MONOWI, Neb. — Weeds twine around the disintegrating remnants of the water tower and sprout in a tangle through the floorboards of the grandest house in town. The Methodist church, gray with rot, slumps toward the frozen ground. An empty mailbox flaps open on a gravel rut that was once a road.
The people of Monowi have died or moved -- all but one: Elsie Eiler. Brisk and unsentimental at 71, she lives in the one home still fit for living in, a snug trailer with worn white siding. She runs the one business left in Monowi, a dark, wood-paneled tavern, thick with smoke.
She also runs the library.
The sign outside is painted on a section of a refrigerator door. The floor is bare plywood. There's no heat. But there are thousands upon thousands of books. "The Complete Works of Shakespeare." "Treasure Island." Trixie Belden and "The Happy Valley Mystery." Zane Grey's westerns, every one of them, lined up across two shelves. Homer. Tennyson. Amy Tan. Goethe.
Elsie's late husband, Rudy, read them endlessly. He farmed and tended bar, he ran a grain elevator, he delivered gas to filling stations, and when the town was down to just him and Elsie, he served as mayor too. But he always found time to read -- science fiction, history, the classics -- anything but a Harlequin romance.
When he got sick with cancer two years ago, Rudy confided a dream to Elsie: He wanted to turn his collection into a public library.
Rudy ordered a custom-made building and set it a few steps from his home and his tavern. The Eilers' son, Jack, wired the lights, and friends built floor-to-ceiling shelves. But Rudy died in January 2004, before he could fill them.
Five months later, his friends and family came together to pack the small white building with Rudy's books. Elsie estimates they shelved at least 5,000 volumes.
Monowi, population 1, had its library.
The farm kids who come tumbling into the tavern with their parents run up to the library now and again to paw through the magazines, looking for pictures of man-eating snakes. Friends visiting Elsie from the neighborhood -- any town within 50 miles -- stop by every few months to browse. Rudy's younger brother Jim pulls his pickup to the library door and carts home stacks at a time.
Monowi may be the smallest town in the nation with its own library. But the bounty of books here for the taking is very much in the spirit of rural America.
Across the Great Plains, towns that have long since lost their schools, their banks and all hope of a future still keep their little libraries going. Volunteers open them for a few hours a week, waiting for readers to come down deserted Main Streets.
Nearly 30% of the nation's libraries serve communities of fewer than 2,500 people, including almost 3,000 libraries in towns where the population is measured in the hundreds.
Because they run on volunteer labor, making do with the books at hand, rural libraries survive even in tight times like these, when big cities are shutting branches. In California, John Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas (population 150,000) has announced plans to close all of its libraries by April to save money. But it's still possible to check out a book in Gaylord, Kan. (population 97), and Strang, Neb. (population 38).
In Monowi, Elsie keeps the key to the library hanging in the tavern. She's there 12 or 14 hours a day, frying up egg sandwiches for the farmers and hunters and construction workers who stop by for lunch at any random hour they're free. "Go on up and take a look," she'll urge.
Rudy's Library is less than 350 square feet. The books are worn, disorganized and eclectic beyond description.
It's impossible not to linger.
Here's "Ivanhoe," by Sir Walter Scott, next to "Jaws 2." Mark Twain's collected works sit side by side with "Dancer of Dreams" by Patricia Matthews, touted on the cover as "America's First Lady of Love." (That's one of the few Rudy likely never opened.)
"How to Get Filthy Rich, Even If You're Flat Broke" recommends reading obituaries so you can assume a dead man's identity to throw creditors off the hunt. "Adventures in Science with Doris and Billy" -- circa 1945 -- advises: "If you could fly in an airplane to the moon, you might reach it in about 100 days."
Copies of Reader's Digest date back to 1950; National Geographic, to 1953. A local newspaper from 1941 bears the front-page news that Rose Karel's tonsillectomy went well.
The library runs on the honor system: Take what you want, return it when you can.
"You just have to look around till you find something you want to read," Elsie says. "You'll probably run across something you're not thinking of."
Seven-year-old Shelby Micanek comes by after school one frosty afternoon, drawn to the children's corner. She has two books at home, she says proudly, both Dick and Jane, one with a yellow cover, one with a blue.
In Rudy's Library, she's looking for a book about animals.
