A Memory from Annie Dillard

I am reading An American Childhood, Annie Dillard’s memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s.  I grew up at pretty much the same time north of Pittsburgh in what is now Hermitage, Pa., and was delighted to see that we shared some similar memories of roaming the public library.  Here is what she wrote:

What can we make of the inexpressible joy of children?  It is a kind of gratitude, I think—the gratitude of the ten-year-old who wakes to her own energy and the brisk challenge of the world.  You thought you knew the place and all its routines, but you see you hadn’t known.  Whole stacks at the library held books devoted to things you knew nothing about.  The boundary of knowledge receded, as you poked about in books, like Lake Erie’s rim as you climbed its cliffs.  And each area of knowledge disclosed another, and another.  Knowledge wasn’t a body or a tree, but instead air, or space, or being—whatever pervaded, whatever never ended and fitted into the smallest cracks and the widest space between stars.

When I was a kid in the fifties, the Sharon Free Public Library filled the front of the yellow brick building on State Street that also housed the Buhl Club and provided space for indoor sports young people.  The Library entrance faced State Street, with wide concrete stairs leading to stout columns and beautiful wood and glass doors.  Inside, was a wonderland of books, organized around a semi-circle of stacks on two levels, plus a first-floor children’s room to the left and a reference/reading room on the right.  It was within walking distance for me, and I spent a lot of time there, haunting the stacks and discovering many great books, biographies and autobiographies, novels, and histories.  It was my haven. 

Thanks to Annie Dillard for a great memory.