[carl_h]

Loved it when the Bookmobile would come around!

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[Gail M Baugniet]

You're probably asking about school days, but I remember having the book mobile visit my place of work!
When I worked for an insurance company in Wisconsin, the office building was located a distance from town. Once a month, the book mobile would park outside the building. During the (staggered) lunch breaks, we could visit the mobile and browse through books and videos. I always came away with four or five books.

 

[Cuechick]

I went to an "alternative" school for one year of jr high and we had one. It was there I found my first Stephen King, Carrie. I can still picture the cover.

 

[Plotspider]

I lived too far away from where it was.  :'(

 

[theraven]

I loved the Book Mobile!  Before I started elementary school, I remember going with my grandmother. I loved to climb the steps and get inside to pick out a book. I remember thought that I was always partial to a picture book that had a ladybug in it. Can't remember the title. I wish that I could.

 

[Tippy]

The Bookmobile. . . I grew up in rural western Nebraska, average population 10 people per square mile.  The county I lived in was larger than the state of Rhode Island.  Nearest official county library was 60 miles away.  You can guess how often we got there.  Then the county bought a bookmobile that came twice a month to a village 5 miles away.  It was amazing.  I found the most interesting books to read.  My parents were stunned and outraged when I checked out Katharine by Anya Seton.  Loved that book. . .certainly a far cry from western NE.  I can remember the musty smell, looking at the checkout card to see who had previously read the book.  Bugged the short, redheaded driver/librarian to put in special orders.  It was great.  Our little school closed in 1968.  I don't know what happened to the Bookmobile after that.  What a wonderful memory.

 

[Grace Elliot]

The Book Mobile (Mobile Library in the UK) reminds me of my Gran.
One used to park outside her house in industrial Yorkshire. It was such an adventure to climb up the metal steps, and bask in the strange ethereal light of the fibreglass roof. I can still remember how the van used to dip under our weight as we climbed on board. I've just had one of those 'scent' memories...of Gran's lavendar water that she used to keep in her sideboard with the Mills and Boon romances she borrowed from the library....ahh, happy days.

 

[MLPMom]

We still have them here, I see them all the time, in fact last Friday there was one here at our local Walmart. I loved book fairs and such when I was younger, heck I still love them when my children's schools do them but other than the school library I hardly ever went to the library growing up. I hardly go now, something about all those books with thousands of different people touching them, weird me out. I know, not nice but sadly it is true.

 

[Son of Aslan]

We never had a book mobile here in East Tennessee, but we did have RIF. RIF was a acronym for Reading Is Fundamental. They would come in, rearrange a few of our lunch tables, and spread literally a thousand or more books on the table. Each student was allowed to pick a book for free. Everyone was looking for books about bugs or with lots of pictures, and I was looking for H. Rider Haggard .

We also had the Scholastic Book Club, with their forms to order books from. Our family wasn't exactly rich, but my mother typically never had an issue with my wanting to order at least one book when these order forms were released to the students.

I think Dolly Parton has something that travels this area that has to do with books and reading, though I am not entirely sure what it is all about.

Wow, this awakens all kinds of memories. School libraries were regular haunts for me. In my pre-teen to early teen years, I would walk miles into the forest to find a suitable tree to lean on and read. Reading by a stream or a river, and losing all track of time.

But, to this day, I do not care for public libraries, and even most college libraries.

 

[Mrs. K.]

I grew up in a suburban area and we had a Bookmobile. I don't recall enjoying it too much; we had limited browsing time so other classes could have their turn, and I always felt rushed. That, and one lady who checked out the books had an extremely long broken fingernail she had secured on with a Band-Aid (as if it would actually reattach.) It kinda freaked me out. Every time I went back I was compelled to check on the lady's fingernail to see if it had given up the ghost. Couldn't name a single book I read back then, but it's been 35 years and I can still picture that Band-Aid.

 

[Chris Strange]

We called them Mobile Libraries here. I used to visit it when it came around, but it was always severely lacking in books I wanted to read (namely SF and fantasy). A large part of their customer base were the elderly residents who couldn't make it to the main library, so their were a lot of large print biographies from people who died 30 years ago.

 

[Julia444]

These are such great stories--and Gail, I love the fact that you had an adult bookmobile.  Wouldn't it be nice if more of them were available to office people now?

And I wonder if it's fun to drive one; that seems like it could be a cool job, unless tons of rude people came in and knocked books off the shelves. 

That story about the fingernail is going to haunt me now, too! 

Julia

 

[Keith B. Darrell]

Wow, I hadn't thought about the bookmobile in ages! Thanks for bringing back an old childhood memory.