Shelving Books

Shelving

I was at the city library shelving books, scooting through book trails atop a plastic chair that rolled on wheels, the kind kids wobble around on, in front of a computer. The shelves were just chest high and a man spoke in my direction, from the other side.  It was only a question, and it initially startled me because I had been fully focused on my mindless task.  I spent two hours among the books each Saturday, when I first moved home to Montana. For many, this would have begun as tedious, and evolved into monotony.  But it felt fine, to me, tucked safely within the quiet, warm walls of books.

The man repeated the question as he indicated the illustration on the cover of a children’s book.  He showed me the drawing of a stage coach with its parts labeled. He had asked me to look at the anatomy of the carriage shown.  He thought it odd that he could not find a part labeled buckboard.  Speaking almost to himself he said, “Each day I drive by a road named buckboard, and I thought I knew what it meant.”  But, he indicated, the diagram did not have a part labeled buckboard, and his disappointment was apparent.  It was as if he had, somehow, let himself down.  Inadvertently, he had believed that he had known something, but in the children’s section of the city library he had learned that maybe he had not known it.

 He asked if I knew where the buckboard was located, and I felt like because I was there, shelving books, I was expected to know the answer to this simple question.  And, as if I knew with certainty, I said that I believed it was somewhere in the front, but towards the bottom, close to the wheels.  But, I really didn’t know whether I was anywhere near correct.  It made sense, he continued, because if a horse bucked while hitched to the coach, a board placed in the vicinity I had pointed to, would indeed protect the driver.  Relieved, he said he had thought that was where the buckboard should be.  We were now it seemed, in agreement that the children’s book was incorrect, or at least incomplete in its labeling.  He was clearly relieved, and returned to his grandchildren, and I to my task.