The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Gael Webster has been driving books to schoolchildren and people in retirement communities for over a decade.

On the Road

The Sun pays tribute to the bookmobile as it rolls into retirement

By Justin Berton

If the old Sunnyvale library bookmobile were a book, a fitting choice might be A Life on the Road by Charles Kuralt.

The 30-foot-long light blue library on wheels has traveled 22,000 miles around the back streets of Sunnyvale since 1986, bringing unique stories to those who cannot make their way to the city library.

But now, after city officials made quite a fuss last month unveiling a new, shiny bookmobile which will make the rounds as the library begins its summer-long renovation this week, the old bookmobile is writing its final chapter.

Unlike Kuralt, though, there is no hidden story behind the old bookmobile. Bookmobiles once served spread-out urban communities, much like Sunnyvale once was, to bring literature to folks who lived too far from a library.

Sunnyvale's bookmobile, as I found out when I rode around with driver Gael Webster and librarian Betsy Wacher for one of its final runs, still serves that need, even in a city that is largely urbanized.

Pulling out of the Sunnyvale Library parking lot just after
1:15 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, Webster, the only driver the bookmobile has ever known in its 12-year existence (save for vacations and a few sick days), took it out for one of its last spins around town. Wacher, another librarian for the city, was also in the cab. I sat between the two, and we all bounced up and down as we made our way to Ponderosa Elementary School.

Webster is tiny compared to the humongous 25,000-pound bookmobile she was driving. She looked like a little girl toying with a hula-hoop as she guided the steering wheel. Wacher is about the same size as Webster. The two librarians could easily share the front seat of a Mazda Miata, to say nothing of the cab of a 25-foot-long bookmobile that holds a 35-gallon gas tank.

Webster recalled a time a few winters ago when the bookmobile broke down after dark, far away from the library. She got on the phone and called for a tow truck. She did not, however, read a book while she waited.

"But that was the only time it failed me," Webster said, as she lovingly tapped the dashboard.

At the first stop, the two women popped out of the cab quickly, leaving me sitting in the middle, not knowing who to follow or which side to exit.

The two met at the passenger's side of the truck, where Wacher unlocked the door with the keys she keeps on a shoestring around her neck. The two worked in unison to unfurl the steps from the bookmobile to the ground.

Once inside the bookmobile, Webster set up her makeshift counter, complete with laptop computer for checking out books and checking up on late fees. After she finished plugging in wires and putting a person-counter on her desk, she took her knit sweater, draped it over her shoulders, lowered her glasses on her nose and began reading the daily paper.

Wacher's job is to straighten up the place and prepare the floor for the onslaught of schoolchildren. Some-
times, she told me, the bookmobile can be a disaster if the ride was too bumpy.

With 3,500 titles the bookmobile is, quite literally, the second largest library in Sunnyvale. It carries everything from children's titles to adult fiction. I know it is legit because it carries the unmistakable smells and sounds of a library--paper and musty threads of bounded backs, glue, and the crackle of transparent plastic covers.

With everything set, all we needed was customers. The school kids hadn't ransacked the place like Wacher and Webster had hoped. But a few did trickle in and out for the 45 minutes we were there.

Two young boys, who are brothers, ran up inside the bookmobile and looked around. Their mother, who was waiting for them in the car gave them a strict limit: 10 books between the two of them. "I'm not counting, though," Wacher said to the boys, winking.

Wacher let the brothers know time was running out before we had to head off for the next destination. The boys were faced with a tough decision: Will mom let them get the book of knock-knock jokes? They left it behind and ran out of the bookmobile, books overflowing in their arms.

As we rolled out of the school's parking lot, we could see down into the silver Toyota the brothers jumped into.

"Look," Wacher pointed out as we passed them, "they're looking at their books already."

Back on the road, Wacher and Webster told me that besides schools, the bookmobile also drops by mobile-home parks and retirement communities.

The bookmobile stops at the same spots every two weeks, and this has allowed some friendships to blossom.

"We're proud to provide a personal service," Webster said. "We know them, and they know us."

"In some cases," Wacher said, "this may be their only contact with other people."

Wacher is the big reader of the two. She averages one book a week, but of course, "I'm not able to read as much as I'd like to." When Wacher was a girl, she said, her parents continually had to pry her away from books and get her to go outside and play. After her father took several months to read A Tale of Two Cities to her each night while growing up in Idaho, she was hooked on books. "My father was a great reader," Wacher said. "We always had books lying around the house."

Webster didn't dive headfirst into the book scene as Wacher did, but her father also had a knack for telling tales.

"He would just make up stories as he went along, and they were good stories," Webster said.

After Webster volunteered to work in the library a few hours a week while her children were in high school, she starting taking on new responsibilities, and pretty soon, she found herself with a Class B driver's license and behind the wheel of the bookmobile.

At San Miguel School, the final stop before I was to head back to the office, three siblings ages 5 to 13 ran up to the bookmobile not long after it stopped. The three kids headed for different sections of the small library.

Before I left, we talked about what will happen to the old bookmobile.

Wacher said she heard about potential buyers who want to convert it into a mobile station for hearing tests. But before it goes anywhere, it will be anchored to the main library this summer, serving as the temporary library during renovations.

The new bookmobile, which Webster will command, will take over an extended route. Webster has driven the new bookmobile before, and said she is looking forward to having flashy new wheels to help her and Wacher make the rounds.

Last month, when the new bookmobile was unveiled, Webster and Wacher drove behind a police escort and honked and waved for the crowds of well-wishers.

Inside the old bookmobile, the youngest of the three siblings, a 5-year-old girl with long, black hair in braids, tapped Wacher on the arm.

"Can I read to you?" she asked.

"Of course," Wacher said.

The girl then did something neither Wacher nor Webster had ever seen take place in all the years of driving around in the bookmobile. In one unexpected motion, the little girl climbed into Wacher's lap and began reading a picture book, which was titled The Story of My Friends.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, July 1, 1998.
©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.