...to the Seefiles, the Seefiles of Love

Welllllll, my evil joy at Seefiling may have come back to bite me.

Turns out, that stacks of overdue slips I Seefiled yesterday were only for patrons with bad addresses and phone numbers who we could otherwise not have contacted. There were two even bigger stacks covering 2003 and 2004 overdues yet to work with. Now, I'm all for Seefiling them too, but Mrs. A wants to give the patrons one last chance to produce the books and to know what the stakes are in case they don't. This kind of annoys me, because these are the same cats I had to phone, write or otherwise contact LAST MONTH regarding extreme overdues. Seems like if they haven't brought em back yet, they deserve all the Old Testament wrath the "liberry" can dish out. But, Mrs. A wants us to be a benevolent and loving "liberry" one last time, so now we have to check the shelves to make sure the books aren't hiding there and send the overdues out again.

Mrs. C approved my request to include a FINAL NOTICE note with each overdue explaining that if the patron's don't produce these books or otherwise pay for them by June 30 they won't be able to check out ANY books from ANY of the 33 libraries in our new regional library network. So nyeah!

There were a few patrons among these overdues that I took the liberty of shitcanning in advance, though. One was "J. Fagin", a child of the dreaded Fagin "fambly" who had three books out from 2003 that he has no intention of returning. I tell you, stealing books from the library is a way of life with these people. Pa Fagin has been at it since he was in highschool and he's raised all four of his yunnguns, not to mention his wife, to follow in his footsteps. Pa Fagin's been banned for life outright. He doesn't even have an official Seefile entry, he's been banned so long. His kids, however, are sneaky little bastards. Each one of them and their Ma too has AT LEAST two patron records with us and they've all been Seefiled at least once already. This should have precluded them from getting another card in the first place, but they like to sneak in whenever we have a new employee who doesn't know their evil ways and try to get a new card. They'll swear they've never had a card with us before, look pitiful and on the verge of tears and suddenly they'll have a new card and 10 more of our books which we'll never see again. We're gonna make Wanted Posters for them to hang around the desk.

So I added young Mr. Fagin to our DO NOT GIVE CARDS TO THESE DEADBEATS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list and, while I was at it, I added the rest of the Fagin clan too.

Other interesting overdues: Matilde the Cranky Wiccan has an overdue for a Bible she checked out in 2003. I didn't realize she even had a card with us, let alone checked anything out. Maybe if we started requiring the Internet Crowd to have clean upstanding cards before they could use the computer they'd be less apt for overdues.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Jesus came in to photocopy lots of things. Mrs. B wound up helping him for the most part, while I struggled with overdues.

And, of course, Parka came in and did his whole schpiel. The man types louder than any human being I've ever heard. (My wife would argue that I hold that title already--I argue that I don't type loud, I just type fast.) He left a full two minutes from closing time. As he lurched through the main room toward the front door, I waited with breathless anticipation for the moment I knew was coming...

Wait for it... wait for it... WAIT FOR IIIIT.

"What are your hours tomorrow?"

Ahhh, there it is!

"Nine to seven," I told him for the 63rd time.

The Parka Adendum (yet another unpublished Robert Ludlum novel)

Now that Parka seems to be back in full force, I guess I can finally share the following tale without the risk of jinxing his departure.

Miss E, our weekend warrior "liberry" ass., recently told me that she had to bitch Parka out for being an annoying patron a couple of weeks ago.

It was a Saturday afternoon and the library was uncharacteristically eat up with patrons. When not checking out books to them, Miss E was in the midst of wrestling with the Devil Copier for a guy who kept insisting on trying to copy the same dark single page despite the fact that the copier was jamming with EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT. Right on time, through the door walks Parka.

"MAY I PLEASE SIGN UP TO USE A COMPUTER?" he robot-droned, still 15 feet away from the sign-in sheet.

Miss E told him it would be a while because the computers were all full and there was a lady upstairs who was already waiting ahead of him. So Parka paced the floor while Miss E continued to pull accordions of paper out of the copier's guts.

One of the internet users left shortly after that. Much to Parka's dismay, though, Miss E continued to wrestle with the copier rather than immediately hunting down the lady with dibs on the open computer.

"Um, don't you think you should go find the other lady?" he asked impatiently.

"I will when I get a minute," Miss E said, unjamming the copier for the umpteenth time.

"I'll go look for her," Parka said. He went upstairs to search. Never mind the fact that he had NO IDEA who had signed up nor what she even looked like; he only knew she was a woman and was allegedly upstairs. He returned mere seconds later to claim, "I don't see her anywhere upstairs. I don't think she's here anymore. Can I please sign up for..."

"LOOK, YOU'LL GET A COMPUTER WHEN I GET A MINUTE!" Miss E screamed at him.

Wisely, Parka backed down. Miss E is not someone to be trifled with and, as her ex-boyfriend can attest, you DO NOT want to have her as an enemy.

This may seem like unprofessional and non-service-oriented behavior for a library assistant. However, I assure you that had "Liberry" Director Mrs. A herself been present Parka's stupid ass would have been verbally handed to him a long time before that.

The Ballad of Cranky Liquid Paper Guy

Miss E was off this weekend, so I had to work Sunday afternoon. This sucked, cause my wife has been out of town doing a medical school psychiatric rotation at the crazy hospital for two weeks and between the play and work I haven't been able to spend as much time with her as I wanted. Still, we spent the morning together and following a carb-encrusted lunch at McDonald's she drove me to work. While trying to get my car key off my keyring so she could drive home again, I managed to drop all my keys in my milkshake and had to go inside to wash them off.

I should mention that ours is not a library where patrons spend a lot of time asking us for office supplies. Their most frequent request is for a pencil and scratch paper. Sometimes to borrow a stapler. Today though, we had a man I've dubbed Cranky Liquid Paper Guy who wanted us to be friggin' Office Max. Cranky Liquid Paper Guy was not only unhappy that he didn't have his own liquid paper to use, but was also cheesed off because he was under the gun of some kind of filing deadline. He had what appeared to be at least two rush job projects which he had to accomplish before the day was out. Among these were several truly bad-photocopies that he was interested in further tarnishing by reproducing them on our devil-copier. And while the damned thing is at least operational following its recent gut rebuild, the devil-copier has completely given up on the notion of precision toner adjustment. If the original document is bad to start with, there's just no helping it. CLPG learned this, but not before demanding liquid paper. I loaned him our liquid paper pen and he started correcting.

Along for the ride was Mrs. Cranky Liquid Paper Guy, who didn't much seem to want to be there. She mostly stood around looking sullen and interrogating me about our patron computers. What did you have to do to use one? Did the computers have internet access? Did you have to have a library card? Did you have to pay?

"It's free," I told her. "All you do is sign up on the clip board and I can log you on one." I also explained that you get a half hour to use it and can stay later unless someone is waiting. She seemed suspicious and did not sign up.

Meanwhile, CLPG himself began complaining about the quality of our liquid paper pen. What he really wanted was a traditional bottle of liquid paper. Did we have one?  I told him that we did not. This didn't set well with CLPG but he was able to somehow get over it.

At one point, I thought he was finished with the Liquid paper, since he returned it to me and went back to making copies. Oh, no. He came back to borrow it several more times. Soon he also needed scissors and Scotch tape and the Liquid Paper again. I finally just left all our supplies on the desk so he could use them at will.

CLPG suggested to his wife that she could use a computer to type up "the resume." I wondered if he meant typing up "the resume" as opposed to piecing it together from worse photocopies of bad originals. She didn't seem too keen on it either way. Mr. & Mrs. CLPG finally paid for the copies and left, but threatened to come back later.

Around 3, Cranky Liquid Paper Guy made good on his threat and returned. This time Mrs. CLPG did want to use a computer to work on "the resume" after all. Unfortunately, the computers were all still full and there were two people waiting ahead of Mrs. CLPG.

"Oh, we didn't realize they'd be full or we could have reserved one earlier," CLPG said.

"Actually, we don't reserve computers here. It's all first come first served."

"Oh. Well, where we used to live you could reserve them," he said, in a tone that suggested we're somehow lagging behing in our service if we don't offer such a plan.

"Yeah, I've heard of that," I told him.

After 20 minutes, I was finally able to bump enough users to give everyone, including Mrs. CLPG, a computer.

After a bit, CLPG asked, "Do you have a typewriter for public use?"

"Well, I can't remember any patrons ever using it, but we have one. We only use it to make library cards, but if you need to it's okay by me. Actually, if you need to type something, I'd really recommend you use a computer instead."

"Can't," he said. "The information on these forms is wrong and I have to correct it. I can't do that in a computer unless you have something to scan it in with."

Technically, we do have a scanner. Its upstairs in the locked staff bathroom until such a time as we have available desk space for it. I hear some is scheduled to open up in about a year and a half.

"Nope. Don't have one of those," I said.

At his request, I showed CLPG how to insert paper in the typewriter and how to line up the form lines with the guide lines on the typewriter head so he could type on them. Most importantly, I showed him where the correction ribbon button was. As expected, CLPG was not a champion typist, so the half-hour that followed went exactly like this:

PECK................. PECK.... PECK... "Aw, dammit," DELETE DELETE DELETE... PECK... "Damn!" DELETE....... PECK........... PECK.

About five minutes into this show, I offered to come over and do it for him just so I wouldn't have to listen to that for the length of time I knew it would take him. Nope. He said he had it under control. Fine.

At around 4:20, Mrs. CLPG was still on the computer. At 4:22, two new patrons came in and I put them on the two free computers. If anyone else came in for a computer it was Mrs. CLPG who'd have to get off. At 4:26, the door opened and the familiar robot drone of "MAY I PLEASE SIGN UP TO USE A COMPUTER?" hit my ears. It was PARKA! I almost said, "Dammit, I thought you were gone for good!"

I went back and told Mrs. CLPG she was out of time. She'd been on the computer for well over an hour at this point. Do you think she'd done jack toward writing a resume? Hell no. Hadn't even cracked a word processor. If she had, I might have had justification for denying Parka a computer in favor of giving her more time for something useful. But she was just surfing the net.

When I told her she was out of time, she looked distraught. She went and whispered to her husband for a bit. Rather than complain about deadlines and pressure, as I'd expected, CLPG asked if it would be okay for them to type up her resume on the typewriter. Frankly, I think I would have preferred hearing complaints because typewriter was the LAST word I wanted to hear in association with patrons and resumes. His typewriter plan was never EVER going to work. A decent resume, after all, is not something you can throw together on a typewriter in less than 30 minutes, particularly when you're a guy who could probably type better with his asscheeks than his hands. But what could I do? Tell them no?

PECK....... PECK........ "Oop, I meant to indent that." DELETE DELETE..... PECK.... "Aw, dammit!"

It was maddening! In a fit of service-oriented mental-self-preservation, I went to the card catalog computer and loaded Microsoft Word. This is not a computer we let patrons word-process on, EVER, but dammit, if it would get these people out of here faster and prevent the huge scene of despair and teeth gnashing I foresaw going down at closing time, I was letting them use it.

"No, that's okay," CLPG said after I'd offered him the computer. "We've already started over here."

Fine! Do it the hard way, if you must. You'll get no sympathy from me come 5 p.m.

However, a few more pecks and deletes into the process must have turned a lightbulb on in his head, cause they gave up on the typewriter and restarted on the computer. This time it only took about 10 minutes for CLPG to figure out this too was a hopeless cause. They thanked me for my time and help, paid us for the copies and left, sans "the resume" and the big nasty parting scene.

The wife came to get me at 5. She'd planned to pick me up, eat dinner and then hit the road for the crazy hospital once again. However, seeing how pitiful I'd been about her having to leave, she'd had a change of heart during the afternoon. She decided to stay the night and just leave at the butt crack of dawn. Looks like Sunday work was worth it.

Classic Lineup

Today pretty much set itself up as a classic "liberry" day, as far as these things go. And I got to live through a great deal more of it than on most Wednesdays because I had to work a full 8 hours of it. This was due to Mrs. A and Mrs. C being out all day at a meeting, with all the horror that entails, and needing a fill-in hitter at the desk.

At 8:55 I rolled in to work and found the photo-copier repairman camped out on the doorstep. The Devil Copier had been in fine form over the weekend, plaguing Miss E because a patron kept insisting on using it to photocopy the same page over and over and over despite the fact that each attempt resulted in a paper accordion jamming the copier. She finally told him to quit it and turned off the copier. Then, after two days of dealing with similar behavior from it, Mrs. C finally called the repair people and insisted that something was wrong. Over the phone, the Devil Copier repair guy told her to break off a little piece of plastic toward the rear of the paper output slot that seemed to be causing all the jamming. She did. It stopped jamming on the rear and began jamming at the front side instead. So the Devil Copier repairman promised he would come in for a personal repair visit. That was yesterday. Today, just as he'd promised, he was here to do mighty battle.

At 9:00 a.m., I opened up the shop and then noticed something addressed to me on the counter. They were two maps with a note attached. See, last week a couple of female tourists had come in on the local Tri-Metro walking tour and asked if we had any maps of the area. We usually do, but the map-restocking people haven't been in for a while so we were fresh out. However, I had one in my car, which I gave to the tourists since I can get a new free map as soon as more come in. Well the two maps waiting for me today included my original free-map as well as one of the `spensive, high-quality, glossy paper, county-maps that are sold locally. The Post-it note attached said the ladies thanked me for the use of my map and hoped I'd get some use out of the `spensive one. That was terribly nice.

At 9:01 a.m. my new good mood fell. I discovered that none of our computers were connecting to the network at all. This means our card catalog, our circulation software and the internet were all down for the count. I try to phone some other local libraries to see if they're in the same boat, but they're all lazy and don't open til later in the day. Finally, after having to beat back a few members of the internet crowd with the three-hole punch, Mrs. C called to tell me that everything was down and that she'd put in a call to the tech guys at home office. They called me shortly and walked me through some network troubleshooting. Turns out the UPS battery backup for our router had stopped working. I plugged the router into the other UPS we have and everything seemed to work hunky dory. Well, except for the fact that Patron Computer #3 refused to have anything to do with reconnecting to the network and I immediately became far too busy with patrons to do anything about it. After several patrons complained bitterly about not being able to check their e-mail on it, I finally just slapped a big sign on it that read "BAD COMPUTER" and just operated with the two good ones. The internet crowd was NOT happy about this and gave me dirty looks about having to wait to get on for the rest of the day. I even had to bust Mr. B-Natural off and he gave me a solid grumble for old times sake.

Back at the Devil Copier, the repair guy had made several accordions of his own. This is suprising, cause the copier usually behaves its best when the repair guy's around. Shortly, the repair guy pried open the Devil Copier and removed a large section of its guts which he took out to his truck and rebuilt from the ground up. Once reassembled, everything seemed to work fine. "That should satisfy the ladies," he said. Screw the ladies, what about me? Before he could get out of the parking lot, I grabbed the darkest book I could find, Stephen King's Skeleton Crew, slapped it on the glass and pressed the little green button for copying. I even left the lid ajar, which is a double no-no that usually causes the copier to self destruct. Instead, the copy came out just fine and very dark indeed. Perhaps the devils have been exorcised.

Lady, I know you didn't just park your big ass Ford Explorer in the middle of the damned road blocking the entire street. Oh, no, I see you did. And now you think you're gonna hop out real quick and pop that overdue book of ours in the drop box, don't you? Yup, you sure do. Oh, so sorry... it's locked! You're gonna have to come inside anyway. Ehhh heh! That's right, honey. Climb back in your truck and go find a parking space.

And with both Mrs. A and Mrs. B gone, the day just could not pass by without a call from our Board President, Mr. Kreskin, desperate to speak to them and pissed that they're both gone. And of course, I had no idea where they'd gone so I couldn't tell him when they'd be back, which is the only thing that pisses him off more than both of them being gone. I really need to take this act on the road and go find the Amazing Randi and collect my million bucks from him, cause if there was ever proof of psychic ability it's Mr. Kreskin. He truly ONLY calls when Mrs. A and Mrs. C are both gone. It's phenomenal.

I asked a patron named Siobahn how her name was pronounced. I knew it was Gaelic and was therefore just as likely to be pronounced "Earl" as what it turned out to be, which was Shavonne.

"Yeah, you gotta watch out for the Gaelics," I said, meaning the language but immediately realizing that I'd probably just insulted her. So I lamely backpeddled, "Um, I mean, the language."

"No, the people too," she corrected. "Especially if they're raging alcoholics with a mean temper."

"Well, y'know, I wasn't gonna say anything," I said.

And it also wouldn't be a proper day with no Mrs. A and C in house if I didn't get five hundred thousand questions I can't answer. The major theme in today's unanswerables was parents asking to sign their kids up for Summer Reading. Sounds easy, but we're not doing sign-ups this week. Furthermore, I have no clue WHEN we're doing it. None. Never do. This'll be my third year to be around for Summer Reading and I'm still out of the loop. Every year I ask, beg and plead for an information sheet that tells me all the stuff I need to be able to tell parents, but I never get one. Well, okay, eventually I get one, but usually at the last second and never weeks in advance when the questions actually start. And let me tell you, these parents get real agitated about it all for fear of getting burned on signing up. We only give them a whole week (nine days, really) to sign their kids up. We don't sign any up before that week and if the parents miss out on doing it during that week it's tough luck for them. But, of course, half the parents schedule a vacation for that week and then raise holy hell when they find out how strict we are about sign-ups. Or they raise holy hell because they screwed it all up the year before and still blame us for it. Every year we explain to them that it'll be okay, we're not trying to ruin their entire summer and they can have a friend come in and sign their kids up for them while they're gone. Even this they find unreasonable. It's like we're asking for a kidney.

At around 2:30, the Drifter noticed our BAD COMPUTER sign and offered to help fix it. Seems he used to do network installation and repair for a living. Unfortunately, the patron computers have security features designed to keep patrons from doing that, so he didn't get very far. I warned him that was the case, but he said he saw it as a challenge. We chatted for a bit after he got tired of fighting the computer. I asked him what kind of flute he had round his neck. "A bamboo flute," he replied. Ah. He said he bought it at the local New Age Crap shop. We also compared notes one how irritating it can sometimes be to work in a public service job. Still, as I explained to him, even on my worst day at the "liberry" it's far less stressful than just about any other job I've had. I may bitch and complain and write excessively lengthy blog entries about it, but I certainly don't hate it.

Freaky Friday

Our National "Liberry" Week open house went okay today. Mrs. A made her pecan pie squares, which are an old favorite of mine from back in my pre-Atkins days. I had a sneaking suspicion, though, that the celery I brought with lunch probably tasted better than the pecan pie bars, so I did a taste test between the two just to make sure. I really couldn't decide from just one of each, so I had a couple more pecan pie squares and a couple more sticks of celery to better make the determination. Eventually, I ran out of celery, but I didn't let that stop me. The patrons also seemed to appreciate our having goodies out, some a little more than we might have hoped. Parka, for instance, made at least four trips to the table to gobble up our food.

One guy who I think was glad we had food was our very first drifter--or at least the first that I've met. I read other library blogs from library staff in larger cities (I highly recommend the ones in the side bar to the right) and one of the major issues they have to deal with is that of homeless people and drifters some of whom are quite troublesome. We don't get a lot of that in our little Tri-Metro area. Our drifter today was a drifter by the definition of the word; a guy who was passing through town on foot, hitchhiking and walking his way from Pennsylvania to Florida. He had the big pack with sleeping bag, supplies, etc. and an American flag on a stick that was protruding proudly from a pocket of it. Probably helps him get lifts. He seemed about five years my junior and struck me as a pretty smart and world-saavy young man who was just trying to get from one place to another as cheaply as possible and wasn't afraid to hoof it. I imagine he appreciated the grub and I didn't begrudge him eating it at all. I chatted with him a bit and learned of his destination. He asked what the best way was to get to I-77 and I pulled out our Atlas and showed him a couple of routes. "Is it hilly?" he asked. I just smiled. It's West Virginia; of course, it's hilly. I gave him a map of the local area, as he seemed like he might want to stay in the area for a few days.

An older couple, visitors to our town, came in to use the internet. They were doing geneological research and mostly printed several things and then began making photocopies from some of our geneal0gy books. Unfortunately, this meant they had to use our devil copier. We hate this bloody contraption. Hate it, hate it, hate it. It's extraordinarily tempramental and refuses to do its job without jamming, compressing the offending copy into an accordion of paper, about 80 percent of the time. And if anyone other than a staff member tries to do anything with it, it jams twice as fast. We used to think it was just picky about copying anything dark, but we've recently concluded that it's just a big ol' cranky piece of shit no matter what we put in it. We pay a local company to service the copier and we used to call them on a regular basis to come bludgeon it into working order. However, whenever the repair guy comes in, the copier is suddenly on its best behavior and nothing we do will cause it to jam. So the repair guy thinks we're a bunch of loons. Unfortunately, it's not a rented copier, so we're stuck with it.

So the couple camped out at the copier with a stack of books. Every minute or two one of us would have to go over and unjam the copier for the couple.

While this was going on, Wal-Mart Jesus came in and went to the reference hall. After 20 minutes or so, he came into the main room with a stack of books of his own, which he was planning to have us copy pages for him. After standing in line to get to it for a few minutes, though, he abandoned his plan, gathered up his bag and cudgel and left.

Wal-Mart Jesus Won't Leave Me Alone

Mrs. A and Mrs. C will be away for the next few days as they attend the Spring Fling the WV Liberry Assoc. throws every year. For something being billed as a "fling" the reality of it is not nearly as exciting as one might expect.

They lit out about midway through the day shortly after I arrived, assuring me that they'd contacted our board president to alert him to the fact that they'd both be away and where they were should he suddenly develop a desperate need to get in touch with them. That's probably the most of our worries, as all the other librarians and sundry state-office officials who might want to call them will be at Spring Fling and can bloody well hunt them down at their leisure.

Before leaving, Mrs. C gave me a sympathetic look and whispered, "By the way, Jesus is in the reference room."

"Really? Wow. Haven't seen him in here in a while."

That's right, it's the return of one of our oldest rogues at the "liberry", none other than Wal-Mart Jesus.

Wal-Mart Jesus has been coming into the library at least as long as I've worked there. He's called Wal-Mart Jesus because... well, he looks an awul lot like the real Jesus, or at least how our Western sensibilities have come to think Jesus looked. He's not Jim Caviezel, but not too far. Plus, he stokes his general air of Jesusness by dressing like a low-rent Arab sheik, with the long flowing robes complete with a long flappy turban. However, his robes look as though they were pulled directly off a roll in Wal-Mart's fabric department. They're white with blue stripes and look like they'd be more at home covering, say, a picnic table than a man. Wal-Mart Jesus also has the full beard and peyo curls, which I believe denote him as a Chasidic Jew.

Now I've visited parts of this country where he wouldn't look terribly out of place, (well, provided someone got him a decent set of robes), but small town West Virginia is NOT one of those parts. I didn't even know the man was simply Jewish at first. The first time I saw him was not too long after 9/11 and I initially thought his mode of dress was some sort of overt statement of pro-Islamic protest. I wasn't angry about it, but I did worry that the local bubba population might not take kindly to it and might administer a beating upon the man's head. I couldn't have been more wrong, though, at least the part about pro-Islamic protest.

Wal-Mart Jesus isn't actually a "liberry" rogue, per se. He's just barely makes it as a benign irritant. I actually kind of like him, cause I'm all for colorful library patrons and he certainly qualifies. Wal-Mart Jesus is, as you might expect, a pretty nice guy to deal with, even though he seems a bit on his guard much of the time. Every time he comes in, though, he's deeply involved in researching a wide variety of topics the reference material for which he has no prayer of finding on the shelves of our tiny library. He's often in the market for lots and lots of information about centuries dead Jewish philosophers that can only be found in a Centuries Dead Jewish Philosopher Encyclopedia which we don't own. We've searched around and found one at another WV library, but they're not keen on loaning it out to us. We've subsequently made requests on his behalf that the other library simply photocopy the pages from their encyclopedia pertaining to the centuries dead philosopher he wants and send them to us. Despite repeated attempts at this, it has yet to come off properly. Usually the other library conveniently loses our request, which annoys both Wal-Mart Jesus and us. And if they actually manage to photocopy what we want they don't actually manage to send it to us, as though we're planning to drive seventy miles to come pick it up. And, on the one occasion they managed to both photocopy it and send it to us, we had already managed to lose the by then crinkly and ancient Interlibrary Loan slip on which we'd written Wal-Mart Jesus's real name and home number and so we couldn't call him about it. I think he may have given up on us at that point, cause until today he'd not been in for several months.

Wal-Mart Jesus can be something of a needy patron. He's back and forth from the reference hall, dragging out volume after volume of the encyclopedias for photocopying, which he doesn't like to do himself. That's okay, though. Serving needy patrons is what I'm there for, so serve I do. Sure, it's a bit irritating to have to drop what you're in the middle of to go run off pages on our devil copier every five minutes, but frankly I can manage to be irritated at just about anything so it's no great slam against Wal-Mart Jesus.

Today I made several photocopies of West Virginia Code regulations, encyclopedia entries on Frederick Nietzsche and some pages from a West Virginia history book. This was pretty much par for the course with Wal-Mart Jesus. However, when he made an interlibrary loan request for a non-specific book that specifically had to contain photos of Nietzsche's Aunt Rosalie, I knew we were in for some fun. Not only did he want Aunt Rosalie but he also wanted a few other Nietzsche family photos and some pictures of Nietzsche's friends, including Lou Andreas-Salome, Rainer Maria Rilke and a few others. He had no idea what book these might be found in, but he wanted the book all the same.

"Have you tried the internet?" I asked. I was already envisioning the headache we were about to send to some other poor bastard reference librarian, not to mention Mrs. C who would have to coordinate this from our end.

"No, I've not tried that yet," he said. "I don't have time right now. I have to catch a bus." Much like the real Jesus, Wal-Mart Jesus doesn't drive.

"How bout this," I said, "I'll dig around on the internet and see if I can find pictures of these folks. If they're out there, I should be able to find them."

Wal-Mart Jesus thanked me, then departed after gathering up his leather satchel as well as the stout, cudgel-like section of a tree branch he carries--one with the stumps of smaller branches spiking out from its gnarled head just perfect for laying a beat-down on any Temple sales-clerks he comes upon. (Perhaps the Bubba Patrol hasn't left him alone after all?)

A few minutes of work on the internet and I'd located pictures of everyone he was looking for. I printed them out, clipped his ILL slip to them and left a message on his answering machine about it. He called back later and seemed very pleased to hear of my success.

Seeing him back, though, reminds me that soon I need to chronicle the tale of our late lamented quintessential "liberry" rogue the Purple Nun.

Now that's some MORE Monday for your ass!

Sure enough, as I drove up to the liberry, a full seven minutes before we were scheduled to open at 1 p, there were already three patrons pounding on the door to get in despite the whole really obvious hours of operation sign on the door. I parked and then made a point of walking past them on my way to the back door.

"We'll be opening in just a few minutes," I said. They looked suitably irritated with me.

I went through all the opening duties then watched the chain-smoking rubes who were still impatiently waiting outside. I'd worn my bright red "DO NOT DISTURB: I'M DISTURBED ENOUGH ALREADY" t-shirt today. It didn't work at all.

The front door opened at 1 p.m. exactly and not a second before. The flood gates opened with it and a steady stream of patrons poured through the door. Three of them immediately and hungrily signed up for computers, leaving two latecomers to stand in slack-jawed frustration at the half-hour wait time. The internet crowd can be especially irritating on Mondays. Most of them are used to being able to come in at 9 a.m., but on Monday's they have to wait an extra four hours to get their e-mail fix. They don't like it one bit. Makes em cranky. They were also irritated that our internet connection has been intermittent at best for the past week. Our ISP has been replacing servers or routers or something and the service keeps going down. I understand how frustrating that can be, but we've had patrons threaten to punch their monitors because of it. I keep having to explain that their inability to check their e-mail and play their on-line crossword puzzles is not our fault.

The patrons who didn't want computers or tax forms or my help with either seemed to desperately need my help finding books. ("Um, hey, I uh, got a book here a long time ago. It was about this girl and she wrote in her diary. The book was about this thick, you see? Whuuut? No, I don't know the title or author.") or making photocopies with the devil-copier, or try to find books we don't have for their kids' book reports, all of which were due tomorrow, of course.

Bout the time I'm neck deep in needy patrons, who walks through the door but the patron who must not be named, Chester the (potential) Molester. He headed through on his inspection rounds and went upstairs. Now, there were three teenagers in the library at that moment two of which were guys--one in the kid's room and one reading at the top of the stairs. They were hopefully off Chester's radar. However, we did have one who was upstairs somewhere herself. Fortunately, there were several mentally handicapped patrons and their aides upstairs by this point and I didn't figure Chester would try anything with so many witnesses. Still, as soon as I could shed myself of needy patrons I grabbed a stack of non-fiction and went up to see what he was doing.

As I put my books on the cart by the door, I could see Chester sitting alone at one of our tables. He was facing our front outer wall with his back to the handicapped patrons. He was still able to swivel his head, and did in my direction as I walked in. Chester looked terribly pleased with himself for some reason. He was smiling in that Chris Penn gone to seed sort of way he has. (I know, I know, this is really insulting. I mean, have you seen Chris Penn lately?) A happy Chester is not a good Chester, though and it wasn't until I was back downstairs that I realized why he was so happy. The teenage girl must have been sitting at one of the closer table's on Chester's side of the room. I hadn't seen her because that table is blocked from doorway view by shelves, but it's the only place she might have been had she been sitting up there. Before I could worry about it too much, the girl came down the stairs, gathered up her backpack and left. She didn't seem angry or worried, so maybe she was just leaving already. But it made me wonder if she found it difficult to bear the Chester's happy stare.

After a bit, (long enough for the girl to have gotten away) Chester came down, looking far less happy than before. I openly watched him as he passed through and toward the door, looking for signs that he had any stolen magazines stuffed into his vest. I figured the guy at the top of the stairs might serve as a deterrent for Chester to do any pilfering, but who really knew.

TO BE CONCLUDED...