The Madison Public Library and Me

by Kirsti Meyer

Every Tuesday around 11 our mornings sound something like this:

“Run into story time. Come on, Dove you don’t have time to pick out a DVD right now. Get going Dovey, or Dana will read the stories without you.”

“Come on Ang. Do you want to help me put the books in the book drop?”

“No! Don’t put the books on the baby please; he’s too little to hold all of the books.”

I live in the small Midwest town of Madison, South Dakota where we have a fittingly small Carnegie library with terraced flowerbeds, red brick façade, fluted columns and in the back a large lawn and a small park.

The library faces the county court house. Sitting to the west of the library is the town’s post office and to the east, the old Elks Lodge.
When I first moved to South Dakota from California I was disappointed to be stuck in a rural enclave of 1950s America. My mother-in-law brought me to the library as a sort of peace offering. She knew I loved to read fiction and hoped the library would sate my desire to be Elsewhere. I didn’t want to like the Madison library, with its Ionic columns and red bricks, and so shrugged my shoulders ungraciously. I smoldered, “This tiny library will hold nothing for me. Really, what can it offer me?”
I’m not sure when I lost my distaste for the Madison Library, but it was probably somewhere among not having Internet access at home, realizing that the people of Madison were normal people and becoming the mother of a three year old.

Three is a magical age in Madison because the community’s activities become available. With my newly turned three year old, we attended Madison library’s story time and we developed a regular library routine. Dove would run into the story time room and I would wander the stacks for my Elsewhere. As I wandered, however, I most have gotten lost because I remember not finding books, but friends: the other mothers who brought their children to story time and the librarians themselves. If the library didn’t provide story time, or if I hadn’t come to story time, I would never have met these women and Bruce (Madison Library’s sole male librarian). The library opened the community to me and my daughter.

When I leave the library now I look at the building and think of all the memories the Madison Library helped to create: listening to and shaking the hand of former President Bill Clinton, listening to my niece play a piano piece for Art-in-the-Park, playing carnival games with the librarians for summer reading, eating hot dogs at “National Night Out” and one of my favorites, groaning with chagrined delight while listening to the cacophony of the South Dakota Old Time Fiddlers.

Every Tuesday at around noon our afternoons sound something like this:

“Ang? Ang? Oh! Sorry Dana. No Ang, not now but you’ll get to come to story time when you’re three.”

“Come on, Dove. No, please don’t walk on the flower beds.”

“See you guys next week.”