Today I did something I haven’t done in years. I went into
the Puyallup Pubic library and checked out a book.
There is no lack of books in my house. Twenty of those, I’m embarrassed to admit,
are stacked up on my nightstand waiting to be read.
One of them is Seek My
Face by John Updike. I picked it up off a clearance shelf for $2 at a used
book store. It has a very specific purpose. I read it when I have insomnia. It
is a single 275-page conversation between an elderly artist, 78 year old Hope,
and the young journalist, Kathryn, who is interviewing her. Hope recounts her artist’s life in New York
spanning the 1940s until today and her three marriages through spoken replies,
her inner thoughts, and flashbacks.
Reasons for rejecting some of the other books gathering dust
on my nightstand are: It’s too action packed or suspenseful--may as well drink
a cup of coffee and then try to sleep. It’s too predictable. It’s got an agenda and I want to relax, not rally to a cause. It’s
just not something I’m currently interested in, but might be later.
Since I like Updike’s style, and somehow despite all the
English classes I took, never read any of his work in school, I decided I
should read one of his earlier novels. After all, he’d won the Pulitzer Prize
for fiction more than once.
I looked for Rabbit,
Run online, but then didn’t put it in my cart because I wanted to
physically flip through it to see if I wanted to buy it. I didn’t want to buy
it on my Kindle because they say that the light emitted by reading on a screen
keeps you awake.
Puyallup, used to have two bookstores: Waldenbooks and
Borders, but hasn’t had any bookstore since those two merged. That meant I’d
have to drive to Tacoma, Lakewood, or Federal Way, a minimum drive of 10 miles or
about a half an hour on Interstate 5 which is under major construction right
now.
Over lunch with my husband John downtown, I debated whether I
had time to drive to Lakewood. Afterwards I walked to my car and looked up to
see, shining like an oasis, the Puyallup Public Library right across the
street! Why not go in and borrow Rabbit,
Run there?
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| Puyallup Public Library in Pioneer Park, Puyallup, WA |
Why wasn’t the Puyallup Public Library, or the South Hill Branch
of Pierce County Library on my radar screen of options? I have library cards to
both of them. One of the first things I did when we moved to Puyallup, as in
every place I’ve ever called home, was to get a library card. There was a time
when I borrowed books, music, and movies from those libraries almost weekly. Both are less than 15 minutes from my house.
The Pierce County Library up on South Hill is where I took
our kids to story time when they were little. It’s where I drop off our ballots
for elections and also where I donate already read books. For years, my gym was
next door so I was always popping in after a workout.
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| South Hill Branch of Pierce County Library |
The downtown Puyallup Public Library had one of the most
extensive music collections I’d ever seen. It was housed in a one-story 1960s
building. My kids were also very familiar with this library, especially when we
moved into the city limits. It was a valuable resource for many school
reports before the internet became indispensable.
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| Puyallup Public Library of the 1960s. |
When both libraries decided to
honor each others’ library cards, I felt like I’d won the lottery with access
to more than a million books!
In 2002 the mid-century library building downtown was
replaced with a beautiful new 39,500 square foot library just steps away from
the old site.
We knew one of the architects who designed it with huge windows
on the second story to take in the views, a copper roof, and a feeling of grandeur.
We bought a brick with our family’s name on it to help
raise money. It’s embedded in the sidewalk out front near the play area.
There are art displays surrounding the outside of the
building. The kids and I had to laugh one day passing by the sculpture called
“Neck Fragment” near the side doors of the library. Someone had carefully
placed a lit cigarette between the lips of the bronze sculpture which looked like it was puffing away.
I was so proud of our library. It’s the centerpiece of
Puyallup. On summer weekends the farmer’s market is held in Pioneer Park out
front and in the Pavilion where the old library used to be. On Tuesdays and
Thursdays during the summer you can bring a lawn chair or blanket and enjoy free concerts there too.
In the library conference room, I had met authors including
Garth Stein who wrote The Art of Racing
in the Rain. I admired the quilts that periodically hung from the bridge
above the grand entrance and always stopped to see what was featured in the
display cabinets in the hallway leading to the parking lot.
Why did I stop going to the library? Was online book buying technology
to blame? Was owning a Kindle? No, I’m old school. I still prefer the heft of a
real, paper book in my hands. Was cable/online access to movies the culprit? It
was none of the above.
What I didn’t enjoy about this gorgeous library with a copper
lined sweeping staircase and a bridge spanning the open foyer, was walking in
and getting hit in the face with the smell of human urine. I didn’t like edging
past homeless people sleeping in front of the welcoming fireplace. I didn’t
feel safe back in the stacks where the quilting books were or going into the
restroom. For that matter, I didn’t feel safe right out front in the lobby where
you checked out books.
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| Ezra Meeker, Puyallup's founder. His wife Eliza started the first library in Puyallup, prior to the city's platting in 1877. |
I wondered why the people of Puyallup passed a bond to
create such a spectacular castle-like building filled with knowledge, history,
and art, only to let it be turned into a homeless shelter. I quit going. I
wasn’t the only one. In one year, there was a decline of 2000 visitors to the
library.
In the meantime, things declined further. In 2015 one of the
librarians was physically assaulted by a transient. People complained to the
library and the city council. They demanded solutions. (http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article25914067.html)
Although that was years ago, I was still a little on edge
when I entered the library today. First of all, there was no smell. That was a
good sign.
The tall shelves that used to hold the video section near the
children’s area were gone. It opened up the children’s section making it more
visible and therefore safer for the kids. A scaled down video section was
upstairs.
I had no problem finding the Updike book in the fiction section upstairs. In fact, I found
an edition that has his first three books all in one. Nobody was sitting (or
sleeping) in the chairs by the fireplace which was turned off.
There were fewer
magazines in the periodical section. There were also fewer quilting books which
had been moved to a more visible area. (At the Pierce County library, so many
quilt books had pages torn out, or were stolen that many years ago they started
holding those books in the back and you had to request them.)
On the men’s restroom door was a sign stating that the door
had to be left open at all times. Students were quietly studying in the teen
section and at computers. A library assistant shelving books was happy to direct
me to the audio books. The librarians at the circulation desk were bustling. A
security guard walked through the rows of shelved books. I did not see a single
homeless person behaving badly.
When I went back downstairs to check out, I realized I
didn’t have my library card. I wouldn’t be able to use one of the self-serve
kiosks. I asked the librarian if she could look up my account. She did not have
a problem finding it. It was inactive. (No surprise there.) She double checked
my address and renewed my card asking if I needed her to re-issue it. I assured
her that I hadn’t lost it. I knew exactly where it was.
When I got home, I pulled my library card out of a desk
drawer and slipped it back into my wallet.
I also stuck a magnet on my
refrigerator with the library hours on it. I plan on visiting the library, my
old friend, again. Now for a cup of tea, and turning to the first page of Rabbit, Run.
Laura Keolanui Stark is looking forward to some summer
reading. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.
