The Library Irregulars

When I worked at a large urban library in the 70's and 80's, we had quite a few street people. That was the time of the sociological theory that people should be let out of the institutions if they were not dangerous to themselves or others, and allowed to find a place for themselves in the world. The place they found was the public library.

Some of them were too smelly, too hostile and violent, and too psychotic to be anywhere but in a padded cell. But they were regulars--and by that I mean that they came into the library every morning at 9 and left every evening at 9--the library was their home, the place where they felt most comfortable.

One day Richard came in, cigarette in hand, and asked, as usual, for the City Directory. I handed it to him and and told him smoking was not allowed in the library, so he ground his cigarette out in the desk calendar. Another time, a patron in the Reference room asked a regular to stop humming. The response? "I'll go and get my AK 47 and we'll see if I can hum or not." Since most library users weren't aware of the crazy element unless they were regulars themselves, the first patron didn't know enough to laugh it off. So a fist fight broke out, broken up by my cohort Peter, librarian and peace officer. AK 47 strode out yelling that he'd be back with his rifle. I informed Peter that I'd be hiding under the desk until further notice.

I have to admit, though, that for the most part we all had great affection for our regulars. They made us laugh, and that was welcome when one had spent two hours poring through the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations, for the uninitiated).

There was Head Transplant Man, who informed Anne that he desperately needed one, and wanted to know where he could get the procedure done. Although Mary and I begged her to usher him into our "clinic" in the back stacks, Anne simply humored him, and settled him down with some government documents, his favorites. There was the little guy who looked like Squiggy, who always asked for "the book with the plutonium cover" (The Congressional Directory). And one of our favorites, Jane, who drew a mountain range near the North Pole in the National Geographic Atlas. When we got a new edition, we kept the old one just for her, so she could continue to draw the world the way she saw it.

When I left that library for a smaller one, I discovered that it wasn't just urban libraries that drew the, shall we say, odd. Imagine my surprise when I walked through Information Services one day and found my old friend, Toenail Clipping Man...yes...clipping his toenails. Shoes and socks off, leg extended over the top of the library table, clipper making that loud, unmistakable clicking sound. I told him to stop that immediately and he, of course, accused me of following him from library to library to interfere with his grooming routine.

The library I work for now is smaller still--it fits the category of medium sized--but it's in a mixed suburban/urban community and, as Sue, Mistress of the Macabre and my Administrative Assistant, likes to say, "It's on the bus line." Though we have fewer of them, the eccentric and perverse and odiferous are well represented at our library.

Public libraries excel at providing a non-threatening atmosphere and, public servant and bleeding heart that I am, I'm rather pleased that the most alienated and lost among us find refuge there.