Libraries are empty of customers and that is sad as hell. Sad for library workers who not only love the musty smell of the stacks but also the everyday challenges of actual patrons! We pine for our books and busy workrooms but the unpredictable and sometimes unpredictable people who visit make library jobs unique. I feel I can speak for thousands of library staff who feel the same. I can speak for them because I have been one of them for over forty years and have spent almost every working day at a reference desk serving these curiously named customers. They have always been called patrons like they were figures at court supporting one of the great composers but in truth, they are just people who love to be around quiet contemplation or free Wi-Fi. That was the original idea that has tilted a few degrees in the time I have toiled in the library vineyard. Patrons at my Central Library are very interesting. I could call some of them the great unwashed or the booboisie or some other derogatory term but the truth is experience in public libraries shows you the kinship you have with those you serve. Those include the homeless, the mentally ill, the lost, the deluded, the studio wannabees, and those who treat you like a piece of furniture. I have served from a candidate for president to a serial killer and all the shades of humanity in between. I am also not some Mother Teresa, although we do share a birthday. I am one of the worst in the profession for making cynical nicknames or telling stories of the wild eccentricities of the “general public.” Deep down though, I have seen time and again those that are not too far away from the man I am. The man I am now sitting at home by myself missing what I have been and who I have helped over the past four decades. Like it or not, we develop relationships with our patrons and some we genuinely love. I even married one. I also divorced one. Beyond all the well-meaning training courses and Ted talks, the best lessons learned come from the people who stand on the other side of our desks and bend our ears or test our logic electronically. I have a slip of paper framed in my bedroom which says “you get smarter and smarter” that was written by an unhinged ex-math teacher who told great stories of his Wisconsin boyhood and borrowed scissors to cut his hair over a waste-basket in our reading room.

Over the decades I have known thousands of library characters like ‘the rubber-man” who tailored his own outfits out of scrap. Or Rafferty, a genuine Wobbly who spent 13 years in a British prison for participating in the Irish rebellion. There was “Blue Fingernails” who transcribed a hefty real estate atlas into his own handwriting. Today there is “Leonard” who speaks eloquently about racism and how hard it is to live as a black man in America but then describes how he saw a fellow camper turn into a reptile under the Harbor freeway overpass. You can meet a great actor one hour and then hear about the Illuminati the next. Both can test your patience or stretch your imagination. At Central Library, we know the man who claims to be the Sultan of Brunei despite wearing a stained windbreaker and Walmart chinos. He probably knows the lineage of the Pharaohs in Egypt as well as any big university scholar but can’t remember the call number 932. The show changes hourly. Maybe a gangster couple looking for baby-name books, millennials sheepishly trying to find out what murder happened in their building because it is haunted, crusty old genealogists looking in an old atlas for a Polish village bombed off the map in WWII, writers trying to re-create where and when for the mystery they have started. People might have the stereotype of a librarian sitting in peace, studying thick tomes but there is a lot of yelling and behavior that would be outrageous at a pre-school that we take for granted. It goes with “serving” the public. I have been given many names sitting as an authority figure. Sometimes complemented which never gets old and lots of hard curses too. Once I was compared to David Niven but in a “different” way. Still, I miss these people. I miss serving a random selection of humanity from the ridiculous to the sublime. I miss the immigrant kids; I miss the old vets minding their own business, the quiet readers, and the naïve researchers who think they have solved the Kennedy assassination. I may not miss the smells of the unwashed but I do miss trying to do something to help out those on the fringes. Even if it is just getting them on the right bus, it is a step toward the common good. I am proud to be a librarian.

After two months adrift in telecommuting, I miss being the know it all who comes up with the answers to hard questions for smart and creative people. I also miss being kind to those who have no one else to turn to in this confusing journey they travel with no money, no friends, and no family. It breaks my heart to think of them sitting outside the old library staring at the fifth street door like their collected misery will cause the big iron door to swing open. I hate to think of them cut off from those little things that are the medicine in their wounded lives. The things we take for granted: a newspaper, a couple of hours on the internet, a place to plug in a phone, or watch a movie without being hassled. Basics mean plenty when they are just a water fountain and a clean bathroom. We are all they have during days that are bookended by the lines to get in shelters or return to single room apartments where they wait until the next time they can find solace somewhere. The biggest myth is about “library bums” who chase the “normal” people away. These patrons fought in Vietnam or Iraq, they may have been trapped by addiction, they may have been chased out of their beloved homes in El Salvador by gangsters. I know their demons pretty well. They drank to forget their poverty and grief and woke up ten years later down on Towne Street. Now the virus takes them deeper into the maelstrom of want and hopelessness. Some of these “street people” have actually used their time well. They have gained diplomas or citizenship as they quietly spent days in reading rooms. Some just educated themselves, reading to put aside the worry of surviving on the streets of LA. It is that kind of stuff that has kept me coming into the people’s university for all these years. It is also why I miss my patrons. I need them as much as they need me.

I learned my lesson early in my career at Central. There was a feisty older lady who was living at the old Engstrom hotel in what was left of Bunker Hill. She always dressed and wore a hat despite having a smell like the clothing section at Goodwill. She was a voracious reader and shared her love for history and hatred for Richard Nixon with me several times a week for a couple of years. The terrible library fire of 1986 ended our conversations but she managed to write a letter asking about the books she had checked out and thus began an exchange of notes. Her name was Irene and while she was eccentric she was also obviously lonely and missed her son who lived in another state and never visited. So, I decided to invite her to my house for my daughter’s birthday despite my trepidation about bringing a patron home. I really never thought she would venture all the way out to Los Feliz from downtown but I thought the gesture would be nice. So the day arrived, a hot and clear late June Sunday with two families showing up to see my two-year-old shine. At the exact time the party was slated, a big checkered cab pulled up on the street below and out stepped Irene! I greeted her and brought her upstairs to the front room where a lot of parents-donated furniture and a never used upright piano filled the room. With in-laws and my own Mom wandering in I had to attend to party details and left Irene in the parlor and ran out back. Minutes later a sweetly played Chopin Mazurka drifted through the house and then an etude beautifully done. Several people headed for the sound and we found little Irene sitting at the piano, bringing it to life and making the party something special indeed. She sat on that bench and played heavenly romantic music for at least a half-hour and only stopped to come out back for cake and an actual pony that terrified the birthday girl. What little glory leftover from the adorable kid was showered on this unlikely patron talent who eventually slid back into a taxi and disappeared from my life forever. She left behind a valuable lesson about the stories all of my patrons had to tell. The very real memory of the adored kids they once were, no matter how they looked in their current state. The tales of their loves, celebrations, protectors, and unfortunate turns that lead them to sad hotel rooms or even cardboard mattresses over on 4th street. They all have their reasons why they come to the library and I really miss being a witness to these small dramas. The great poet Mary Oliver says a lot in a short poem:

“Instructions for living a life/ Pay Attention/ Be Astonished/ Tell About It.”

I remember Irene playing Chopin’s Opus 10 no. 3 and I am thankful for my pure luck.