Chardon, Ohio

 We took a morning break  in Beaver, Pennsylvania to take advantage of a bakery which had an enticing billboard on the way into the town.  While we were feasting on a handful of sweet rolls, an older gent stopped to ask about our travels.  He was a retired truck driver who’d been everywhere and had a nephew in San Jose, where Chris started out from, who was a barber.  He’d served in the Navy during the Vietnam War and his final months of service were at the Glenview Naval Air Base, in the Chicago suburb where I grew up, and just a mile from my high school, Glenbrook South. 

We told him we were headed to Beaver Falls for its Carnegie Library and wondered if there were any plaques or statues acknowledging Joe Namath, as it is where the Super Bowl winning quarterback had grown up. He said there was a plaque and then added, “I played against him in high school.  He was good, but he was a cocky guy.” 

The plaque wasn’t much and it wasn’t erected until 2011, sponsored by the football Hall of Fame and All State Insurance, that employs Namath as a pitchman.  There was a second such plaque by the library.

 The library was a genuine eye-catcher, a well-worn titan of a building on the main highway through the city.  As I was giving it a closer look prowling around its exterior, disappointed that it wasn’t open, a librarian showed up for some administrative chores.  She saw me coming around the side of the building and asked, “Can I help you,” with that tone of “what are you doing” not really meaning “can I help you.”  She was so sour my explanation of getting to all the Carnegies in Ohio didn’t even brighten her.

An hour down the road on another most pleasant bike path through forested terrain we came upon an older guy pushing a bike.  We suspected he might have had a flat and needed help.  No, he was just pushing his bike through a rough stretch.  He told us we had just crossed into Ohio from Pennsylvania and that the Ohio stretch of the path had deteriorated.  He’d gotten a promise from the local mayor to improve the path, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

This fellow was retired too and spent as much time as he could roaming the area on his bike, a passion that went backq thirty-five years.  He had a license plate lashed atop his rear carrier.  I asked if he collected them.  

“No, that’s my version of a fender to protect me from the rain, but I do find them and I always take them to the police.  They’re not always happy about having to try to find the owner.”

I told him I had a handful in my pack, including one from West Virginia, and got a laugh from him when I offered them to him if he felt like getting a rise out of the police.  He gave us the great news that the Youngstown Carnegie up ahead was open, as we hadn’t found one that was open since we began riding together four days ago.  

Unfortunately, he was mistaken, and once again we had to be content with just a view of the exterior of the mammoth library bearing the name of Reuben McMillan, an educator who led the drive to acquire a library from Carnegie in 1907.

We stopped at a McDonald’s on the way out of town hoping for some accessible electrical outlets.  The lone outdoor one had a lock on it and we couldn't gain access to those inside as this was the first McDonald’s we had come upon that didn’t have walk-in service.  For the first time in these travels I had to use the drive-up window.  There was no wait, a rarity.  Chris was hoping for an ice cream cone, but they didn’t have any, so it was just a McChicken and ice water for me.  

At the first window where one pays for the order I was startled to see pennies, and a few silver coins,  strewn all over extending for fifty feet along the building beyond the pay and pickup windows.  This was a possible new phenomenon, people either discarding or simply dropping some of their change at fast food pickup windows. I haven’t had a chance to make a study yet, whether this is unique to Youngstown or universal.  This could be a potential gold mine and an interesting study, perhaps for some PhD, determining what difference there might be between franchises and countless other factors. 

We reached the Warren Carnegie across from a gargantuan and grandiose county courthouse after seven.  In these Covid times there was hardly any traffic in the downtown of this sizable city.  It’s dignified charm was enhanced by the stark contrast with the modern buildings it was sandwiched between.  It had become a law library not open to the public even if it were open.  

We tried a state park campground again, Mosquito Lake, seven miles out of town.  It too had the policy of only being able to book a site on line, with a $6.40 processing fee tacked on to the $27 camping fee.  We could have easily slipped into the adjoining forest, but paid up for a shower and electricity and water to wash our rain-dampened socks and other garments.  

After an early morning downpour delay we rode up the east side of the lake to the small town of Kinsman, where at last Chris could set foot in a Carnegie and gain an acquaintance with Carnegie’s portrait.  The front of the library had been altered with a small entry addition.  Within the addition was the original facade graced with “Pvblic Library” and a pair of globular light fixtures.  A sign said, “Entry only with approved masks.”  No one objected to my white neckerchief, a find that Chris spotted along the road a couple days before, his first of the trip.  He let me have it, as he couldn’t surmise a use for it even though he knew I was a strong advocate.  

We had earlier encountered another mask sign on a gas station store requiring them for all except those with a medical condition.  It had an accompanying sign forbidding hoodies and sun glasses and hats, as the owner feared those were the indicators of potential thieves.

A few blocks from the Carnegie was a unique octangular house where Clarence Darrow lived from 1864 to 1873 moving there when he was seven from a neighboring town.  A plaque stated he moved to Chicago in 1887 after he’d been practicing law in Ohio for nine years. He came to prominence defending Eugene Debs for his role in the Pullman Strike of 1894.  He gained further fame defending Leopold and Loeb in 1894 and in the Scopes “Monkey Trial” defending evolution a year later. 

We crossed back across Mosquito Lake to Bristolville for its Carnegie, and once again had to be content with just a look.  It’s plaque included mention of its first librarian, Gertrude Gardiner, who served from 1914 to 1940.  Chris asked if it’s figure of 111 Carnegies in the State was correct. As happens all too often, the plaque was giving out faulty information.  There had been 114, of which eight were on college campuses.  All but eleven still stand. 

We fell fifteen miles short of Willoughby, forty miles away, for a third Carnegie on the day, pausing to camp in a large forest we had all to ourselves.  We had dessert fit for royalty, slices of lemon cake and chocolate cake and boxes of cream-filled chocolate rolls compliments of a nearby Aldis.  The sliding doors on the dumpster were padlocked, the first such measure I’d encountered, but I was able to hop in for this treasure.  Chris was an instant convert to dumpster diving.  He was all for checking out the next one we came to and was rewarded by a large bag of potato chips and all the bananas one could want. 

We had a couple of firsts for the day, the first Biden sign in someone’s lawn that Chris had seen since leaving California in the town of Mecca, and sharing a bike path with several Amish horse drawn carriages.  Someone told us we were passing through the fourth largest Amish community in the world, and shortly after a sign confirmed it.

And congratulations are due Randy for becoming one of five thousand cyclists in the past twenty-five years to accomplish an Everest.  He climbed over 29,000 feet in just under 160 miles, making twenty laps on a circuit an hour from his home in Asheville, North Carolina.   It took him 13 hours and 57 minutes, with only forty minutes of his time off the bike.  Even though he drank 20 bottles of electrolyte and carbohydrate solutions, including four of $7 high-octane 400 calorie bottles on his final four laps, he managed to lose seven pounds while expending 8,000 calories.  Fortunately it met the approval of the governing body, so he doesn’t have to repeat the effort as Lachlan Morton had to do a week after setting the record, then reestablishing it.