Since we were already at over 1,000 feet in Auburn and less than twenty-five miles from two beckoning Carnegies, I was willing to suffer the consequences of wet weather. The day was drawing to a close, but there was time enough to knock off a few miles of the climb. Tim had already pinpointed a place to sleuth overnight park his car and sleep seventeen miles up the road if I declined his offer to head south thanks to a website that he has been successfully abiding by during his time in California. Me with just a bike and tent to conceal can be more spontaneous and flexible. Seven miles up the road I found a spot behind a junk yard by a volunteer fire department.
The forecast about rain was right. I awoke at midnight to a few drops that continued intermittently through the night. There was a lapse at daybreak allowing me to start pedaling dry. It was 39 degrees, but I knew as I climbed the temperature would inch downward, hopefully not below freezing. I managed five miles before an off-and-on light drizzle resumed, never enough to soak my tights. My body warmth dried whatever fell. My gloves though were absorbing moisture and my digitals weren’t radiating enough heat to keep them dry, so I wrapped them in plastic bags.
Tim’s car was parked in front of the grand red-bricked multi-pillared Grass Valley Carnegie, but he was elsewhere. It was 9:40 and the library didn’t open until ten. I was damp and chilled. I made a quick WiFi check huddled under its overhang out of the rain. I was about to let Tim know I would continue on to the Carnegie in Nevada City four miles away and meet up there, when a white-bearded old-timer arrived at the door and started a conversation that was too interesting to abandon. I forgot that the near freezing temperatures had me on the verge of shivering.
He had come to the library to check the rental ads in the paper, as his long-time landlord had given him notice that he wouldn’t be renewing his lease, as he planned to rehab his building and start charging an exorbitant rent like most others were getting in this rapidly gentrifying town where it was hard to find a property selling for less than $500,000. He said he thought he was in luck of not having to leave the area, as someone on his block had just offered him a place. It was $400 more a month than he had been paying, but he could manage that if nothing else turned up. It would just lessen the money his children would be inheriting. The move would be harder on his cat than him, as they would be on the second floor and couldn’t have a swinging cat-hatch allowing his cat to freely come and go. Another concern was the time coming when he might have to replace his car, as the cheapest new car he knew of would cost him $31,000. At 83 he was beyond biking age, or so he thought.
He was a New Yorker who left the big city in the late ‘60s when he divorced his wife, a Jewish American Princess who got all his money. “I was 31 when I married her and a little older than her. She could see I was a nice easy-going guy and she got me,” he matter-of-factly said with no rancor. There was no complaint or bitterness in any of his ramblings. He was glad to leave New York, as it was becoming ruined by all the developers like Trump, who was now ruining things on a much grander scale. He was just happy to have discovered this area and had had a good thirty years in the community. The library opened before I could find out what his work had been or how he presently spent his time. He retained his New York accent, but he had been fully California-ized—personable and laid back, a most alluring fellow who a couple others happily greeted as they joined us awaiting the library to open. He was a prime example of the type of people that my cycle podcasting friend Randy says he and his wife miss from their time living in California.
This was another Carnegie without an addition that retained all its charm in its single large room with a high ceiling and large windows letting in plenty of light. But like all these century-old buildings it had a scarcity of electrical outlets. I had to sit at one of the four computers to charge my iPad as I pecked away at it. Though there had been a rush of patrons at the opening, none were computer bound. A couple minutes later Tim appeared, cheerful as ever and concerned over how I was handling the cold rain. I was just happy we were still below the snow line at 2,400 feet, though we might reach it on our climb to Nevada City.
I patted my dry leggings, and said as long as the rain remained light enough not to soak into them I was okay. He asked if I needed rain pants, as he had some. I didn’t anticipate so. He said there was a Salvation Army store around the corner and he would check to see what they had. Five minutes later he was back with two pairs. At less than five dollars they were a good deal, but I didn’t wish to add anything more to my already stuffed panniers that I may or may not need, so he returned them, as he warned the sales clerk he might.
Less than half way to Nevada City patches of snow appeared along the road. An occasional car coming down from higher elevations was thickly caked in the white stuff. A little later flecks of snow appeared in the light rain, though they were snuffed to water when they touched ground. The Nevada City Carnegie was up a steep street beyond its City Hall. If the magnificence of the building hadn’t caught my eye as I approached, Tim’s car with bike atop would have confirmed I had found it. He was hovering outside to usher me in. It was now a research library with old large leather-bound volumes on special shelving, taking us back in time. The Carnegie portrait was behind the circulation desk.
We were warmly greeted by the librarian asking if she could help us, thinking we might be researching something. When we said we had come to appreciate her Carnegie library she launched into an enthusiastic spiel extolling its many virtues. She pronounced Carnegie the Scottish way, “Car-nay-gie,” with emphasis on the second syllable, explaining she was Scottish herself. She handed us a small pamphlet on the history of the library as well as its cousin in Grass Valley, which she took great pride in as well. She told us of other Carnegies in the state we ought to visit. She was such an enthusiast, I told her she ought to be the one to write a book on the Carnegies of California as others had done for Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.
I asked if a framed photograph on a shelf behind the circulation desk of an older guy with a flowing white beard sitting in the woods was that other renowned Scot, John Muir. She pulled it down and said, “This is William Gigler, a local who everyone knew and loved. He walked everywhere. He died in 1999 and a few years later, someone left the photograph at the library. I just love looking at it and think, ‘I want to sit and have lunch with him and hear his stories.’ He was a seaman and had seen the world.” After fifteen minutes someone came in needing her assistance. As Tim and I drifted away, he said, “This is why I travel, to meet people like her and learn about people like him.” I couldn’t agree more.
Larger flakes of snow were falling when we took leave of the library, but they weren’t accumulating, making the descent down to the valley floor less perilous than it could have been. I still had to control my speed. I wore out my brakes enough on the twenty mile descent that I had to pull out my Allen wrench to tighten my brake cable, as the micro-adjuster wasn’t enough. I have a new cyclometer with a thermometer on it. I left it on the thermometer function to watch the temperature climb to back above forty as I descended nearly 3,000 feet. Twice along the way Tim had pulled over to see if I needed anything, once offering me some warm water.
By the time we reached the valley floor, the road was dry, but now I had a strong headwind to contend with. It was so blustery I was concerned about camping. When I saw a cheap motel in downtown Yuba City half an hour before dark, I thought I was saved. My shoes and socks and gloves and sleeping pad were all wet, and wouldn’t dry in my tent in sub-40 temperatures. But there was a sign on the door saying “No Vacancy. Don’t Ring the Bell.” I hoped I might see another on the way out of town, but there were none. At least I had turned north and gained a bit of a tailwind. Plus I was now in peach and walnut orchard country with easy camping down any of the long rows of trees. None provided a windbreak as I couldn’t pitch my tent close to them as upraised metal irrigation pipe lines connected them all. But the wind slackened with the dark and as I ate my ramen and beans dinner I was happy I was in my tent and not confined to some musty room with wet gear strewn all over drying.
My shoes didn’t dry in the night, but my gloves in my sleeping bag did. I awoke to the first blue sky I had seen since arriving in California. The shoes were bearable with two pairs of socks and were almost dry by the time I reached Gridley, for my first Carnegie of the day, twelve miles later. I stopped at its McDonald’s to email Tim and have a sausage burrito. Usually they are among the dollar specials, but in California, where everything is more expensive, especially gas at $3 a gallon, they were two for three dollars. Before I had finished the first in walked Tim. He had slept in front of the Carnegie awaiting me. During the night he heard what he presumed was a police car stop and run a check on his plates. He’d had a couple of beers in a local bar the night before and learned there had been a huge influx of people to the town due to the disastrous forest fire in Paradise this fall that had gotten national attention. It was thirty miles away up in the Sierras. Refugees from Paradise who’d lost their homes and workers from elsewhere, federal and otherwise, who had come to start the rebuilding had inundated Gridley. There had been a large homeless community at a Walmart, that initially welcomed them, but then had had enough.
The Gridley Carnegie was in a residential neighborhood on Kentucky Street just out of the business district and now housed an accountant. No evidence of it being a library remained other than a small plaque on the stairway leading to the entry stating “Carnegie Library 1916.” Like each I’ve seen in California, other than the first in Sacramento, it hadn’t been marred by an addition. Grass Valley put a ramp to a side door to make it wheelchair accessible, but that was an easily overlooked blemish.
Four miles up the road in Biggs, “The heart of rice country,” it’s praire-style Carnegie with extended overhangs had a sign on its door offering free prints and copies to those effected by the fire. It being Sunday morning, I could only peer in. For the first time I didn’t share my Carnegie encounter with Tim. He had considered heading up to Paradise to see how it was recovering from its devastation, but didn’t want to be a gawker and thought he might head to the large town of Chico and it’s assortment of offerings.
Nor was he to be seen at the Carnegie in Oroville, now the county law library. It was adorned with twin plaques. One outlined its history, built in 1912, one of 36 in the state in the style of Temple Classical Revival, designed by William Henry Wouks, who was responsible for 22 Carnegies. The other plaque dated to when it was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Then it was on to Chico. I had been spotting nickels here and there along the road, always hoping they might be quarters, but Chico asserted its prosperity with the first nickel that was a quarter. It’s Carnegie was now a museum. It’s three large bay windows on its two side walls had all been replaced by wooden panels with mini-murals relating to the town’s past. It’s former existence as a library was only remembered on its exterior by its cornerstone—“Public Library 1907.” I arrived after it had closed. Since Tim is drawn to museums, hopefully he will have a report on its contents. It continued the trend of “No Addition,” a marked contrast to most states. California so far has been an “intact or nothing” state, either leaving the Carnegie as it was built or tearing it down.
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