By C.S. Beaty
As Told By C.S. Beaty
As Told By Uncle Bob: Yelling at the Library
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As Told By Uncle Bob: Yelling at the Library

Cracking the code on overdue books

By Bob Copperstone

The Wahoo Public Library in 1949 is an intimidating place, housed in an upper floor of the grim, 1891-vintage City Hall.

I’m Bobby, a skinny 10-year-old town kid standing in front of the building just as the sun is going down. It is a gloomy and cold early-winter evening. Spooky shadows are beginning to fall, made even more ghostly by the low-wattage streetlights which were beginning to switch on, offering only a sickly illumination.

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I clutch a bundle of borrowed books which will become overdue if I don’t get them to the librarian this very night. I think I remember that the library is open some evenings. I’m counting on this being one of those nights.

During the day, the librarian, Miss Mona Steen, rules her musty upstairs domain within that dour building. The maiden daughter of a prominent local family, she has been the only librarian I and a lot of other people in Wahoo have ever known.

Miss Steen employs an effective librarian’s “Shss!” (more of a hiss) and an icy glare that can instantly freeze a chatty child into silence. She wields a mean date stamp, too, its sharp thump creating the room’s only acceptable noise audible over the patrons’ stifled whispers.

The books I carry tonight have been date-due stamped by Miss Steen’s own hand. I will have to face her displeasure if I am unable to lay them at her feet tonight. There is no outside book drop.

Miss Steen officiates from her desk atop a raised platform. She has a gimlet stare that can pierce a kid’s very soul. The late fine will probably be only a few pennies per day, but I face having to confront the lion in her den.

I stand on the sidewalk on the northeast corner of Broadway at Sixth Street, looking up at the library stairs door on the gloomy northeast corner. A single gooseneck light fixture, hooded by a white porcelain steel shade, cranes its neck downward to shine feebly on the thick wooden door and its heavy brass latch and key lock.

I desperately rattle the locked door. It doesn’t give an inch. I panic. I can barely see a dim light through cracks in the door, and I believe I hear faint voices from within. There might be hope after all. I peer more closely through the dim light at the lock and see a word on the heavy brass plate: “Y-A-L-E”. I turn that word over and over in my fifth-grade mind.

Don’t ask me why, but I settle on pronouncing it phonetically as “Y-E-L-L.”

That’s it! I’m saved! I’m supposed to YELL for people to let me in!

In a desperation born of panic, I proceed to yell as loud as can: “Hey! Hey! HELLO!” But no one answers.

I continue to shout as Orville Zauss rides by on his bicycle.

Orville is a slow, intellectually challenged young man, sheltered since birth by his loving mother, who wouldn’t let anyone take her son away for special schooling. He grew into young manhood as her gentle, simple child.

Orville rides his Schwinn bike which sports an actual police-car’s whip antennae over the rear fender, along with his own version of a police radio -- a small, plain wooden block with an electric wire dangling loose from the handlebars. I’ve often seen him mumbling “police broadcasts” into it, and seemingly receiving and broadcasting police orders. I could never quite catch the exact words.

Orville hangs out a great deal at the police station and fire hall located on the City Hall’s street level. Everyone in town knows Orville is odd, different and quirky, but over the years they have found him to be harmless and even colorful. Kids, being kids, often tease him. But Orville, with his gentle manner, doesn’t respond, and bullies soon lose interest.

Orville pulls up to the door. “Hi, Bawby,” he calls out in his thick, slow way. “What’cha doin’?” He always wants to help people; he thrives on their attention and loves their thanks.

I explain that instructions on the door require me to yell in order to get into the library. Orville accepts this as true logic. He dismounts, leans heavily against my shoulder, and together we start yelling into the keyhole.

Naturally, nobody appears. My voice is getting raspy and thin. At last, the futility of the situation overtakes me and we shrink away from the door.

Orville, having arrived late in the shouting, is willing to keep up the crusade, but he climbs back on his bike. “Bye, Bawbie,” he calls, riding off to continue his imaginary police and firefighter duties.

I slink away into the shadows and head for home, still clutching the books. How ridiculous this must have looked, right there downtown in the open!

Thank goodness, nobody had walked by to ask us what in the world did we think we were doing? But I can only guess how many people driving past wondered why Hank and Irma’s kid and the village character are shouting into the closed library door on this bleak night.

City of Wahoo - Library main page

* * *

As I remember it now, the next day I humbled myself before my inquisitor and returned the books.

It actually wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Miss Steen frowned and stared me down, of course. But then, in a businesslike manner and through thin, pursed lips, she decreed the amount of my fine.

I forked over the coins, turned, ran down the stairs and burst out onto the sidewalk, free at last of guilt and debt, and leaving Miss Steen to her tight little literary world and her brand of library justice.

Today I grin to realize that it would have saved Orville and me a lot of embarrassing yelling if only the City Hall builders had, instead of a Yale brand, installed a Schlage lock, those many years ago.

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