Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

I like libraries. In 1980, I hated libraries. I walked past half a dozen libraries in 1,100 miles. Four stay in my mind.

I guess I never saw the library in Collinsville, Alabama. It hadn’t yet officially opened. It is in my mind as the town was having a “quilt walk” to raise money to buy books for it. They had wanted a library for years, but, well you know how things sort of get in the way. A “quilt walk” was basically a tour of some of the older and larger homes in this little town. I didn’t take the walk (I was walking enough each day), but I bought a fried pie and a coke to help support the cause.

The next library was the little one in Vance, Alabama. I walked past it early on a Saturday morning, so it wasn’t open. It was a building maybe 10 by 10 feet in size. Tiny, but a public library nonetheless. One of the noteworthy things was its location – in Vance. You see, Vance is the home of a large Mercedes Benz factory. Vance sits on Route 11, and the factory sits between Vance and Interstate 59. It seems to me that Mercedes would have built a library for Vance.

Early in the walk on the first big day that my wife and I walked together was the Handley Library in Winchester, Virginia. Handley is a large library with a dome on it. We walked through the library including the stair case that spirals around the open area under the dome. What puzzles me is how a small town in the middle of no where could build and maintain such a large library. Winchester, Virginia is not a small town any more. It is the western reach of the Washington, D.C. area now, but when the library was constructed, well Winchester was tiny and might as well have been in Iowa.

Finally, is the Linn-Henley Research Library in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. This was built in 1927 as the main library for Birmingham. Beautiful inside and out. This, and the Handley, are how libraries are supposed to appear. Books everywhere on polished wooden shelves. Tables with small lamps, chairs, central desks with library employees at the ready.

The Birmingham library and the Handley library remind of the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. I love to sit in places like that. I love to see the works of people who toil to pass along what they know and what they imagine.

I hated libraries in 1980. I since have written a few books and dozens of papers. Perhaps toiling to put words on paper has given me an appreciation of words on paper and buildings that house words on paper.

We live in the information age of the Internet. I find much good in this age. I treasure the past of the library. Taking a walk helped that appreciation of grow.