With everything closed due to the pandemic, there are many things I miss, but a big puka in my humdrum life is the library.
When I was growing up, Hilo library was the afternoon meeting place. Four schools — elementary, intermediate and high — clustered along Waianuenue Avenue between the makai side library and the jail up mauka.
We were advised that if we spent more time here — pointing to the library — then maybe we wouldn’t end up there — head jab at the jail.
It was good advice, and when final bell rang, students meandered downhill to the handsome lava rock gathering place where teens could loiter without raising suspicion. We gossiped and flirted but kept the noise down because of stern librarians giving us stink eye when we got too loud. And in addition, we did homework, wrote reports and even borrowed a book or two.
Today, 69 years after its construction in 1951, Hilo Public Library is still an inviting place, with Kamehameha’s Naha stones guarding the entrance and lush laua‘e packing the flower bed outside the children’s room.
Everything inside looks almost the same, but after all these years there are, of course, a few changes, most notably the computers. It started with a handful, but now there is an entire phalanx lining the floor-to-ceiling front windows.
I have a laptop and an iPad but haven’t bought a printer since moving back home. Who wants one more thing to dust? Nowadays, needing to print a document is one of the reasons I go to the library, and because I’m paying per page, I no longer reprint any personal writing after a mere one or two word revision. That extravagance belongs to the past.
So the library helps me feel not just studious but sanctimonious. Think of all the trees I’m saving and the trash I’m not making! That glow emanating from the stacks is my halo.
But perhaps the next biggest change is the noise. The library used to be a quiet place for reading and reflection. Now it’s like a busy coffee shop. Where are the librarians of yesteryear who scowled if we laughed out loud?
These days, I’m forced to overhear sappy sagas and sorry tales of woe from strangers. We used to shush the children when they played in the library, but now with adults yakkety-yakking, I want to say, “Inside voice, please!”
Even those on computers are noisy. At the monitor next to me is a guy animatedly talking back to his email. On the other side is a woman humming show tunes nonstop and off-key. There’s that moe lepo snickering as he surfs god-knows-what, and Mr. All-Thumbs muttering invectives at his screen that just mysteriously disappeared.
Limited to one hour a day of computer use, we have to tolerate the impatient patron, drumming fingers and sighing loudly while waiting for someone’s time to expire.
Before the shutdown, I noticed that the library was still a gathering place, but nowadays mostly for loud-talking retirees like me going deaf. Students weren’t milling around so much, and when I wondered about research, they just waved their phones.
Whenever I entered this sacred place, I saw either dinosaurs like myself, or harried parents with pre-schoolers, hoping for story-time so they (the parents) could take a short nap. Those in between were elsewhere, sipping lattes and swiping screens.
I worry what the post-virus future will look like, not only for restaurants, businesses and schools, but also for public libraries, those majestic monuments to literacy and learning.
Rochelle delaCruz was born in Hilo, graduated from Hilo High School, then left to go to college. After teaching for 30 years in Seattle, Wash., she retired and returned home to Hawaii. She welcomes your comments at rainysideview@gmail.com. Her column appears every other Monday.
