A visit to the bookmobile makes the summer better
- col-teri-stein
- August 8, 2025
- 443
There seems to be never enough time to enjoy the outdoors in the summer. And now, who doesn’t feel the pangs of anxiety when “back to school” ads start showing up everywhere. I haven’t been to school for many decades, but I still feel the pain.
Now is the time to spend as much time on the porch, in the backyard or at the park and enjoy what is left of summer. Yes, this column was written on the front porch swing. The recent brief cooler spell of perfect weather was especially enjoyable.
After a hiatus of some time, we really enjoyed the return of the bookmobile to our community for the summer. During the time when back to school was a real fear, all of us six siblings loved to go to the bookmobile. We were there early, waiting for it to arrive.
The good bookmobile memories have grown fonder over the years. They are one of the best memories from childhood.
We loved picking out books for ourselves, like the Encyclopedia Brown mystery books for children, and for our mom who enjoyed reading books on the President John F. Kennedy family. This would have been after his death, so much was being written. We always tried to find something interesting for Mom.
I must have gotten the non-fiction genes from Mom, because now I enjoy reading biographies and especially autobiographies. This summer, I read the autobiography of Cher, the singer. That book went up to the time in her life just before she began her career as an actress in the movies. It covered a lot of stuff that I remembered like the Sonny & Cher Show on television. A second Cher book is still in process, so I’ll have to read that when it comes out.
The bookmobile librarians were very helpful, and they gave us bookmarks that featured our stop and the time and dates they would be there. They even ordered books for me that I requested including titles by actress Marlo Thomas.
One of the books was an autobiography by Thomas that covered her life plus had information on other popular comedians at the time. This book, “Growing Up Laughing,” was from 2010 and it is still interesting. Of course, I liked to watch the “That Girl” show on television during the late 1960s, early 1970s and I still like to watch the reruns today. We didn’t realize at the time that the show was cutting edge, it was the first show of its kind to feature an unmarried woman trying to start her career. It paved the way for shows like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and others.
Of course, the bookmobile of yesterday was larger than the one of today. Everything changes, with the smaller bookmobile you don’t need someone with a special license to drive it.
There was still a great selection of books despite the smaller size, and they had more interesting books than I had time to read. They had a lot of newer titles and a big selection of large print books. I did find a newer cozy mystery series to try, too.
Once summer is over, I’ll have to go back to my other favorite way to get books. I go online to my library account and do a search for newer titles and subjects that I am interested in. You can select these and put them on hold. Then you can suspend some of the holds, so if you pick out 10 books, they don’t all arrive at once.
The bookmobile only has one stop left for the summer in our neighborhood and that is a scheduled pick-up only time. It will be sad, but we hope the bookmobile, all the good bookmobile memories and all the good bookmobile books will be back again next summer.