Pat Stuart

How lucky we all are that we live in such a lovely area with fabulous scenery, temperate weather (most of the time) with well-defined seasons, a well-run, safe city boasting about all the amenities one could reasonably want including a lovely (if currently inadequate) library, great medical facilities, and ... most of all ... well-educated, capable, hard-working, caring neighbors.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably say it again as we suffer under pundits and politicians creating and inflaming discontent.  Wouldn’t it be nice if more of those people didn’t remind us that while there’s always room for improvement, this nation, this state, this county and town are better than ever before in any time.

In any time.  I’ve been reminded of this while doing more research into the early 20th century for a piece on the history of the Powell Library.  Smelling and feeling the old documents, their musty scent, their fading words and yellowing paper, sent me back in time to imagine, once more, how rough things were for our early settlers who transformed a tent camp into a town. 

We complain about some things now, but just imagine.  Take the wind, for example.  It plucked incessantly at the little settlement, tearing hair from the pins meant to hold it in place, turning canvas tent sides into drums that seldom stopped their insane beat, infiltrating dirt into every soup pot and flavoring even frying bacon.  In the summer it kept the flies down but added ferocity to the heat.  In the winter, the frigid wind reached through even the warmest of clothing.  When people said, “I’m freezing to death,” they meant it as an all too real possibility.

Almost everything they did from tending a fire to harnessing a horse could have a deadly conclusion.  A spark from the fire could catch in the fabric of a long, heavy skirt.  A spooked horse could slam you to the ground and break your bones.

Injuries killed.  Epidemics killed.  And those are just for starters.  But people are nothing if not resilient.  Our grandparents (greats or great-greats), went about making their situations better.  The men of Colter Camp platted streets and made laws.  The women banded together to, first, make a place for religious gatherings, and second to raise subscription money to build a library.

These meetings of the camp women had to have been wonderful respites for people who rose early and collapsed exhausted onto pallets or cots late.  Sheer survival for themselves and their children demanded unceasing work under conditions we would find horrific.  

What I love about the library part of the story, though, is that establishing a public library, free for all, was the second priority of those hard-pressed women who were working shoulder-to-shoulder with their men to survive and build a thriving town.  They understood that libraries are the great social leveler.  They knew that access to knowledge — what books represented to them — would make all the difference to the future of their children and the town.  And it has.

Have I wandered?  I don’t think so.  The library, any library full of books and other access to information, which is free for all, is a key element of what we now have, what our ancestors gave us.  

It is an important part of what makes us so lucky to be alive in this time and place with a good chance of much safer and longer lives, with opportunities undreamed of in past times, with the product of what our greats and great-greats worked to give us.

Something to think about when next you hear a podcast or “personality” spout hate and discontent.