I just wanted to kind of dive right in to the story about you at the Central Library.

You were taking a tour one day, right?

And you got to the fiction section.

And this person who was giving you the tour just sort of stopped, pulled a book off the shelf,

and did something that you were not expecting. What was it?

What happened? He absolutely, I stopped dead in my tracks. He pulled a book off the shelf,

and he took a deep whiff of the book. He just held it up to his nose and took a deep, deep inhale, which I found

strange. And then he said, you know, you can still smell the smoke in some of them.

I didn't really quite understand what he meant.

And I said, well, did the library use to let people smoke in the stacks?

And he said, no, of course not.

Of course not.

It's smoke from the fire.

And I said, what fire?

What are you talking about?

He said the big fire in 1986.

Again, I had no idea what he was referring to.

He said, you know, it shut the library down for seven years.

And then we moved on in the tour.

Right.

Being a curious person and a reporter and somebody who can't let a comment like that just lie there, I, as soon as I got home, I started digging and discovered not only was

there a fire in the LA Public Library in 1986,

...