The Library Card

by Joan Young

In the 21st Century, libraries are repositories of information services. But around the middle of the 20th Century, from a viewpoint much closer to the floor, “my” library was intimate. The Hinman Memorial Library, in my very small home town of Interlaken, New York, is a modest historic building.  Well, that’s what I know now. What I saw then was the most beautiful building in town, its white face cleanly contrasting with the green lawn. The library sat back from the main street, and one approached on a paved walkway that wended between towering monuments. Only a few steps to an adult; a journey worthy of the goal to a two-year-old. Climbing the steps and opening the large, creaking door, my mother and I entered a room full of... books! The floor was dark wood, with wide boards, and the air was redolent with the odors of old varnish, binding glue and paper. I have never forgotten that smell. It is the aroma of pleasant afternoons and cloth-bound promises. 

My mother selected stacks of books, which we were allowed to borrow! Each week, on grocery day, the trek would be repeated. I suppose this experience is not so different from that of many children. But on my fourth birthday, in 1952, I gained the right to access the magic for myself. Mom and I approached the desk; a lady with glasses on a beaded string looked down at me. “I want a library card,” I said.

Startled, she replied, “Oh we don’t issue library cards to people who can’t read.”

I was quite put out. In fact (completely unmindful of the fact that I was unusual), I had been reading since the age of two. “I can read!” I exclaimed.

The woman still protested that I was much too young to read. I am told that I stamped my foot and rebutted with “I am not!”

Mom, as mediator, suggested that I be allowed to pick a book from the shelves and read it out loud.  I returned in a few minutes with The Flight of the Silver Bird, by R & L Carroll, the story of a family who flies across the Pacific Ocean on a Pan-Am “flying boat,” a fourth-grade level book.  I read to her, for several pages, and was promptly issued my own library card. Still incredulous, the librarian asked if I could sign my own name. I had to be able to do that, too. But I calmly took the fountain pen and signed my name in cursive, unaware that I was making history. The librarian’s final victory was to proclaim that I could not take out books from the adult section until I was older.

Over the years I read every book in the small library’s sections for children and young adults. Finally, I was allowed access to the general collection and later the historic documents. I continued to check out The Flight of the Silver Bird regularly. Perhaps that was part of the cause for my terminal wanderlust.

Many years later I received a package from the library containing that much-loved book. The library was retiring the book, and they had decided that it should be mine. It remains one of the treasures of my collection. As far as I know I am still the youngest person to be granted a library card at the Hinman Memorial Library.

Miles and years away, I now embrace all the computer-served information one can retrieve. But I can still smell the old book bindings and rejoice in the adventures I first experienced at the public library.