• Share

PRINT

The flight attendant was making the usual pre-departure announcements. She urged everyone to put their rolling bags in the overhead compartments, wheels first, “and then turn them to the side, like books in a library.”

This frequent flyer had never heard that line before. I was nodding my head at the cleverness of it when the very young man sitting next to me said:

“I have never been in a library.”

If you want to stay bummed out for the next four hours in the sky, that’s a pretty good way to do it.

I said nothing to the young man, but I did fight back by opening a book. And ignoring him. And silently shaking my head in sorrow.

Never been in a library!

Never had the intense pleasure of wandering the aisles, not knowing what wonders you might encounter. Never rediscovered and re-read a classic. Never looked around and marveled at all those authors and all those ideas.

And never realized what we oldsters learned long ago: A library is an irreplaceable refuge for educated people. It’s where thinking is on every shelf.

Without thinking, we have…well, we have a seatmate on an airplane who spends four hours playing some sort of dopey, animated video war game.

I tried — honestly, I tried — not to scowl at him as we deplaned.

Today, libraries have become heavily automated. If you want to check out a book, you present a plastic card with an embedded chip. The clerk swipes. Bingo, bango, you’re done.

But I still fondly recall the old method of checking out.

You would open your book to the inside back cover. A little envelope would be glued there. A card would be inside the envelope, bearing the return dates for every previous borrower.

The clerk would trot out an ink pad and a rubber stamp. He or she would twist the dials of the stamp to the correct date.

Bop — the clerk would hit the ink pad with the stamp. Then bop again — the clerk would carefully apply your due date to the next open line of the card. Bingo, bango, you were done.

But you were really just beginning. As you walked to the exit, you couldn’t wait to open your choice and sink into it. Libraries were where you went to feel a special shiver of anticipation.

Also, a special respect for silence. Today, you can enter a public library and people at the desks are talking(!). Sometimes patrons are even playing music on their laptops.

Way back when, silence was not only golden in libraries. It was absolutely required.

A much younger version of this writer was once evicted from his local public library for cracking his knuckles. Young Bob did not protest. He knew he had sinned against everything that was holy.

He also knew that librarians were among the most helpful — and the most consulted — people on earth.

In high school, I was assigned a history term paper that buckled my knees. William the Conqueror? I knew zero about him. But maybe, just maybe…

I consulted the school librarian. She marched me to the right shelf, exhumed three dusty tomes and told me to start with these.

I read all three. I conquered William. I got an A on the paper.

Gratefully, I showed the grade to the librarian. “I’m not surprised,” she said.

I never have been again. In a library, answers are everywhere. You just have to look.

And not rush yourself. I am often asked what I dislike most about modern life. “How hurried we are,” I always say.

Not in a library. You can fish a novel from an out-of-the way shelf, find a seat and dive in — for an hour or more, if you like.

No one will charge you. No one will give you the fish eye. Libraries are for flights of fancy, for discovering that you are 15 pages into something great and have never even paused.

Of course, libraries have never been immune to vandalism. I still recall how shocked I was during my first year of college. I was deep into a history of World War II when I turned the page….The entire next chapter had been ripped out.

I showed the damage to a librarian. “Happens every day,” she said. The only thing worse than never entering a library is destroying what’s in it.

Nor can I forget the extracurricular benefits of those old-fashioned college reading rooms.

Students went there to study. But students were also people.

Across the vast room, a certain student (he looked a lot like me) would spy a pretty female person. He would amble over and ask if the seat next to her was taken. If she said no, well, libraries have benefits far beyond what’s in the stacks.

Flight done, seatmate pitied, I marched through my front door. My wife greeted me and asked how the trip had been.

“Fine,” I said. “But I need to get some sleep. The public library opens tomorrow morning at 9.”

Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.