The root of my love affair with libraries is hard to explain.
Using a library of any kind in the rural area where I grew up was a challenge. Our small farm home was in a rural neighborhood called Highland. Highland had a small store, a creamery, and a hand pumped source of gasoline in relation to the store. Farmers from two miles around used these services. In the days of no automobile use after winter set in we delivered milk by sleigh, walked or skied to the one-room school, and visited neighbors. We had a Model T Ford that was used summers and was put up on blocks over winter. There were no school buses and only the rare graduate of Grade Eight attended high school.
Highland was five miles from Howard Lake, the nearest town. Though only fifty miles from Minneapolis the area was very rural as was most of the state in the 1920's. Over one-half of the population lived on farms or in small towns and in my home county, Wright, there were no towns of over 2500 population.
Where in this setting could a love affair with libraries begin?
Did it begin with that old library table in the living room? That table included the only bookshelf in our entire farm home. It held a complete set of Sherlock Holmes, a Bible, The Anatomy Of Man, and several books from past Christmas presents.
Or did it begin with the cased library in the one room Highland school that I attended? In that library were no more than 200 books. By tradition dating back to the late 1800's, five new books were purchased yearly by the school board. This was supposed to make up for those lost or severely damaged during the year.
Or was it the traveling library developed by the County Superintendent of Schools? When the budget allowed the local school board included in its budget the postage required to get a box of 50 books delivered once each month during the eight-month school year. Those books were devoured by those of us with imagination and a developing love for reading.
Or were its real roots with the difficulty of borrowing books from a public library? Howard Lake had a public library kept open by volunteer ladies. I was not welcome. First, the library was to be only for those living in the corporate limits of the town. By hindsight I am convinced that this farm kid dressed in country clothes did not fit the library culture. There were a number of other factors that caused my parents to ignore the library. They had never tried to use it. At age ten I braved the negative attitude of the librarian, the strange looks I got from other patrons, and went into the library on my own and tried to check out a book. I was told in no uncertain terms, "No, you cannot check out this book or anything from the library. This is only for those in town. We shouldn't have let you in the reading room".