Sunday, November 06, 2005

Mill Memorial Library, 11/05/2005

The Mill Memorial Library is located near the "main entrance" to Nanticoke, on the corner of Kosciuszko and Main, directly across from the former location of the old Nanticoke High School (now a CVS.) It's a small library. I used to go there as a kid with my father, and later I would use it as a quiet place to work on papers in High School. I don't go there much now, maybe once every few years to see if they have any interesting used books for sale. My own book collection may rival theirs in terms of quality and quantity. I have even donated a few books to them - I checked on one of them yesterday and they still have it, even though I don't think anybody has checked it out since I donated it. (It's Genius, a biography of Richard Feynman by James Gleick. I bought a copy specifically for the library when I saw it at a remaindered books store for about $4.)
I said that we are past peak locally, but that referred to Northeastern Pennsylvania as a whole, or at least the parts of it that I commute through each day. In Nanticoke we are at peak right now.
The Mill is a small library located on a large lot. It's a hilly plot of land that doubles as a public park and is very popular for sledding in the Winter. It is covered with trees, although not as many as it once was. A few years ago a big wind storm damaged a number of trees and they were removed. A few others were removed at the same time for good measure. And earlier this year a number of very old trees were removed from along the edge of the lot because their roots were causing the sidewalks to heave. (They had been causing the sidewalks to heave for years, so they resembled not so much a stretch of sidewalk as a flight of steps. The rise from one sidewalk to the next could be as much as four inches, sometimes more.) Still, what remains is beautiful, and is worth seeing.

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