Instagramed shot of CLP (Main)
While all Pittsburgh natives agree that Pittsburgh is the best city in the world, no one can agree on what the best place in Pittsburgh is.
Sports buffs love cheering on 'dem Stillers at Heinz Field. The Pittsburgh version of the hipster (those uber cool folks who really do bike uphill both ways to school) can tell you which neighborhood farmer's market to go to for the best Saturday morning flowers. Come Lent, parishioners of the 50+ Catholic Parishes of Pittsburgh will shamlessly plug their parish for the coveted Best Fish Fry of the Year Award.
But as a Pittsburgh native, I know what the best place in Pittsburgh is. The Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh (CLP).
I first encountered CLP during my childhood summers. During the summer months, charged with looking after a bookish smart-aleck while her daughter put in long hours in the operating room, Granny was always on the lookout for free ways to entertain said bookworm. Her solution? Tuesdays became Library day.
During the late 1990s, CLP began to sponsor a program called Summer Reading Club as a way to trick (I mean, encourage) kids to continue to read once school let out for the summer. Every time you read a book, you were given so many raffle tickets that you could submit to win a prize. The more books you read, the more chances you had to win. And they were good prizes. Like 164 packs of Crayola Crayons.
Since she lived in Glassport, Granny decided to sign me up at the McKeesport Branch of the CLP. She bravely co-signed for my very first library card, and gave me my very own cardboard box to carry my ten weekly books back and forth in.
But Granny, always on the lookout for ways to tame my already healthy ego, knew that she needed to find some kind of service for me to do lest Tuesday's turn her granddaughter into a reading monster. One day, her sister-in-law mentioned that she planted fresh flowers on the graves of our relatives at the McKeesport Cemetery. But Aunt Mammie worried how she would find the time to care for the flowers between her work schedule, and caring for her mother and brother? Granny told her not to worry, she knew just the eager eight year old for the job.
From then on, Tuesdays became Cemetery and Library day. Every Tuesday morning during the summer we would load up Granny's blue min-van with four empty plastic milk cartons, two knee pads, and a small shovel and travel to McKeesport Cemetery to weed and water.
At first I was not happy with our weekly trips to the Cemetery. I saw them as an unjust encroachment on my library time. I may or may not have thrown a tantrum or two. Or three. But Granny was insistent. No cemetery. No library.
I look back now and see those summer Tuesdays as the highlight of my childhood. Spending time with Granny in the cemetery taught me a lot about my family history, respecting my elders, and creating beauty in an ugly world. CLP's Summer Reading Club helped me to fall in love with reading, learn to finish tasks I started, and appreciate the consequences of breaking rules (i.e not returning your books on time).
Granny passed away from ovarian cancer during my senior year in high school. At that point, I was working as a page at another CLP, and would soon begin my studies at the University of Pittsburgh as an English Literature and History major. Granny was buried with the rest of our family in the McKeesport Cemetery. A couple Tuesdays a year, I drive to the cemetery to scrub bird poop off her tombstone, and water her plastic flowers.
As I sit here and write this from seat 107 in the reading room of CLP Main, I hope she's looking down from heaven and smiling.
No comments:
Post a Comment