Old Drew Id
First Post
Session 1 (5/07/2003) Late Night Research
Session 1 (5/07/2003) Late Night Research
As it turned out, Joe didn’t have a car either. So Taylor found herself giving rides to both Crystal and Joe. She dropped Crystal off at one of the university libraries.
Joe clambered out of the backseat and hopped up front. Taylor waited for him to wrap a seat belt around his considerable girth. She realized he smelled vaguely of Cheetos, but tried not to think about it too much, as she asked, “Where to?”
“Could we get back into the library tonight? There’s a few things I would like to look up that I couldn’t find online.”
Taylor thought for a moment. The repairmen had replaced the glass in the library’s front door this morning while she has swept up the broken glass. Mr. and Mrs. Hammack had scrubbed the blood out of the carpet and collected the damaged books before giving her the night off. They had said they would close the library until tomorrow, so it should be deserted. She nodded as she turned south onto Highway 31, “Alright, we can do that.”
. . .
The parking lot was dark, except for a small pool of light from a lonely lamppost set far from the front door. Normally, there was a light over the front door that was kept on at night, but with no one here, it apparently had not been turned on.
The front door looked completely repaired, though there was still some tape and some kind of caulk around the edges. The window that Joe had crashed through twenty-four hours earlier was covered over with a sheet of plywood. There was a single lamp on inside at the front desk, enough to see the little orange pylon and makeshift ‘wet floor’ sign that Mrs. Hammack had put up just inside.
Joe shuffled his feet back and forth and watched the parking lot as Taylor opened the front door. He sounded like he was nervous, but was trying to hide it, “So, you been working here long?”
“Nope. Only three weeks.” The lock was sticking. Perhaps the door had been bent when the men crashed through it.
“Oh, that’s not long. What did you do before this?”
“You know that library we dropped Crystal off at earlier? I was a librarian there.” The door finally opened, and they headed inside. Taylor flipped a couple of light switches, and the place was bathed in golden light. She locked the doors behind them. Joe moved over to the front desk and then stopped and looked around the room.
“Where’s a computer?”
“There’s one behind the front desk, but it’s old.”
Joe started to walk around the front desk. “I just want to look up some books to see what you have.”
Taylor adopted a wide grin. “Sorry, no luck.”
Joe ignored her and moved over to the computer. “Don’t worry. I’m good with computers. I can-”
He stopped. She wasn’t kidding. This computer was old. It was an old Apple II, with a monochrome monitor that looked like it was held together by the mound of sticky notes plastered over its top and sides. To its right was an old dot matrix printer loaded with greenbar.
“Are you serious?” He looked like he had just seen a ghost.
Taylor nodded with a deeply suffering look, “It doesn’t have a catalog. It just does memberships and tracks what people check out. It doesn’t even have a modem.” She had not complained to anyone about it before, but now that she had someone to show it too, she had to vent some frustration.
“That’s insane,” Joe looked disgusted.
“No, what’s insane is that we used to have a bunch of computers. Like four of five brand new ones, and they took them all away when I started working here.”
Joe paused and looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “Okay, china girl, you want that by me again?”
“Ok, again, I’m not Chinese, I’m Korean.”
Joe waited.
“Well, I started working here three weeks ago.” She had to admit, now that she started saying it out loud, there was a lot that she had accepted that was a little bit strange about the job. “I was working at Sterne library. That’s the big one at UAB. I’m studying for my doctorate in Sociology.”
Joe moved over to the card catalog. He cracked the knuckles on each hand before pulling open a drawer and flipping cards.
“So, anyway, one day I get a call for Mr. Hammack. He’s my boss here. Anyway, he called and offered me a job here as an assistant librarian, just working nights. And he offered me a lot of money…actually way, way more money than a librarian ought to be making. Especially somebody without a degree in Library Science whose only library experience was part time work at the university.”
Joe perked up and turned around, “How much?”
“Well…almost three times what I should be getting paid.”
“And you still drive that piece of crap?”
“Well, I’ve only been working here three wee—Hey, at least I have a car, fat boy.”
Joe pulled a small notebook from his backpack and copied down a number from a card in the catalog.
“So anyway, I took the job. And when I got here, they were doing a lot of changes. Weird stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like, they removed all the computers, and the internet access. And they replaced the computer at the desk with that piece of junk. And they completely removed the entire children’s section, plus the government publications section and the whole entire section on literary critiques.”
Joe was clearly lost from the look on his face. Taylor couldn’t tell if he was looking for a specific section of the library, or if she had lost him somewhere in her story. He paused at one bookshelf in the local history section and then turned a corner while asking, “Okay, so what does all of that mean in English?”
“Well…it means they just removed the three most popular sections of the library….plus they removed the computers and internet access, which means they removed the other big reason people come in here. Then, they removed the community bulletin board area and they started charging fees for people to use the meeting rooms. And then they cancelled pretty much every community event we had for the last month.”
“I’m not following you,” Joe muttered, while counting books with his finger, looking for a particular title.
“Well, I thought it was just budget cutbacks at the time, or maybe Mr. Hamack had gone a little senile. He acts senile actually quite a bit.” Taylor frowned and thought more about it. Budget cutbacks didn’t really make any sense considering the salary they were paying her. “But anyhow, looking at it now, I think they were doing this all deliberately. I think they wanted people to stop coming to the library.”
Joe pulled two books of the shelf and motioned Taylor over to one of the tables. He was already flipping open one of the books as he asked, “Why would they want people to stop coming to the library?”
“I don’t know,” Taylor admitted. “But I’ve been working nights mostly for the past three weeks. And we’ve been open until ten every night. And in that whole time, no one has ever come in after dark until last night when you all came in.”
Joe paused and looked up from the book, “And we all show up at the same time, and five minutes later, all hell breaks loose.”
“Exactly.”
. . .
Blotta-blotta-blotta-caaaarip-blotta-blotta-blotta-blotta-blotta-caaarip.
The old dot-matrix printer finished its job and scrolled out the last page. Taylor scrolled an additional page out of the dusty machine and carefully tore the paper along the perforated line. After folding the paper up into a neat thirty-page pile, she turned off the computer and headed back over to Joe’s table.
“Here’s the list of library patrons. One thousand forty-two people.”
Joe folded the stack one more time and shoved it into his backpack. He flipped the page back on his notebook and spun it around to face Taylor. “Take a look at this.”
Taylor pulled the notebook over and glanced at his notes. Joe had neat handwriting. Boyish handwriting, not feminine, but very neat. She actually thought the handwriting looked familiar for a minute and then realized what it was. His handwriting looked exactly like the printing in a comic book. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and started reading.
Joe had been searching for information about G.B. Ward, the Ward Numismatic Society, and for any information about the history of the library. He had a stack of books in front of him from the library’s local history section, plus several boxes of files from the library’s business records.
According to his notes, the library was not technically a public library at all. At least legally, it was a private library, owned and operated by and for the Ward Numismatic Society. But in terms of how it operated on a day-to-day basis, and how it presented itself to the public, it was a normal public library.
The Society apparently owned a separate entity known as the Friends of the Library. This separate entity actually owned the library and had funded its work since the beginning.
In the past decade, the library had been further financially supported by large contributions from local philanthropist Dick Scorse, from South-Medical.
. . .
Crystal didn’t have time for this. She had her Choctaw Oral Histories paper due next Monday, and she was already behind on it after that fiasco last night.
But, she was already right next to the microfiche machine, and there was no one using it. She could afford a few minutes.
She sat down at the little indexing computer and typed in a few search terms. After a moment, the screen returned a handful of possible matches. Selecting the oldest match available, Crystal wrote down the number and brought it over to the librarian.
A moment later, the librarian handed her a microfiche cartridge. Crystal fed it into the slot on the side of the machine and twiddled the knobs over to the appropriate coordinates.
The image on the screen was a negative of the Birmingham News, dated a little over six years ago. It was an article about the completion of the new Mountain View Church in Vestavia. Crystal hit the print button and then skimmed the article for any important facts, but there wasn’t much to go on.
The Church was built six years ago, funded entirely by private contributions. In an inspiring little anecdote, the pastor relayed to the reporter how he had been offering services in a small makeshift building while attempting to raise money for the main construction. He had asked the parishioners to fill out pledge cards stating their name and the amount of money they could donate to the new construction. The pastor had asked that each person try to donate one hundred dollars, but that they could take as little as a dollar if that was all that someone could manage.
One particular parishioner had turned in his pledge slip, and signed it. The amount listed was seven hundred thousand dollars. The name on the slip was local philanthropist Dick Scorse, from South-Medical.
Well, anyhow, nothing useful for their current situation, but she would definitely save the article to show the others when she saw them again. With that taken care of, Crystal proceeded to get back to her homework.
Session 1 (5/07/2003) Late Night Research
As it turned out, Joe didn’t have a car either. So Taylor found herself giving rides to both Crystal and Joe. She dropped Crystal off at one of the university libraries.
Joe clambered out of the backseat and hopped up front. Taylor waited for him to wrap a seat belt around his considerable girth. She realized he smelled vaguely of Cheetos, but tried not to think about it too much, as she asked, “Where to?”
“Could we get back into the library tonight? There’s a few things I would like to look up that I couldn’t find online.”
Taylor thought for a moment. The repairmen had replaced the glass in the library’s front door this morning while she has swept up the broken glass. Mr. and Mrs. Hammack had scrubbed the blood out of the carpet and collected the damaged books before giving her the night off. They had said they would close the library until tomorrow, so it should be deserted. She nodded as she turned south onto Highway 31, “Alright, we can do that.”
. . .
The parking lot was dark, except for a small pool of light from a lonely lamppost set far from the front door. Normally, there was a light over the front door that was kept on at night, but with no one here, it apparently had not been turned on.
The front door looked completely repaired, though there was still some tape and some kind of caulk around the edges. The window that Joe had crashed through twenty-four hours earlier was covered over with a sheet of plywood. There was a single lamp on inside at the front desk, enough to see the little orange pylon and makeshift ‘wet floor’ sign that Mrs. Hammack had put up just inside.
Joe shuffled his feet back and forth and watched the parking lot as Taylor opened the front door. He sounded like he was nervous, but was trying to hide it, “So, you been working here long?”
“Nope. Only three weeks.” The lock was sticking. Perhaps the door had been bent when the men crashed through it.
“Oh, that’s not long. What did you do before this?”
“You know that library we dropped Crystal off at earlier? I was a librarian there.” The door finally opened, and they headed inside. Taylor flipped a couple of light switches, and the place was bathed in golden light. She locked the doors behind them. Joe moved over to the front desk and then stopped and looked around the room.
“Where’s a computer?”
“There’s one behind the front desk, but it’s old.”
Joe started to walk around the front desk. “I just want to look up some books to see what you have.”
Taylor adopted a wide grin. “Sorry, no luck.”
Joe ignored her and moved over to the computer. “Don’t worry. I’m good with computers. I can-”
He stopped. She wasn’t kidding. This computer was old. It was an old Apple II, with a monochrome monitor that looked like it was held together by the mound of sticky notes plastered over its top and sides. To its right was an old dot matrix printer loaded with greenbar.
“Are you serious?” He looked like he had just seen a ghost.
Taylor nodded with a deeply suffering look, “It doesn’t have a catalog. It just does memberships and tracks what people check out. It doesn’t even have a modem.” She had not complained to anyone about it before, but now that she had someone to show it too, she had to vent some frustration.
“That’s insane,” Joe looked disgusted.
“No, what’s insane is that we used to have a bunch of computers. Like four of five brand new ones, and they took them all away when I started working here.”
Joe paused and looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “Okay, china girl, you want that by me again?”
“Ok, again, I’m not Chinese, I’m Korean.”
Joe waited.
“Well, I started working here three weeks ago.” She had to admit, now that she started saying it out loud, there was a lot that she had accepted that was a little bit strange about the job. “I was working at Sterne library. That’s the big one at UAB. I’m studying for my doctorate in Sociology.”
Joe moved over to the card catalog. He cracked the knuckles on each hand before pulling open a drawer and flipping cards.
“So, anyway, one day I get a call for Mr. Hammack. He’s my boss here. Anyway, he called and offered me a job here as an assistant librarian, just working nights. And he offered me a lot of money…actually way, way more money than a librarian ought to be making. Especially somebody without a degree in Library Science whose only library experience was part time work at the university.”
Joe perked up and turned around, “How much?”
“Well…almost three times what I should be getting paid.”
“And you still drive that piece of crap?”
“Well, I’ve only been working here three wee—Hey, at least I have a car, fat boy.”
Joe pulled a small notebook from his backpack and copied down a number from a card in the catalog.
“So anyway, I took the job. And when I got here, they were doing a lot of changes. Weird stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like, they removed all the computers, and the internet access. And they replaced the computer at the desk with that piece of junk. And they completely removed the entire children’s section, plus the government publications section and the whole entire section on literary critiques.”
Joe was clearly lost from the look on his face. Taylor couldn’t tell if he was looking for a specific section of the library, or if she had lost him somewhere in her story. He paused at one bookshelf in the local history section and then turned a corner while asking, “Okay, so what does all of that mean in English?”
“Well…it means they just removed the three most popular sections of the library….plus they removed the computers and internet access, which means they removed the other big reason people come in here. Then, they removed the community bulletin board area and they started charging fees for people to use the meeting rooms. And then they cancelled pretty much every community event we had for the last month.”
“I’m not following you,” Joe muttered, while counting books with his finger, looking for a particular title.
“Well, I thought it was just budget cutbacks at the time, or maybe Mr. Hamack had gone a little senile. He acts senile actually quite a bit.” Taylor frowned and thought more about it. Budget cutbacks didn’t really make any sense considering the salary they were paying her. “But anyhow, looking at it now, I think they were doing this all deliberately. I think they wanted people to stop coming to the library.”
Joe pulled two books of the shelf and motioned Taylor over to one of the tables. He was already flipping open one of the books as he asked, “Why would they want people to stop coming to the library?”
“I don’t know,” Taylor admitted. “But I’ve been working nights mostly for the past three weeks. And we’ve been open until ten every night. And in that whole time, no one has ever come in after dark until last night when you all came in.”
Joe paused and looked up from the book, “And we all show up at the same time, and five minutes later, all hell breaks loose.”
“Exactly.”
. . .
Blotta-blotta-blotta-caaaarip-blotta-blotta-blotta-blotta-blotta-caaarip.
The old dot-matrix printer finished its job and scrolled out the last page. Taylor scrolled an additional page out of the dusty machine and carefully tore the paper along the perforated line. After folding the paper up into a neat thirty-page pile, she turned off the computer and headed back over to Joe’s table.
“Here’s the list of library patrons. One thousand forty-two people.”
Joe folded the stack one more time and shoved it into his backpack. He flipped the page back on his notebook and spun it around to face Taylor. “Take a look at this.”
Taylor pulled the notebook over and glanced at his notes. Joe had neat handwriting. Boyish handwriting, not feminine, but very neat. She actually thought the handwriting looked familiar for a minute and then realized what it was. His handwriting looked exactly like the printing in a comic book. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and started reading.
Joe had been searching for information about G.B. Ward, the Ward Numismatic Society, and for any information about the history of the library. He had a stack of books in front of him from the library’s local history section, plus several boxes of files from the library’s business records.
According to his notes, the library was not technically a public library at all. At least legally, it was a private library, owned and operated by and for the Ward Numismatic Society. But in terms of how it operated on a day-to-day basis, and how it presented itself to the public, it was a normal public library.
The Society apparently owned a separate entity known as the Friends of the Library. This separate entity actually owned the library and had funded its work since the beginning.
In the past decade, the library had been further financially supported by large contributions from local philanthropist Dick Scorse, from South-Medical.
. . .
Crystal didn’t have time for this. She had her Choctaw Oral Histories paper due next Monday, and she was already behind on it after that fiasco last night.
But, she was already right next to the microfiche machine, and there was no one using it. She could afford a few minutes.
She sat down at the little indexing computer and typed in a few search terms. After a moment, the screen returned a handful of possible matches. Selecting the oldest match available, Crystal wrote down the number and brought it over to the librarian.
A moment later, the librarian handed her a microfiche cartridge. Crystal fed it into the slot on the side of the machine and twiddled the knobs over to the appropriate coordinates.
The image on the screen was a negative of the Birmingham News, dated a little over six years ago. It was an article about the completion of the new Mountain View Church in Vestavia. Crystal hit the print button and then skimmed the article for any important facts, but there wasn’t much to go on.
The Church was built six years ago, funded entirely by private contributions. In an inspiring little anecdote, the pastor relayed to the reporter how he had been offering services in a small makeshift building while attempting to raise money for the main construction. He had asked the parishioners to fill out pledge cards stating their name and the amount of money they could donate to the new construction. The pastor had asked that each person try to donate one hundred dollars, but that they could take as little as a dollar if that was all that someone could manage.
One particular parishioner had turned in his pledge slip, and signed it. The amount listed was seven hundred thousand dollars. The name on the slip was local philanthropist Dick Scorse, from South-Medical.
Well, anyhow, nothing useful for their current situation, but she would definitely save the article to show the others when she saw them again. With that taken care of, Crystal proceeded to get back to her homework.
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