Famine

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

   Jonah reported to his job the next day.  The museum building on Ninth and Frederica streets had been built from funds that Andrew Carnegie had lavished on small towns wanting to buld libraries in the early twentieth century.  Some misguided architects had almost ruined it during constant renovaions, but someone got the idea of restoring it to its original Beau-Arts classical style.  Jonah had checked many books there when he was a kid growing up in Owensboro.  He already knew his way around.  He had once sat enthralled on afternoons after school while a master story teller called Miss Salley told exciting stories.   Never having imagined he'd work here, he felt like he was really home as he stepping into its entrance.

   Gone were the stacks of library books along its walls, the huge oak desk where women in two-piece suits smiled at him as a boy and always praised his choice of books.  Somehow Jonah long stopped buying it when they kept saying it was their favorite.  But Miss Salley always knew each book in detail and could say something to get him so excited he just had to read it at home.  He kept coming back for more just to hear her reaction when he recalled their plots. She made him feel like the smartest little boy in the world. That and other things took him from a problem reader who devoured comic books to reading excellence.  He stood oblivious as the museum's curator approached.

   "Good morning, Jonah."  Jonah didn't hear him the first time.  "Good morning!" he said again.  This time he broke through a century of nostalgia and got Jonah's attention.

   "Oh!" Jonah answered.  "I am so embarrassed.  I was thinking about how this place looked some hundred and fifty years ago.  I'm afraid you will have me lapse into the past until I get used to things around here."  He extended his hand to the curtor.  "Forgive me.  I am Jonah Mark, and they tell me that you need someonf from the twentieth century as a resourse person."

   "I'm Warren Crabtree, the museum head.  This building is but the main office of our museum system, one of several we have here in town.   This one has been cleared of its books although they make up a small portion of literature nowadays.  But they are interesting, and I persuaded Dr. Boron from burning any of them as subversive.  He still has trouble with the works of Mark Twain.  But that is another story."  He looked in the direction of his office. "Step in here where we can talk in comfort."

   Jonah knew that Warren's office had once housed the library men's room but decided that he would allow that one historcal fact would rest in peace.  He took a seat in a leather chair with wooden arms while Warren sat behind his desk.  Jonah noticed a wooden rack with a stuffed crow on top as Warren hung his Curator's Jacket there.  Jonah in knee-jerk fashion said, "Quoth the Raven!"

   Warren laughed.  "Dr. Boron likes Poe, so we still read it here."  He then waved his hand over what Jonah had taken as a traditional desk-top blotter.  Warren looked down and read in silence.  "I  just looked over your dossier again.  Your job here was selected for you while you were still in Reclamation.  I know all about you.  We have long needed someone from the Baby Boomer Generation to fill in our knowledge of the twentieth century, the information subject to Dr. Boron's approval, of course."

   "We'll, Mr. Crabtree."  Jonah stopped.  "I knew a Warren Crabtree once, his wife was Mildred."

   "Wow! He is my great grandfather."

   "Look.  I will do my best to fill you in, but I was not around for the remaining part of that century.  We still had the Berlin Wall, the Russians threating to turn the Cold War into a nuclear holocaust."

   "Jonah, you do not have to know everything.  Have you ever visited the Field's Museum in Chicago before anachists destroyed to obliterate the past?"