Bibliophile from Birth to Burlingame

We finally made the short walk down the street to explore the historic Burlingame Public Library. During a previous dinner, T's friend, a former Burlingame resident and fellow bibliophile, had highly recommended a visit. She could not have been more right. The place is not only a book lover's haven but also an architectural treat. The dark oak-paneled walls, ornate tapestries, period lighting, and Stickley-inspired, Arts & Crafts Movement furniture evoked a time in Burlingame's history when the bluebloods of San Francisco called this sleepy, eucalyptus-lined town, home. On the third floor, hidden in the rear, we "discovered" a wonderful wood-paneled conference room that faithfully replicated the ones I would often encounter at an Ivy League campus, Yale in particular. On the lower floor, we happened upon a box of old black and white photo plates, all depicting some historic moment in Burlingame's past. There were several photos depicting then-President Teddy Roosevelt arriving at the Burlingame train depot (now the Cal Train stop) and participating in a welcoming procession down Burlingame Avenue towards the Burlingame Country Club. Walking down the aisles of books brought back some very old memories. Looking back, libraries have been, in one way or another, a consistent backdrop in my life. Early on, at newly-built John F. Townley Elementary School back in my hometown of Irving, Texas, I was one of a handful of students in my fifth grade class allowed to knock off class time to volunteer in the library; this is where I was first introduced to the Dewey decimal system and also to that particular scent of worn paper that is unique to libraries. The experience was so memorable that I later volunteered a few hours per week behind the circulation desk of our high school library, where I would cause mischief by adding fines to classmates' accounts. And much later in life, I earned a little extra income by working in the law school library, manning the security desk on Friday and Saturday nights; strangely enough, to make sure my fellow law school colleagues, many of them bound for future careers as criminal prosecutors, weren't pilfering fifteen pound federal law digests in their backpacks on the way out. The elegant Main Library at Berkeley, as well as the cavernous New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan, were also memorable backdrops for many hours spent with fellow students or more often than not, alone with a stack of books and magazines. My bibliophilic love of libraries must have rubbed off on my sister, who works for Innovative, the leading database software provider (primarily electronic card catalogs) for public and private libraries. On a whim, T and I signed up for Burlingame library cards. Good thing we did because I may be visiting more often. To steal a quote from writer Jorge Luis Borges, "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."