Olga Klibo, 1914-2013
Sometimes they can knock you out.
Voices from the past. Returned to you. And then just as suddenly stilled.
You didn’t know Olga Klibo, and that’s too bad. If you’d known her when I did, in the 1970s, and if you’d been a child too, as I was, you might have learned to love reading and books just as I did: by your weekly visits to the Buellton Library, where Mrs. Klibo was the warm, inevitable presence behind the librarian’s desk, just to the left of the front door. For a little boy like me, Mrs. Klibo didn’t “work” at the library; she was the library. Throughout my entire childhood I never once set foot in the building without her being there, and I never once saw her anywhere else. And so, as happens with kids, I was unable to imagine any other life for her. Mrs. Klibo was the library; the library was Mrs. Klibo.
Back then Buellton, California was a small, semi-rural farm town; the sign on driving in via Route 246 claimed a population of 700. (Later, when I was in high school, that sign was amended to indicate the whopping revised total of 1500.) There wasn’t a lot in Buellton other than its touristy claim to fame, which is still there: Pea Soup Andersen’s, just off Highway 101. Other than that it was a sleepy village-a couple of housing tracts (one of which contained the Conlons), a little shopping center, a restaurant or two, a few bars, an elementary school…and the library.
It didn’t even have its own building, the Buellton Library. It was just one big room within a larger structure which contained various city offices. But it was a magical place for me. My mother and I went there all the time, she for her romance novels and police procedurals, me for my science fiction and Alfred Hitchcock mystery anthologies. I remember the polished hardwood floors, the big overstuffed leather chairs, the rack of LP records that sat just to the right of the entrance. And since I’d never been in any other library in my life, it became the template for all others to follow. The Buellton Library may have been the smallest one I would ever set foot in, but I’ve never loved a library more. The reason was partly the books, of course. But mostly it was Mrs. Klibo.
She had a way about her-a way with children. While I can’t recall any specific conversations I ever had with her, I remember that she was one of the few adults in my life who took me seriously-who genuinely listened to what I said, who talked to me in a warm, attentive way that was the same way she spoke to my mother. Mrs. Klibo didn’t discriminate on account of a patron’s youth, unlike some librarians I encountered later, who often seemed to consider children a burden to have within their hallowed halls. No, Mrs. Klibo was actually interested in what I had to say: what I thought of my latest check-outs, which writers and types of writing I liked best. When I got a little older-about twelve, I think-she explained to me the miracle of library loans: that I could actually get more books by Ellery Queen and Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury than were on her shelves. All I had to do was fill out a simple little form for the book I wanted and it would arrive in a week or two. She showed me how to fill out the form, and never complained when I handed in half a dozen at a go. She knew I wasn’t wasting her time; she knew I would read the books. And I did.
I actually knew little about Mrs. Klibo, as kids generally are ignorant of the lives of the adults they see from day to day. I couldn’t have told you back then if she was married (she was), if she had children (she did), how old she was (born 1914), where she came from (Minnesota), what she did besides being a librarian (bookkeeper for her husband’s welding business, church and museum boards, PTA). All I knew was that she was a tall, plainspoken woman who made me feel welcome at a time in my life when I rarely felt welcome anywhere.
Well, times changed. My mother grew less interested in reading as she blurred into alcoholism, and when I got my driver’s license as a teenager I quickly, alas, abandoned the Buellton Library for the larger and greener book-pastures of Solvang, the next town over, and eventually to the holy grail itself: the main branch of the Santa Barbara Public Library, thirty-five miles away. The tiny Buellton Library came to seem quaint and irrelevant to me. Sometime in the later ’70s I did visit there once more, though, with my mother-I may have driven her there; she still read occasionally, at least. I can remember my shock when I walked in (I’d not been there in maybe three years, a long time at that age) and discovered a different, much younger librarian behind the desk.
“Mrs. Klibo,” she told me pleasantly, “has retired.”
It felt wrong. Terribly wrong. How could there be a Buellton Library without Mrs. Klibo in it?
I never went there again-not as any kind of statement, mind you, but rather simply because I had no reason to. My mother died, I went to college, I moved away. The usual things.
Some four years ago, in a rare fit of nostalgia, I was Googling some names from my very distant past with no real hope of finding anyone. Yet I managed to get a line on Olga Klibo who, it turned out, was still living. She was in her nineties. I couldn’t find an address for her, but eventually got in e-mail contact with her daughter, who told me Mrs. Klibo lived in a senior citizens’ home in Solvang. One thing led to another, and her daughter eventually sent me a lovely photo of Mrs. Klibo, while, on her daughter’s request, I sent a couple of my books, a photo of my mom and me, and a letter to Mrs. Klibo at the rest home.
Mrs. Klibo was unable to respond herself, but her daughter wrote me an e-mail telling me about her mother’s reaction to the package. She remembered me, all right-and I knew she was telling the truth when I was told that she recalled my mother too, quite clearly, while her memories of my father and brother (whom I’d not mentioned) were more vague. (That was exactly right; she’d certainly met them, but neither would have been a regular visitor to the library.) She was, I learned, moved to discover that I’d become a writer. The daughter closed her e-mail by thanking me for “making [her] mother’s week.”
And now Mrs. Klibo has passed on.
I can’t begin to say how happy I am that I made that final contact a few years back, that she remembered me, that she knew and understood what I’d become and the importance of the role she’d-mostly unknowingly-played in my life.
In my novel A Matrix of Angels, about two girls growing up in California in the mid-1970s, there are a couple of references to the main character, Frances, going to the local library and being helped by a certain “Mrs. Klibo.” That book wasn’t yet published when I was in touch with “my” Mrs. Klibo again, but I’m still pleased to remember the reference. Maybe a few library shelves in the world have my novel on them, and so Mrs. Klibo can live on, a little bit, in my pages.
What’s more, the Buellton Library itself now contains a children’s reading room-the Olga Klibo Children’s Reading Room.
Yes, sometimes they can knock you out-voices from the past, returned to you. And then just as suddenly stilled.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newspress/obituary.aspx?n=olga-eleonora-petersen-klibo&pid=162934552#fbLoggedOut
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Voices from the past. Returned to you. And then just as suddenly stilled.
You didn’t know Olga Klibo, and that’s too bad. If you’d known her when I did, in the 1970s, and if you’d been a child too, as I was, you might have learned to love reading and books just as I did: by your weekly visits to the Buellton Library, where Mrs. Klibo was the warm, inevitable presence behind the librarian’s desk, just to the left of the front door. For a little boy like me, Mrs. Klibo didn’t “work” at the library; she was the library. Throughout my entire childhood I never once set foot in the building without her being there, and I never once saw her anywhere else. And so, as happens with kids, I was unable to imagine any other life for her. Mrs. Klibo was the library; the library was Mrs. Klibo.
Back then Buellton, California was a small, semi-rural farm town; the sign on driving in via Route 246 claimed a population of 700. (Later, when I was in high school, that sign was amended to indicate the whopping revised total of 1500.) There wasn’t a lot in Buellton other than its touristy claim to fame, which is still there: Pea Soup Andersen’s, just off Highway 101. Other than that it was a sleepy village-a couple of housing tracts (one of which contained the Conlons), a little shopping center, a restaurant or two, a few bars, an elementary school…and the library.
It didn’t even have its own building, the Buellton Library. It was just one big room within a larger structure which contained various city offices. But it was a magical place for me. My mother and I went there all the time, she for her romance novels and police procedurals, me for my science fiction and Alfred Hitchcock mystery anthologies. I remember the polished hardwood floors, the big overstuffed leather chairs, the rack of LP records that sat just to the right of the entrance. And since I’d never been in any other library in my life, it became the template for all others to follow. The Buellton Library may have been the smallest one I would ever set foot in, but I’ve never loved a library more. The reason was partly the books, of course. But mostly it was Mrs. Klibo.
She had a way about her-a way with children. While I can’t recall any specific conversations I ever had with her, I remember that she was one of the few adults in my life who took me seriously-who genuinely listened to what I said, who talked to me in a warm, attentive way that was the same way she spoke to my mother. Mrs. Klibo didn’t discriminate on account of a patron’s youth, unlike some librarians I encountered later, who often seemed to consider children a burden to have within their hallowed halls. No, Mrs. Klibo was actually interested in what I had to say: what I thought of my latest check-outs, which writers and types of writing I liked best. When I got a little older-about twelve, I think-she explained to me the miracle of library loans: that I could actually get more books by Ellery Queen and Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury than were on her shelves. All I had to do was fill out a simple little form for the book I wanted and it would arrive in a week or two. She showed me how to fill out the form, and never complained when I handed in half a dozen at a go. She knew I wasn’t wasting her time; she knew I would read the books. And I did.
I actually knew little about Mrs. Klibo, as kids generally are ignorant of the lives of the adults they see from day to day. I couldn’t have told you back then if she was married (she was), if she had children (she did), how old she was (born 1914), where she came from (Minnesota), what she did besides being a librarian (bookkeeper for her husband’s welding business, church and museum boards, PTA). All I knew was that she was a tall, plainspoken woman who made me feel welcome at a time in my life when I rarely felt welcome anywhere.
Well, times changed. My mother grew less interested in reading as she blurred into alcoholism, and when I got my driver’s license as a teenager I quickly, alas, abandoned the Buellton Library for the larger and greener book-pastures of Solvang, the next town over, and eventually to the holy grail itself: the main branch of the Santa Barbara Public Library, thirty-five miles away. The tiny Buellton Library came to seem quaint and irrelevant to me. Sometime in the later ’70s I did visit there once more, though, with my mother-I may have driven her there; she still read occasionally, at least. I can remember my shock when I walked in (I’d not been there in maybe three years, a long time at that age) and discovered a different, much younger librarian behind the desk.
“Mrs. Klibo,” she told me pleasantly, “has retired.”
It felt wrong. Terribly wrong. How could there be a Buellton Library without Mrs. Klibo in it?
I never went there again-not as any kind of statement, mind you, but rather simply because I had no reason to. My mother died, I went to college, I moved away. The usual things.
Some four years ago, in a rare fit of nostalgia, I was Googling some names from my very distant past with no real hope of finding anyone. Yet I managed to get a line on Olga Klibo who, it turned out, was still living. She was in her nineties. I couldn’t find an address for her, but eventually got in e-mail contact with her daughter, who told me Mrs. Klibo lived in a senior citizens’ home in Solvang. One thing led to another, and her daughter eventually sent me a lovely photo of Mrs. Klibo, while, on her daughter’s request, I sent a couple of my books, a photo of my mom and me, and a letter to Mrs. Klibo at the rest home.
Mrs. Klibo was unable to respond herself, but her daughter wrote me an e-mail telling me about her mother’s reaction to the package. She remembered me, all right-and I knew she was telling the truth when I was told that she recalled my mother too, quite clearly, while her memories of my father and brother (whom I’d not mentioned) were more vague. (That was exactly right; she’d certainly met them, but neither would have been a regular visitor to the library.) She was, I learned, moved to discover that I’d become a writer. The daughter closed her e-mail by thanking me for “making [her] mother’s week.”
And now Mrs. Klibo has passed on.
I can’t begin to say how happy I am that I made that final contact a few years back, that she remembered me, that she knew and understood what I’d become and the importance of the role she’d-mostly unknowingly-played in my life.
In my novel A Matrix of Angels, about two girls growing up in California in the mid-1970s, there are a couple of references to the main character, Frances, going to the local library and being helped by a certain “Mrs. Klibo.” That book wasn’t yet published when I was in touch with “my” Mrs. Klibo again, but I’m still pleased to remember the reference. Maybe a few library shelves in the world have my novel on them, and so Mrs. Klibo can live on, a little bit, in my pages.
What’s more, the Buellton Library itself now contains a children’s reading room-the Olga Klibo Children’s Reading Room.
Yes, sometimes they can knock you out-voices from the past, returned to you. And then just as suddenly stilled.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newspress/obituary.aspx?n=olga-eleonora-petersen-klibo&pid=162934552#fbLoggedOut
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