“Escape to the Bookmobile” by Glenys Smith Elliott

As a child, I loved going to the bookmobile on Wednesday evenings and looked forward to it all week. The bookmobile provided an escape from the tense reality of my home to a make-believe world full of possibilities and alternate realities. Each new book gave my head an interesting place to return to over and over again.

Dinner was usually over by 6 pm, and at once, I started to plot my escape from arguing, taunting and drinking. Slowly, I removed myself from the other eyes at home, hoping to get away unnoticed. With any luck, the nightly fight over dinner would end with the meal as my parents served themselves another drink in the living room while my younger sister and brother screamed and chasing each other around.

If it had been a rare quiet dinner, a sliver of peace ushered me away.

I could barely keep still waiting for 6:45 when the bookmobile arrived. My family lived in the seventh house along Pharmacy Avenue, south of Shepherd. Gazing up the street from my parent's bedroom window, my heart raced, watching for the back of the bookmobile as it reversed up the paved space between Shoppers Drug Mart and Wishing Wells Woods.

Even on the coldest evenings, I watched the clock, eager to put on my coat, hat and boots and head out. Then with the door silently closed and my destination in clear view, I blasted up the street to the bookmobile.

There was always a lineup to get into the bookmobile, rain or shine or snow. Parents chatted, teenagers kept their heads bent toward each other, whispering, and children circled around, skipping and running. My first move always was to scan the area, hoping no school bullies were hanging around the area, ready to swear and name-call without provocation. Adult eyes did not see everything.

Three steps led up onto the bus with a handrail for balance. Only a few people could fit in the small space at one time. Once you reached the top step, a narrow hallway ran down the centre of the bus. Both sides were flanked floor to ceiling with bookshelves. The vast number of books the bookmobile could hold fascinated. Were there any books left at the library?

The first whiff of inked words on paper, magically held together between a front and back cover, soothed me. That smell trumped the scent of flora and fauna in the summer and the quiet peace of snowfall in winter. My shoulders relaxed, my gaze became less furtive, and my steps slowed.

I pretended to be interested in all the books while patiently waiting in the queue. Secretly, my heart was in the fiction section. I scoured the shelves, searching for anything about outer space; aliens, travel to the moon, and spaceships were the shiny objects in my sights.

But science fiction wasn’t all that interested me. Books that followed me into adulthood , that never parted from my shelves and that I eventually read to my children, included The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Charlotte’s Web, and Nancy Drew Mystery Books.

The bookmobile was always crowded; you felt the breath on your neck from the person behind you. You might even know what they had for dinner, especially cabbage rolls. In winter, bulky coats meant even fewer people fit inside. Salt accumulated on the rubber floor mat and was gritty underfoot. The librarian usually voiced a warning to be careful not to tramp on the person’s foot ahead of you in line.

Feeling self-conscious in front of all the people in the bookmobile and terrified of drawing attention to myself, my fingers fidgeted and my feet shuffled forward and back while waiting my turn. How quickly could I find my allotment of books and get out?

With last week’s choices clutched closely to my chest, I scoured the shelves in search of the perfect read. A rainbow of book spines, listing titles and authors, swirled before my eyes. The tingle in my stomach would begin as soon as I spotted a book that looked good.

Plucking it off the shelf. I flipped from the front to the back cover and quickly read the inside jacket to confirm my selection. Instantaneously, I knew if I was going to take the book home or return it to the shelf. When I reached to return a book, I felt the impatient eyes of all the people waiting behind me.

My best friend Alison and her family were always one of the first people in the lineup. She lived behind us on a side street, with their backyard adjacent to our side neighbour's backyard. They were a family of five, similar to mine, with two older girls and a younger boy.

Alison mirrored my eldest sibling's position in her family and was my direct opposite in appearance. She was tall and gangly with long, straight, blond, and highly sought-after hair. We became best friends when my young brother didn’t come home from school one evening. Knowing she had a similar-aged brother, I summoned up my courage and knocked on her door and asked if she had seen my brother.

Alison offered to help search, and we bonded, wandering around the neighbourhood for hours in the scary dark, searching for my brother long after he had been found.

When I visited Alison’s house, the living room always had at least three family members with their noses tucked tightly into a book. The room was set up with a terracotta-coloured couch, and across from it, on either side of the fireplace, were two matching wingback chairs that created enough seating for five people to read. Bright lamps sat beside each spot. Books littered the tables, turned upside down to preserve the current page.

Their television was nowhere to be seen. I later discovered it deep in the basement with the homemade wine, where it was rarely watched.

All the time spent reading books from the bookmobile served Alison well. Later in high school, she corrected the teacher’s comments on her essays, resulting in a silent agreement between the two in which she didn’t attend classes, submitted all assignments on time, and, in exchange, got an A+. All her visits to the bookmobile definitely paid off.

I did not meet the standards to arrange the same deal with my English teacher, but I was happy to receive Alison’s proofreading expertise.

Our interests eventually shifted from the bookmobile to sneaking Alison’s father’s revered red Fiat Spyder convertible from the driveway. Late in the evening, one of us got in the driver's seat, lifted the handbrake, and put the car in neutral. The other pushed, and slowly, we inched silently down the driveway. With jerks and grinding noises, we both learned how to drive the gear shift – and without getting caught.

With the fervour of teenage imaginations, we created our own fantastic stories about what her father had gotten up to in that Fiat – perhaps a good start toward a book I might myself write one day and find on the shelf of a bookmobile.

***

Glenys Smith Elliott is a retired mental health and addiction educator who now enjoys sharing her time with family and friends, is obsessed with fitness but never fit, and has a newly found curiosity about writing. She is inspired by how people endure hardship and make changes in their lives.

She has lived in Auckland, New Zealand, Vancouver, and Toronto while raising her family. She looks forward to extended travel to exotic places in retirement.

Her earliest memories of writing are poems about her own childhood emotions in early grade school, and she wishes she could find some of them now.

Through Genealogy, Glenys has explored her family’s rich history, reaching back to World War II and plans on writing a memoir to honour some of these brave stories.

See Brian Henry's upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.

For more essays and other pieces about books or about reading, writing, and the writing life, see here (and scroll down).