Jewel in the Crown Shines Again

HARDWICK – One of the jewels in Hardwick’s village crown shines again. The original Jeudevine Library building has cast off the shadow of mid-twentieth century linoleum, and, under the skilled guidance of Topnotch Floors, has revealed her original late nineteenth century beauty: lustrous, rich red and golden brown oak flooring.

When I stopped by to admire the reincarnated wood I instinctively removed my shoes. So struck was I by the transition from years of rather drab floor covering to gleaming, beautifully grained oak that I could not imagine tracking the debris of mud season across the room.

When the Jeudevine addition is completed in the coming weeks, the Main Street entrance will be closed. The new main entrance will be on West Church Street, so the pleasant surprise of the flooring revival will await your passing through from the addition into the original building. The project included the balcony office space and the winding staircase linking it to the main floor.

The tops of the original bookshelves are similarly being refinished to match the floors. Some are also being resized, allowing us to hold on to them and fit them into the altered space. Together with the recently cleaned and repaired stained glass windows, the floors will bathe readers and browsers in a rainbow of welcoming color.

As our patience is tested in awaiting the completion of the new building and the reluctance of Spring to assert itself, perhaps we can find comfort in admiring the landscaping along the Main Street side of the Jeudevine. Gene Gravel has done the hardscaping. Ceilidh Kane and Geoff Fehrs are doing much of the soil preparation and planting, aided by Andrea Brightenback who serves as head of the Jeudevine Landscaping Committee. Cady’s Falls Botanical Gardens donated many plants. The stone patio and gardenscape create another inviting space to pause as you pass by, or to linger with a friend, a good book, or your favorite morning wake-up beverage as the sun rises over the Memorial Building.

Inside the new addition, boxes of books fill the large upstairs children’s space. Shelving is being installed in those areas in preparation for a massive un-boxing to happen one day soon. Final inspections are ongoing: punch list, fire safety, climate control, the elevator. Inch by inch . . .

You can find the novel, “The Water Dancer,” on the Jeudevine shelves. Well, it’s almost certainly in a box as I write this, but look for it once it is back on a shelf. It is the first novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer best known for his non-fiction works, “Between the World and Me” and “We Were Eight Years in Power – an American Tragedy.” For a decade he was a columnist for The Atlantic magazine, writing about a wide variety of topics from culture to politics and race. He is widely respected as an important voice on race in America. I found his initial venture into the world of fiction to be quite remarkable. The story unfolds in the American South during slavery and centers around a young orphan slave, Hiram Walker, who possesses a magical gift: the ability to transport people from place to place. The novel recounts the death of his mother, his blending into the family of other slaves on the plantation, and his slowly uncovering the power of his gift and the memories of his mother. It is beautifully written. Coates’ descriptive writing is rich. In scene upon scene he vividly describes landscapes and creates characters so as to immerse the reader in that time and place. I am cautious in embracing a blend of the real and the spiritual, but Coates is not heavy-handed with the magic, and so, although not fully believable, it rests comfortably within the scope of his story. As a reader, I was readily transported into that world. In his own way, Coates shares Hiram’s gift.

Brendan Buckley