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.