The town where I grew up was so small and safe that from a very early age children were allowed wander by themselves from one end to the other. Free to explore ,I would go to the lumberyard in search of scraps for basement carpentry projects, to the telephone company to watch the operators at work and to the officesupply store where ,in the summer before second grade ,I had my eye on a fake alligator book bag .Green with red trim, it was so fine it made me ache. But I seemed tdropped into the post office to study the “Most Wanted ” posters. If I seized one of these wicked men, I would collect a reward from the FBI .
That summer , most of my friends had learned to ride bicycles , an art that still escaped from me . While they pedaled around town together ,I spent a lot of time on my own .On hot , quiet afternoon , as I walked along the main street , I stopped in front of a store I had never noticed before . Through the windows I saw people sitting in Knotty-pine armchairs with big cushions . Everyone was reading . I supposed they were waiting to be waited on , like diners in a restaurant . I went inside to look around . I had never seen so many books---shelf after shelf rising higher than I could reach . Were there hundreds? Thousands?
A lady at a desk asked me if I would like some help . When I asked what kind of store this was , she said it wasn't a store , it was a library . Nothing was for sale , but everthing could be borrowed . All I needed was a library card . Would I like one?
Would I ? Who wouldn't .
One a small orang card she inscribed my name and a number , 1221 . She wrote with a fountain pen , and in the eternity it took for the ink to dry , my feelings zigzagged beween amazement and fear . The very idea of a library seemed too wonderful to be ture ----like free candy . There must be a hitch . Maybe you would borrow books without money but had to pay when you brought them back . I didn't dare ask .
The librarian pointed out the children's section . I beowsed for less time than it had taken the ink on the card to dry , checked out a book , and left before she could change her mind about granting me this astonishing privilege .
There were more astonishments to come . I discovered that children could borrow books from the adult section . Imagine ! The librarian showed me how to find my way around: fiction was arranged aiphabetically by author , nonfiction by the Dewey Decimal System . Years later , when I discovered the regular decimal system , it seemed very boring compared with the magic of Mr.Dewey , who had invested every number with meaning .
In the first weeks after discovering the library ,I went twice a day , always checking out a single book until the librarian mentiond that a person could borrow several at once . Think of it !
At home I began to talk about how handy it would be to have a book bag , and by the end of the summer my parents yielded . There was another conquest too----- the bicycle . It happened shortly after I figyred out how easily a pile of books could be carried in the basket .
Over the next few yearsI read voraciously and indiscriminately: biographies of everyone from Amelia Earhart to Herbert Hoover ,history and things of little significance .i also read, over and over, certain fairy tales. In “the ugly ducking “ was the comforting hope that someday I , too , might be graceful as a swan . “ The Emperor's New Clothes” confirmed my hunch that adults were not all-knowing and all-poweful , despite what some of them said .
The little orange card was my passport to the universe . With it I was introduced to uncountable people and ideas I could not otherwise have known in my little town . Louis Armstrong was the first black I never met ,in a biograhy that also made me aware of the horrible fact of prejudice .There was no major art museum for 200 miles in any direction , so until I went to college , the only paintings I saw were in the library's art books . Through the wonder of the inner—library loan , I was furnished with stacks of books on whatever sank a hook into my curiosity .
I never stopped going to libraries . Every time I opened one of the hesvy doors of my college .library , I was filled with awe . This was a sacred place . Here under one roof were millions of books--- an infinity of wisdom and beauty .
I now travel with several passports----community library cards , permission to use rara-book collections ,and privileges at one of the largest university libraries in the world . The idea that libraries exist still fills me with wonder , and I seize chance to spread this joy .
If , as often happens , children stop to watch while I'm using a library microfilm reader , I ask their birthdays and fish out the appropriate reels of the New York Times . Once they start reading a birthday issue , they don't want to stop . I tell them about Dewey and his decimals . I encourage them to load up their book bags . And I hope –oh , how I hope –that their first passports carry them to as many worlds as mine did.
