by Jack Cook *

Picture a winding gravel road of the rural Kentucky hill country, following the lay of the land, the farms it joins together. Suddenly, the road forks, right in front of Schuyler Honeycutt’s barn. To the right at the farms of Rob Groce and Elvin Byrd. This part of the road ends at Elvin’s farm.

The left fork goes on for maybe fifty yards or more. From Schuyler’s barn to the end of the road is Speck School and its playground. But this is a playground with a difference: There are no swings or neat ball diamonds. Instead there is a large grove of oak and maple trees. In the middle of the road, just before we come to the school house itself, is a board, a large brick, a rock, and some boy’s old discarded shirt laid out in a small softball diamond. This is Speck School’s playground.

About ten yards from home base is a small, wood building with the white paint wearing off in patches. Its architectural style might be called “Early American Public Building.” It contains one large room. That’s all–for eight different grades. One room and one teacher.

The road we’ve been following stops just beyond the school. Almost exactly in front of the building’s only door is an old granddaddy oak tree. It was struck by lightning once, and almost half of it was burned away. But the other half somehow lives on. My cousin Morris was sitting in the teacher’s car directly under the tree when the lightning struck, while the rest of us were huddled on the floor of the school, but that’s another story.

The school building was built about three or four feet off the ground, so we have to walk up concrete steps to the door. The door is scarred, probably from some of the students throwing knives at it. Open the door and look in. We see a room, fairly lit, for there are windows along the length of the room so the electric lights are only needed on dark days. At the far end of the blackboard, with the teacher’s desk directly in front of it, almost in the middle of the room, but not quite, is a great dirty coal stove. That is the central heating system. The students’ desks are grouped with this stove even more so in winter.

The children sitting at the desks are obviously country kids. The boys have on overalls and blue jeans, with work shirts, and the girls are wearing mama made material bought at the Five-and-Dime. Most of the boys and girls are barefoot.

I was one of these kids, in the seventh grade. I think, one day more than eleven years ago. But this day we weren’t sitting at the desks. It was recess, but also raining, so most of the kids had a loud, laughing game of “Blindman’s Bluff” going. I wasn’t playing. I was restless, wanting to be outside, anywhere but in school on a rainy day. I had read the few books the school had: old texts or maybe one or two novels some generous soul had donated to the “Library.”

I was staring out the window toward the fork in the road in front of Schuyler Honeycutt’s barn, when a large auto, something like a Volkswagon Microbus, but larger, stopped there and hesitated. As its driver tried to make up her mind, I saw the word “Bookmobile” on the side of this strange vehicle. I had heard, I don’t know where, of this “traveling library,” so I yelled out to the room, “here comes the bookmobile.” I didn’t even know how to pronounce the name.

The “Bookmobul” turned left toward the school and parked in the middle of the softball diamond. By this time everyone was watching it from the window and wondering what it was. Mrs. Cross, the teacher, sent me out to talk to the librarian, since it was raining.

I ran out the door through the mud to the vehicle and jumped inside. I looked up and saw Mrs. Eloise Smith, our county librarian, for the first time. This lady had a tremendous job of handling the country library, in addition to driving this traveling library to all the little schools like ours in the county. As far as I know, she is still doing the same wonderful job.

Mrs. Smith told me to have the teacher send two or three students as representatives to pick out so many books for the school. You see, each school had a quota of books, depending on its size. Mrs. Cross sent one of the older girls and me to choose the books.

I can still remember the feel of those books, as I looked them over, I realized that I could choose from their number of books to read. I chose one for myself, and probably the rest were books I wanted to read. I wasn’t thinking of anyone else. I can still recall that first book I read from our library on wheels: Kipling’s “Tales of India.”

After the bookmobile left, Mrs. Cross chose one book to read to the entire school for the next period. I listened with half a mind, the other part of me mentally fondling the book that was all mine.

It had stopped raining by the next recess period. The other kids went outside to their games, but I stayed inside reading from Kipling. After that I was lost to my softball team, the sheriff’s posse in the Cowboys ‘n’ Indians game, or anything but reading. I must have read all the books we had from the library in three days. The bookmobile only came once a month, and here I was dry already. It was a long month before I saw that green panel truck again.

The next time Mrs. Smith came she told me of the county library in town. It was hidden in one of the county education buildings, and wasn’t very big. Our farsighted politicians had finally approved a public library after the state and national governments had donated most of the funds for its operation and books to stock it with. Actually the politicians can’t be blamed too much. I doubt that the people of the county would ever have voted funds for something as frivolous as a library.

Anyway, on my family’s next shopping trip to town, I found the library and there I could check out as many books as I wanted. “The Last of the Mohicans”; “Tom Sawyer”; “Huckleberry Finn”; “Kim”; worlds I couldn’t have imagined before.

They were all mine.

The late Jack Cook

* [Editor’s note: The above was written by the late Jack Cook during his college days in Berkley, California in the late 1960s. Cook, who passed away in 1998, was the son of the late Roxie Cook Honeycutt and the brother of Janet Brown and Ann Riddle, of Albany. The essay was submitted by his sister, Janet Brown.]