I learned to read quite well when I was in elementary school and I enjoyed reading books. The Heber School had some books we could check out to read and we had reading time in school but that was about the only opportunity we had to visit anything like a library.
At that time in Arizona, there was a “Bookmobile” that was like a bus filled with shelves full of books and it would visit the small towns like Heber about every month or so for a few hours. People could get in the Bookmobile and look through the books and check them out to read and to be returned the next time the Bookmobile came to town. We took advantage of that when we could.
I am not quite sure how it came about but Mom decided that we needed to have access to reference books like encyclopedia’s and dictionaries and atlases so she visited with the Bookmobile person who explained that the Bookmobile could provide the books if there was a library in the town. Mom decided that our house would become the public library for Heber-Overgaard or at least one bookcase in our house would become the library. It meant that people could come at any time to look through the book case and select books. We became the librarians and checked out the books to people. Each month or so when the Bookmobile came to town, we could exchange most of the books in our bookcase for a completely new set of books except for the reference books which stayed in the bookcase. If we wanted books more often we could box up some books and send them to Phoenix and they would send back a box of books they had selected. Some of them weren’t too good so Mom preferred to pick the books herself from the ones on the Bookmobile.
Our bookcase got filled every month with fresh books and we had new books to read. Many of the people in Heber and Overgaard took advantage of the library and checked out books to read from our library. We often came home to find people looking through the bookcase in the corner of the dining room for something to read.
True to their word, the Bookmobile provided a set of Encyclopedia’s and other reference books which we used a lot over the years. I mention in another section that Charlie Reidhead loved to come and sit and read the encyclopedia’s. He also enjoyed the other books.
I can’t remember just how long our house served as the library. It was several years. Finally Mom decided to end the agreement and the Bookmobile picked up all the books except for the encyclopedia’s. I think they thought they were too old to be useful to anyone else so they left them with us. It was probably after I left for college that the “Heber Library” closed.
A few years later someone fixed up the house across from the store to be the “New Heber Library”. I don’t know if they put the word “New” on it but those of us who lived in town in the “good old days” knew that the “Original” library was in the rock house on main street.
I read a lot of books in those years that the library was in our house. My Mom was pretty sly and by having the library in our home she encouraged us to read. We all learned to read well and we learned to read for entertainment. Dad read to us aloud a lot and some of the books he read were from the Bookmobile. In addition we provided some service to the community. I guess it was a good deal all around. I don’t know whether the Bookmobile even exists today but I would not be surprised to see it driving down the road or parked in the center of some small Arizona town.