The leaves have just started turning hues of red, yellow and orange as Linda Carpenter drives up Highway 1050 in the Montgomery County Public Library’s bookmobile.
She pulls up to a mobile home in the Camargo community and a woman comes out with books she wants to return. The woman’s two young granddaughters watch from a deck, dangling their bare feet through the railing.
Linda, 55, started driving the bookmobile in November 2017. The job has bridged a gap in her life.
“I had to find something to make me feel whole again,” she says.
Linda lost her longtime job at a medical lab and was grieving the loss of her parents. After losing her job, she was employed as a caregiver for senior citizens in the community, but that work sometimes brought more grief.
“I was just looking for something to do to somehow feel needed. I never expected to get so close with somebody,” Linda says, recalling her connection to a woman who died a year and a half after she began caring for her. “A lot of days I didn’t cope very well. A loss of any kind is a huge trigger.”
Her struggle with depression and her desire to care for others led her the job at the library.
The bookmobile delivers books and DVDs to residents across the county who can’t often get to the library. Linda’s patrons include the disabled, senior citizens and people who don’t have transportation to the library in town.
“We’re bringing movies to them, books and companionship that they wouldn’t otherwise have,” Linda says.
The bookmobile runs five days a week, and Linda drives it three of those days. She works with 73-year-old Alicia Medina. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Alicia breaks the language barrier between Spanish-speaking patrons and Linda. In addition to improving communication, Linda hopes books will help boost education into the county’s lower-income communities.
Linda constantly works to find new patrons so the importance of the bookmobile is justified.
“It terrifies me to think there might come a time where there won’t be enough funding to run it every day,” she says.
When she is not delivering books, Linda is home on her family farm with her husband Tony and their three daughters and three grandchildren.
“I need to be needed,” Linda says. “That’s my bottom line.”
