North Star Writers Group

I see where the pubic library in Wickliffe, Ohio has a new rule that requires kids under 14 be chaperoned by a parent, guardian or “responsible adult” 18 or older. The rule was adopted, library officials said, to discourage loitering and vandalism at the library.

I’m glad the library in the town where I grew up didn’t do that because if it had, I wouldn’t have ever made it through school.

You see, my parents weren’t exactly what you would call voracious readers. To my knowledge, my mother was never inside a library after, say, the age of 18.

Dad, on the other hand, was in a library. Once. It was the day his car conked out near downtown and he went to the library to use the pay phone to call a wrecker service.

It’s not that Mom didn’t read. She did. She loved those pulpy True Romance magazines that were all the rage in the 1940s. Dad read, too, if you counted auto repair pamphlets and score sheets at bowling alleys.

Dad was one of the toughest men I ever met. He toiled in the sprawling auto plants of Flint, Michigan for nearly 50 years, participated in the bloody General Motors sitdown strike of 1936, could drain a half a bottle of beer in one long gulp and played semi-pro baseball as a catcher for two decades.

“See that?” he’d say, pointing to the gnarled and knobby index finger of his right hand. “Broke it twice in one game against the House of David team. We lost in extra innings.”

Dad always hoped I’d be a great baseball player and I might have done it except for two things. I couldn’t hit and I couldn’t field.

Oh,sure, I could pound the daylights out of a nice slow and straight pitch that split home plate down the middle, like those thrown by pigtailed Paula Chapman, a girl I fell in love with in the fourth grade. But then, invariably, I’d find myself facing a pitcher like evil David Bostator — the school’s resident bully and best curve-ball pitcher at Whittier Junior High School — and he’d toss a curve my way sending me two rows deep into the bleachers behind home plate.

Mom fully supported my love of libraries.

“I’m going to the library,” I’d say, heading out the door.

“That’s nice,” she’d reply, using her finger to mark her place in the latest issue of Smoldering Love Monthly Magazine.

Then she’d say, “And remember, don’t talk while you’re there. You aren’t supposed to talk at a library. Ever.”

Dad, on the other hand, never quite understood my love of books. Sometimes when I was getting ready to leave the house to do a little studying at the local library, he’d ask, “Where ya goin’ son? To the libary?” I tried for 18 years to get him to pronounce the word right, but, to my knowledge, he never did.

One of my most memorable library-related moments came when I was in the 9th grade and had a big English test looming over my head. It was a Saturday afternoon and I decided to go to the library to study.

“I have a big test coming up so I’m heading out to the library,” I said. Then I quickly added, “But I’d much rather be practicing playing baseball.”

Dad smiled and said, “Go for it.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“Get your glove,” he replied, rising from his chair. “Meet you at the park.”

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