"Little pink houses for you and me." ~ John Mellencamp
Like John Mellencamp, I grew up in a small town. It was a hamlet of around 1,000 people just west of the Finger Lakes region of New York State. My earliest memory of my local library was a tiny house behind the hardware. It was just past the railroad tracks that I crossed by foot with my mom, and as I walked in, the colors and smell of all of the books immediately transported me. I quickly forgot how badly I missed my sister who was whisked off to kindergarten.
A few tears later, the library in the next town over was, and still is, a stately brick structure with columns and arches. This was where summer movies, comic books, and Henry Huggins awaited me. I eventually followed in my grandmother’s footsteps to study literature, seduced by the sparse and sardonic prose of Hemingway and the poetry of Yeats, Whitman, and Poe, to name a few. My grandmother’s living room was floor to ceiling shelves of literary treasures, yet a visit to the library was always too enticing to pass up, regardless of the stacks of books at my fingertips.
- rschrader@scarboroughlibrary.org
- (207) 396 - 6266
