Hard as it may be to believe nowadays, it wasn’t considered dangerous, during the late Thirties, for a reasonably alert and well-trained five-year-old to hike around downtown Albany. True, the city had recently slipped into the fierce grip of the O’Connell political machine, the longest-lived in the country’s history; the allegedly corrupt local constabulary drove Buicks with little holes cut in their windshields through which to point firearms during chases; and the gangster Legs Diamond had been shot to death only a few years earlier and only a block away from our flat on Dove Street. But if there was any anxiety in my parents’ minds about my peregrinations – I know there was none in mine – they never made me aware of it.

The four blocks to the library (I can GoogleEarth it today, and it sure looks different), paved with large gray slate sidewalk slabs, ran across State Street two blocks above the Capitol, and past a pleasant-looking little tea room. Inside the library, at the main desk, presided my first crush (Judith Eisenberg and Marguerite Tedesco came later, in kindergarten). Her name I may never have known. Tall, with rimless glasses and blonde hair rolled into a bun at the back of her head, she inspired confidence at first sight. She had one of those librarians’ pencils with the little T-shaped top for stamping due dates in borrowed books. At my first visit, she had no way of knowing that, because my parents were deaf, I could read and write already. She gave me a library card with my name on it, led me to the children’s section, ran her fingers along a few book spines, and handed me The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. (at the time, a first edition; if only I had known!) She saw that I could read it, and asked if there was anything else I was looking for. Yes, there was. I spent the next few months reading the library’s entire collection of model airplane books. From there it was an easy jump to Anna Sewell, Albert Payson Terhune, and Walter Farley.

Like so many people in our several pasts, the librarian probably never had any idea how much her encouragement meant to a geeky little early reader who in his social life had to run home from school by a different route each day to outfox the bullies. And, like all those other people, she probably never heard me thank her. But perhaps it’s not too late to try.

Our form of government, essentially democratic, depends upon, more than anything else, an educated citizenry. Just as the three branches of government act as checks on each other’s powers, we citizens act as the ultimate check on the powers of all three. Without education, we can be led like sheep by those who possess it. Not forever, of course; the average maximum shelf life of a modern totalitarian state is about seventy years. But what a miserable seventy years! – almost three generations; and what follows is often not much better. Maintaining a representative government is a lot like crossing a room with an overfull glass or walking a tightrope: It takes concentration, all the way to the other side. And that takes education.

It’s not true that, without the Harmanus Bleecker, I wouldn’t have gotten an education. We had plenty of books at home, and both our parents were college graduates. But the sight of all those books at the library – seemingly endless shelves of them! – implied forcefully that no matter how much I ever read and learned, there were still infinite untapped resources.

Thanks to the blossoming of the cyberage, libraries now aren’t what they were, but they still perform the same functions as repositories of accumulated revelation and wisdom; resources for research; and warm, safe places to spend a few hours reading, chatting, surfing the Internet – even, if you like, watching Casablanca with earphones. With the proliferation of two-career families, they more than ever provide a place for kids to study in the afternoons till their parents pick them up after work. Catalogs are online; I can sit here at my desk and search for what I need. If the library has it, I can tell if it’s available for loan. If the library doesn’t have it, I can request it via interlibrary loan. Somebody almost always has it, no matter how arcane. All this for a library card that costs, just as in 1940, nothing. The only fly in the ointment is the meter maid, who I swear lurks in the bushes by the library waiting for me to say, “Hell, I’ll be only five minutes.”

One of the first Americans to see the value of libraries was Benjamin Franklin, who with a group of literate friends set up a subscription library (membership fee assessed) that was the first to lend books to members. The tradition has continued unbroken ever since, maintained by private donors – Andrew Carnegie was probably the foremost – bequests, and public funds.

That last item – public funds – currently worries library boards of trustees more than any other. New England voters, faced with cuts in public funds for medical care, schools, and other public services, may feel justified in shorting the local public library’s request for money. Governors have suggested that everybody must share the pain of cuts; I’d prefer that we all dig a little deeper, each according to his means, to reduce the need for or the effects of any cuts. It’s been said so often that we believe it: that we’re already taxed beyond our means. But the cost of refusing to invest in the future is greater than that of coming up with the support in the present. We all know that preventive health care saves us twice as much down the road. The same can be said for education, and our old friend the library. When the warrant item appears on your town’s agenda, please smile upon it, if only for the sake of some child first opening Bartholomew Cubbins.