Lynn Martin is an artist and poet.
BRATTLEBORO-It was 1945. The year the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald was liberated by the United States, Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance by name, and Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to play for the Montreal Royals.
I was 10 years old, and about to make the most amazing discovery — a discovery that would affect my entire life. Our fifth grade teacher took us to the public library.
It was a windy day. We were all buttoned up and hatted. Two by two, like Madeline, we walked from the school to the Kearny Public Library. It was all stone, like a church. We walked up the steps and entered the magic door.
* * *
Recently, I was part of a discussion on values: Where did we learn the values that defined our lives?
I’d always thought I had learned mine in the Baptist Church as a child. I had loved the stories they told in Sunday School, especially when they were told with the help of a flannel board; I would get caught up in the plot and the movement of the figures.
But, I thought, much as my imagination was caught by the plots — the flood, the miracles, the Cain and Abel story — had I ever seen myself in the stories? No, I never had.
I did learn by my parents’ example. They were hard workers, children of the Depression. I learned to not spend what I didn’t have and to appreciate the value of education.
But where did I learn the other values? Back to 1945 and the public library. I learned the values I live today in the books I discovered there.
* * *
That brings me to Alec Ramsey. He was the hero of The Black Stallion and its series of sequels by Walter Farley. He was a boy, but no matter — I could replace him with myself in my imagination easily.
For a city kid, there is nothing so exotic as a horse. Especially one that comes from Arabia and lifts me off our city streets as easily as a wayward wind.
Alec taught me self-reliance. He taught me stick-to-it-iveness. He taught me the value of friendship, especially with unlikely people. Henry, the retired jockey, wasn’t the most glamorous of characters. But, like Alec, I loved him.
Alec’s adventures cemented my friendship with Shirley, another city kid who lived down the street from me. We spent hours, weeks, years riding imaginary horses all over town. We became avid readers, looking always for new names for new imaginary horses. We could recite long lists of exotic names: Satin, Sultan, Sand. We became hotshot spellers.
* * *
It was now 1948. I was 13 when, somehow, I wandered into the front of the library and found the adult collection.
As I browsed the shelves, there weren’t many women writers I could stumble on: a few poets and Pearl S. Buck. I read everything Buck wrote, but the book I remember the most is, of course, The Good Earth.
This book globalized a kid who had rarely been off her street. I learned that I could relate to someone in faraway China, sometimes better than I could to someone who lived next door. I totally identified with O-Lan, lived her story.
It never occurred to me how strange it was for an American teenager to identify with an oppressed woman. I know now because I knew about oppression. It was unspoken and all around me. It is not surprising I have spent my life learning to speak for myself and for those who are voiceless around me.
Let me not neglect the men. I read all of John Steinbeck, whose East of Eden gave me one of the tenets that was the backbone of all my teaching.
Steinbeck used the Cain and Abel myth for his central theme. For two generations, his protagonists — Caleb and Aaron — the myth remains the same. Caleb (Cain) is the bad one; Aaron (Abel), the good one. But in the third generation Cain changes the story. He does not follow the pattern.
And I absorbed and believed: People can change. When you believe this, your approach to life is one of possibility for yourself and others.
In an early English class, I read “Dulce et Decorum Est,” by Wilfred Owen, a poem about World War I by a poet who died in the war.
Wilfred Owen graphically describes a gas attack, and people choking to death; if the reader saw it, they wouldn’t say “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” (It is right and proper/to die for your country). I totally believed him, and he sent me on my way to pacifism and anti-war marches.
* * *
Today, in my 90th year, I continue to visit the library almost every week. I continue to add to my knowledge, rearrange my priorities, and learn from others both local and global.
I get all this from the Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro.
No, it’s not the Kearny Public Library — except, in my imagination, I am still climbing those stairs into the sacred sanctum.
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