Bookmobile

This morning on the way back from my PT appointment I saw something I haven't seen in awhile:  a Bookmobile!  (I didn't get a photo of it -- I was not quick enough -- but if you click the link in the previous sentence, you will see what it looks like.)  It brought back such memories... when I was a little girl, we would sometimes get books from the bookmobile in Minneapolis.  At least, I remember being in one when I was very little. 

Of course I have loved libraries for as long as I can remember, which is probably why I remember the bookmobile.  I can remember vividly many of the libraries I have visited in my life, which is saying a lot: my memory isn't all that great.  One of the first public libraries I ever went to was the Children's Library, which I think was in Edina, Minnesota, or perhaps in Minneapolis quite near to Edina.  The librarians were all very nice to us kids, and there were little tables and chairs, and we could sit and look at the books for a long time.  I remember this place as a free-standing children's library, but perhaps it was just the children's section of a branch library.  In any case, it was wonderful. 

Later on I went to libraries in other places I lived and many of the places I have visited.  The downtown branch of the Atlanta Public Library, which I visited often as a teenager in the late 60's, was a particularly memorable place.  The librarians there were very strict about silence.  Also, there was a certain place on the mezzanine, a pass-through from one section of the library to another (all lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, of course) where the floor was squishy, as though it were made of that stuff that now often forms the surface under a jungle gym or the swings in a public park.  It looked like solid floor, but was actually probably rotting out underneath.  I always found that place and walked across it when I went to the downtown library.  More often I would visit the Ida Williams branch in Buckhead, which had its own particular charm.  It was our library, the one my family most often went to and where they always knew us.  It is not there anymore -- it's been replaced by a newer building.  But it still brings back fond memories, as I am sure the new building will bring to its visitors many years hence.