Charles Starkweather, serial killer

When I was growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, Charlie Starkweather was our garbage man, and when he went on his killing spree, our neighborhood took it personally and was scared out of its mind.

Until I worked at the Northeast Branch of the Lincoln Public Library, these facts were just something relegated to my childhood memories.

But in the summer of 1968, I worked as the substitute head librarian at the branch while Sammie, the branch's librarian, had her baby.

Northeast was a classic one-room Carnegie library with stained glass windows, a place that reminded me of being in a cathedral when the sun slanted through the windows in the late afternoon.  Standing at the librarian's desk and looking straight through the main door, the librarian had the children's area to the right and the adult's area to the left.


Going to work became almost a sacred duty, except that some of the patrons made me uneasy at best, frightened at worst.

One of these patrons was Charlie Starkweather's father, who would come in and rant and rave about how his boy was innocent and was a very nice kid indeed.  While the man seemed relatively harmless, I wasn't ever quite sure about him.