The 4th Street Branch of the Richmond Public Library was my refuge away from the ordinary and where I wandered the shelves, going from one new world to another with a book or two in hand.
The library branch was tucked into the basement of a traditional Carnegie style building, constructed in the 1920s when Richmond had its first growth spurt as a new East Bay town. This was the only branch of the Richmond Public Library that served the primarily black, brown, and poor white neighborhood. It was an anchor for me and almost all of the locals respected it as knew it as a safe haven for book lovers like me. It was our most visible inner (i.e. ghetto) city outpost and while it had seen better days it was still a haven. By the mid-fifties the area around the 4th Street Branch went dark with a tide of brown and black families moving into the part of the city no one else wanted.
My Carnegie sat on a gentle mound. It was about thirty feet high and maybe seventy-five by forty across. It towered over all the homes and building in the area as it looked like an an ancient people had once lived there and left it behind as one of their monuments. The building had the look of permanence as it had already been around for several decades and looked like it would last longer than us. It left a mark on me as during my kid days in the mid-fifties as the Carnegie branch library was my home away from home, my refuge. I was always a bookaholic and the Carnegie Branch fed my reading habit.
The Carnegie building had two levels. The top floor housed our local informal local history museum and public meeting hall. It was ruled by a handful of old white women who kept the place open and clean, ready for weekend and holiday visits by locals. These women, are local version of home-grown plantation dowagers, gave their time on weekends and special holidays to conduct tours and offer groups a place to meet and talk. They took care of the bare bones exhibits that included vintage photos of Richmond before WW1. The walls also had a more current section of photos and articles honoring Richmond’s part in WW2 as a war goods powerhouse of liberty ships and armaments. The black and white photos showed Richmond’s workers making war supplies, ranging from field toilet kits to grenades and submarine torpedos. I was especially proud of the torpedo photos as my Uncle Frank was a WW2 vet and told me that my mom, his favorite sister, worked at American Standard in North Richmond screwing in torpedo detonators. I really liked that building with its Corinthian columns and dark oak floors and the submarine torpedo on the main floor.
The Carnegie branch was a little over a mile away from our home on the other side of the rail tracks. On a hassle free day I could get there in about twenty minutes if I used the regular streets. But most times I could not take the direct route as it would mean that I’d have to get past the bad ass kids and wannabe thugs that demanded a toll or just bullied anyone who passed. They loitered around the south side of the street next to the rail tracks, a throw’s distance from our home. They didn’t get too close to my home as we had some dogs who saw the world in black or light brown. To avoid those kids, most of them probably dead before they hit twenty-five, it meant jumping over our back fence, crossing the first gully filled with human and machine debris, then the tracks, and then getting across the other ditch that separated the school from the tracks.
All of this after I climbed our back fence to make the run. And if I was not spotted by them I climbed the wire fence that separated the school from the ditch. I knew the layout well as I could see all this from our home’s backyard. This was my elementary school and I went there despite not living on the right side of the tracks. I used my abuela’s address that was on the north side and happily went to Lincoln Elementary, built to accommodate us WW2 children. The school rooms were still in good shape and it was staffed up with some great teachers and a good library which I read through before the end of third grade.
I managed to get to the Carnegie branch on a regular basis although several of the bad ass kids did catch me a couple of times as I scurried across the tracks. They would yell at me to pay up or they would pelt me with rocks. I loved books and tried to be prepared for the rock fights. I kept a supply of the “good” rocks in small burlap bags outside the rear door of our home. I would grab the bag and climb over our fence and then race like hell to the first ditch. I always hand-picked my rocks for weight and shape, ready to launch at the punks if they caught sight of me. I learned to throw them fast and despite having bad eyes I often managed to hit one or more of the guys if they spotted me. It was always worth the potential rock hit as I needed to feed my book habit that gave me glimpses of the world beyond the tracks.
