Advanced Writing Workshop Portfolio

Final Draft of: Story Hour and the Survival of Small Town Libraries

 

            The best thing about growing up in a small town is that you live within walking distance to everything. My house, on the older side of town, was located just three blocks away from the Glen Ullin Public Library on Main Street. I had been going there for “Story Hour” since I was small, which was an attempt to ease the lives of parents who needed some relief throughout the summer. Parents would drop their children off on Wednesday afternoons at 1 p.m. and pick them up two hours later, expecting their children to return with more knowledge and better behaved.

 

            Story hour was made possible by the librarians of the Glen Ullin Public Library and a few local volunteers. An elderly woman from my church, whom I still say hello to at church when I go home for the weekend, would sit and read picture books out loud to groups of children who sat with legs crossed and eyes wide; their ages ranging from those of toddlers to elementary school students. During Story Hour, those of us who couldn’t sit still were reprimanded for distracting the other kids who were more attentive. I used to grow impatient while listening to the story, always more interested in the arts and crafts session that usually followed the reading. During arts and crafts, my infantile fingers clumsily grasped at scissors, glue, and whatever else was made available to us while we sat at little, round tables. The crafts we made were related to the story in some way and I was always the last to be done. More than once, I brought home an unfinished masterpiece because I took too much time selecting my art supplies; I like to think that it was because I put more thought into my work.

 

            Although reading would later come easily to me, art would always be my first love and my favorite subject in school. When I grew up, I wanted to make animated films; hidden in the back of the Glen Ullin Public Library stood a shelf of videos that would fill my imagination with princesses and goblins from off-brand Disney movies. If I behaved well during Story Hour, I was allowed to check out one VHS from this shelf, which was my favorite thing about going to the library. This was my motivation for going to Story Hour. Sometimes, I would check out the same VHS for weeks and weeks in a row. At home, I would cram these tapes into my VHS player and watch them over and over while recreating my favorite characters in crayon. In fact, it would be many years before I even realized that libraries were primarily used and for checking out books.

 

            On Main Street, the library was squished between a mom-and-pop grocery store and a bowling alley that had gone out of business. There was nothing distinctive about its exterior and the inside was made up of scratchy carpeting, fluorescent lighting, and mismatched shelves. For my mom, I think that going to the library was a welcome interruption from her daily routine of cooking, cleaning, and working night shifts as a CNA at the nursing home, which was also two blocks away from our house. On Wednesday afternoons during the summer, my mom, older brother, and I religiously walked the three blocks to our library, past the church and the playground where I always begged her to stop, to attend Story Hour.

 

            My mom is an avid reader, but she has terrible taste in literature; she only reads books about pioneers and oppressed Amish women. My siblings and I like to make jokes about her novels, speculating about suggestive content. When I was younger, she would sit at the kitchen table, drink tea, and read her books. By taking me to Story Hour, she was the first person to encourage my literacy. She also became a role model because I wanted to grow up to be just like her. Now, even though I don’t have a kitchen or a table, I think of her every time I sit down to read with a cup of tea.

 

            When my mom started working day shifts at the nursing home, it became the responsibility of my older brother, Jayme, to take me to Story Hour. Because I had been a tag-along since birth, Jayme did not appreciate having to be my guide. On Wednesdays, he would begrudgingly take me to the library. Sometimes, we rode our bikes to the library and carelessly threw them in a pile outside of the building along with those belonging to all of the other kids. The following summer, my mom decided that my brother had outgrown Story Hour. While he was still obligated to drop me off, he was no longer forced to stay for two hours. Eventually, my parents realized that I was old enough to travel the three blocks by myself.

 

            That was when I discovered my love of reading. By then, I had watched every VHS the library had to offer and was getting sick of them, so I began to explore other shelves. I checked out books about Nancy Drew and the Boxcar Children. Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t need to see images on a screen because I could picture the stories in my head as I was reading, which exposed me to a whole new world of literature. Soon, I would start walking to the library on Wednesdays and Saturdays in order to replenish my supply of books more frequently. On the way home, I would spontaneously stop at that playground, climb to the top of the tallest slide, and read for hours. I would stay out until it became too dark to see the words on a page.

 

            Even after I became too old to attend Story Hour, I continued going to the library. The same women who read books out loud during Story Hour encouraged me to help by becoming a volunteer; because of this, I may be someone else’s sponsor of literacy. Looking back, this was my first experience with teaching. Later, I would decide to make it my career.

 

            During the summer between sixth and seventh grade, I found a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare that hadn’t been checked out since 1987. Out of the kindness of my heart, I rescued the book from its dusty shelf and ended up keeping it for three months. Although I didn’t understand all of the words, I loved the way they were written and studied the way they were used. At the end of the summer, I dropped it with a heavy thud through the book return slot on the outside of the building because I was afraid of being scolded by one of the librarians for not rechecking it out. However, this would not have been the case. The staff at the Glen Ullin Public Library were so friendly, and with so few people visiting the library, they knew exactly who was in possession of what book at all times. If they had really wanted The Complete Works of William Shakespeare back, they would have called my house and talked to my mom or asked me about it at church. Plus, the book hadn’t been checked out since 1987, so it wasn’t exactly in high demand. In the Glen Ullin Public Library, there was a certain level of trust between the librarians and those of us who regularly checked out books.

 

            After moving to Fargo, it is one of the things that I miss the most about living in Glen Ullin. As a college student, I have access to thousands of books through the library at North Dakota State University, but for some reason, it just doesn’t feel the same. Whenever I want to check out a book, I send them an email and by the time I arrive, they have it waiting for me at the circulation desk. Then, one of the librarians scans my Bison Card, and I take my book and leave. While this system may be extremely convenient for me, I can count the number of times that I have ventured into the library to search for a book on one hand. Inside, the tall shelves seem foreign and imposing to me. Instead of having the whole building to myself, I have to share it with other students. Now, the library is a place where the atmosphere is heavy with stress and anxiety seems contagious; a place where deadlines for assignments linger in the air. If I do not return it within a certain amount of time, I am charged and a hold is put on my student account; although I have not experienced this problem yet. Gone are the days when I could stop at the playground and leave my bike unattended outside of the library and expect to get it back.

 

            Now, I wonder if the Glen Ullin Public Library will even be open the next time I go home. It seems like every time I do, another business has closed. The last time I talked to my parents on the phone, they told me that the only restaurant in town, Docks, was closing because the owner had recently passed away. I’m not sure if the library even has Story Hour anymore. While sharing a first draft of this narrative with my one of my classmates in Advanced Writing Workshop whose fiancé has family in Glen Ullin, Hannah said that she was surprised that the small town in North Dakota even had a library in the first place.

 

            Hannah told me that programs like story hour were not as accessible to her growing up because she lived a big city and could not walk to the library. Her house was too far away and it might have been dangerous to walk there by herself. This was unfathomable to me because I had always thought that there would be so much more to do in a city. I never realized just how lucky I was to be able to walk to the public library and to not have to worry about my safety; I knew all of the librarians because they went to my church. As more and more small towns are becoming suburbs of larger cities, especially in the Fargo-Moorhead area, I think that this kind of safety and familiarity will be missed.

 

            These are just a few of the things about growing up in Glen Ullin that I didn’t appreciate until after I moved to Fargo to attend NDSU. Now, I hope to return to small town North Dakota after graduation as a middle and high school English teacher. If I ever have kids, I want to take them to a place like the Glen Ullin Public Library. More importantly, I hope that places like small town North Dakota and the Glen Ullin Public Library still exist.