Eleven days ago the family and I were among the thousands held hostage by US Airways’ incompetence during the Northeast ice storm; our dungeon was Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, a modern facility that under more favorable conditions wouldn’t be a bad place to spend two hours. As it happened, Terminal C was a mini-Altamont, with weary and angry passengers checking the departure screen every 10 minutes or so to see if their flights had been cancelled. We were lucky, since our connection from the Bahamas to Baltimore was a mere eight hours behind schedule, although there were plenty of hairy moments during that time, with our boarding call dependent upon the arrival of a crew from Tampa.
Not as fortunate was a group heading to Philly, who, after left dangling for an eternity, finally found out they’d be spending the night at the airport. (Not surprisingly, all of Charlotte’s hotels were booked.) It was hard to muster much sympathy for any US Airways employee, but the fellow at this particular check-in station was really in the trenches, dealing not only with a hysterical and sobbing pregnant young woman, but half a dozen belligerent passengers screaming all sorts of obscenities at him. I’m usually impervious to standard cursing, but this was the kind of language that might even make a MoveOn.org volunteer blush.
My sons were pretty pissed too, and Nicky, in the heat of another announced delay even made the ridiculous claim that he never wanted to fly again. I calmly explained that if you travel often enough the law of averages simply dictates that a horrific airline experience can’t be avoided. (The day before, in Nassau, we’d wasted half a day at the airport before learning our flight was nixed.) Somewhat mollified, he got a couple of Nathan’s dogs and continued reading some book about how the oil companies are screwing U.S. citizens. I wasn’t in the mood to argue about this topic and rifled through my briefcase to find clipped newspaper articles that took fifth place to the sun and aquatic water rides at the absurdly overrated Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
One piece was written by The Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Zaslow, a column lamenting the nearly unanimous disinterest in libraries among people under the age of 30. I’m not sure Zaslow meant to dabble in nostalgia—he did cite a few kids in his suburban Detroit neighborhood who embraced the local “oasis”—but the fact is that this is a battle that was over a long time ago. Zaslow writes sentimentally: “For parents and grandparents, it’s hard to accept that young people today often feel little connection to the local library. We recall the libraries of our childhoods as magical places; getting our first library card was a rite of passage. It saddens us that younger generations seem more eager to buy books than borrow them, or that they consider libraries just another tool for acquiring information.”
Fact is, I share Zaslow’s opinion—even if “magical” is a touch hyperbolic to describe the town library, as if it were on the same pedestal as, say, Coney Island or Jones Beach—but if I suggested to my boys that we go downtown to the fine Enoch Pratt Library, they would likely suggest that a doctor’s appointment for premature dementia was in order. Nicky and Booker read (books, not newspapers), but trips to the library are confined to school field trips. In truth, the library today is an antiquated cultural staple, just like independent record stores, blue jeans that aren’t pre-faded, bank passbooks, hitch-hiking, TV dinners and rotary telephones.
The closest the boys get to a library is sitting in our living room, listening to me talk about my own father and how we’d spend time together in Huntington’s “oasis,” usually on rainy days when he’d close his car wash early because of the weather. This was in the late ‘60s, and for a couple of hours we’d put aside differences about long hair and the “outlandish” prices at Sam Goody’s (I thought $2.99 for an LP was a good deal; he didn’t) and sit together at a table and read quietly. Dad would pore over the latest edition of Barron’s or Moody’s, while I read about U.K. pop in Melody Maker or rifle through the stacks for books providing research for a term paper. There were, of course, no superstores in Huntington, and when I was flush with money from mowing lawns, shoveling snow or babysitting, I’d go to Oscar’s and buy a couple of New Directions titles, the latest Tom Wolfe and even, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, the hippy-dippy stoned doodles of Richard Brautigan. When Dad and I had finished our library stay, sometimes we’d walk down to Woolworth’s and get a Coke and plate of French fries, especially when we knew that my mother’s dinner menu consisted of frozen salmon croquettes and instant mashed potatoes.
I don’t know what Zaslow’s habits are today, but the last time I went to a library was about a year ago and that was to return three overdue books that one of kids checked out on the aforementioned field trip. It wasn’t a pleasant experience: I waited on four lines, was shuffled from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, all to fork over $5.10 in accumulated fines. Frankly, I can’t remember if the process was so slow when I was a teenager—not that I was ever so errant in returning books—but that’s neither here nor there since the entire library experience has gone the way of a slice of pizza that costs less than a buck. And although my doubts about Wikipedia as a research tool are many—the idea of participatory editing of an encyclopedia is for the birds, in this crank’s opinion—who can blame today’s youth for preferring the convenience of a computer to the library? It’s almost impossible to think of the time, not really that long ago, when ATM’s didn’t exist and you had to get to a bank by 3 p.m. The library, fond memories notwithstanding, is increasingly a relic of the past and no amount of nostalgia will revive it.
Not as fortunate was a group heading to Philly, who, after left dangling for an eternity, finally found out they’d be spending the night at the airport. (Not surprisingly, all of Charlotte’s hotels were booked.) It was hard to muster much sympathy for any US Airways employee, but the fellow at this particular check-in station was really in the trenches, dealing not only with a hysterical and sobbing pregnant young woman, but half a dozen belligerent passengers screaming all sorts of obscenities at him. I’m usually impervious to standard cursing, but this was the kind of language that might even make a MoveOn.org volunteer blush.
My sons were pretty pissed too, and Nicky, in the heat of another announced delay even made the ridiculous claim that he never wanted to fly again. I calmly explained that if you travel often enough the law of averages simply dictates that a horrific airline experience can’t be avoided. (The day before, in Nassau, we’d wasted half a day at the airport before learning our flight was nixed.) Somewhat mollified, he got a couple of Nathan’s dogs and continued reading some book about how the oil companies are screwing U.S. citizens. I wasn’t in the mood to argue about this topic and rifled through my briefcase to find clipped newspaper articles that took fifth place to the sun and aquatic water rides at the absurdly overrated Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
One piece was written by The Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Zaslow, a column lamenting the nearly unanimous disinterest in libraries among people under the age of 30. I’m not sure Zaslow meant to dabble in nostalgia—he did cite a few kids in his suburban Detroit neighborhood who embraced the local “oasis”—but the fact is that this is a battle that was over a long time ago. Zaslow writes sentimentally: “For parents and grandparents, it’s hard to accept that young people today often feel little connection to the local library. We recall the libraries of our childhoods as magical places; getting our first library card was a rite of passage. It saddens us that younger generations seem more eager to buy books than borrow them, or that they consider libraries just another tool for acquiring information.”
Fact is, I share Zaslow’s opinion—even if “magical” is a touch hyperbolic to describe the town library, as if it were on the same pedestal as, say, Coney Island or Jones Beach—but if I suggested to my boys that we go downtown to the fine Enoch Pratt Library, they would likely suggest that a doctor’s appointment for premature dementia was in order. Nicky and Booker read (books, not newspapers), but trips to the library are confined to school field trips. In truth, the library today is an antiquated cultural staple, just like independent record stores, blue jeans that aren’t pre-faded, bank passbooks, hitch-hiking, TV dinners and rotary telephones.
The closest the boys get to a library is sitting in our living room, listening to me talk about my own father and how we’d spend time together in Huntington’s “oasis,” usually on rainy days when he’d close his car wash early because of the weather. This was in the late ‘60s, and for a couple of hours we’d put aside differences about long hair and the “outlandish” prices at Sam Goody’s (I thought $2.99 for an LP was a good deal; he didn’t) and sit together at a table and read quietly. Dad would pore over the latest edition of Barron’s or Moody’s, while I read about U.K. pop in Melody Maker or rifle through the stacks for books providing research for a term paper. There were, of course, no superstores in Huntington, and when I was flush with money from mowing lawns, shoveling snow or babysitting, I’d go to Oscar’s and buy a couple of New Directions titles, the latest Tom Wolfe and even, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, the hippy-dippy stoned doodles of Richard Brautigan. When Dad and I had finished our library stay, sometimes we’d walk down to Woolworth’s and get a Coke and plate of French fries, especially when we knew that my mother’s dinner menu consisted of frozen salmon croquettes and instant mashed potatoes.
I don’t know what Zaslow’s habits are today, but the last time I went to a library was about a year ago and that was to return three overdue books that one of kids checked out on the aforementioned field trip. It wasn’t a pleasant experience: I waited on four lines, was shuffled from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, all to fork over $5.10 in accumulated fines. Frankly, I can’t remember if the process was so slow when I was a teenager—not that I was ever so errant in returning books—but that’s neither here nor there since the entire library experience has gone the way of a slice of pizza that costs less than a buck. And although my doubts about Wikipedia as a research tool are many—the idea of participatory editing of an encyclopedia is for the birds, in this crank’s opinion—who can blame today’s youth for preferring the convenience of a computer to the library? It’s almost impossible to think of the time, not really that long ago, when ATM’s didn’t exist and you had to get to a bank by 3 p.m. The library, fond memories notwithstanding, is increasingly a relic of the past and no amount of nostalgia will revive it.
