We last left our hero and his good friend Gus in Bumsville, NC on the sad case of the 1960's library, a relic of Brutalist Architecture, and its pending demolition. A terrible man with slick-backed hair is running the demolition and cares little for modern architecture. Does anyone else? Art Guy in Jeans seeks the answer...
"Gus, my friend, I fear that in this day and age, most people wouldn't see this library the same way you see it," our hero says.
"What do you mean?" says Gus.
"Great architecture to them is either something very old or very new. As for the mid-modern stuff - Frank Lloyd Wright is safe, sure, and Corbusier, but other than that..."
"I don't understand. Are you saying the people of this noble town will let those schmucks tear down our old library?"
"Let them? Gus, they'd love for them to destroy that library. You could sell tickets to the demolition. The architectural style is dead and gone, and nobody likes it."
"I like it. Don't you like it, Art Guy?"
Art Guy is silent. He doesn't like his opinions set loose at the wrong moment.
"Gus, you asked me to help you save this building. And I think a building that wants saving deserves saving. I'm behind you every step of the way."
"Thanks, Mr. Guy!"
"Get me on the phone with the mayor," our hero says.
In the main office of the town hall, a Neo-Classical building of brick and wood, the mayor of Bumsville answers the phone.
"Who is this?... Old library? We don't have a library in this town, trying to waste my time?... What was that?... What, that old cemented up rat hole?... Uh, huh... Well I'll tell you what, Mr...what did you say your name was?... Well, okay, Mr. Guy, I'll tell you what...try getting 100 signatures of people who don't want to see that modernist disaster blown to smithereens, and I'll bring it to the floor... Yeah, you bet, good luck Mr. Guy... I'll be surprised if I hear from you again."
The mayor rolls his chair around playfully and then asks his secretary about the old library.
"I've been there a couple times," says the secretary. "But why do we need a nuclear space station to store books?"
Gus and Art Guy spend the whole day on the phone, hearing similar responses:
"That place gives me the willies. The roof looks like it could fall right off and crush my car."
"Why are the windows tinted? It's like the Shakespeare section is a headquarters for top-secret Government conspiracies."
"When I return books to the drop-off slot, I feel like I'm going to be gunned down by Imperial Troops."
By the end of the day, they only have interest from 15 people, and Art Guy is starting to long for the Medici's Lorenzian Library, part of the San Lorenzo church in Florence, designed by none other than Michelangelo Buonarroti. Now there's a library worth saving.
"Gus, let's have a beer," says our hero. "We've made our dent today."
Weeks go by on the project, and somehow they muster up 100 signatures. Most people interested in saving the building are batty old hermits from the distant suburbs. They remember the days of old, when cement spaceships were in their prime. The architect, a fellow by the name of H. L. Jones, is living in San Diego at the age of 74, and has donated 2,000 dollars to the cause, vaguely aware of having built the thing. Art Guy and Gus show the dumbfounded mayor the list of signatures, and at this point the hearing is scheduled for next Monday. Over a celebratory beer, Art Guy comes to a dark realization.
"Gus, they're going to bring it to the floor in less than a week," says our hero.
"Isn't it great! I knew we could do it. Where there's a will, there's a way," says Gus.
"No. We haven't won yet. They're going to bring it to the floor in a week, and everyone will vote for the side of demolition. We haven't rallied any public support from the town. The only people who signed were old bats from the suburbs."
"With a little help from your art historical database of a cranium we'll win with flying colors. What are you so worried about, Mr. Guy?"
"If only I had some inside piece of information, something really historical about that building to talk about, we'd seal a win."
Beers abandoned, our hero and Gus hop into the pickup truck and drive down to the old library on Old Oak Lane.
There's almost no moon, but the Bumsville sky is alive with stars. The library stands before the preservation-minded partners as Art Guy takes down some key dimensions in his moleskine.
"You know Gus, even if the demolition guys win in court, they'll need a lot more than dynamite to make a dent in that cement."
Art Guy, armed with climbing gear, takes half an hour to pick his way to the bottom lip of the cumbersome roof slab that signs the building as Brutalist. It's the tallest library he has ever ascended, and our hero needs his special fresco-viewing binoculars to see Gus's worried expression below. Our hero knows he is safe because of all the horizontal slabs that jut mysteriously from the building's fabric. Within twenty minutes, Art Guy has scaled the overhang of the roof, entered the air vents, and broken into the storage floor of the old library. Our hero never said it was going to be easy.
Art Guy switches on a flashlight and browses piles and piles of hardcovers that are long out of print. He even finds an art history section. He cannot believe what he's seeing: extensive studies on landscape architecture, a log of confessions to artistic atrocities written by Pietro Perugino. Art Guy reaches for an especially large volume of "unabridged" Vasari and reads a few pages - to find that it pays due respect to the Sienese. Our hero suddenly feels cold and vulnerable. There, what's that? He's gotten thoroughly distracted by the art literature in the top floor of the Brutalist library, but maybe this one will help his case. It's an overview of modernist architecture. He flips 60 percent of the way through and finds an entry on the very building he has broken into:
According to legend, The Jones Library in Bumsville, North Carolina, is home to a sacred spring of lost literature not on public display. The owners of the library have long ago lost the key, and only a planned demolition of this disposable example of eccentric '60's monumentality can reveal the lost treasures.
"Lost the key!" our hero says aloud, forgetting he's in a library.
How could they just lose the key? What is this, Florence? Our hero reflects on a hotel in central Florence that has access to an underground Roman road, but upon our hero's investigation of the location, the hotel owners confessed the key had gone to the city government, and nobody was allowed to see the road. Just as nobody was allowed to see the lost books of Bumsville, NC.
Apparently nobody tried sneaking in the vents. In this case, our hero has found the stash of lost books and has a burning desire to steal the objective version of Vasari. But what of the demolition? If this architecture book was true, maybe the demolition was all a plot to recover the treasure by pillaging the rubble. That would crush the slick hair guy in court and might be enough to save the building. Art Guy packs up only the architecture encyclopedia, remembering the scariest moment of Alladin, when the monkey wants to take more than just the lamp and the tiger cave gets angry and swallows up all the good guys. As our hero breaks for the ventilation infrastructure, a strange voice calls out from the bowels of the book dungeon.
"Who disturbs the fiery night of the library at Old Oak Lane!"
And the age old mystery of the tinted windows suddenly becomes clear...
(to be continued...)
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