Highway hypnosis part 3

I think when I last posted we had been welcomed from the pouring rain after driving 14 hours, into the warm and lovely Memphis home of Debbie and Bill, Matt's parents. We awoke the next morning to the smell of fresh baked blueberry muffins. After a nice morning visit with them we went to McAllisters deli for lunch and sweet tea (well some of them had sweet tea, not me!) Got the vehicles all gassed and went to the Walmart parking lot for a tearful goodby to the sailors who would stick around Memphis for another day or two then head back to the base in Norfolk. Under dreary grey sky and drizzle rain the Gann convoy headed west, next stop Aunt Loretta and Uncle Greg in Searcy Arkansas. After the previous day of grueling road weariness it would be nice to take just a short hop across the river and head off onto some very boonie like roads to arrive at L and G's in just a few hours. Welcomed with open arms just before dinner time to the girl's Aunt Loretta and Uncle Greg, transplanted from California awhile back, it was family re-union time! We ate pizza til we couldn't get down another bite and then Uncle Greg and I watched t.v. in the other room while Aunt Loretta got her Gannimal fix. It was the sweetest sound while I drifted off to sleep to hear chatter and laughter from the kitchen well into the night with the girls catching their aunt up with all of their stories from the past few years. Out eyes opened the next day to a beautiful blue Arkansas sky. Had a wonderful treat of heading to the local Searcy IHOP for brunch, bought some snacks and things for the road and hit the highway. It was going to be a long day hoping to make it all the way across Oklahoma but I didn't care. Each mile was getting us closer to home. To be continued...

A writing submission

Here's my post for the week. Yes I know I am keeping you on pins and needles for the rest of my riveting travelog of helping be part of the Gann Girls Convoy helping Tiff move back from Virginia. Never fear, that is to come soon. But I realized I had a deadline for the submission to a local publication that I love. So here's my story of "When I Was a Child, I Read...

Library Time

Mona Mechling

 

When I was a child, I read everything I could find, the magazines at the laundromat while I waited for my mom to do our family washing for the week, the street signs while my sister and I would walk to and from school, the posters at the doctor’s office where I had to get a shot that would help me get over my chronic bronchitis. Well you get the picture.

 

Pretty soon though at around the ripe old age of ten I found a place to go that was amazing, my town library. The library that I remember best was in Santa Rosa where we lived right near downtown. It was tall and built of stone and was only a few blocks from our apartment complex.

 

When the weekends would come along my sister and I would beg our mom to let us go to the library by ourselves and unless it was raining she would usually say yes. It was the mid 1960’s and parents could let their kids run off for hours without a worry. And being the bookworm that I was, it would be easy to be lost in a fictional world at the library until closing time.

 

My favorite spot to spend time at the library was downstairs where there was a basement full of Charlie Brown and the gang comic books. Some might say that’s not really reading because it was more illustrations but I think I got a lot out of spending hours reading those comics over and over again. Sometimes I would even softly read them aloud to my little sister who wasn’t as good of a reader as I was. I really felt like I was getting away with something while I whisper read. There were signs all over saying “Quiet” and the librarian would have shushed me if she had heard.

 

Our family moved a few months after my discovery of the town library and although I would continue to search out and find libraries in all the towns we would move to, the old library where I could spend so many joyful hours is the one I always think of fondly. Without it I may never have had a chance to light that first spark of my love of reading and writing.