Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World

Chapter 17

Dewey in the Modern World

I’m not naive. I know not everyone in Spencer embraced Dewey. For instance, that woman still wrote regular letters threatening to bring her cow downtown if the city didn’t stop the injustice, the horror, of a cat living in a public building. She was the most vocal, but she certainly wasn’t the only person who didn’t understand the Dewey phenomenon.

“What’s so special about that cat?” they would say over a cup of coffee at Sister’s Café. “He never leaves the library. He sleeps a lot. He doesn’t do anything.”

By which they meant Dewey didn’t create jobs. Dewey was appearing regularly in magazines, newspapers, and on the radio around the country, but he wasn’t improving our municipal parks. He wasn’t paving roads. He wasn’t out recruiting new businesses. The worst of the farm crisis had passed; spirits were rising; it was time for Spencer to spread its wings and attract new employers to our plucky Midwest town fairly far off the beaten track.

The Spencer economic development commission scored its first big triumph in 1992 when Montfort, a large meatpacking company headquartered in Colorado, decided to lease the slaughterhouse on the north end of town. In 1952, when local businessmen developed the property, the plant was the pride of Spencer. It was locally owned, locally run, and employed local workers at top wages. In 1974, the salary was fifteen dollars an hour, the best-paying job in town. Trucks lined up for a mile waiting to be unloaded. The company began packaging several products under a Spencer Foods label. That label was a source of pride, especially when you’d drive to Sioux Falls or down to Des Moines and see the Spencer name in the big new grocery stores.

In 1968, sales started dropping. Processing conglomerates had moved into nearby towns with more efficient plants and cheaper labor. The owners tried to rebrand the products and retool the plant, but nothing worked. In 1978, the Spencer Packing Company was sold to a national competitor. When the workers wouldn’t take nonunion wages of five-fifty an hour, the company closed the plant and moved the work to Skylar, Nebraska. Land O’Lakes moved in next, but when the recession hit in the mid-1980s, they closed up and left, too. They didn’t have ties to the community, and there was no economic reason to stay.

Ten years later, Montfort negotiated a lease with the absentee owner of the plant. They just needed the building rezoned so they could expand and upgrade it. Small towns all over the country were desperate for jobs, but the jobs that had paid fifteen dollars in 1974 were being offered by Montfort at five dollars an hour with almost no benefits. This was slaughter work, which was physically brutal and psychologically numbing, not to mention smelly, noisy, dirty, and polluting. Locals didn’t want the work, at least not for long. Most of the people who ended up in the jobs were Hispanic immigrants. Towns around Spencer with slaughterhouses, such as Storm Lake, were already 25 percent Hispanic, or more.

Still, Montfort had steamrolled through dozens of towns, and they didn’t even bother addressing our concerns or offering concessions. The town leaders were for the plant, why worry about the citizens? The city council offered the usual public forum on the proposed zoning changes. The forum usually took place in front of five people in a little room at the council offices. The demand was so great this time that they held this debate in the largest room in town, the middle school gym. Three thousand people showed up that night, more than 25 percent of the town. It wasn’t much of a debate.

“Slaughterhouses are messy. What are they going to do about the waste?”

“Slaughterhouses are loud. That factory is only a mile from downtown.”

“Don’t even get me started on the smell.”

“What about the hog trucks? Will they come straight down Grand Avenue? Has anybody thought about the traffic?”

“We want local jobs. How are these jobs going to benefit our city?”

Outside of the economic development commission and the city council, there weren’t a hundred people in that gymnasium who supported the slaughterhouse. The next day, the zoning change was voted down.

Some people—Montfort supporters in the city and economic development boards in nearby towns—hinted that the decision was racially motivated. “Lily-white Spencer,” they snickered, “doesn’t want Mexicans moving in.”

I don’t believe that at all. Spencer is not a racist town. In the 1970s, for instance, we welcomed one hundred refugee families from Laos. It’s true we looked at the changes in towns like Storm Lake and Worthington and didn’t like what we saw, but the problem was the slaughterhouses themselves, not the workers. Spencer banded together that day not against immigrants but against pollution, traffic, and environmental disaster. We weren’t willing to sell our way of life for two hundred of the worst jobs in the country. If we did, it meant we had learned nothing from Land O’Lakes, who walked out of that very building when we needed them most. Maybe, as some suggested, we were turning our backs on economic progress to preserve the kind of town—a town based on local merchants, farmers, and small manufacturers—that can no longer survive in modern America. All I know is this: Spencer would be a different town if the first thing you saw (and smelled and heard) when you drove in from the north was a slaughterhouse, and I think we’re better without it.

Spencer is not antibusiness. Within a year, the old slaughterhouse was turned into a refrigerated storage facility. Storage didn’t provide as many jobs, but the wages were better and you didn’t get pollution, noise, or traffic. You barely even noticed it was there.

Two years later, in 1994, Spencer welcomed with open arms what many consider the biggest, baddest conglomerate on the block: Wal-Mart. The downtown merchants were against Wal-Mart, especially a Wal-Mart superstore, so they brought in a consultant to advise them. After all, local businesses had carried this town. Why should they turn over what they had invested in and built to a national competitor?

“Wal-Mart will be the best thing to ever happen to the businesses in Spencer,” the consultant told them. “If you try to compete with them, you will lose. But if you find a niche they aren’t serving, for instance by providing specialty products or knowledgeable, hands-on service, you will win. Why? Because Wal-Mart will bring more customers to town. It’s that simple.”

The consultant was right. There were losers, most obviously Shopko, which packed up and left town, but business at the downtown merchants has increased significantly since Wal-Mart arrived. Wal-Mart did what the railroad depot had done decades before: it made Spencer a regional destination.

The same year, 1994, the Spencer Public Library entered the modern era. Out went the antiquated book-management system, with its cards, stamps, catalog drawers, checkout bins, late-notice slips, complex filing systems, and of course, dozens and dozens of boxes. In came a fully automated system complete with eight computers. The bins for the cards, where Dewey loved to lounge in the afternoon, were replaced with a circulation computer. Kim’s typewriter, which Dewey had loved as a kitten, fell silent and motionless. We threw a party, pulled all the drawers out of our card catalogs, dumped thousands of cards on the floor, then turned on the one public-access computer that would replace them all. The three card catalog cabinets, with their hundreds of tiny drawers, were sold at auction. I bought one for my house. I keep it in my basement with a 1950s flip-top desk from the Moneta School. The card catalog holds all my craft supplies; the desk holds all Jodi’s papers and artwork from elementary school, which I’ve kept carefully preserved for thirty years.

After the technology update of 1994, people began using the library differently. Before computers, if a student was assigned a report on monkeys, she checked out every book we had on monkeys. Now she did research online and checked out one book. Patron visits to the Spencer Library rose between 1994 and 2006, but only a third as many books were checked out. In 1987, when Dewey arrived, it was common for the book drop to overflow with books. We haven’t had a full drop box in a decade. Our most popular items for checkout are classic movies on DVD—the local video stores don’t carry them—and video games. We have nineteen computers for public use, sixteen with Internet access. Even though we’re small, we are tenth in the number of computers available to patrons in the entire Iowa library system.

A librarian clerk’s job used to involve filing and answering reference questions. Now it’s understanding computers and inputting data. To keep track of usage, the clerk working the circulation desk used to make a hash mark on a piece of paper every time a patron entered the library. You can imagine how accurate that system was, especially when the library was busy and the clerk was answering reference questions. Now we have an electronic clicker that records every person who comes through the door. The checkout system tells us exactly how many books, games, and movies come and go and tracks which items are the most popular and which haven’t been touched in years.

And yet, for all that, the Spencer Public Library remains essentially the same. The carpet is different. The back window, which looked out on the alley, has been plastered over and covered with bookshelves. There’s less wood, fewer drawers, and more electronics. But there are still children’s groups laughing and listening to stories. Middle school students killing time. Older people thumbing through the newspaper. Businessmen reading magazines. This library has never been Carnegie’s quiet cathedral to knowledge, but it’s still a relaxed, and relaxing, place.

And when you walk into the library, you still notice the books: shelf after shelf and row after row of books. The covers may be more colorful, the art more expressive, and the type more contemporary, but in general the books look the same as they did in 1982, and 1962, and 1942. And that’s not going to change. Books have survived television, radio, talking pictures, circulars (early magazines), dailies (early newspapers), Punch and Judy shows, and Shakespeare’s plays. They have survived World War II, the Hundred Years’ War, the Black Death, and the fall of the Roman Empire. They even survived the Dark Ages, when almost no one could read and each book had to be copied by hand. They aren’t going to be killed off by the Internet.

And neither is the library. We may not be the soothingly silent book depository of yesteryear, but we serve the community better than ever. We are connected to the wider world like never before. We can order any book at any time; we research at the touch of a button; we communicate on an electronic bulletin board with other librarians, swapping tips and information essential to making each library better and more efficient; and we access hundreds of newspapers and magazines for less than the cost of ten subscriptions only ten years ago. The number of people entering the Spencer Public Library keeps rising. Does it matter if they are checking out books, renting movies, playing video games, or visiting a cat?

Dewey didn’t care about any of that, of course. He always focused on the here and now. And he loved the new library. Sure, he lost a few boxes, but there are always boxes in a library that orders books on an almost daily basis. Computers may seem cold compared to the old hands-on system of wood, paper, and ink, but to Dewey they were warm. Literally. He loved to sit on them and bask in the heat of their exhaust. I took a picture of him up there, which became the image on our new computerized checkout cards. The company that made the cards loved it. Every time I went to a library convention, I would see Dewey emblazoned on a huge banner above their booth.

Almost as good, at least from Dewey’s perspective, were the new sensor posts beside the front door, which beeped if you tried to leave without checking out your library materials. Dewey’s new favorite position was just inside the left post. (Just like the left shoulder for the Dewey Carry. Was Dewey left-pawed?) He sat by that post for the first hour of every day, starting promptly at two minutes to nine. With Dewey and the posts crowding the entranceway, there was almost no space for patrons to walk. Before, it was difficult to ignore Dewey when he was in front-door greeting mode; with the new sensors, it was impossible.

BASIC RULES FOR CATS WHO HAVE A LIBRARY TO RUN

(according to Dewey Readmore Books)

First printed in the Library Cat Society newsletter, and since reprinted numerous times around the world.

1. STAFF: If you are feeling particularly lonely and wanting more attention from the staff, sit on whatever papers, project, or computer they happen to be working on at the time—but sit with your back to the person and act aloof, so as not to appear too needy. Also, be sure to continually rub against the leg of the staff person who is wearing dark brown, blue, or black for maximum effect.

2. PATRONS: No matter how long the patron plans on staying at the library, climb into their briefcase or book bag for a long comfortable sleep until they must dump you out on the table in order to leave.

3. LADDERS: Never miss an opportunity to climb on ladders. It does not matter which human is on the ladder. It only matters that you get to the top and stay there.

4. CLOSING TIME: Wait until ten minutes before closing time to get up from your nap. Just as the staff is getting ready to turn out the lights and lock the door, do all your cutest tricks in an effort to get them to stay and play with you. (Although this doesn’t work very often, sometimes they can’t resist giving in to one short game of hide-and-seek.)

5. BOXES: Your humans must realize that all boxes that enter the library are yours. It doesn’t matter how large, how small, or how full the box should be, it is yours! If you cannot fit your entire body into the box, then use whatever part of your body fits to assume ownership for naptime. (I have used one or two paws, my head, or even just my tail to gain entry and each works equally well for a truly restful sleep.)

6. MEETINGS: No matter the group, timing, or subject matter, if there is a meeting scheduled in the meeting room, you have an obligation to attend. If they have shut you out by closing the door, cry pitifully until they let you in or until someone opens the door to use the restroom or get a drink of water. After you gain entry, be sure to go around the room and greet each attendee. If there is a film or slide show, climb on any table close to the screen, settle in, and watch the film to conclusion. As the credits roll, feign extreme boredom and leave the meeting before it concludes.

And the library cat’s golden rule for all time . . .

Never forget, nor let humans forget, that you own the joint!