Going back again Jan. 8, 2025

  

I can't recall exactly the last time I came here before 2010 for sure since the library was still a library then this aside from our magical mystery tour last year when we paid this part of the planet a visit though Paulie with long gone by then

Back the last time I came here, when Paulie was still alive, he was still director though he no longer lived in the house on the lake

We came for Memorial Day at the firehouse in 2002 when he, John and Garrick played and then again two years later for the picnic outdoors with a full band -- that later played the gig at the grasshopper in cedar Grove before the band broke up again for the last time as it turned out

This building, the old library,  when it's still served as the town's library, also served as a police station in a town that has since outgrown the old library and old police station, still small when Pauly moved to this neck of the woods in 1985

A tiny building that at the time with Police department on the ground floor even before  he accidentally became the director in the mid late 1990s, he was a force to be reckoned with, altering the small library in fundamental ways

There were two doors to the library both of which boarded up now, but back then the main door led to a small vestibule lined with bookshelves, narrow and not easy to navigate

 Paulie was always puttering about making changes sorting through old volumes the library would eventually sell to the public at a discount to make room for the new volumes.

Paulie increased the library’s collection of video tapes and later DVDs and included graphic novels the place lacked until then and when questioned Pauly said he would rather get people to read anything than nothing at all

Now the building vacant, a kind of tombstone signifying the most potent years of police life and I come here because it is the only place where he can be mourned.

 


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