The Library and Reading Books

I guess it was next to the site where the blacksmith shop had been that Brunson’s had their combination jewelry/variety/library store. This was their second location — at the first in a substantially better structure it had been primarily just a jewelry store though even then there was a public library section in the rear. During the Depression the store had to retrench and move to a less auspicious building. The family also expanded their operation to include various stationery items, etc. The library section continued. Just inside the door old Mr. Brunson had his counter at which he plied his trade as watch repairman.

The library played a significant role in my growing-up days and I have memories of going to the store selecting books and taking them home. The library hours were on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons but I don’t remember the specific hours it was open. The Brunsons (the elder Brunsons that is) had one son who resided with them along with their daughter-in-law. The latter was the librarian. The library contained a nucleus of books that were permanently included — I have no idea of the source of these, whether the town had bought them or they had been donated.

The library also had a changing assortment of books from the state library system. These were periodically returned to the state library and a new batch obtained, perhaps every three months or so. The quality of the books was not very high and much of my reading was of westerns, Tarzan books and the like. There were however some classics such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

I must have started using the library at quite an early age. I can recall reading Tom Sawyer and being petrified with apprehension when Tom was lost during the cave episode. I can still see myself sitting on the steps leading to the upstairs in the little brown house, on a Saturday evening after supper was over reading the gripping (to me, at the time) account. Perhaps I had taken out the book just that afternoon. I must have been 8 or 10 at the time.

My mother did not approve of the Tarzan books — they smacked in some way of the evolution of man and although she did not have quite the attitude toward the theory that others in her family did she was definitely ill at ease with the books.

There were also books to read at home which had been garnered in various ways. These were contained in two bookcases (with panel glass doors) in the divider separating the dining room and the parlor in the little brown house. There was one shelf of books which my parents had bought for us as children, probably before the family fortunes declined in the Depression. The only book in this group that I definitely remember was R. L. Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. There may have been a book about Pinocchio.

My father in his bachelor days had acquired a set of encyclopedias and a multi-volume set of Ridpath’s History of the World. In retrospect these appear to have been rather low-quality books but they did play a useful and informative role in our development. The history contained a considerable number of illustrations, some pretty gory in subject matter. We used the encyclopedias I’m sure in conjunction with our schoolwork.

There were doubtless a considerable number of religious books in the store of books at home but I can’t remember anything about them. There was sort of an illustrated history of the Bible at my grandmother’s house which as children we were allowed to look at on occasion. This book also contained lurid illustrations as of drowning sinners as the floodwaters rose at the time of Noah and other dire happenings. I wonder what happened to some of these books.

One of my fonder recollections of reading books was as I was growing up at the Peterson farm. On occasion, perhaps on Sunday afternoons but at other times I’m sure when work or school did not interfere, I would go to the room that Vincent and I occupied, lie down crosswise on the bed on my stomach so that my feet extended past one side of the bed and my head and arms over the other side. With a book on the floor beneath my head I would read until such time as I was called away for some duty. There was also an old rocker in our room, and I would sit in it with me feet on the windowsill of the window to the east and read as an alternative to lying on the bed and reading.

The whole experience would be particularly enjoyable in the summer time (provided the weather was not too warm) with the two windows in the room open, with perhaps a slight breeze blowing through the room and the inimitable sounds of an Iowa summer in the background. Of these latter I recall with delight and nostalgia such sounds as the cooing of the mourning doves, the song of the meadowlark, the whirring of grasshoppers and the chirping of crickets.