Spencer, Iowa

An all day rain with the temperature hovering around fifty forced me into a motel for the first time in these travels. The decision was made for me at five p.m. when I stopped at the Spencer library in the rain and it took me a full five minutes to pry off my soaked cycling gloves, as I could barely get my fingers to function. I was much colder than I realized and with no imminent break in the rain I couldn’t count on my exertion to warm me or to dry my garb. 

With 11,000 people Spencer had several motels to choose from. It was the first town I had passed through since Des Moines four days ago large enough to have a Walmart and a series of stop lights down its Main Street. My tent was wet from the night before and my shoes were plenty damp too, though I had been wearing booties over them. I’ve had other days of rain on this trip, but it had never been cold enough to require the booties. When I stopped to put them on under the awning of a rural gun store, an older woman offered to give me a ride to wherever I needed to go. I wasn’t even tempted.

The Spencer library wasn’t a Carnegie, though it resided on the spot where a Carnegie had stood until it was torn down in 1970, one of ten of Iowa’s 108 Carnegies to suffer such a fate. It at least lives on in a photo by the library’s drinking fountain. Much greater memory, though, is paid to Dewey Readmore Books, the library’s cat from 1985 to 2006 immortalized in the book “Dewey: The Small-Town Cat Who Touched the World,” by Vicki Myron, director of the library. A ceramic replica of Dewey sits beside the circulation desk.

Outside the library a plaque resides in an alcove to the right of its entrance where his remains are interred. A large portrait of him hangs over a faux fire place in the periodicals room.  

Dewey souvenirs are for sale—posters for $15, puzzles for $10, tote bags for $4 and post cards for $1 or four for $3.50. He had loads of room to roam in the spacious single floor library. The Hollywood studio that was all set to film his story may have turned off the green light on the project when it discovered how bland and characterless the library was, both inside and out. If his domain had been a Carnegie, that could have made the difference, as it would have co-starred with Dewey.

The tiny, quaint Carnegie in Laurens, thirty miles away, would have made a superlative setting. It’s simple, stucco design was uncharacteristic of Iowa, but distinguished enough to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, the year it was replaced and turned into a museum.

One of the two women tidying up the museum packed with local artifacts said she and her husband had passed me on the road the evening before and were concerned for my safety as a local teacher had been killed ten years before riding that road in the same waning light. They were especially concerned as their daughter-in-law had been a passenger in the car.  They lived along the road and were going to invite me to their home, but I disappeared.  I had slipped into a patch of woods three miles before Laurens.  

As I acknowledged the portrait of Carnegie in the entry that most of the Carnegies have, she proudly said that Laurens was the smallest town to receive a grant from Carnegie. I’ve heard that before, including at Merom, Indiana, the library that put my name up on its message board knowing I was on my way. Merom had a population of just over 500 when it received its grant. Laurens was 800.  

The woman pulled out a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings on the library to prove her case, many of which repeated the notion that Laurens was the smallest town to receive a Carnegie grant, a self-perpetuating myth. One article cited the 1935 Century of Progress in Chicago, where the Iowa exhibit included mention of Laurens as the smallest town with a Carnegie. It may have been the smallest in Iowa, but not everywhere.

The many articles in the scrapbook traced the history of the Laurens Carnegie. A group of women, known as the Mother’s Club, which became the Laurens Woman’s Club, initially opened a reading room with 100 volumns, half for adults and half for children that they rented from a store for twelve dollars a month. When they learned of Carnegie’s beneficence they applied for a $3,500 grant, and passed the requisite ten per cent per annum amount of $350 to fund it. Women had yet to gain the right to vote in federal elections, but they could vote on issues such as this. One article from the times said the election “demonstrated a woman’s ability to vote.”  

Laurens resides in Pocahontas County. The town of Pocahontas had a giant statue of her and mentioned the county was one of three in the state to be named for a woman. The women in Laurens thought another might be Lizzie, but they didn’t know.  

The plaque outside the glorious Carnegie in Humboldt, another worthy of biking hundreds of miles to see, also raised the issue of woman being able to vote.  It stated, “The decision to build gave the first voting privilege to the women of Humboldt.” This was in 1908 more than a decade before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920. Humboldt’s library was constructed of limestone quarried on the site of the library and from another quarry a block away. The columns were of Indiana limestone. It is adorned with “Carnegie Library” on its facade and “Free to the People” below it. An addition to the rear in 1992 made it accessible to those who couldn’t mount the steps.

The Carnegie in the larger city of Fort Dodge would have been spectacular in its day. It is still a site to behold, but not so well maintained. It was converted into six apartments in 2000. None of the librarians at the new library live there, though they were tempted to pool their resources and purchase it when it went up for sale again a few years ago.

My route from Laurens to Spencer took me through the small town of Marathon. Cyclist Rick in Lansing alerted me that the acclaimed food writer Richard Olney, who he had been reading about in Justin Spring’s recent book “The Gourmand’s Way” on French cuisine, grew up there. Its library, only open four days a week for twenty-one hours, had just one of Olney’s several books.  

Olney lived in France from 1951 until his death in 1999.  He was a mentor of Alice Waters and colleague of James Beard.  There was no plaque on the house he grew up in as it had burned down. Nor was there a sign on the outskirts saying it was the home of Olney, as it would have if he had distinguished himself athletically, just a sign promoting its marathon, which was run for the last time in 2018 after twenty years, when the organizers grew too old to promote it, and no one else cared to. The librarian offered to call Olney’s brother and sister, who lived nearby and were retired, if I’d like to meet them.