Artificial. A-r-t-i-f-i-c-i-a-l. I learned to spell it reading cereal boxes and ketchup bottles while I ate, and it was my favorite word until a pleasant turn of events.

How do you describe the wonder of a public library to a book-deprived kid fresh off the farm? Longfellow Public Library was Christmas every day! Housed in a beautiful replica of the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, it was staffed by a diminutive shushing librarian with glasses on her nose and a little gray bun on top of her head; and a beautiful, impeccably dressed black woman (the first black person I’d ever met).

My first real feeling of independence — simply signing my name on that coveted little card gave me borrowing rights to the world.

I vicariously grew up, dated, went off to Europe and ultimately got married through Betsy and Tacy. Trixie Belden and her best friend Honey took me on scores of adventures. Trudy Wells, R.N.: Pediatric Nurse began a journey through every nurse book on the shelves and a few other career explorations as well. Sitting on the window seats of the sunroom in the children’s side, I dreamed through American Girl magazines.

TV viewing was controlled and rare at our house (except, as I recall, for the Friday night fights on The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports — "To look sharp, and to feel sharp, too — Use a razor, that is right for you…").

So I read at the dinner table (when Dad wasn’t home), in bed with a flashlight under the covers late into the night, in the bathtub ignoring siblings banging on the door in need of the facilities, or curled up wherever and whenever until the dreaded “Get your nose out of that book and do something!”

The adult side of the library was mysterious, beckoning yet dissuading. One day a friend ridiculed me for still going to the children's side, and that day I decided I'd better grow up. Too bad.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. Proverbs 1:7