Alex Garver of Garner only goes to his neighborhood library once or twice a month, but when he goes, he makes a big haul.
"I check out 10 to 12 books at a time. When I finish 'em, I take 'em back," Garver told me last week at the Garner Historic Auditorium, where angry - that's a word you don't often hear associated with a library, right? - residents confronted county commissioners over a possible plan to close theirs. "I can buy books, but I don't want to buy every book I read at Barnes & Noble."
Scores of passionate - another word not routinely associated with libraries - residents turned out to try to persuade commissioners to abandon any notion of shutting down the community landmark that is the only library within miles for many of them.
"We must keep the Southeast Regional Library - known as the 'Garner' library to us - open," Ray Scott, a Garner resident for 22 years, told the commissioners.
As an admitted bibliophile - hey, that just means I love books, not furry little animals or anything else inappropriate - I was thrilled to see residents so emotionally invested in their library. You can tell a lot about people by which books they read or whether they read. Here's a tip for you ladies and girls: If a guy doesn't own a library card, that's a clear sign you're dealing with a Philistine. Keep on stepping, girlfriend.
No one was more passionate about keeping the library open than Garner Mayor Ronnie Williams, who said he was missing his beloved "Grey's Anatomy" television show to be there "as long as it takes."
Even though the Oscars were a couple of days away, Williams exhibited his flair for the dramatic. He pulled out a key ring laden with keys. "I have the key to my house, my car, my children's houses ... my house at the beach. I have keys that I don't know what they belong to. I don't," he said to the commissioners and county manager seated behind him, "have the key to open the library. But you do."
"Why you targeting weak people?" asked Eva Maletz-Kordas, a native of Poland who lives in Garner and uses its library often. "We pay taxes."
County Manager David Cook tried to reassure Maletz-Kordas and others that "We're going to look at all alternatives other than closing the library. That is the 17th of 17 proposals for budget cuts."
Even those long oddsweren't long enough to mollify Amaka Flynn, a Garner resident of nine years and a mother of two children of school age. "We want this proposal off the table," she said to cheers and applause. "You have the power to do that."
Country singer JimStafford, a sort of down-home Bob Dylan, once wrote a funny, veiled song about something called "wildwood weed" that allowed users to "take a trip and never leave the farm."
Books allow us to do the same thing. The commissioners need to consider what kind of trip they want residents, especially young ones, to take. Then they should scrap any plan to close the Garnerlibrary.
