GRAND RONDE, Ore. — In the tiny community of Grand Ronde, right off Oregon's Highway 18, few of the countless drivers heading to Lincoln City, Pacific City, or the Spirit Mountain Casino notice the unassuming old Grand Ronde Bank building. The bank closed long ago.
Fewer people still know what replaced it; something that gives new meaning to the phrase: "banking hours." The building opens only on Mondays from noon to 4 p.m. And they probably don't see 80-year-old Amelie Redman dutifully open the doors — rain, snow, or shine — every Monday. Only on Monday.
"Just Monday ... I try to open by noon," Redman said.
She arrives well before opening time, grabs some logs from the wood pile, and starts a fire in the old bank building's potbelly stove.
"I take about three to start with and a little bit of kindling," she said.
The former bank vault has no phone, no computer and no heat.
"It's so cold. All my matches often go out," Redman added.
A resident of Willamina, Amelie Redman has replaced the bank teller in the old building. What was once a depository of bank notes now holds other treasures.
Redman proudly gestured towards the other riches the bank holds today: books. Lots of books. They fill shelves that wrap around the room and every space in between.
"There are novels, all alphabetical, starting over by the street and comes over here by the side," she said.
There's horror, romance, mystery, sci-fi and fantasy — all donated, many of them handed down from generations ago.
"To think Grandma and Grandpa had those books as children," Redman said.
It's a library time forgot. It was founded in 1958 by the Grand Ronde Women's Club and was once the only library around. It's not connected to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, which has its own more modern library up the road.
A tattered spiral notebook holds the names of all the patrons who have checked out books in this little library over the years, about 3,500 in all. Willamina school kids were some of the first.
"Number one isn't dated. Glenda Morgan. There's Mike Albin, Sybil Albin. Those are all school kids. And there's my mom, Bernice J. Rydell. Number 727," she said.
Redman finds her name in the book. It's number 3365. The first librarian, Elsie Werth, signed her in. Werth and Redman's mother were among the original members of the since-disbanded Grand Ronde Women's Club.
"When she (Elsie) passed away, I started coming here and being the librarian," Redman said.
That was in 2013. Redman has opened the library every Monday since, except for one. She points to a page in the notebook marking the Monday she missed. A special day: August 21, 2017.
"This was Eclipse Day," she said. "I closed on Eclipse Day so I could go watch the eclipse."
There is no card catalog in the library, and much of the time there are no patrons.
"It's amazing how you can hide in plain sight," Redman joked. "Maybe if I put out a sign, 'free counseling,' I'd get more people."
Despite the lack of foot traffic, Redman doesn't consider herself a lonely librarian. In her lifetime, she's seen much more solitude than a quiet library.
"I worked on a forest lookout. So, what's that look like? Not a constant stream of visitors coming up for a tour," she said.
Redman has had many careers in her 80 years, from a forest lookout to an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer to a waitress in Willamina. She also worked for the State of Alaska for several years where she earned a pension. She said she even thought about running for public office once.
"I was going to run for governor in 1984, but it wasn't a gubernatorial year. Obviously, I wasn't paying too close attention," she said.
Redman also worked at a recycling center. While she waits for a library patron to show up, she fills the time playing her guitar — singing a little recycling song she wrote.
"She is the queen of the recycling center. She rules the junkie kingdom," Redman sang. "Her scepter is a magnet and a cardboard baler throw. All the markets should gather around her to win these fine materials, to see which ones will take the tons from the recycling center home."
But even when no one else shows up, Redman always has plenty of company.
"Look at all these free books I get to read. I haven't read all of them yet," she said.
Keeping this hidden-in-plain-sight little library open has become Redman's calling.
"I think it's to keep the spirit of literacy alive. To keep the spirit of Grand Ronde, the spirit of learning," she said.
On average a patron finds the library and the treasures inside once a week, including new area resident Travis Dow.
"I drove by it going to the post office and the store. It's an old bank building turned into a library, so my curiosity was — I am a reader. I am a nerd. I like history a lot," he said. "Now, I try to make it a habit to stop by every Monday."
And on this Monday, Dow brought his sister Frankie from Dallas, Oregon.
"It's very cool. It's very quaint. Lots of old books ... so cool," she said.
For Redman, this is what keeps her coming back, Monday after Monday after Monday. She teared up as she talked about her dedication to the old Grand Ronde Library.
"I haven't been replaced yet. No one has told me to get out," she said.
As the day’s library hours ended, Dennis Werth arrived. He's the son of the little building's very first librarian, and he now keeps the library funded in his mother's memory.
"We youngsters are now the oldsters and we are picking up the slack as long as we can," Werth said.
Together, Werth and Redman locked up the old bank building — closing the book on another week for the humble library waiting to be discovered off Highway 18. And as it waits, it stands as a quiet legacy that speaks volumes.
If you'd like to visit the Grand Ronde Library of a Monday, it's located at 8615 Grand Ronde, just a block north of Oregon Highway 18.