When it came to the weather here, August and September could not have been better. Sunny, dry and warm, day after day – what more could anyone ask? It was so nice for so long, I made The Mistake of the Ages (but not of the Aged): I thought it would last forever.

So on Monday morn when I arose at the crack of ten and saw it was wet, cool and overcast, I felt my spirits sink. Not to a Woe-Is-Me level, just to an Ugh and Feh one.

So what to do on a day fit for mushrooms, not men? Well, even though I could have gone for a walk or mucked about in the woods, I didn’t feel like it. Sure, I was wimping out, but even an uber-macho like me needs to accede to the forces of Nature now and then, and this was one of those nows.

Instead of forcing myself to rise to some outdoorsy occasion of which the ghost of John Muir would be proud, I decided to groove my higher chakras and take shelter in my favorite village refuge — the SL Free Library.

The library and I go back — way, way back, since my visits there are among my earliest memories. In fact, my mother the avid reader shlepped me to the library long before I learned to read. So what did a pre-literate kid do in the library? Just this: I sat in the kiddies’ section with other pre-literate poppets, looked at the drawings in various books, and waited for my mother to shlep me home.

I’ll also tell you what I did not do. I did not — upon pain of rack, ruin, and reprimand — utter a word, or walk out of the kiddies’s section. Had I done so, I had no doubt the librarian, Mrs. Worthington, would’ve taken a white-hot branding iron and seared into my forehead a huge M (for Miscreant). After that, the disgrace I’d brought upon my family would’ve doomed me to spend the rest of my days confined to the attic, allowed to go out only on moonless nights, for maybe 10 minutes.

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The law east of Berkely Square

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Ah yes, Mrs. Worthington. To me and probably every other little library rat in My Home Town she was The Law. If I had to liken her to any historical figure it’d be Captain Alexander Slidell Mackenzie whose story, fittingly, I first read in the library as a pre-teen, in a book called, “Tales of the Briny Deep.”

Now you ask, Who was Cap’n. Mackenzie and what was he famous for? To answer the first question, in 1842 he was the captain of the Navy brig, USS Somers. As for the second question: He suspected three crew members, two enlisted and one midshipman, of planning a mutiny. And so in keeping with good ole naval tradition and without benefit of counsel, clergy, or compassion, the had the three run up the yardarm. In classic Old Navy fashion, the trio provided both food for the fishes as well as food for thought for the crew.

On any other occasion, hanging three mutineers in the middle of the Atlantic wouldn’t have raised one hoary eyebrow among the big brass. Hanging suspected mutineers was tied with scrimshaw, keelhauling and floggings as the Navy’s favorite on-board entertainments. But this triple header was a wee bit different. The midshipman, one Philip Spencer, happened to be the son of one John C. Spencer, who just happened to be the Secretary of War.

By all accounts, Spencer fils was a real piece of work. Apparently, he’d either been kicked out of or “asked to leave” two colleges for inappropriate behavior of one sort or another. He then signed on a whaling ship, but Daddy found him and told him if he wanted to go to sea, he should do it as a “gentleman” and become an officer. He agreed, and the old man scored him a midshipman’s commission. But since he kept getting in drunken brawls (including with his superior officers and even a Brit officer on shore leave), he was asked to resign his commission, which he did.

Then, still itching to go to sea, the old man got him another midshipman’s commission, and he continued being a rotten little snot till Cap’n Mckenzie and a hundred feet of hemp put an end to both his nonsense and him. When the Somers returned to port, sans Phil Baby, there was a court of inquiry at which Cap’n Mckenzie got acquitted. After that, there was a court martial, and again Mckenzie got acquitted. This put the issue to rest for almost 100 years…till I read the story. For when I did, all I could think was Mrs. Worthington was Cap’n Mckenzie reincarnated.

As I said, in the library she was The Law. As opposed to the rest of us, the library today is twice the man it used to be: As you face it from Main Street, the original library was only that little section on the right with the pillars. When you opened the front door, there straight ahead of you, planted behind a desk only a wee bit smaller than an aircraft carrier was herself, looking like a one-headed Cerberus. But while Cerberus stood guard over Hades to make sure no one left, Mrs. W. made sure everyone coming in behaved. And if they didn’t, they’d be tossed out on their keister before they could say Dewey Decimal System.

Of course, the “everyone” I referred to was kids. But while we were always under her gimlet gaze, I don’t think it was necessary, since every kid I knew was poop-sick scared of her. And aside from that, if we had misbehaved, after she’d gotten done eviscerating us, she would’ve called our parents, told them of our perfidy, and we would’ve gotten punished again. I practically lived in the library from about fifth grade on and no matter how much I rack my brains I can’t recall one incident of any kid acting out, let alone laughing or even speaking above a whisper.

But no matter how fierce Mrs. Worthington seemed, I knew two things. One, unlike Cap’n Mckenzie, she couldn’t string me up on a Main Street light pole. And two, the library was my Sanctum Sanctorum, and it has remained such over the last seven decades.

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Update

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After Mrs. Worthington went to The Great Card Catalog in the Sky, her assistant librarian, Joyce Monica Meagher took over librarian and library director duties. Joyce was in every way Mrs. Wothington’s polar opposite. While Mrs. W. was an old lady, who looked like an old lady (and a rather ferocious one at that), Joyce was the very vision of loveliness. She was petite, pretty, soignee, had beautiful red hair, and was always sweet and eminently approachable. She was all business, and I’m sure could’ve put the hammer down if she’d had to, but I doubt she ever had to. After Mrs. W’s Reign of Terror, having Joyce in charge, made the joint feel like a shmendrick’s Elysian Fields. Joyce worked for the library for thirty years – all her adult life, really — and sadly passed away far too young.

Our current librarian, Peter Benson, is a great guy to be The Big Boss Man, which is obvious by how upbeat the other employees are. He’s low-key, sharp, and always available and helpful. Beyond that, if he’s not takin’ care of business, he’s fun to chat with. And even though I have to explain some of my more subtle jokes to him, he does have a sense of humor…whether he wants one or not.

Before COVID hit, I went in the library almost every day. Either I was taking out or returning a book, reading the magazines, or just schmoozing with whoever was free at the time (whether they wanted to schmooze or not). Now, mid-COVID, my library visits, like all my town visits, have been greatly curtailed, both in frequency and duration.

But while I doubt I’ll see the end of COVID, I know I’ll never see the end of my library visits.