Chiefland, Florida

As with the first pair of Carnegies I came upon in Florida, the second set were just two miles apart—in Tampa and West Tampa.  Tampa received a $50,000 grant from Carnegie, five times larger than most, resulting in a most commanding edifice.  It opened in 1917 and was Tampa’s first library.  By 1968 the city had outgrown it.  A new library replaced it and it became the administrative offices for the library.

West Tampa actually acquired its Carnegie three years before its much larger neighbor.  It can easily be argued that it’s compact size and traditional restrained dignity lends it a greater majesty than its grandiose cousin.  It was the first of the four Carnegies on my Florida itinerary so far that still served as a library.  It had a large addition that now provided the entrance to the library. 

On a landing outside the original library a cut-out figure of Carnegie stands just below a framed newspaper article from 2014 detailing the events of the library's centennial. 

The article quoted a few of the town elders recounting their earliest memories of the library.  One man said, “I was intimidated by this amazing structure.  Ascending the steps I thought I was ascending to heaven.”  He also praised the librarians, saying, “Their interest in you raised your self-esteem.  Thank God the library was here.”

It was built on the site of a former cigar factory, the first industry of West Tampa established in 1892 that employed its largely immigrant community of Cubans, Spaniards and Italians.  A lector read to the workers from magazines, newspapers and novels, establishing in them a connection with the written word that drew them to the library once it opened.  

The next Carnegie on my agenda was in St. Petersburg twenty miles away.  I went on-line to learn if I could ride the three-mile long Gandy bridge across a large bay that separated St. Petersburg from Tampa, site of next year’s Super Bowl, keeping it in Florida after Miami this year.  I found an article that said police were known to ticket cyclists even though there were signs before the bridge advising motorists to share the road. The sign was still there.  I took a photo in case I needed to defend myself.  Motorists hardly needed to share the road, as there was a plenty wide shoulder on the bridge that remained flat all the way across the bay.  It was a nice reprieve from riding in the city traffic before and after the bridge.  

I had to duck down more than ten miles south to downtown St. Petersburg for its Carnegie.  When I turned off Fourth Street North at Third Avenue North and spotted the Beaux Arts Carnegie a block away I had my first spontaneous Carnegie “wow” of this trip.  It sat in front of a lake, which it took its name from, “Mirror.”  As with Tampa, it was the city’s first library, but unlike Tampa it still served as a library, though it was no longer the city’s Main Library.  

A large addition to its side matched the original so harmoniously it hardly seemed an addition, though inside there was a clear distinction between the old and new.  The ceiling was much higher in the old and the windows much larger, giving it a much greater warmth than the addition.   Even though it was sunny and warm outside, quite a few homeless were scattered throughout the library making it hard to find an available outlet.  Finally a woman reading the New York Times in the addition pointed out a set of outlets in the leg of the table she was seated at.

It was mid-afternoon and I had a long ride to escape the series of towns north of St. Petersburg up the coast.  I feared it was going to be a test of my wiles and good fortune to find a place to wildcamp.  The traffic was unrelenting on a road that alternated from being six and eight lanes wide.  At least there was a sliver of a bike lane most of the way. It was a non-stop gauntlet of nearly every franchise that had a foothold in the US and one billboard after another advertising real estate agents and “aggressive” attorney’s.  

What few patches of wilderness that had escaped the clutches of the developers had high fences around them as if to keep out us transients.  But I lucked out half an hour before dark when I came upon a small stretch of forest with a high wooden fence on just one side separating it from a luxury subdivision.  It was unkempt and thick enough with vegetation that I didn’t need to be concerned with dog walkers or joggers or serial killers.  I just had to hope my headlamp didn’t catch the eye of someone through the cracks of the wooden fence. 

The suffocating traffic and franchise hell continued for thirty more miles the next day.  It included two Aldi’s but I had no luck supplementing my diet or pleasing my palate with some surprise, as an Aldi’s the day before had with several cartons of bean and chick pea salads, as both their dumpsters had been emptied earlier that morning.  Peering into an empty dumpster, having my expectations denied, is almost as disappointing as showing up at an address where I expect to find a Carnegie and discovering Wikipedia had it wrong.

Not long after I got back out into rural, forested Florida I came upon a sign warning of bears.  There is an actual Florida black bear subspecies, the only American Black Bear to live in a semitropical region.  I wondered how concerned I needed to be when camping.  Twenty miles after passing the sign I asked a librarian about bears in the vicinity.  At one time they roamed the entire state from Key West into Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, but they were now confined to a few park areas and none in the direction I was headed. 

By Inglis as I closed in on the panhandle I had the road pretty much to myself.  A sign warned motorists that it was thirty-five miles to the next gas station.  I was far out enough into the sticks for there to be a small town called Yankeetown, a settlement founded in 1923 by someone from Indiana that the local postman derisively called Yankeetown before it had a name.  I thought a nearby community had a bit more range in its worldview to have named a forest for Goethe, but the Goethe was not the German writer but a local who owned the land before the state acquired it in 1992.

Walmart’s were occurring with enough frequency, at least one a day and sometimes two or three, that I have yet to have to resort to a Dollar store, as I most commonly must out on the Plains.  That means I have access to fresh fruit and bread other than white as well as chocolate milk and other solid caloric choices.  I am regaining some of the weight I lost in South America and no longer need fear going into energy debt.  The last Walmart had a special on mini-360-calorie pumpkin pies for fifty cents.  I should have bought more than two.  Here’s hoping the next Walmart has the same deal.  I will stock up.