Ode to the Bookmobile

Children gathered around the Saint Paul Public Library Bookmobile 1917
(Source: SPPL website http://www.stpaul.lib.mn.us/history/bookmobile.html)

When I was a little girl my grandfather drove the county bookmobile. For reasons unknown to me the bus was kept parked in the alley beside my grandparent’s house. I was entranced when I was allowed to reverently enter this mysterious library on wheels under the stern eye of my grandfather. This extraordinary conveyance seemed to be the best of all worlds, part gypsy caravan and part library. The bus offered the promise of new adventures, on the open road and inside the pages. I fantasized about traveling the globe, like Huck, Tom, and Jim in Tom Sawyer Abroad.


Plus, the bus was just the right scale for a child, like a house of books built to just my size. The big library buildings were fascinating, but slightly scary. This little room felt like a safe and cozy secret library. I even loved the smell and the neat orderliness of the books lined up tightly on the shelves, like soldiers standing at strict attention. 

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   Children using bookmobile 1958
      (Source:  Minnesota Historical Society Photograph)

Perhaps those early memories are why I applied to an ad to be a bookmobile driver fresh out of college and a paid summer internship. I needed something quick to keep myself in beans and rice, while I searched for my first “real job”. However, just entering the old downtown library for my interview proved to be overwhelmingly seductive, with its wobbly old wicker tables and mishmash of centuries and volumes. I experienced such a powerful sense of homecoming that I stayed for almost three decades.

I forgot all about my fantasies of museum studies at Winterthur or a bohemian life in the cafes of Paris. Working at the library was a choice I never regretted. I was charmed with a life filled with books and readers, and with the lovely group of women who ran the library and their families with the same gentle intelligence, kind hearts, and fierce devotion. Thus our lives can be inadvertently shaped by a random ad and a chance encounter.

The bookmobile driver job proved to be a memorable stepping stone. The system served more than seven hundred square miles, encompassing three counties and a city. One of the counties, Westmoreland, stretched almost seventy miles from the furthest point to the library, and required a full day on the road. Early every Saturday morning, rain, snow, or sun, we were on the bus (with a nod to Ken Kesey).

CRRL Bookmobile 1970
(Source: www. librarypoint.org)

In addition to the many built-in bookcases, the bus had large storage cabinets over the driver and passenger seats, also stuffed with books to be delivered. A sudden turn or shift in direction could result in one or both cabinets suddenly opening and multiple book missiles shooting out. In fact, the whole vehicle was a traveling book bomb,

1967 Bookmobile (Source: Providence Public Library)

In those bygone, innocent days, when no one thought of background checks, DMV driving records, or requiring a commercial driver's license; my bold assertion that I could drive this bus was sufficient. I had driven a small shuttle bus one summer so I could claim some experience. The truth was that driving that old bookmobile was a leap of faith. Each week we rolled boldly through the countryside and a series of steep hills and twisting curves as we descended deep down into the Northern Neck of Virginia to the Town of Montross.

I quickly realized that the brakes on the bookmobile were largely an illusion. The bus was so heavily loaded and weighed down with its treasure trove of volumes, that once we had picked up a good speed and were barreling down a hill, there was simply no way to stop the thing. Standing on the brakes resulted in only the slightest hesitation in speed for the first twenty yards. I lived in terror that an old farmer would suddenly pull out in front of us, with a pickup truck load of vegetables or a hay wagon traveling at farm speed, and that all that would remain would be a somber mingling of corn, fodder, and the written word.

Jean remained serene, regardless of the often challenging driving conditions. It occurred to me that this Zen-like quality was probably due to the fact that she had never had a driver’s license, thus giving her the innocent obliviousness of a child in the backseat. This was just one of her many endearing qualities.

To this day I owe Jean a genuine debt of gratitude for her tutelage. Under her slow Mississippi drawl I learned many important lessons about library service. Everyone, regardless of age, education, income, or background, was treated with great respect and attentive interest. The request of the tiniest child and the circuit court judge received equal care, attention and thoughtfulness. That democratic impartiality still seems to me to be one of the most wonderful and miraculous things about public libraries.

Children wading to bookmobile  (Source:  Library of Virginia)

Another lesson I learned quickly under her tolerant eye was to skew the flawed notion of the librarian as the arbitrator of good taste and fine literature. The first week I loaded the shelves with literary classics, and then watched dismayed as one disappointed reader after another scanned the shelves, and then left discouraged without a book for the week. Jean didn’t need to say a word. As soon as we returned to the library I immediately reloaded the bus with the wide variety of books people wanted.

I also had a quick education in the importance of libraries in the everyday lives of many people. Each week, as we pulled up to our first stop near the town square in Montross, we could see a large, impatient crowd of what appeared to be the entire village, all waiting for the bookmobile. It took the full two hour stop for the line of people to file through the bus; returning books and selecting new ones, chatting, and showing off new babies, husbands, and injuries.

"Children with bookmobile books 1969"  (Source: www.librarypoint.org)

Jean oohed and aahed, tsked, and nodded; dispensing books and that most valuable of commodities, interest and personal attention to each patron. In that pre-Internet, pre- VCR, pre-Cable TV, pre-Amazon era, the bookmobile was one of the few shows in town, and everyone came. I smiled and busily slid book card after book card into the little checkout machine with a satisfying clunk, clunk, clunk. Then I carded and shelved every book I could, piling the rest wherever I could precariously stash them.

I thought of those days recently when I heard that the library in Fredericksburg had permanently retired the bookmobile.  The final run was on June 30, 2010.  Those bustling days of hundreds of patrons has been replaced by branch libraries and a changed world.  What I think of as "The Golden Age of Bookmobiles" is drawing to a close in many places around the country. News stories abound of iconic bookmobiles disappearing from roads and towns across America.

"Library automotive truck Washington Country, Maryland"

The halcyon days began as early as 1849 in Britain. In America, there seems to be some debate whether the first horse drawn bookmobile was trotted out in Pennsylvania or South Carolina circa 1905, but there is ample credit to go around. These intrepid librarians, filled with a missionary like zeal to spread knowledge and books through the countryside, were soon setting out to remote areas across the continent.

Bookmobile June 2, 1941 (Source:  Davidson County Public Library - Bookmobile Timeline)

Over the years I have heard heart rending testimonials from famous writers and good souls how their lives were changed forever by a bookmobile visit.  Stories of when a librarian entrusted a small Indian girl or a poor migrant child with a beautiful book to take home, and in that moment threw open a door to a bright new world.  A world where a child suddenly became a person worthy of trust and respect, of possessing a library card, and being the keeper of a beautiful book. 

Over the past few months at the Chesapeake Public Library we have wrestled over the fate of our bookmobile. Its lifeline has hung in the balance, weighed against the unyielding economic realities of shrinking resources and hard choices. The use at many stops have dwindled to a few devoted souls, and the numbers tell a story that could not be denied. So we have gathered the data, sat around the table, and pounded out a new story for this relatively new and wonderful vehicle.

Chesapeake Public Library Bookmobile (Source: www.chesapeake.lib.va.us)

We are going to eliminate all of the sparsely attended neighborhood stops, and replace them with a system of changing lobby collections for seniors, books by mail for shut-ins, and curb side service for handicapped drivers. We are going to reserve the big bus for the big results.  There will be a single monthly Saturday run with two or three "Power Stops" at neighborhoods with a significant number of users. Two days a week the bookmobile will visit daycare institutions in Chesapeake that are interested in partnering with the library.  These dozens of daycare centers offer the potential of  15,000 bookmobile visits by children a year.

Once a month, children in daycare centers will have a chance to climb on that magical bus, select a book, and have a library experience. We believe that all of those visits will result in some wonderful opportunities to impact young lives. As I can personally testify, through these seemingly chance encounters, the course of an entire lifetime can be changed.