At any rate, Old Town librarian is what I am, at least for now, and so far it's been a pretty good gig. I like the town and the people, they seem to like me, and life here is comfortable. Every once in a while things get just interesting enough to keep the routine from turning into a rut, but not so interesting that things get thrown too far out of whack.
When I first got here, I felt a bit of coldness from the local folks, most of whom were either natives or very long-time residents. There's not a lot of movement into and out of the local population base, and when new people do move into town, they have to more or less prove themselves. It's like they're suspicious of new folk at first, as if they kind of assume that you're going to leave as unexpectedly as you showed up. But, once you show them that you're not an itinerant and have every intention of making a life for yourself here, that initial aloofness dissolves, and you can move about in local society without feeling any sort of stigma attached to your presence.
So, in five years I've managed to carve quite a nice little niche for myself. I've tried to bring the library into the 90s from its previous musty presence in the 60s. I've gotten rid of card files and built up the library's computer capabilities so that Old Towners can get a feel for what's available. We've established a Web page, which has actually gotten good reviews and quite a lot of attention from the high school kids, and begun sponsoring reading clubs.
My first experience with delving more deeply into the Old Town emotional life came as a result of one of those reading clubs. I'd encouraged some of the local readers to form a mystery book reading club when I saw how popular the genre was with a group of local library regulars. They were all very interested in some sub-sets within mystery writing, but seemed to have no awareness of some of the other sub-sets, nor that there were other folks in town equally enthralled with mysteries. I acted as a kind of literary Cupid, and encouraged them to form a club along the lines of a science fiction club I'd been a member of in college. Once that group got underway and rolling, holding a twice-monthly meetings at the library, adding members, and even enticing the occasional writer passing through on book tours to give talks, I decided to see what other groups I could form.
I wasn't being entirely altruistic in this, by the way. I was hoping to form a constituency for the library to go to bat for me when I approached the town council with my occasional requests for more money for my pet projects. I figured the more groups I could form, and the more I could encourage people to see the library as a social center for the town, the more juice I'd have when I wanted dough.
So, after the mystery readers got rolling, I set up groups interested in science fiction, westerns, "serious" literature, and nature. Within about a year, we had meetings in the library on most evenings during the week. I even formed a romance readers group, although reluctantly. Call it snobbery, but I just couldn't work up any enthusiasm for romance novels. However, the people who read those things are tremendously loyal to the genre, and consume the books at a prodigious rate. And I finally figured that, like pornography, at least it encouraged reading among people who most probably otherwise wouldn't crack a book.
The romance novel group was the only one to meet every week, and Tuesday evenings I usually had to pry them out of the meeting room at closing time. One evening as I was good-naturedly throwing them out, one woman lagged behind the rest as they made their way to the parking lot, talking animatedly among themselves about the romance du jour.
Linda Hunter was the pretty 20-something daughter of the guy who owned the local arcade. Phil was an outgoing guy, popular with the high school kids who frequented his place. He dealt in video games, comics, trading cards, and, I suspected, a bit of pot. Not that I was in any position to look down my nose at anyone else for breaking federal drug laws, what with my history and all. Just thought I'd mention that as a way of establishing something of Phil's character. Or lack thereof, depending on your outlook.
Anyway, Linda was hanging around the front door as I was locking up.
"Hey, Linda, how ya doing? How was the meeting tonight?"
"Oh, pretty good. Nothing too special. Have you got a minute, Cheese?"
"Sure. What's up?"
"Well, I'm not sure how to say this. You wanta get a cup of coffee. Or something?"
Eeyikes! What the hell did "Or something?" mean?
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