When I was a kid... once a week, the Book Mobile would come to our neighborhood. There was a wooded place where the Church is now and at the entrance to the woods was a big huge boulder. Around the boulder, to the left and right, were smaller ones. Huge trees covered the site with Summertime limbs of green that reached out only a few weeks before shading afternoons of Kool-Aid and Monopoly.
In the Fall the trees would release their colors and they would dam up all around the boulders. It would be an unreal sight for the kids to be up to their necks in a sea of leaves. The Book Mobile would pull up around 4PM and we'd go through it to get story books and then gather outside in the leaves to hear the Librarian read to us. It was actually almost warm in the depths of the fragrant fallen... our backs against the stone.
The Librarian would then come out, down two steps and read above us perched on golden lit stone with little heads popping out from the ground... our hands beneath crumbling leaves all around. Blustery wind but only above her... that huge stone shield... all was quiet and only her words could be heard from cover to cover. It was us, The Librarian,The Green Book Mobile, it's generator and it's lights... and the sunset at 5.
A week later, we all came back and like every year... the leaves were gone.
Last week... while working, I installed a replacement air conditioning blower on top of a library... windy and cold.... the heat came up through the air handler on the roof.... warm from below, I could smell the library. I thought of the Book Mobile... cold and warm.... the smell of it's books, "The Blustery Day", the leaves, the Librarian and the sound of her words.
