Sylvie Lubow (SL): We’ve all been pretty cooped up these last few months, isolating at home or leaving only to go to work. But with a little imagination, there are still ways to escape.
It’s the StoryCorps podcast from NPR. I’m your host, Sylvie Lubow, filling in for Jasmyn Morris.
This week, we’re bringing you stories about how books can open doors and transport us to new worlds.
First, we hear from Olly Neal, a retired judge in Arkansas. Based on his career, you might not have guessed that as a teenager Olly struggled in school and sometimes cut class. But it was on one of those days that he wandered into a library, and discovered the work of a Black author named Frank Yerby.
Judge Olly Neal (ON): I was a rather troubled high school senior at the time, about sixteen years old. And I spotted this book that looked rather risque, called the Treasure of Pleasant Valley. On the cover was a drawing of a woman who appeared to be wearing something that was basically see-through, but the symbolism was really great for me at that age, at sixteen.
And then I realized if I read the book, two of my classmates, girls, were volunteering in the library, and if they saw me taking out a book they would tell the boys and then my reputation would be down because I was reading books. And I wanted them to know that all I could do was fight and cuss and so, finally, it come to me, just steal the book.
And so, when I finished the book in about a week or two, I brought it back.
Karama Neal (KN): Right.
ON: And when I put it back there was another book by Frank Yerby. So I thought maybe I’ll read that too. So I took it under my jacket, and later I brought it back. And God, there was another book by Frank Yerby so I took it. And I think that semester I read four books by Frank Yerby.
And, uh, several years – thirteen to be exact, we were at a gathering at my high school, for my class reunion, and the teacher who had been the librarian, Mrs. Mildred Grady, was there. She told me that she saw me take that book when I first took it. She said her first thought was to go over and tell him, “Boy, you don’t have to steal that book. You can check them out. They’re free.” Then she realized what my situation was; that I couldn’t let anyone know I was reading.
So she said that she decided that if an old boy would read a book, she and Mrs. Saunders would drive to Memphis and find another one for me to read. And they would put it in the exact same place where the one I had taken was. And every time I took one out, they headed to Memphis to find another one.
Now you have to understand, this was not an easy matter, because this was 1957 and ‘58. Black authors were not especially available, number one, and number two, Frank Yerby was not such a widely known author and number three, they had to drive all the way to Memphis to find it.
And I credit Mrs. Grady for getting me in the habit of enjoying reading so that I was able to go to law school and survive.
KN: That’s pretty cool.
ON: Yeah (laughs).
SL: That was Olly Neal in 2009 talking to his daughter, Karama, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Next, we go back to the early 1960s in Washington state.
That’s where Storm Reyes grew up with her family, who made their living working on farms. They moved constantly to follow the harvest, along with other Native American families who were doing the same.
Storm Reyes (SM): The conditions were pretty terrible. I once told someone that I learned to fight with a knife long before I learned how to ride a bicycle. And when you are grinding day after day after day, there is no room in you for hope; there just isn’t. You don’t even know it exists. There’s nothing to aspire to except filling your hungry belly. That’s how I was raised.
But when I was 12, a bookmobile came to the fields. And you have to understand that I wasn’t allowed to have books, because books are heavy, and when you’re moving a lot you have to keep things just as minimal as possible. So when I first saw this big vehicle on the side of the road and it was filled with books, I immediately stepped back.
Fortunately when the staff member saw me, kind of waved me in, and said, “These are books and you can take one home. I’m like, “What’s the catch?” And he explained to me, “There was no catch.”
Then he asked me what I was interested in. And the night before the bookmobile had come, in the camps, there was an elder who was telling us about the day that Mount Rainier blew up, and the devastation from the volcano. So I told the bookmobile person that I was a little nervous about the mountain blowing up. And he said to me, “You know, the more you know about something, the less you will fear it.” And he gave me a book about volcanoes.
And then I saw a book about dinosaurs. I said “Oh, that looks neat.” So he gave me a book about dinosaurs. And I took them home and I devoured them. I didn’t just read them, I devoured them. And I came back in two weeks and had more questions. And he gave me more books and that started it.
That taught me that hope was not just a word. And it gave me the courage to leave the camps. That’s where the books made the difference. By the time I was 15, I knew there was a world outside of the camps. I believed I could find a place in it and I did.
SL: That was Storm Reyes speaking with her son, Jeremy Hagquist, at StoryCorps in Tacoma, Washington.
When Storm was a teenager, she started attending night school, and eventually got a job working for the same library system that ran the bookmobile program.
After a short break, we’ll hear from a man who’s collected more than 10,000 books in his lifetime.
Stay with us.
<BREAK>
SL: Our next story comes from Alagappa Rammohan, who immigrated from India to the United States in the early sixties. More than five decades later, he came to StoryCorps with his daughter, Paru Venkat, to talk about his profound love for books. Paru begins the conversation.
Paru Venkat (PV): When I think of my earliest memories, I think of asking you homework assignments and you looking at my textbooks and falling in love with the textbook and reading it almost from cover to cover. And only answering my question hours later. So where does that come from?
Alagappa Rammohan (AR): When I was young, I’ll give you an incident how I am hooked into this book business:
When I am nine or eight, when my parents give me one rupee, which is like one dollar, you know what I do with that? I don’t buy candy, or anything. I just go to the stall where they sell children’s books and I like all of them. So I ask what this one rupee can buy.
Then I would come home. You know what I do? Even today I do this. I don’t start reading the first page, I smell it.
PV: I know you do, I remember that.
AR: You’ve seen it many times.
PV: I’ve seen you do that many, many times.
AR: The fresh book, printed from the press, untouched, I open, I smell it…
PV: Right, right.
AR: …that’s my connection with the book.
The book became my friend. Better than my friends, you know, human friends.
I feel that the author is talking to me in person. Now if I go and ask him for wisdom, he’s a big guy, he may not talk to me. But now he’s coming to me…
PV: Right.
AR: … and he says ‘I’m here, I’m talking, listen to me.’’
The book could be written in any language, it can say anything. It is a transfer of knowledge, from one person to the other, it doesn’t force you to read, but it is there. That book, in my point of view, is very sacred.
You have to read all books.
PV: Keeping an open mind.
AR: Open mind. Next time you’ll think, Oh, wait a minute. There’s another viewpoint there.
If you want to give anybody something, the very best, give a book. It opened for me how to live.
SL: That was Alagappa Rammohan and his daughter Paru Venkat, at StoryCorps in Chicago.
Our last story comes from a family who didn’t just feel at home in the library, they actually lived in one.
Back in the 1940’s, the New York Public Library system offered custodians housing; the only catch was they’d be living in the building where they worked.
Ronald Clark (RC): The custodian’s apartment had these huge French windows that opened inward and I still remember looking out at the skyline of New York and seeing how the sun would set and reflect off all the buildings. It was just a beautiful view and I fell in love with it.
SL: That’s Ronald Clark, whose father spent three decades working as a custodian for one of New York’s most beloved institutions.
At StoryCorps, Ronald told his daughter, Jamilah, what life was like right before his family moved to the library.
Ronald Clark (RC): As a child, I always thought I was rich, and one day at the dinner table, I said something like, “I’m so glad we’re rich.” And my father almost choked. And my mother said, “Well, honey, we’re not exactly rich.” And Dad said, “We’re poor. You understand? We’re poor.”
And then they offered my dad the position as the library custodian. And my father was the keeper of the temple of knowledge.
In some libraries, it’s all chewing gum wrappers and dust. My dad’s library, you saw nothing but wax. He would even wax the tops of the bookshelves. And when you walked up those stairs and looked down on the book stacks, they gleamed.
Jamilah Clark (JC): Did you realize how different your home was from your friends?
RC: At first, I was kinda ashamed of it as a child because you always want to be normal. I would never invite any of my friends to visit. They would always say, “This guy lives in a library. I mean, he literally lives in the library.”
You know, but nobody else had as many books as I had. You had to be very quiet during the day. But, once the library closed, I was the only kid in the building. I could run and scream and jump and yell. And if I had any question about anything, I would get up in the middle of the night, go down, get out a book, read until 3 o’clock in the morning. I began to realize how great I had it because the library gave me the thirst of learning. And this just never left me.
Coming from a family in which nobody had ever graduated from high school, much less gone on to college, I was the first one.
After I graduated, I got a position teaching at a college. I took my dad, and I showed him the classroom and my name on the door: Professor Clark. He just nodded. You know how Daddy is, quiet. But I saw the way he looked at it.
He wanted me to have higher horizons. And I can hardly even imagine what my life would’ve been like had I not lived in the library.
SL: That was Ronald Clark and his daughter, Jamilah, for StoryCorps in New York City.
Three generations of the Clark family (including Jamilah) lived in that library ‘til the late seventies. Jamilah describes her experience growing up there “like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory… just without the chocolate.”
That’s all for this episode. It was produced by me, Sylvie Lubow and Jud Esty-Kendall, who’s also the editor. Jarrett Floyd is our technical director and wrote our theme song. Fact-checking by Natsumi Ajisaka.
Special thanks to Jasmyn Morris, Michael Garofalo and Dan Collison; StoryCorps producers Vanara Taing, Kelly Moffitt, and Liyna Anwar, as well as facilitators Yasmin Peña, Cristina Kim, Eliza Lambert, and Naomi Blech.
If you want to check out photos and animations from the stories you just heard, go to our website, www.storycorps.org
For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Sylvie Lubow. Thanks for listening.