Category Archives: The Past

I was in an antique store this week and saw a section of an old library card index system. It was worn oak with brass knobs which had place holders to insert the indexing for each drawer. The smell from the opened drawer was a mix of deteriorating wood and musty paper. I remember going to the library as a kid and pulling a step stool up to look things up in the “A” drawer on top. The cross-referencing of title, subject, and author to another drawer always intrigued me. For some reason, I always had to test that the cross-referenced card would be there when I looked but it was always there. Jack London, The Call of the Wild, action adventure-fiction. Each drawer I went to referenced another drawer as promised.

I remembered the card file “gatekeeper.” She seemed to me to be ancient with her gray hair and black military glasses. She left a chemical and lotion scent as she walked away like a laced formaldehyde trail. Always in earshot of the card files, as you inched out a drawer you heard, “Do you need help?” It always scared the bejesus out of me like a ghost in the closet. I knew she would be there but she always caught me off guard.  I thanked her and assured her (with a ten year old’s command of language) that I could find what I was looking for and I  received a stern warning  not to remove the cards from the file. I found it funny that I saw her daily removing cards from that file and pulling books from shelves. Later I found out that she pulled the cards and books when they were leaving the floor to be discarded. I guessed there was a sort of a book cemetery in that basement with a  beat up old card file holding all those bent and beat up cards until their time was really up.  The books were lined on unpainted shelves in quietly darkened rooms.Were the words in those books no good any more? Was the paper in them to weak to be turned any longer?

Papered cards and files no longer set in rows in the library alcove. Now, you enter the library and go to computers and tap in the author’s name, subject or title, and the screen fills with dozens or hundreds of options to choose from. It lists books available and one’s that are not. The screen shows all the same information as the card files did and more. The type is clear and legibly static on the page with a picture of the book you want. I miss the surprise of not knowing whether the book had an engraved gold leaf cover or a sewn binding on a shelf. The old card files sometimes had fingerprints, smudge marks, and writing that was not always legible. The print was different on some cards, and the pens used were thick or thin, black ink or number two pencil lead. The writing sometimes shaky and lazy or uniform and crisp. These subtle differences in each catalog card reminded me of all the hours put in by men and women who respected books. In one way or another their efforts and focus on organizing the work of so many authors made my trip to the library a treasure hunt. In a split second of looking at vintage furniture, with the swift opening of a cracked oak drawer, after inhaling a musty odor,  I recalled a decade of happy times spent in the book stacks at the local library.