Martha shares an email from a longtime listener, Lois Teeslink of Vista, California, about a favorite childhood librarian. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Favorite Librarian”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
A while back, we encouraged you to send us stories of your favorite librarians.
And we received an email about this from Lois Teaslink of Vista, California.
She wrote to us about a librarian whom she knew back in the 1920s.
And she writes,
I thought I would tell you about my favorite librarian. She volunteered, I’m sure, and appeared in the one-room lending library over the tailor shop at 7 o’clock each Saturday morning.
She dusted and rearranged the donated books and opened the door at the top of the rickety steps around 8, or when she thought we could wait no longer.
My friend Neafy and I, two out of our class of nine who read even when nothing had been assigned, were sitting on the landing.
She smiled, let us in, and started the process of writing the slip that let us take a precious book downstairs to read, lying on our stomachs in the shade, and then scurry upstairs for another one when we had finished.
Lois goes on to say,
The tailor donated the use of his upstairs during the only time that he would not be busy downstairs, lengthening the Sunday pants of the growing teens and widening the waistbands of their fathers.
The librarian patiently signed out and in the books that we found that we hadn’t read or knew were worth reading again until 1145.
Then she said, choose a long one now because I have to go take care of my mother and closed the library until next Saturday.
We called her Miss Beth and she opened a door to a bigger world for me and my friend.
Well, Lois has written us several times about language.
She’s continued to love language all those years.
And recently we received an email from her daughter, Mary Claire, who wanted to let us know that Lois passed away this past week.
And so, as Mary Claire put it, won’t be pestering slash entertaining you anymore with the phrases she remembers.
Well, it was all entertainment. Thank you, Lois.
And that’s what a lovely story.
Libraries are important to a lot of us.
And if you have a story to share about somebody that moved you, it can even be from the 1920s.
We would love to hear about it.
Send it to words@waywordradio.org or call us 877-929-9673.
