Gurney Norman recently gave me a copy of a most interesting book, Carcassone, by Clifton Caudill of Carcassone in Letcher County. I liked very much Mr. Caudill's account of the way his father went about starting the school at Carcassone in 1920. Money was scarce, but there was no thought of government help or expert advice. Mr. Caudill's father contracted to build a mile of road for $5,000. With the profit from the road job, he bought a sawmill to saw lumber from the trees cut on his own farm, and with the lumber he and his neighbors built the school. Is this community spirit of self-help and free enterprise now dead among our people? Maybe it is. Maybe all we can do now is just sit and wait for help - but I hate to think so. I would like us to see what we can do for ourselves.
-Wendell Berry, as excerpted from Citizenship Papers
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