book rescue on Belmont Ave.

I took a look at Clare's posting on her CPL memories and promised to post my own. The Portage-Cragin branch on Belmont near Laramie was, and still is, my home branch, about three blocks away from our house on George St. I was a bookworm from an early age, the kind of kid who liked getting books for Christmas and looked forward to the annual library book sale. I forget how much we paid, perhaps .10 cents a book. One year, I went to the sale with some of my sisters and we bought enough to fill two paper grocery bags. We started to cross Belmont to go home when we heard a fire engine. It was racing down Belmont. Panicked, we ran across to get out of the way but the paper bags gave way and our books scattered all over the street. We didn't dare run into the street to retrieve them, paralyzed with fear we could only look on forlornly as the fire engine bore down on our books. It seemed they would meet a bad end when, suddenly, out of nowhere, a woman appeared. She must have been shopping at the Jewel, which is across the street from the library. She went into the street and, working quickly, picked up all the books and threw them into a shopping cart. She returned them to us and, just as quickly as she had come on the scene, disappeared, our hero.