In praise of the bookmobile

... the real reason for which the wheel was invented, the bookmobile. Literary salvation that rolled.

Thomas C. Foster, Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America

Last week, for the first time in 60 years, I stepped onto a bookmobile. I spotted it in the parking lot of the supermarket where I shop. During the summer, instead of making the rounds of area schools, our local bookmobile stops on a regular schedule at various businesses, parks, etc., in the county. Seeing it there in the parking lot, I knew I had to peek inside to rekindle fond bookmobile memories.

My first surprise was how spacious it was. Like Doctor Who's Tardis, it seemed bigger inside than outside. I'm sure bookmobiles are much larger than they were in my elementary school days, but it helped that other than two staffers and a mother and daughter, I had the vehicle to myself. I didn't have several classmates at may elbows also looking for choice books in the same cramped space. That may be my only unpleasant bookmobile memory.

The second surprise was that the modern bookmobile, at least during the summer, has materials for adults as well as children. None of the books interested me, but I did borrow a DVD (The Book of Henry).

A couple days after my bookmobile visit I came upon Thomas C. Foster's tribute to bookmobiles in Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America. Like me, Foster grew up in rural Ohio, just a few years behind. His reflections come in his chapter about The Cat in the Hat, a book that revolutionized elementary education in America. "Those earlier years," he writes, "were taken up with slight variations on 'See Spot. See Spot run.' I know not what course others may take, but those words still make me want to run." Then comes the sentence quoted above, where he praises the bookmobile for giving us kids growing up in the Fifties something interesting to read even before Dr. Seuss worked his magic. "From the bookmobile you could get stories," he says. "From the bookmobile you could eventually get Robert Louis Stevenson. From the bookmobile you could even occasionally get in trouble with your mother. From the primers you got Spot."

That's pretty much how I remember it. We had a small library in our rural school, and while I have fond memories of that, too, the advent of the bookmobile brought so many more reading options. And those bookmobile books were practically new, not like those school library books that had been on the same shelves for years. And each time the bookmobile came to our school it had a different selection of books. What excitement bookmobile day brought, once every two weeks if I remember correctly.

Eventually the bookmobile that came to our school began to offer less appealing choices. My reading tastes were maturing, while the books in the bookmobile stayed at the same level. When the weather was good enough, I started riding my bicycle or driving my dad's tractor into town to visit the public library, which was also the high school library, although I wouldn't be in high school for another year or two. There I walked past the juvenile books and went straight to the adult section. But the bookmobile had filled a need, fed a hunger, quenched a thirst during my elementary days. It was wonderful to relive those memories.