August 12, 2009
Mild-mannered librarian has a colorful history
There’s a sign thoughtfully placed in the front of the bookmobile in Alta, right in the spot where it tells you the ultimate destination of the bus and its passenger. Grounded in far western Wyoming with its tires covered in canvas, its still all aboard to Gretchlandia for patrons of the Alta Branch Library.It’s mildly prophetic that Gretchen Notzold would end up in a bus while anxiously awaiting the county’s spacious new library facility. Gretchen spent a colorful time in her life with a band of free spirits who roamed around the west in search of land to establish a commune.
It never really worked out, but Gretchen will never forget the amazing old school buses inlaid with barn wood and sporting stained glass and wood stoves. If you like to read, it’s likely you already know Gretchen. She might even be a good friend. Working at the Alta Branch Library for almost a decade, Gretchen has become a mainstay for mystery or romance, fact and fiction.
Though she is a rock beneath the stacks, Gretchen’s path was often a windy one, taking her from an Indiana farm to Southern California via Michigan, Oregon and other points on the map.
“I started taking off when I was 13-years-old,” Gretchen recalled. “I was often brought back by the law after running away. My teens were in the hippie days, and I defi nitely wanted to see the world. I got to California and couldn’t believe you could just pick a lemon from a tree.”
Skilled in the proverbial art of making lemonade from a bitter fruit, Gretchen sought to burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. She once got an amazing ride from Southern California to San Francisco with Dennis Weaver of Gunsmoke and McCloud fame.
“We arrived in Chinatown on a Saturday night. He was taking one of his sons to school,” Gretchen said. “He ordered us a meal and showed me all around town. Then we went to a little theater to watch Samurai movies. I just knew him as Chester from Gunsmoke.”
Gretchen and her friend Debbie Shafer lived out of backpacks until they hooked up with the school bus clan, and then she worked on a goat ranch in Northern California. She started the farmer’s market in Trinidad on the Pacific Coast just below Oregon. She drove an old ’49 blue Chevy truck and sold herbs and flowers, rabbits, chickens and ducks. Gretchen went on to school in Monmouth, Oregon and ultimately landed in Teton Valley where she would raise two daughters, Chloe and Ginny, with Kane Brightman. She took a job as a cook at the Teton Science School in the early 80s when scores of teachers and students got snowed in for two weeks.
“It was a pretty wild time,” Gretchen said. “We lost electricity and the kids had to melt snow for water. I stretched tuna fish with the morning pancakes. I think we had two eggs by the end of it.”
Gretchen went on to wear every hat you could, waitressing, cleaning houses, providing day care, working at the bookstore, writing for the newspaper.
“You name it, I did it,” she said. “Anything I could do to get by. We lived all over Teton Valley, from Clawson to Cedron, Alta and on Stateline Road in tiny farmhouses that are all abandoned now. We all slept in the same bed to keep warm. The cat could come and go as he pleased in those houses.”
In 2000 Gretchen got her job with the Alta Branch Library and she felt she had locked into the best job in the valley, getting the opportunity to grow the branch with new programming. After years within the Alta School, Gretchen moved into the bookmobile where her daughter crafted the “Gretchlandia” sign, a tribute to Paul Fleischman’s children’s book “Weslandia”.
Gretchen has watched with rapture as Alta’s new library takes shape, and she is blown away by the possibilities in the new facility. From the very beginning with Doris Moss and Etha Bohi, the library has been a most special place in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains that tower over western Wyoming, and Gretchen is still in awe. Go by and pick up a book. See for yourself how excited she is.
“To evolve to this is just amazing,” she said. “I just still don’t believe it yet. It’s a library with one of the best views in the world. We are literally moving from a sardine can into a castle.”
The Alta Branch Library is scheduled to be finished in November, with a grand opening sometime in January.
“I love reading to kids and working with seniors. Those are my favorite groups,” Gretchen said. “I feel like I really fit here in Alta.”
Gretchen’s love of books is rivaled by her passion for gardening and a dedication to the practice of yoga, but nothing competes with her love of being a mother to her daughters.
But like Liza Wilson is reported to have said, “Good parents work themselves right out of a job.”
