a/c” advertised
it with signs in the front window saying “It’s cool inside,” with icicles
dripping from the word ‘cool.”
Of course we couldn’t hang out in restaurants or movie
theaters all day, and the swimming pool didn’t open until 1 p.m. Fortunately for us, the library was one of
the air conditioned public buildings in town.
We could spend hours at a time in the blessed coolness before taking our
books home to read in the basement family room (with a dehumidifier providing
climate control).
One of my favorite books about Midwestern summer was
written many years ago. Each year I
revisit it because it is so evocative of the season and the place. And, of course, it includes a story about the
library.
“Garnet thought this must be the hottest day that had
ever been in the world….This morning the thermometer outside the village drug
store had pointed a thin red finger to one hundred and ten degrees
Fahrenheit…..It was like being inside of a drum. The sky like a bright skin was
tight above the valley, and the earth, too, was tight and hard with heat.”
So begins Thimble Summer, Elizabeth Enright’s
classic story about Garnet and Citronella, two nine-year-olds in a small town
in Wisconsin in the 1930’s.
In the chapter titled “Locked In,” the girls get a ride
into town on a Saturday afternoon. “Finally
they came to the library, an old-fashioned frame building set back from the
road among thick-foliaged maple trees.
Garnet loved the library; it smelled deliciously of old books and was
full of stories she had never read. Miss Pentland, the librarian, was a nice
little fat lady who sat behind an enormous desk facing the door…..Many times
the screen door of the library creaked and closed with a muffled bang as people
came and went; other children and grown people, old ladies looking for books on
crocheting and boys wanting stories about G-men….Garnet was thousands of miles
away with Kotick, the white seal, and Citronella was in ballroom lighted by a
hundred chandeliers and crowded with beautiful ladies and gentlemen in full
evening dress.”
The girls were so quiet and absorbed in their books that
Miss Pentland didn’t realize they were still there when she closed the library
– and locked the door! “There was no
telephone in the library and no electric light. There were gas fixtures but the
girls could not find any matches.” The
girls banged on the windows but no one heard them. Their fathers discovered them at midnight
but Miss Pentland had to come (“her hat on sideways”) to unlock the door. After fried egg sandwiches and apple pie at
the diner – the only place open so late – the girls reveled in their
adventure.
75 years after
Garnet and Citronella’s adventures were recorded, and 50 years after my
own experiences, the public library is still the COOLEST place in town. Surely you agree – and I hope to see you at
ZBPL one of these afternoons!
I love your story and I definitely loved the library growing up and with my kids growing up. It's funny, I don't go nearly as often now, without the kids, as I used to... but thanks for sharing your story.
ReplyDeleteThat was one of my favorite books growing up! So fun to find someone else who loved it too. I remember one summer I was determined to read my way through the children's library - drove my mother crazy, she would push me out the door and lock it to try and get me to play more but I'd just pull out a book and read in the shade. :-)
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