Lost in the Library Stacks

A search for enlightenment

I made a trek to the Philadelphia library every morning during the summer of my youth. I hiked over choppy sidewalks in my leather sandals, hardcovers under my arms, and crossed the asphalt-lined streets with skid marks from cars. Noisy children played in the schoolyards, and older men with gout sat on benches with bus passes around their necks. At the same time, a line of customers formed at the Famous Delicatessen, holding tightly to their numbers, impatiently waiting for their turns.

The old brick library stood elegantly on the street corner of Oakland Street with the large white letters Northeast Regional. I entered its rotating glass door and saw strangers checking in and out books and an excited little boy filling out an application for his first lending card.

Almost like a cat burglar, I climbed the stairs to the Fiction Department. I knew the place, like the back of my hand, the texture of the worn carpet, the cut of the railing, and the slow leak from the ceiling on rainy days. I knew the calm, distant expression of the librarian who sat at her reference desk. I treated her like a goddess, so she would help me locate hard-to-find books. Like clockwork, the lumbering security guard made his rounds on each floor with a folded Philadelphia Daily News stuck awkwardly in his back pocket.

The red arrows pointed me to the 800s. I trusted my instincts, turning down each aisle, searching for quirky, offbeat novels that would transport me to another dimension, perhaps leading me to a place of knowing. Words floating around my head of the titles I had read before. Images of starving children in concentration camps, a man who woke up one morning as a cockroach, and a French prisoner writing his memoir.

I rarely spoke in the library unless to a librarian asking for help. I relished being a loner amid stacks of well-written words, alone in my inquisitive mind, silently receiving ideas from the masters and their enchanting yarns.

I searched for answers because I was too young to have an insight other than what I had read. The library was my cathedral, my Quasimodo church. I worshipped each day in the pew. The librarian was my pastor, mentor, and guru. She pointed to the truth while slipping me handwritten notes and book titles of interest.

Lost in the stacks, I could barely breathe, with my brain full of foolish ideas and…

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