Love of Libraries Started in Allenstown, N.H.

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I first entered a library when I was 6 or 7, a short myopic Yankee kid hungry for books. The Allenstown (N.H.) Public Library, then and now, is housed in a modest, one-story brick building with a fireplace at each end and large windows on either side of the front porch. In the summer, day lilies fill its front yard, blooming riotously as flowers do in cold climes. The library could easily pass for someone’s home, except for the identifying sign in front.

The library was built in 1934 during the New Deal by the Public Works Administration at a cost of $13,000, in the Colonial Revival style. I watched a brief video clip by Fritz Wetherbee, a longtime Granite State journalist still going strong at 86. Wetherbee noted a stipulation of the federal grant required the library be built without using any power tools. That meant more jobs for those working on its construction, which were badly needed during the Great Depression. It only took one year to complete construction of the library, which has served this little town (population 4,422) for 90 years.

Our house at 27 Valley St. was a half mile from the library, an easy walk down School Street, past what is now Allenstown Town Hall to Library Street. (Nearly all New England towns have unvarnished street names such as School Street, Library Street, etc.)  The town hall, built in 1878, originally was Allenstown Grammar School.

I started first grade in that two-story brick building in 1961, but it caught fire a few weeks after classes started. Amadee Courtemanche, the fire chief, was our next-door neighbor. We all headed down to see smoke billowing out of the school’s second-floor windows. All eight grades were subsequently shoe-horned into cafeteria and gym space down the street at St. John the Baptist Church until a new elementary school could be built. The “new” school opened in time for me to start second grade. The former grammar school was renovated and became the town hall.

My childhood in that little town was quite idyllic. Even at 6, my parents were fine with me walking alone to school or to the library. Our pack of neighborhood boys explored the nearby woods, built snow forts, and rode our bikes to Pembroke, the slightly larger town on the other side of the Suncook River. It held nearly all the retail stores in our little spot of New Hampshire. The Allenstown school system only went through eighth grade, so if we had stayed, I would have attended Pembroke Academy for high school. Instead, we were Gone to Texas just before I started eighth grade.

Reading has been a part of my life for so long that I don’t remember not being able to read. I recall walking up to the library counter, which I could barely see over, with an armload of books. Memory plays tricks, but I recollect wanting to check out Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and possibly 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. (Let’s go with that.) The librarian, an elderly woman (she was probably 40), looked dubious. She asked if I was going to be able to read these “big” books. I cracked open one of them and began reading aloud without missing a beat. After that, she was invariably helpful and encouraging.

That little library unlocked the world for me. When you love to read, boredom is rarely an issue. I have been fortunate to spend hundreds of hours inside libraries and archives, doing research. And, for nearly seven years now, I have worked part-time as a reference librarian/archivist at Estes Library at LeTourneau University. This job has truly been a blessing, a post-newspaper publisher gig I still enjoy and have no plans to retire from.

When we left Allenstown for Longview in 1968, my parents bought a house on South Twelfth Street, which borders the east edge of campus. This campus became a playground of sorts for me and my new East Texas friends. We explored its woods, played touch football near Speer Chapel, cut through to get to Howards, across Mobberly Avenue from its entrance. Ironically, I don’t recall ever going into the library back then.

I can’t predict the future, but working in this library might be the last job I have, since I turn 70 next year. (I really don’t know how that happened.) That seems a fitting coda to a life spent around books, starting with that little library in Allenstown, N.H.

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