#56 Eldo/Rado

Dear diary,

Oh. My. God. Eldo is awesome! It’s a large country town with a massive shopping mall and cinema complex and leisure centre and planetarium and more than you would ever imagine would exist in a place that barely registers as a dot on a map of outback Victoria. They even have an enormous library service which is well stocked and has competent staff (I gave them a run for their money though with some challenging questions, just to test them). But sadly, we’re barely going to spend any time in Eldo, as Pepper gloomily informed me on our first day.

Our work was in the twin town of Rado, which has more socio-economic disadvantage than you could poke a long and pointed stick at. According to the Resource Department of the second floor of the local history section in the Eldo Public Library, the two towns were originally one large city, but it was cleft in twain in the Great Gold Rush Revival of 1982. Many people from the Eldo ward became rich overnight while those from the Rado ward lost everything.

We’ve been hired by the mayor of Rado to “promote the benefits of lifelong learning among the community”, which really means we’re here to stop it going further up the creek minus a paddle. The townsfolk are wary of stepping into the neighbouring town as prices there are through the roof. Pepper came up with an ingenious plan to encourage them to visit the Mobile Library. She spent all the first night designing posters and banners saying “FREE!!”, which she hoped would attract patrons-to-be.

While she was off in her ‘design lab’, and her own world, I decided to take Heb out and show him around town, as some exposure to sunlight and the general public would do him well. We spent hours looking in book stores and the library until even I was bored (and trust me, that takes a lot). He was engrossed, but I wanted him to experience some of the finer qualities of real life.

The pub was fairly empty when we stepped in. He immediately ran to a dark corner booth where no-one could see us. I followed reluctantly. He was hesitant to have a drink, in case it blurred his vision and he couldn’t read the Chaucer he’d snuck in under his shirt. Eventually I convinced him into having a ‘Jezebel Bonchance’ cocktail by pretending that alcohol won’t affect you if you drink it quickly. He was naïve enough for it to work.

By the eighth round we were both so drunk that we were slurring, so we came up with the idea of speaking only in Dewey. I said I wanted to take that pretty girl back to the caravan and read some 613.95, but he countered by reminding me I was in no state to operate 629.222 within 994 or I would face 347. He then seemed to recall he was 297 and that his 173 would be disrupted, but he didn’t really mind due to some tricky 158.1 and besides, we should get some take-away 641.5.

We stumbled towards the general direction of the door but didn’t make it. I slammed into the wall and fell to the floor, while Heb ended up lying on a pool table. The people who were playing were upset about this cessation to their tournament and there was a fight, of which I only saw the start before I dozily passed out.

I awoke the next morning in the caravan and panicked. I’d left Heb, inebriated and alone, in a bar full of boozy ruffians. How would I explain this to Bron? She’d kill me, and then I’d never get to finish the Robert Jordan series! My hangover slowed me right down, and it too a good ten minutes to make it from my room at one end of the Mobile Library, to the other to tell Pepper I was partially responsible for the death of our only shelver.

But I’d underestimated Heb. He was standing out the front of the library, surrounded by a huge group of townspeople. Several pairs of eyes and bewildered expressions turned to face me in the doorway. Pepper came up behind me and offered around some coffee. She told the story of how she’d been in town looking for inspiration in the bottom of a glass when she’d heard a commotion. When she went to investigate she found Heb displaying his learnings from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and a handful of martial arts books, against a rowdy mob of snookerers. Pepper went in to rescue Heb and used her high heels and gymnast legs to help bring the fight to a close.

News had traveled fast, and it wasn’t every day that two out-of-towner nerds, one a woman and the other a kid, came along and beat up a gang of blokes. Half the population of Rado had come to see these strange newcomers, and many were captivated by a combination of an impressive collection of library material and Pepper’s signage. We had a large wave of borrowers that first day. Here’s hoping we can keep it up for the next fw days before we move on.

-Jay