Ayoung Kansas boy moves between oil derricks, wheat fields, and abandoned buildings. He stops for only one thing: the hose. Not any ordinary hose, but a most extraordinary hose. Its contents pour forth not in trickles, streams, or torrents but gush in words, images, and pages. Not a fire hose run from a hydrant, but a library hose. It runs not from any particular library, but many places at once. While the Wiley Elementary School Library and the Hutchinson Public Library were reliable fonts, none was more important than that found at home, where his mother lovingly nourished him from shelves, coffee tables, and the nightstand beside his bed.
In time, the miraculous happened. Filled with this torrent of books and words, he began to disgorge words, words, words! Papers for school and arguments for the debate team consumed him. Research was both an intellectual puzzle and an art. He would grow to become what Russell Kirk called a “Bearer of the Word,” a dedicated man “whose first obligation is to the Truth, and that a Truth derived from apprehension of an order more than natural or material.”
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