Cummins Memorial Library
Cheryl Unruh
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
IT WAS LIKE entering a house of worship.
Silence and reverence were expected.
What was not expected in that house of hush was a slap-slap, slap-slap, louder than the sound of someone snapping gum.
That noise came from the feet of a 7-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy, their hair wet with chlorine from the city pool, their flip-flops echoing in the staircase.
My brother and I got “the mom look” which, thankfully, saved us from “the librarian shush.”
That was in the 1915 Cummins Memorial Library in Larned. Across from the Pawnee County Courthouse, the library kept company with the City Auditorium next door. Our mother told us that she had gone to high school dances in that auditorium. This was her town, her library.
Cummins Memorial Library was the first library love of my life. Mom took us every week. On trips to Larned for groceries or errands or swimming, it was standard practice to stop and exchange books.
Due to a frantic word addiction, I read everything: biographies, cereal boxes, encyclopedias. I consumed newspapers, magazines, comic books. I seldom ate dinner without a book on my lap. In the bathtub, I’d read shampoo bottles.
When I was young, I’d dash into the children’s room in the library’s basement, into a wooden cave of child-sized bookshelves. After making my selections, I signed my name on the check-out cards and watched the librarian stamp the due date on the books.
I read every mystery they had, read some more than once and hoped that the librarian wouldn’t notice that I was checking out the same books over and over.
I scooped up my reading stash for the week and climbed the stairs. At the top of the steps, at the massive adult circulation desk sat a librarian, the queen of whispers. Behind her, in a glassed-in room were shelves of novels.
One side of the building held a reference room with large reading tables and the other side had a room with non-fiction. That was usually where I found Mom.
In 1972 when I was 13, my beloved old library in Larned was torn down. It was replaced the following year by the Jordaan Memorial Library.
On a recent trip through Larned, I photographed the Jordaan Library. It’s a one-story stone structure that stands where the other one stood.
I think I’ve only been in that “new” library a couple times. Despite, or maybe because of my connection with the Cummins Library, I never bonded with the new place.
During the year that it took to build the new building, I switched my library allegiance from Larned to the (also new) library in Great Bend.
Wherever you’re from, you probably have your own cozy-library memories. We’ve all thumbed our way through card catalogs, felt elated when we’ve pulled that sought-after book from the shelf, and spent time in the library silence, hearing little more than the hum of fluorescent lighting.
Emporia’s present library was opened in 1979. If you’ve been in Lyon County for more than 30 years, you may recall checking out books from the 1904 Carnegie Library (which now serves as the Lyon County Historical Museum.) In that building, the children’s section was in the basement and the stacks upstairs had a glass floor.
Even some of the tiniest Kansas communities have a library. There may be little else in town other than a post office, a senior center and a tavern, but likely as not, you’ll find a downtown building where residents can borrow books.
Libraries have always been there for us, lending books, providing information, and conspiring to create a smarter community.
My momma raised a library rat and I do my part to keep the Emporia Public Library in business. Thomas Jefferson is credited with the quote, but I think many of us can profess it: “I cannot live without books.”
Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.
bharz (anonymous) says...
Cheryl, this is another beautiful column. I am amazed that people can rant and rave in such an ugly and negative way over a smoking ban or public figures' salaries, and have nothing to say regarding such eloquent prose.
February 10, 2009 at 3:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
fsaffer (anonymous) says...
I wonder how many Emporia residents realize what a treasure the City has in Cheryl Unruh. If she isn't, she should be teaching prose at ESU.
February 10, 2009 at 4:36 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )