Saturday, we checked in on the library’s book sale. Back in the old days, even when I worked there just 8 years ago, they kept books in the basement. This is very bad for books: dampness, mold, bugs etc. But this was before they added the new wing and they really had nowhere else to store them. The good part was they were children’s books and so we, as kids, could spend hours down there talking, laughing, reading, picking out books. We would ride our bikes into town in the summer and hang out at the library and then on the way home, stop at the little old grocery on the edge of town. This place has since been torn down which is a shame because it was great: a completely old-fashioned, small-town sort of place in one of those old buildings with the tall front that you just don’t see anymore. I don’t remember it selling anything but beer and candy. We didn’t go for the beer, of course, but often stood for quite a long time agonizing over what candy to buy: taffy, gum, candy cigarettes…you know, the good stuff.
Anyway, it was the smell in the basement of that library that I wanted to focus on. We spent so much time down there (and then again when I worked there) that that smell became something we were used to. I’m sure it was the smell of damp carpet and old moldy books. Cool, wet concrete and bricks. But we didn’t realize that then, of course, and we wouldn’t have cared anyway. So Saturday as I made my way through the maze of rooms to the back room where the sale books lined the shelves, I became aware of that smell. And even as Sophie and Will whined to go back upstairs, I stood there breathing in the familiar scent from childhood. There was only a whiff of it; the back door was open and a teenaged boy was moving boxes in and out and of course, books are no longer stored down there for great lengths of time, literally soaking up moisture off the bottom row of shelves, but that smell lingers nevertheless. It’s not a bad smell to me. In fact, it’s probably good that I only got that little whiff or I might have stood there too long, breathing it in as other patrons milled around me and Sophie and Will made their own ways upstairs.
It made me want to spend all morning down there, searching for the perfect book. It made me want to get on my bike and ride back out of town (stopping for some taffy on the way) and pedal as fast as I could down our country road to beat my sisters home and start reading…