At the library
Iwas a high school freshman, watching my mom’s station wagon drive away. The tailpipe exhaust lingered as I paused on the steps. My friends and I had notebooks, our pockets rattling with nickels for the copy machine.
We stood in silence as the station wagon disappeared, then turned to open the library doors.
I was thinking about that day as I logged off an author talk I had moderated through the Six Bridges Book Festival last week. The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) sponsors this type of visit to bring great writers to the great readers of Little Rock and beyond.
I had the opportunity to visit with New York Times best-selling author Stephen Markley about his new book, “The Deluge,” when my mind wandered back to high school.
Our world history teacher had ordered us to complete a massive project he referred to simply as Time Magazine. In short, we’d select a year and create our own magazine about that year—all the news, sports, entertainment articles we could find.
It was a massive project meant to teach us one powerful lesson as we launched into serious academics: how to use a library.
My youthful interaction with libraries began when the bookmobile showed up at Butler Park one Saturday morning. I can still smell the inside: printer’s ink mixed with summertime sweat and a tinge of cut grass. It was warm. My elbows bumped shelved books as I scooted by and made selections based on coolness of covers.
Later, I’d visit the Fletcher Branch near my middle school and snag a handful of biographies. On rainy days, I’d sit in my parents’ station wagon, great lives unfolding in my hands as the rain pattered the metal roof above me.
The Little Rock library took form in 1910 on Seventh and Louisiana Streets. It expanded in that general location in 1964 and made a major move to its current location in 1997. Even in the segregated South of 1917, Black readers had the opportunity to visit a branch on Ninth Street until finally welcomed to the main branch in 1951.
In high school, I burned through microfilm. I picked up periodicals on my year—1969— and learned about the My Lai massacre in 1968 that had been finally uncovered more than a year later, the New York Mets, and the first landing on the moon.
More importantly, I gained a healthy knowledge of library research.
As a teacher in the early 1990s, I assigned the same project. and my students complained as much as I had. Later that decade, the world of research changed with the Internet’s advent.
I eventually tanked Time Magazine as the new century dawned, but Little Rock’s libraries adapted.
While I won’t be needing microfiche copies of The Wall Street Journal anytime soon, I will be visiting via Zoom with best-selling authors brought to my living room thanks to the good work of CALS. Little Rock’s libraries had to change, and change is difficult.
The focus on good research, good reading, and good memories remains.
Steve Straessle is the principal of Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys. You can reach him at sstraessle@lrchs.org. Find him on Twitter @steve_straessle. “Oh, Little Rock” appears every other Monday.