Willett Free Library

There isn’t too much in Saunderstown that’s the same as it was in the 1960s. The road I grew up on is still dirt, but the pasture next to my childhood home, once filled with gentle music from the bells on Mr. Newcomb’s sheep, is now occupied by a mini-​mansion. My childhood home expanded and looks like a Cape Cod on steroids. The once mostly abandoned summer homes on Narragansett Bay are winterized and occupied.
It is unlikely that quite so many families harvest quite so much from the bay as we did… quahogs and mussels and steamers and flounder, or that doors are left unlocked for days, weeks, years, or that mothers don’t worry much if, on a summer’s night, a 9 year old is so busy capturing fire flies that it is a long time after dark before they come home.
I am hopeful that children still get to have a childhood in Saunderstown, that they are encouraged to go barefoot all summer, to be outside all day with few in and out privileges, to climb on the rocky shore, to learn to swim and sail in the cold bay waters, to play tennis and climb trees and ride bikes with wild abandon, to cross neighbors yards in noisy tribes, declaring an ancient right of way gives them the right.
I am even more hopeful that the Willett Free Library, my childhood sanctuary, remains a welcoming and treasured place for every kid in Saunderstown — a remarkable village comprised of a post office, a yacht club, a church and a library. Reading and learning and self teaching are earnest New England occupations, and the kind librarians of the 1960s thought very carefully of all of their patrons as they added each volume to inventory. I can still see Mrs. Taylor, one of my favorites, lovingly caressing a book, thinking of the homes in the village it would visit, knowing who should be sure to get it next. I can taste the excitement and anticipation on each dash to the library, trying so hard to remember to slow my pace to respectable library standards before going up the front stairs, not flinging the door open or letting it slam, to gently place the returning books on the counter, and to politely greet the librarian and fellow readers before diving into stacks.
I am pretty sure the spirit is alive, as the website for the library says «Our flag depicts a sailing ferry built by Stillman Saunders. At his home, a „Circle for Mutual Improvement“ was formed in 1885; the beginnings of this library. When the flag is flying, the WFL is open».
I didn’t know that the library started in somebody’s house, but it is not surprising, as story hour and reading never began and ended at the library in my childhood; it was alive in the home of Anna and Winslow Ames, with Anna’s loving story circles for carefully selected, well behaved children, at bedtime every night in almost every home, …in books traded from one house to another… words have always been woven through the village, spoken and written, the Willett Free Library being just one of the many places where books were honored.