April 4, 2007

Thank You, Mr. Carnegie

If it wasn't for Andrew Carnegie, I might not have been a writer. Why do I owe my love of words to a Scottish robber baron who died 32 years before I was born? In his lifetime, this Captain of Industry who made his fortune in railroads and steel, gave away more than $350 million, mostly to build libraries, including the one in Logansport, Indiana. It was there, amongst the musty stacks housed in that limestone mausoleum of a library, that I spent every spare minute of the fourth grade.

We had moved to Logansport from the Chicago area, where my Dad attended graduate school at Northwestern University. I was devastated to leave my friends-especially Betsy with the braids like Pippi Longstocking-and the third-floor walk-up right across from my school, where I had taken home my "Dick and Jane" book and devoured it the very first day.

Our new house had a scary basement and bats in the attic, but it was only three blocks from the public library, a stately building with wide stone steps and dark oak woodwork. It was much too grand for our new town, a gritty place that had grown up around the railroad and had started dying when the interstate highways were built.

My mother took me to the library even before we had unpacked. I explored the stacks hungrily, searching for books I hadn't read yet.

The books were shelved by grade level. I looked at the fourth grade section, since I had just finished the third grade in my old school. I ran my fingers along the spines at eye level, then the ones on the shelves below. There wasn't a single book I hadn't read. I moved on to the fifth grade books. Again, they were all old friends. They had kept me company during long Chicago winters. At the sixth grade stack, I struck gold. There were mystery stories, adventure stories, and biographies I hadn't seen before. I loaded up my arms and went to find my mother.

She was filling out paperwork at the circulation desk, a huge wooden structure presided over by a woman with a severe hairstyle and glasses on the end of her nose. She had pried our life story out of my mother under the guise of taking our application for a library card. She knew that I'd be in Miss Newby's class and that I lived three blocks up the street and was from the big city. Apparently we had passed scrutiny because she told Mom that we could take out up to five books while we waited for our library card to be mailed to us.

I hoisted my stack of books up onto the desk and carefully picked out my five favorites. I figured I could read them that night and return the next day to check out the rest.

"Where did you get these?" asked the nosy librarian, examining my choices.

"Over there," I said, pointed to the shelves with the "6th Grade" sign on top.

"Oh, no," she said. "You're starting the fourth grade. You'll have to get fourth grade books."

Well, my mother, an English teacher with a keen intellect and a quick temper, raised the roof of the Carnegie Library with her indignant protest. To the horror of the library staff and most of the patrons, she loudly insisted that no one was going to dictate to her or her children what they could or could not read.

The librarian pushed her glasses up her nose and silently stamped my books. "They're due in two weeks," she snipped.

My right to read freely secured by my fiercely protective mother, I returned the next day and the next day and the next.

Somewhere, the ghost of Andrew Carnegie was smiling.