One of the things that seems to go with getting older is seeing your childhood shrink as you look back at it.
I dropped back into Fort Worth again to check out an exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum (and it’s only on for a couple more days, so if you missed it, you missed it.) In the process of dodging what looked like a fairly ugly traffic jam after the long haul from Houston, I made a brief excursion into the past.
40-odd years ago (some of them odder than even I could have imagined, which makes them very odd indeed), this was the East Branch Library, part of the Fort Worth Public Library system. I remember it as a very large building, much bigger inside than out. I spent many happy hours seeing the world from inside this building, and I have to admit I choked up (just a little, understand) to step back inside. This is where I discovered, much to my ongoing and permanent delight, that the world is full of books… for hundreds of years, thousands of people of all sorts have felt the need to pick up a pen or a typewriter and tell stories. Things that happened, things that might have happened, things that should have happened, things that ought to be possible in a perfect (or at least another) world.
For many years I thought they wrote those things just for me, personally, and even as I’ve learned that wasn’t the case, I still try to read as many as I can, and I continue to believe there’s nothing more valuable to a civilized society than a system of public libraries.
Even if they’re smaller than they used to be….