As you drive down Clark Street or Jackson these days, you may see the repairmen with their bright orange gear towering along the roof of the library in their blue lift as they work to give our old girl a nip and tuck—tuckpointing, that is. She is 160, after all.

After a summer rain sent some water sneaking through to the inside on the second floor, closer inspections revealed a missing stone from the exterior of the building. Talking with Jacob Kennon, the project foreman for Staat Tuckpointing out of Saint Louis he said the building has really been maintained well over the years, and the hunk of limestone popping out was probably just a result of the limited materials and technology available when some repair was done on it back in the ‘90s. 

“With the care this building seems to get,” Kennon said, “it will probably last another hundred years.”

That was a recurring theme, because in talking with Christal Bruner, the Mexico-Audrain County Library District director, she said her mission is the “make sure this beautiful library is still here a hundred years from now, so future generations of kids and families can enjoy it as much as past generations have.”

In talking with Bruner, it is easy to see why the repair crew mentioned the building being so well taken care of. Since stepping into the role of director in June of 2018, she has carried on the tradition of great directors. In addition to the roof project, she has also overseen replacement of some of the air conditioning system, the installation of new carpeting, and recovery from a boiler fiasco last year. She is currently waiting for beautiful new interior shutters for the grand windows on the front of the library. Bruner treasures the building and the services offered there.

 “It is sort of like having an extra child, and every step forward feels so fulfilling—each repair project, getting the programs with kids back after a year off, and so on,” she said.

The current repair project started last week and is expected to take between four and six weeks overall, barring rain delays. The need to tackle the problem with the leak resulted in an opportunity to go ahead and address some related maintenance and updating that needed to be done—like re-tuckpointing along the roof, redoing the epoxy work on some other limestones, and replacing part of the metal flashing. The projected total for this, around $84,000, comes from carefully stewarded capital improvements funds in the budget and may receive support from one of the area foundations. That last bit is wonderful news for Bruner, and for the community, because there are always things on the wish list, like updating the elevator, and all those funds come from the tax base with a little added in from book sales and, as Bruner mentioned several times, the shared love of the Friends of the Library.