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).
