Op-Ed Columns

Growing up in a dry county surrounded by dry counties, when I heard the term "brown bag" it was usually associated with sneaking beer or whiskey into some place it wasn't supposed to be.

Put it in a brown bag and no one will be the wiser.

Yeah, right.

So you can imagine what I thought when I was invited to speak as part of the "Brown Bag Lecture Series" at the B.B. Comer Memorial Library in Sylacauga. If nothing else, I figured that the audience would be relaxed and happy (assuming none of them were mean drunks).

Then I was informed that the bags contained lunch instead of liquor.

Oh, well.

I am not sure when I first met Shirley Spears, the whirlwind of a lady who directs the Comer Library. I think it was when I was doing programs for the Alabama Humanities Foundation and she did what more people should do: she tapped into that organization for speakers.

Turns out I was one.

What I do know is that believing, as I do, that we university types have a responsibility to the general public that pays our salaries, I figured talking to folks at a library at lunch was about the best thing I could do to show my appreciation, so off I went.

Up until that time, to me Sylacauga was little more than a place I went through on the way to Montgomery. I knew of its history as a mill town. But behind the wheel of a moving vehicle the town's most distinguishing feature was the name Comer on just about anything that needed a name and a marble sculpture that apparently took a lot of work to sculpt and would take more than a glance out the car window for me to understand.

This time I stopped. At the library.

Folks, if you want to know how a town feels about itself and how its residents feel about their community, take a look at the public library. A town without one is not much of a town. Google up the Web pages where communities tout their glories. If a library isn't mentioned, you don't want to live there.

There are some neat libraries in Calhoun County, so I am not suggesting that what the folks do down at B.B. Comer is unique. What I am suggesting is that they do it so well that any library board needing a model to follow should give them a look.

But back to brown-bagging, which was what got me started on this in the first place.

I arrived, not knowing what to expect, and there was a bunch of people who, I found out, didn't know what to expect, either. They just knew that Shirley had lined up another college professor, and here he was.

I don't recall what I talked about that first time; probably rivers, since that was what I was into at that moment, but it must have gone OK since I was invited back and back and back again. It's not a bad drive, and since lunch is a daytime gig I am able to avoid night driving (which I avoid whenever possible).

Shirley organizes the lunches around themes that will have a particular appeal to senior citizens, who make up most of the audience. Programs with titles like "Alabama Past and Present," "The Way We Were," and "Icons of the Twentieth Century" packed 'em in. But speakers beware.

Often the folks in the audience know more than you do, or in one particular case, than I did. When Shirley was putting together the "Icons" series I jokingly suggested that along with talks on Billy Graham, Harry Truman, Henri Matisse, someone should do Elvis. That someone turned out to be me.

Now folks, if you think talking about the Civil War to a room full of Sons of Confederate Veterans has pitfalls and challenges (calling it the Civil War would have nailed me at the outset), try talking about Elvis to a room full of Elvis fans, many of whom are there to make sure you don't besmirch The King. One lady in particular seemed to know more than most, and lots more than me, and during the question-and-answer session that followed she gently corrected some of my observations.

I found out later that she sang backup on some of his records.

All of which is to say that programs like this keep folks like me in touch with local communities — for as I said, Shirley is hardly alone in what she is doing.

And programs like this keep folks who attend in touch with folks who might otherwise be stuck in college classrooms or corporate offices or pulpits or hospitals or any of the host of places that Shirley finds her speakers.

This fall, she is cranking up "Passport to the Past," which will bring in storytellers such as Kathryn Tucker Windham, historians such as Wayne Flynt, museum curators such as John Hall, and loose cannons such as me.

If you want to see how she does it, go to www.sylacauga.net/library. It is worth the click of the mouse.