Summer Memories... the Bookmobile

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Paul here. Today is the first official day of summer, so I’m sharing one of my favorite summer memories:
 
The bookmobile.
 
If you grew up in a decent-sized town, you may have never heard of a bookmobile. I’ve included a couple of pictures to give you an idea of what they look like. Think of an RV or bread truck, except full of books. It's pretty ingenious, really. The librarian drives to a location, usually a small town far removed from any public library, parks near the local church or general store, and stays for a couple of hours. When I was a kid, the bookmobile came to Galestown every other Tuesday between eleven and one. I don’t know if it’s the same today, or if the bookmobile is even still a thing, but in 1960s and 70s Galestown, Maryland, it was huge.
 
The selection of books was small, but in the days before Amazon and Barnes and Noble, the opportunities were endless. There was always plenty of Beverly Cleary’s Beezus, Ramona, and Henry Huggins. I spent most of summer before sixth grade reading Clair Bee’s Chip Hilton series. Miss Charlotte, the bookmobile librarian, would happily bring books she knew I would like. Thanks to the bookmobile I can tell you anything you want to know about Brooks Robinson, Curt Flood, or Pete Maravich. And, as my tastes changed and developed, the bookmobile scratched the itch. Pat Conroy’s eloquent prose thrilled fifteen-year-old me in The Water is Wide and The Great Santini. Stuart Woods’s Chiefs kept me on the edge of my chair while introducing me to the southern fiction I still love today. Throw in some Stephen King, Irwin Shaw, and Harper Lee with a little George Plimpton and J. D. Salinger, and a lifelong love of reading was born in a tiny bookmobile on the Maryland countryside.
 
Unlike the traditional library, the bookmobile’s selection changed from week to week as books were pulled and returned to the central library thirty miles away. Later, after leaving Galestown, I lived in communities where we had our own public libraries. I could go any day and check out as many books as I could carry. Heady times, but still not as exciting as climbing onto the bookmobile every other Tuesday to discover what treats Miss Charlotte had for us. Like the Alice Cooper biography, that probably should have been locked away behind the circulation desk! I’m a big Alice Cooper fan and love how he has become such a beloved figure today, but in 1970s America, his biography could have stripped paint! Thanks to the quirkiness of the bookmobile’s circulation system, I checked it and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath out in the same week. Dust bowl misery on Wednesday, sex and cocaine with groupies on Thursday. I learned a lot, thanks to the bookmobile.
 
So, how about you? I’m not the only one around here with bookmobile memories, am I? I hope you will share yours below or on our Facebook page!
 
And enjoy your summer!