An early postcard shows the Kohrs Memorial Library in Deer Lodge, Montana. An addition was built in recent years to accommodate the broadening of services.

By Kevin S. Giles

When I was a boy in western Montana I discovered the wonders of our local library. Granite steps led upward between a pair of sleek double pillars to heavy glass-and-brass doors. Behind those doors awaited a place of enforced quiet where the stern librarian tolerated only occasional whispers and the ticking of an ancient clock. There was a reverence about the place. To a book lover, ascending into that magnificent entrance felt like swinging open the gates of heaven. Or so I speculated, having no practical experience with the afterlife beyond the lessons at Sunday school at the Presbyterian Church.

Fines and admonitions

Books, all of the hardcover variety, filled rows of shelves in our town library. I came to appreciate how the struggle to learn the Dewey Decimal system in the public schools up the street had its merits.

Our Kohrs Memorial Library had a checkout-and-fine system. Borrowing a book meant taking it to the counter where the librarian stamped a return date on a card that slid into a brown envelope in the front pages of the book. The stamping usually came with an admonition to return the book in time to avoid a daily fine, possibly a nickel. This was cause for worry for a boy who knew a nickel bought some impressive penny candy at the “Little Store” half a block away.

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Finding all-time favorite novels

The novel ‘Summer of the Black Chevy’ by Kevin S. Giles grew from memories of his hometown. The novel also takes place there, in Deer Lodge, Montana.

Historical fiction intrigued me. I recall reading Johnny Tremain, a novel about a 14-year-old boy in Boston during the American Revolution, a time of considerable intrigue for a boy. The Civil War fascinated me as well, in large part because two of my great grandfathers fought for the Union Army at Gettysburg among other major battles. My mother’s family was an old one with long stretches between generations. Both of those men died many years before I was born. Still, I thought of them when I perused the stack of books about the Civil War. It was there that I discovered my all-time favorite novel from my youth, Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. (Readers of my novel Summer of the Black Chevy will recall my frequent references to Little Shepherd.)

One summer I checked out a lengthy nonfiction book about Andersonville, the Confederate prison in Georgia that held thousands of captured Union troops. Day after day, stretched out on my father’s white vinyl recliner while he worked a swing shift at the prison, I flipped many hundreds of thin pages. Imprisoned men fought like animals for food and shelter. It was a window to a world far beyond my practical understanding. Eventually I finished the book, better for the experience. I have no idea how many volumes the Kohrs library held back then, but if each volume was a window, the view was long and enriching.

Carnegie libraries became legends

I’ve read that our town library was modeled after the famous Carnegie libraries funded by philanthropist and steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Nearly 1,700 of these libraries were built in the United States between 1883 and 1929. The libraries introduced substantial reading opportunities to even the poorest Americans. Books and newspapers were the dominant media in that pre-television, pre-internet era, mostly pre-radio era.

As most everyone knows, modern libraries reinvented themselves to adapt to digital preferences. The large “reading rooms” of the past gave way to e-books. Fines largely disappeared. Popular community programs such as children story hours emerged. Libraries retained their significance as repositories of knowledge but gained a new purpose as gathering places where people exchanged ideas. Today’s librarians continue their critical role as experts who guide patrons in research and help them navigate the library’s mysteries.

Americans read less? No, they read more

As the physical familiarity of our long-ago libraries — those stately rows of reader-worn books — withers over the years, it’s a mistake to think Americans read less. In fact, they’re reading more, and from all sources. They read on their phones, their tablets, their computers. They read e-books. They read newspapers both online and from the doorstep. And yes, they read print books.

That authoritative book industry source, Publishers Weekly (PW), has reported that sales of print books began climbing again after a few years of losing ground to e-books. Many readers decided, after all, that they want an old-fashioned book in their hands.

While I don’t haunt libraries as much as I once did (because I do it online), my love for them continues. They’re essential to a free and informed citizenry. They teach us, they entertain us, they take us on journeys to times and places we couldn’t possibly experience otherwise.

Working in the library, as boiler attendant

I was in high school when the Kohrs librarian offered me a temporary job. She and her husband planned a vacation. He tended the building’s boiler. In his absence I went to the library early each morning to monitor boiler pressure. I checked again at night. I can’t recall instructions about what to do in the event of imminent explosion, but I took my duty seriously, following every necessary step to protect those precious books. The job included sweeping the floor with a long push broom. There I was, all alone in that cherished building, entrusted with my own key.

It was enough to make me read another book.

Buy! Mystery of the Purple Roses

Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.

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