Lulu Boone was head librarian at the Sterling library from 1930 to 1950, having moved from Lawrence, Kan., with her husband. When they divorced, she stayed on, childless, proper and a bit mysterious.
She taught the art of library science to a handful of competent Sterling girls who were expected to keep the shelves dusted and the stacks quiet. She ran a tight ship. When she found out the library’s janitor was hiding a bottle of hooch behind the toilet tank, it didn’t go well for him.
No one in Sterling knows where she’s buried, which only makes me more interested.
But then, I’ve just spent 48 hours living in a room dedicated to Lulu Boone, surrounded by what I imagine is her aura. I was free to imagine whatever else struck my fancy.
“I know how that goes,” says Jennifer Goble, proprietor of the Old Library Inn Bed and Breakfast in Sterling. “When I first discovered Lulu, I so much wanted her to be a flapper. Maybe she wasn’t, but …”
Perhaps Boone was no Zelda Fitzgerald, but that didn’t stop Goble from decorating the Lulu Boone room at her B&B with books on black-and-white-era film stars, beaded evening accessories, shimmery curtains, Hollywood-thick towels and a tarty silver-lamé shirtwaist displayed on a shelf near the high ceiling, as if Boone’s ghost were about to get dressed for cocktail hour.
Putting this image together was fun for Goble, a psychotherapist and unsung interior designer who had always wanted an inn of her own.
Four years ago, while living in a downtown Denver high-rise, Goble visited her daughter in Sterling for Mother’s Day. In a twist of fate, the 1916 Carnegie Library, unused for that purpose since 1976, was on the market for $76,000. Goble bought the building, spent twice that on a charming rehab, signed up with the National Historic Register and opened as a three-room inn. Along the way, she learned what she could about Boone and her fellow librarians, and dedicated rooms to their memories.
Generally, I’m leery of B&Bs. I recoil from teddy bears in lace, ducks with ribbons around their necks and Scarlett-O’Hara-wannabe hostesses hovering with muffins. On vacation, or frazzled from the road, I don’t necessarily crave elegance, and I shrink in horror from cute.
The Old Library Inn was the perfect antidote to all that. Goble and her friend Jim, a retired English teacher who comes by to flip crepes and brew coffee, were unobtrusive – so much so that I began to wish we could hang out more, maybe over a glass of wine.
Goble had just come back from a whirlwind visit to the Christo installation in New York; Jim from an alternative film festival. Provincial they most certainly were not.
And they offer more than hospitality. As part of a romantic weekend, Goble suggests you sign up for some marriage counseling – with her, of course. (She operates a part-time practice on the first floor.)
“It’s not long-term therapy, but it works as a kick-start,” she says. “My guests really enjoy it. Communication is never a bad thing.”
Neither is solitude. Surrounded by vintage books at the Old Library Inn, I cranked out many chapters for the book I’m writing and left as refreshed as if I had been at a spa. I expected as much from a place where people have been whispering sssshhhh! for nearly a hundred years.
Lulu? Is that you?
Robin Chotzinoff is a freelance writer who lives in Evergreen.
The details
The Old Library Inn B&B is located 126 miles east of Denver on I-76 at 210 South 4th Street in Sterling. 970-522-3800cq, http://oldlibraryinn.comcq.While in Sterling, be sure to visit:
The Overland Trail Museum, a comprehensive frontier village concentrating on, but hardly limited to, life on the Overland Trail in the busy years of 1862-1868. 21053 Colorado Road 25, (970) 522-3895.
The tree sculptures located in and around Sterling. For more information, go to the website of sculptor Brad Rhea, at www.thesculptor.netcq.
Eat the smoked salmon Caesar salad at Gallagher’s River City Grill, 1116 West Main, 970-521-7648.
Work out at the Bank of Colorado Events Center at Northeastern Junior College, so sparkling and new you could dine on any of its surfaces. You get state-of-the-art cardio and weights for only $3.50. 100 College Avenue, 970-521-6756.
Work out at the Bank of Colorado Events Center at Northeastern Junior College, so sparkling and new you could dine on any of its surfaces. You get state-of-the-art cardio and weights for only $3.50. 100 College Ave., 970-521-6756.
