This is where I began my library career
as a page,
nearly fifty years ago.Gosh.
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Birds, Classics, Etcetera
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2008
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March
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- This one's for Cheryl
- Where's Oppy?
- Earth Hour
- Great Scott, twenty years before Edison!
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- You guys ...
- Alcatraz
- BH, continued
- Gas Pains
- Calverton Grasslands: Some publicity
- Fascinating books on Berkeley Heights
- More Chinese Brush Painting
- Two Emoticons for "Cat"
- Aamir
- I miss having 5 cats ....
- That's funny...
- Black and white restful ...
- It hasn't changed much (at least from the outside)
- Yipes! What did they see?
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March
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21 comments:
Too bad you don't have a picture of the library in old Columbia School. For the life of me I can't remember EXACTLY where it was. I think it was on the 2nd floor of the expansion. Up with the 6th through 8th grades. That's where I first discovered SF books. I expanded my search to the BH library shortly after I ran out of sf books at the school.
How perfect~
The first chapter of your career as a librarian started as a page.
:)
Oh, my goodness!! I can remember our class trips over to this Lib. With the explanations of the Dewey Decimal system and the racks of cards in the card catalog, it was one of my first insights into human beings ordering, listing and cataloging our collected knowledge into some sense of order - since even at this point in my life, I was aware that my mind seemed to "float in time and space", I was a little overwhelmed that there were minds that were so disciplined to do this type of thing.
I don't remember you working there as a page - was this an after school job? Can you remember your awareness of knowing when this was your niche?
Ooh, three great comments! Let me see if I can respond, if only briefly, to each.
Oppy, I remember, not a room for the library at Columbia School, but just the back office attached to one of the newer classrooms or homerooms. I remember bunches of books on shelves and boxes and piled up and it was self-service. The teacher (which?) just said help yourself and bring them back promptly. I liked that free and easy attitude, being trusted. I guess they were in the process of organizing a school library. We also had those monthly shipments of Scholastic Books, remember, that we could order and buy for a few cents. I remember walking over as a class to the public library soon after it opened (1953?)and getting our cards and the boys were horsing around and Mrs. Wrathall made them behave. She was the one who offered me the job of page for senior year of HS. Barbara Fay and I were the pages that year. (Barbara also became a librarian).We did simple jobs (putting on dust jackets, reshelving, tidying up, repairing books)and we worked there 2 evenings and every other Saturday from August 1958 to August 1959. The seed was planted obviously at that time, but it was 8 or 9 years later that I decided to become a librarian and Mrs. Wrathall urged me to apply to Rutgers Library School and helped me get a trainee position at Plainfield Public Library. She was my mentor. It has always seemed a natural choice of occupation for me.
Yes, Cheryl, page is the perfect word for us little novices.
The repairing of books (ripped pages, erasures, etc) and dust jackets was my favorite activity. The workroom was downstairs and evenings I was the only one working there so if I stopped to read a best seller for ten minutes no one was the wiser. I felt a little guilty for those infractions but now I realize that that was all factored into the deal, as Mrs. Wrathall knew I would be reading down there and she was hoping I would become a librarian all along, so didn't put any pressure on that would drive me away. So now I don't feel guilty. It takes a lifetime to figure some things out.
My niche? Well, Biddie, books have always been important to me. Even before the BH library there was a library in New Providence (BH was called New Providence Township before 1951 and my address was RFD #1, New Providence when I first went to school). It was across from an old church (Oppy, we discussed this once, I think) that my mother took us to. It was in one room, had a pot bellied stove and wooden floors, and the librarian was nice. Early experiences are formative, as they say. It wasn't till after college, around '64 or '65 that I made the formal choice of career. Before that there were many directions I thought of--cowboy, athlete, veterinarian, gardener, actress (for about 30 minutes)... I guess that is the way with most kids.
I really enjoy reading your comments back and forth with Op about the early BH years - I missed so much by not moving there before 7th grade and the close strings that my father kept me under ....
Biddie, you may have missed some things but I'm sure you have your own memories of other things.
Priscilla, the church was the New Providence Presbyterian Church and I think the original library was in the old firehouse. That's being polite. It was where the fire engine was housed. I doubt there was much room for anything else. They built a newer one a quarter mile up the road (not Springfield Ave)towards Summit. It was near a NP school which I assume was the grammar school since they went to high school in Summit.
After I raided the BH library for SF books I did the same at the NP library. [grin]
We also got our mail as RFD#1 Chatham (spelling doesn't look right) Township. Chatham was over the river in another county. At some later point I think the mail came through NP. I still remember my home phone number SUmmit6-4285J. The things you remember. [laughing]
Oh, I remember a phone number from years ago also. It's the only one I've remembered over the years - for a weird quirk of the mind.
We moved to outside New Orleans in the summer of 1946. I was 5 years old.
The telephone number that we got was: CEdar 6-1948.
I had just recently become aware of the year designation and realized that the telephone number would match the year's number in another year and a half! I very patiently waited until the time passed and 1948 rolled around - it was fun to see it happen!
Correction: Our address before '51 was RFD #1, Scotch Plains. That came to me last night.
Our phone # was Summit 6-0277. If you had a J on the end did that mean you had a party line? We had to speak to the operator to place a call, a bit intimidating for a child, and the receiver seemed to weigh ten pounds. I never saw a rotary dial until the mid-50s when I began to visit my grandmother in Phila. I thought it was something they only had in that city!
That's right! The whole Free Acres all the way down to at least Mountain Ave. maybe beyond was served by Scotch Plains. I'd forgotten about that. I knew someone on Plainfield Ave. almost to Valley Rd (the one that ran into Watchung not the one that was an extension of Springfield Ave once you went out of BH to the west).
The J suffix did indicate it was a party line. We didn't have much problems with it because the other party was an older couple in their late 60s or early 70s and didn't use the phone much. And you're also right about having to talk to the operator. I'm not sure when the dial phones came in. I don't remember when we got dial phones.
I enjoy an occassional use of the "way back machine". There are a lot of things that have been brought back from those times.
Priscilla,
I have a book that my mother left me that really interested me and, if you haven't read it, might interest you too.
The title is "From the Passaiack to the Wach Unks" a history of the township of Berkeley Heights NJ. Copyright 1977 sponsored by The Historical Society of Berkeley Heights in cooperation with the Berkeley Heights Bicentennial Committee. It starts with the geology of NJ, goes into the Indian Heritage (notice this is pre-political correctness), the land owners and settlers, major roads (Ghost Pony Road which I did know about), different communities within the area (Deserted Village, History of Free Acres), maps and partial maps of the area. The latter provided me with the name of the brook that ran through our property (Smiths Brook). Pictures from different eras and much more.
Wow! I would love to see that book, Oppy. Could you lend it to me?
There's another book I saw online, "Berkeley Heights Revisited". On Amazon.com you can see the table of contents.May not be as complete as the one you have.
Re: old telephones...you can get a replica of an old phone from the Crosley Company, even the ones like a post with the hanging receiver, and they are supposed to work. Santa gave me a replica of the old Crosley Radio for Christmas. I think he got it from L.L. Bean. It works!
I'd be happy to loan it to you. I assume you've been getting our class newsletters which means I have your snail mail address. I'll try to get it out before the weekend.
I will also take a look at the book you mentioned!
I just went to Amazon and after reading that the book you mentioned was the second book in what appears to be a series I went back and searched on just Berkeley Heights. I discovered that the book I have is listed for from $12 to [choke] $75. The original Berkley Heights book is going for from [choke] $77 to [MAJOR GAG] $222!
I'd be willing to bet that none of these books document a "most wanted" person from the '20s that could never be found but who could be seen almost any day of the week if the FBI had gone there. Or that just over the border there was a nudist camp for a while. It's amazing the things you can find out AFTER you leave town. [grin]
If you want, ask Pat W. about the first part above. Her father verified what I told her.
Oh my gosh this was some interesting reading listening to the three of you! I have heard of the party line phone, never understood what it was exactly because we did not have such a thing. I was born in 1969, we did have rotary dial phones but it was after the time where you only had to dial 4 numbers up this way any how.
I hated going to the library and I still do because our school, no one ever taught us how to use those card directory things, I have no idea how to find a book in a library, I have never heard of a page but I am assuming you were like a librarian apprentice? Priscilla you must be a very smart woman and I think you should go on jeapordy.
We had RR1, box 340 as an address after a while but we used to be just plain old Anderson Rd. then we got real house numbers, that was very exciting. Our house in NY address is just RT 8, Speculator NY. now RT 8 goes on for miles and miles, how would the police or FD ever find us? We simply say next to Swifty's the local pub!
And lastly Oppy, I do know what the "way back machine" is, sherman!
[laughing] Kirsten, I'd be surprised if no one here knew what that was. And YES Priscilla is a very intelligent person! Always was and still is.
As for telephones that didn't use the prefix (SU6 in my case) I could be wrong but I don't think we could. We were what I call a marginal rural setting. Just to the east was pretty much built up and the real rural was a few miles further west. Rural in our area didn't mean wide open spaces or fields, it meant hills and woods.
I lived on the end of a half mile road. The mailbox was at the beginning of the road. So in order to get the mail you had to got the the beginning of the street. My nearest neighbor was about 600 ft up the street and then about 500 feet off the road. We were surrounded by woods. It was a great place to grow up from my point of view.
Oppy, I just sent you an email with my snailmail address. Thanks.
That nudist colony and most wanted reference rang a faint bell. Did you know there was a training camp for famous boxers in Gillette, before our time? Our kind of rural area was called Exurbia, no sidewalks, low population,lots of property and elbow room and even a few dairy farms over the border in the next county. It was great. Our driveway was 300 feet long and I could spot the piano teacher's car (Mrs. Schweinfurt) as she turned in the driveway and I could run downstairs, practice my piece before she came through the front door and I could truthfully say I had practiced that week. She was also the truant officer for the school and seemed to have a lot of gossip... for the adults, not us little pitchers.
Priscilla,
I'm so surprised at you for practicing the Minute Waltz by doing it in 10 seconds! [laughing] And then telling something that was..... well, very misleading. Shame on you!!! (Hope you got away with it) My driveway was also about 300 feet. One side was all woods. Our property was a fairly narrow strip with woods down the opposite side. The front lawn (about an acre) was split by Smiths Brook which then went down the property line and across the property behind the house forming the end of the about half acre of house, small backyard, and garden and the beginning of woods. The remaining about 4 acres were all in that back woods along with hundreds of acres of other peoples property but, until just after high school, there was no houses or anything but woods there.
Now that you mention about the boxing camp I do remember something about it. I wasn't sure if it was Gillette or Stirling.
I never had any dealings with the truant officer so that's one I didn't know. Did you brother have any dealings with her?
I'm sure they did. Your mother would have remembered her name. If a child was out of school Mrs. S would call the home and find out if the child were sick or what. I remember answering the phone when my mother was working and assuring Mrs. S that yes I was very sick cough cough.
Kristen: this may be news to you but the "card directory thing" was made obsolescent years ago by the arrival of online catalogs, which are very easy to use. Try it! http://depthome.sunysuffolk.edu/Library/index.asp
Ooooo there's a sneaky side to you! [laughing] You hid it well.
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