Preface

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams die
Life is a broken winged bird
That cannot fly.
               Langston Hughes

Summers in the late 1950's were often spent on my grandfathers farm on Mount Sherman in Newton County, Arkansas. I loved staying on the farm. It was not always fun because we were expected to work for our room and board -- grandparents were very different in those days.

Jefferson Leroy Raney, was a self made man of the mountains. He was one of thirteen Raney's raised in the hills of the Boston Mountains.of northwestern Arkansas. Born on October 13th, 1906 he was 35 years old when he joined the Navy in World War II. After spending his time in the pacific, he returned to Arkansas and seized the opportunity to homestead 160 acres of land at the cost of $1.00 per acre. The only requirement was that he develop and live at least six months of the year on the land. So he built a couple of small cabins on the prime spot of land on top of the mountain. He would spend months of his time in the Kansas City area working for the rail roads earning enough money to live on for for the rest of the year. He also spent sometime on a farm (Garastana Farms) in Stillwell Kansas working for a doctor who owned harness racers -- that is another story.

Jefferson eventually built a stone two bedroom house on the property. When I say built, I mean he personally designed and built the home. He even used lumber milled on the mountain from his own trees. He even had a heated bathroom floor -- way ahead of his time. He also had a well location water witched (it worked for him) and dug his own well in the front yard. He also ran a water line to the house and installed a pump to keep pressurized water throughout the home. The well never went dry, even in the driest of drought years -- of course he used water conservation during the driest of times.

I would spend many summers there with him and my grandmother, Flora, helping around the farm and exploring the mountain top wilderness.

He was a devout Christian and all of my religious teachings came from him through bible study and stories. He knew his bible.

As long as I could recall, there was a small cabin that sat on the southeast side of his property about 100 yards from his home. It was filled with books and magazines. It was known as the J.L. Raney branch of the Wilderness Library. He would tell me stories of the man named Ted Richmond who started the library system and who he revered. I never met Ted personally that I can recall, as he left the area in 1956 when I was only five years old.

I was fascinated by the stories he would tell me of this man, with no job, no known sources of income other than a few goats that he would raise and yet established a mountain library that at one time had branches throughout northwestern Arkansas years. This was long before anyone had ever thought of the need for free reading material for this part of the country.

I would often see people drive up to the library to get books and more often drop off books and magazines for others to read -- it was a wonderful place to explore as it was filed with a jumble of reading material. Nothing was really organized at that time and as best I can tell never really was. No Dewy Decimal system there as one person could not possibly keep up with all of the donations -- that was part of it's charm.

I would spend loads of my free time at the library sorting through all of the facinating material and always remembered by grandfather telling me to be careful, because there were often snakes hidden behind the books, yikes! Not your typical library of today, eh? I never saw one, but did find a shed skin once -- most likely a black snake that was hunting the mice that would often nibble on the books over winter months.

There was also an old megaphone speaker in the library. It was just the old cone speaker from an old turntable phonograph. Jeff said that when Ted had visitors or new books arrived at the library, they would use it to "holler" down the hill side for Ted to come up to the top of the mountain. That was cellular phone service for the 1940's and 50's.

The library never required cards to checkout books. You simply came and took what interested you, logged your name and if you wanted, a brief note to Ted in a ring binder he kept in the library. It was strictly an honor system and it worked.

One of the early lessons I learned was when I found a paperback book I liked. We had a hard days work schedule clearing and setting up a road on the property. I took the book with me to read during breaks and kept it in the back pocket of my jeans -- I thought it was cool. Granddad saw the book and complemented me on my choice (I don't recall the book now), however, he said you are not taking very good care of the book by placing it in your rear pocket. He was obviously correct, because it was bending the corners and stressing the bindings. From that day forward, I knew to take better care of items that would eventually be used by others.

If you use it, return it to where you found it in the same or better condition, when you borrowed it. A simple lesson that will make life better for you and those around you.

Now, as I also learned, this branch of the library was not the only one. Ted's cabin (Wildcat) I was told, was the original and Official Wilderness Library. Yes Ted's epiphany that lead to establishing the library did occur in a small cave on his property. He even placed the few books he had on a small shelf he built in the cave, however, he soon realize that the humid air of the cave and the difficulty of accessing the cave was a real negative.) Ted's would leave his cabin open for anyone to visit and check out or return reading material.

Ted's cabin eventually filled to the point that he built a second (much smaller) cabin nearby and moved into it. There were two physical libraries later established to house the books and magazines that I was aware of; the JL Raney Branch and the Wilderness Library on the Camp Orr Road near the valley. The Library on the Camp Orr road was vandalized and burned down sometime in the mid-60's as I was witness to the aftermath of it's destruction -- a terrible waste of historical value. I recall my grandfathers complete disgust of such wanton destruction of a mans life work.

I hope you can understand my fascination with this learned man of the wilderness. The untrusted interloper who arrived and won the hearts and minds of the mountain folk. A man who called this place home for thirty years and later was held up to ridicule by the nearby towns people who never really knew or understood the man.