M L Ferguson, Sharp Co, Arkansas

TOUCH AND HEARING SUBSTITUTE FOR SIGHT BLIND PIANO TUNER HAS CAT'S HOMING INSTINCT

Taken from the Arkanas Gazette, Little Rock Sunday, September 19,1948

M.L. FERGUSON, piano tuner who has "doctored" thousands of Arkansas
pianos in 45 years, has never seen a ray of light.  Yet the world has a face
all its own for him.  And his sense of direction is so strong that he can go
anywhere that anyone else can go.

"He has the Homing instinct of a cat or a pigeon", a close friend said in
describing Mr. Ferguson.  Once a friend took him home in a car at night.

By mistake he drove to 2222 Center Street, instead of 2222 Louisianna.

When Mr. Ferguson stepped out of the car he said at once, "This isn't
the right place.  You must be on Center Street."

Blind from birth because of failure of the optic nerve to develop, Mr. Ferguson came 
from his farm home near Batesville at the age of six to enter the Arkansas School for 
the Blind.  Each summer he returned home and his parents and nine brothers and 
sisters took it as a matter of course that he roamed all over their 160 acre "one-man" 
farm, for everyone knew he could find his way.

Years later, as a business man in hcarge of his own going enterprise of rebuilding 
and tuning pianos, he went to Batesville to buy the old home place.  "It was just 
sentiment, but I wanted to heire someone to run the farm, and I wanted to keep it 
to visit.  But they told me that some campers had stayed overnight in the 
abandoned house about two months before, and had burned the house and barn 
down.  I turned around and came back and never went there again. I can 'see' that 
house just like it was when I was a child.  I can even 'see' the nail I had driven to 
hang my razor strap on when I was a young fellow" 

Does Not Play Piano

While still a child, Mr. Ferguson decided he would be a piano tuner, but he didn't 
bother to learn very much about playing the piano.  "If I had been able to play, I 
would have wasted a lot of time playing for people," he said.  He tuned his first 
piano at 14 and received a $5. gold piece which he kept for years.  At 16 he was 
graduated from the blind school and began to build his trade.  For some years he 
traveled throughout the state, visiting Batesville, Jonesboro, Paragould and 
Newport, and going up the White river valley as far as Cotter.  He scoffed at the 
idea that he might need help in traveling, for trains never gave him any trouble.  
If he needed guidance in reaching addresses, he could always hire a boy to
show him around.

By 1913 Mr Ferguson's Little Rock trade had grown to such an extent that he
dropped the out-of-town work.  Since then he has rebuilt and tuned thousands of 
pianos, some in homes of owners and some in his workshop.  He has 14 pianos 
in his shop, including two handsome square pianos which he is rebuilding and 
restringing.


"Until the automobiles got so numerous, I went everywhere in town, but I don't go 
about so much alone any more,"  Mr. Ferguson said.  He has more work than he can do.  The quality of his workmanship is proved by the number of long-time customers 
who still send for him or send their pianos to his shop.

Mr. Ferguson's hobby is woodwork.  a favorite pastime is making furniture.
"After I've been working on pianos for a few days, I drop everything and
go to my bench and make something." he said.  "That's as necessary to me 
as food and water. I have to do it."

He has made many storage cabinets and other handcrafted fixtures for the 
pleasant large-roomed house which has occupied at 2222 Louisianna Street
since 1922.  Tables, chairs, and other articles alos are products of his bench, 
including four sets of porch furniture for the Blind Women's Home.

He enclosed a basement stairway, built a fence from the house to the garage, and 
made and hung every screen--about 30-- in the house. " The neighbors get scared 
scared when they see me up on a ladder," he chuckled.

Installs Transformers

But their surprise was nothing compared to that of the workmen who came
to work on the roof and were amazed to find Mr. Ferguson walking joists of
the attic. "They didn't know I already had been up there to put in a transformer for 
the doorbell," he chuckled.

Mr. Ferguson had a large audience the time he cut some limbs out of a large
hickory tree in front of the house.  And when he was building the backyard
fence at night some motorists stopped their cars to watch him drive nails in the 
dark.

He was disappointed when the buildings of the old Blind School at Eighteenth and 
Center Streets were torn down recently.

"I knew every inch of the place, and it was always home to me.  That's where I grew 
up."

Mr. Ferguson has a brother in California and two others in Sharp County.
He has never married, and for many years has made his home with the Misses
Stella Mae and Lavanna WELLS, supervisors for the Southwestern Bell
Telephone Co. for 35 years. The two families formerly lived at 1000 Louisianna 
Street.

Mr. Ferguson's one unrealized ambition was to become a surgeon. "Look at
these hands," he said, holding up his tapering fingers. "If I'd had my sight, I could 
have been a surgeon.  But I get a lot out of life.  Anybody that wants to make his 
way in this world can do it."