Library

I’m in trouble with the local branch of the Houston library. They say I have a book that’s over due. I know I returned it ahead of the due date and I’ve told them that, but their computer keeps notifying me to return the book. I continue checking books out and each time I return them I hand them to one of the librarians IN PERSON, but they are so busy they don’t remember. I’ve searched the apartment for the missing book, but it’s not here. I asked my son to help me look for it but he couldn’t find it either.

Once last year, I did mislay a book I had purchased at a thrift shop, and spent days searching for it. I was quite embarrassed when my son found it on my bedside table, almost in plain sight. It was lying under a flower catalog. Thinking it was a pile of catalogs, I failed to turn over the top one.

The missing book had been put on reserve for me, and I had waited several months before it was available. After taking it home, it wasn’t interesting enough to keep very long, and I returned it along with other books, none of them over due.

I do not know why I’m so greedy about books. From the time I learned to read and was old enough to go to the library by myself, libraries have been a source of pleasure for me. My sister Adeline and I believed the library was our second home. We spent hours browsing picture and story books. It was easy to stop at the library on the way home from school and we both developed a love of libraries that lasted thru the years. Adeline even became a volunteer to help stack returned books when her children were all grown and away from home. I’ve mentioned in past posts that Adeline and I, either jointly or separately, were in constant debt to the library when we were in the third and fourth grades. By the time we had reached the higher grades we had learned to return books on time, and no longer had to spend our summers finding jobs to pay off the fines built up during the winter months.

Even though I’m diligent about returning library books on time, I once deliberately ignored the due date of a book many years ago. All the used text books for a six weeks college class in Art History had been sold and my budget didn’t allow the purchase of a new text. I telephoned the downtown Los Angeles Public Library and was told they had several copies. I checked one out as quickly as I could, knowing full well I would keep it past due. I had mentally weighed the exorbitant cost of the text against the daily fine and chose the fine. If I remember right, the fine came to a little over $4 and the cost of the book was nearer $30.

My son has been in phone contact with the library from whence the missing book came. There is still hope that it will be found, but it might take as long as 5 weeks to track it thru the library system. If it’s not found, I will probably be asked to buy one to replace it.