Readers Find Odd Ways to Pick Up Where They Left Off

Retired Covina librarian Delores Grammatikas used to bring home the bacon--and just about anything else her patrons would see fit to use as bookmarks.

“I think somebody was cooking breakfast,” Grammatikas recalls, “and they needed a bookmark. I’m afraid that reading and eating have always gone together.”

Now 30 years after that discovery, Grammatikas spreads the contents of her vast bookmark collection-- sans bacon--on her living room carpet.

Her porcine tale suddenly pales against the piles of potpourri--booties and Blue Chip stamps, condoms and crochet hooks, protractors and Popsicle sticks, toothpicks and tongue depressors--that have all doubled as bookmarks. Like an exploded time capsule, her collection represents decades’ worth of keepsakes and personal effects.

Grammatikas points to a wooden-jointed snake perched on a stack of match books. The harmless reptile had once startled a book-browsing woman who found it resting between the hard-bound covers of “Pride and Prejudice.”

“She asked us to open all her books after that,” Grammatikas says, chuckling.

Strangely, Grammatikas’ sprawling bookmark collection is not unique. For example:

* Palos Verdes librarian Julian Genevy found a pressed and laminated cockroach marking some pages;

* El Segundo and Redondo Beach librarians Denise Dumars and Miriam Hutzelman also found bacon strips, cooked and uncooked;

* South Pasadena librarian Mary Lou Colver found bullets inside a copy of “Rosemary’s Baby,” adding that while she wasn’t sure they were your typical bookmarks, “they certainly left their mark;”

* San Dimas community library manager Mary Noonan discovered a 1943 letter from Navy Secretary James Forrestal telling a woman that her husband had been killed in battle.

Noonan is still trying to locate the heirs of the deceased World War II veteran, but usually her search to return important documents, photographs and money is fruitless. Patrons are either unaware they have left something in a book or too embarrassed to claim it, Noonan says.

There are exceptions, however.

At the San Dimas Library, a woman accused Noonan’s staff of appropriating a rice-paper bookmark mistakenly returned with some books. Although the library “was turned upside down,” the bookmark was never found.

One invisible force working against the happy reunion of library user and bookmark is the computerized bar code system. Once a clerk checks in a book with a scanner, any record of who last checked out the book is erased.

As a result, the local library staff usually bombs out when it tries to find the person who checked in a book with a $100 bill or a winning lottery ticket.

Consequently, libraries accumulate a plethora of bookmarks, with most ending up in boxes, drawers or on bulletin boards where the library staff can speculate on their origins.

At the San Dimas library, a pinch of hair returned in a copy of Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure” was plucked from the pages detailing the hangings of three boys. Noonan suspects the lock represents the reader’s violent reaction to the passage. “That’s a tear-your-hair-out scene,” Noonan says.

Colleague Vivian Bridgewater, however, surmises that the snippet was simply another example of a reader grabbing the first available thing to mark a stopping point.

While many bookmarks make light-hearted fodder for sleuthing librarians, they also hasten the degradation and destruction of many books, according to Dr. Danielle Mihram, head of the reference center at USC’s Doheny Library.

“Paper clips are perhaps the worst offenders,” Mihram says, “because they create a two-way stress on the paper that leads to tears.” She also cited rubber bands and acid-rich newsprint as the bane of books.

Another innocent-looking, but insidious, bookmark is the dog-eared page, Mihram says. Unlike a paper clip or other bulky marker, the tiny turned-down fold often goes back on the library shelf undetected. Over time, the unnatural crease weakens the paper and the folded corner falls off.

In response to such dangers, USC, which spends about $3 million each year on new books, has established a committee to make the academic community more sensitive to damage to books.

Sometimes, people leave things in books on purpose. Reams of poems, sketches, short stories, notes, letters, missive, novena cards and religious tracts regularly crop up in library returns, apparently attempts to influence readers.

However, the most powerful subliminal messages can be unintentional.

In her hilltop Covina home, Grammatikas displays a sheet of notebook paper that lists a variety of violent acts in a typical “Three Stooges” episode. She found it in a copy of “Alice in Wonderland.” It’s unclear whether the bookmark was a discard or deliberately placed.

There’s little doubt about its impact, however. “When I think of Alice, I now think of the ‘Three Stooges,’ ” Grammatikas says.

At the Glendora library, Bonnie Deering has divided her bookmark collection into plastic bags marked recipes, photos, personal hygiene products, trading cards, religion, among others. Gleaned from hundreds of books over 20 years, Deering’s collection often makes the rounds at retirement homes and women’s luncheons.

Among the highlights, Deering reads items from a Things To Do list: “Shave legs, shave arms, take nice long bath with bath oil, wash hair, shave mustache, set hair, rub down, pedicure, eyebrow tweeze, face mask, manicure, make up, take out hair and pick up outfit.” “I don’t know if the author is a man or a woman, but this will all mean something in 100 years,” Deering says.