A Library Thing...

I have a friend from graduate school, and occasionally we get together for some day road trips. Usually, she plans them, and we both bring along our cameras. Or we just get into the car, drive, and stop wherever we happen to be.

Our field trip started out with me meeting my friend at her house. We started to talk. I told her how I have been going to the same library to write and finally how I became uninspired. I said, “Our library smells, it leaves me claustrophobic, and I seemed so uninspired that I can’t write anything.” Finally I ended with. “I hate the library!” In my rant, I didn’t notice the strange expression that flickered across my friend’s face.

After allowing me to rant for a while, my friend said, “Well, come on, Mary. It’s time for our ‘field trip.’”

“Where are we going?”

“Come on. You’ll figure it out after we hit the first place.”

We parked across the street from a solid looking building. “What is that – a post office? I asked. 

“Come on and you’ll see.”

And of course, after seeing the front of the building, I got it right away! On the top of the concrete was etched…LAUGHLIN MEMORIAL FREE LIBRARY, AMBRIDGE.

Of course I started to laugh and that helped with our field trip of – libraries! We drove around and saw a few other libraries: BF Jones Memorial Library in Aliquippa, Carnegie Free Library in Midland, the libraries in Beaver Falls, Beaver, and Rochester.

So, okay, maybe I don’t really hate libraries. The ones that I mentioned were beautiful and interesting, except for the one in Beaver Falls. Maybe I just needed a break from the Northland Library, North Hills where I usually write. Sometimes seeing what else is outside of the usual helps. Sometimes it takes a change and a field trip to re-vitalize one’s writing. Or maybe it was the ability to laugh at myself that helped.