This article, by John Cafiero, was originally published in the Arizona Daily Star on January 19, 2025.
We moved to the States from Peru when I was six years old. We lived pretty well in Lima but had to start over in Miami. We stayed in a hotel for a bit, then my dad found a small house to rent, and we bought sleeping bags because we didn't have beds yet. When we got there, it was completely empty except for a giant swordfish mounted on the wall.
I did second grade in Miami, split third grade between Springfield, Illinois, and Marlborough, Massachusetts, and started fourth grade in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Somewhere in there, I remember going to a library to see the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I don't remember anything about it, but I learned that, in a time before widespread VCRs or cable, they sometimes showed free movies at the library.
In school in Tulsa, we had something called "library class," where, as far as I remember, we were supposed to just read quietly. I had read only comic books before, but here I gravitated toward books about airplanes and rockets. Then I discovered a book called The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, by Daniel Pinkwater, the first novel I ever read. The helpless, in-over-his-head feelings of the protagonist spoke to me. It began an obsession with books that I'm only now getting a handle on.
In high school, I didn't have people to sit with at lunch, so I leaned against a wall at the farthest edge of the cafeteria, near the door to the library, and read books like The Plague and The Spanish Anarchists. Eventually the librarian invited me to sit inside. Later, when I started dating a girl a year ahead of me, I stole a library book and gave it to her. The Complete Poems of E. E. Cummings. I don't know why I thought this was okay. Maybe it seemed like something an anarchist would do.
In college, I had a work-study job at the university library. The tall, closely set stacks on the periodicals floor made it quiet, and it smelled intensely of books. My manager was a devotee of macrobiotic food and a close talker. A coworker who had the look of a squirrel magically turned into a human was also a close talker, and when these two chatted it looked like they were in imminent danger of kissing.
Another coworker, Joel, had a mellow voice and a compelling way of talking about people and art and life. Hours flew by as we talked about books and movies and music. I reckoned this was typical conversation in the adult world I was entering, that wit and depth were going to be commonplace. It turned out that Joel was fairly unique, and it didn't occur to me to make an effort to hang on to him as a friend.
I started reading to my kids the day each one came home from the hospital, and I was faithfully late taking them to Storytime at Nanini Library every Saturday. The librarian who ran it was a master of the art. He started out sitting and reading normally, but by the end he was standing on the chair waving his arms and hollering in silly voices. I took mental notes. My kids became book addicts who took pride in their super-long library due-date slips.
When the pandemic hit, I had been a stay-at-home dad for four years, something my brain and nervous system didn't end up loving. We had just bought our first home when Covid put the business my wife had spent years building in danger of going under. The outlook was uncertain-to-bleak. I applied for jobs to bolster our stability, including at the library. Eventually, a raft of loans, grants, and personal gifts—tied together with sheer luck—kept our business afloat. But the library threw us another lifeline when I was hired at Kirk–Bear Canyon Library, working with people who are kind and welcoming.
Over and over, in moments when I've felt lost—out of place like a swordfish in an empty house—I've found myself again at the library.
John Cafiero's first job was at a library, and, if all goes well, his last one will be too. In between, his work time and spare time have been spent largely on books, writing, design, and music. He and his wife spend their date nights watching (and sometimes roadying for) their kids' band, Lunar Excursion Module.
