Lake Erie State Park, New York

My final stretch of Carnegies in Ohio came along Lake Erie east of Cleveland beginning in Willoughby, the first of the last five that would complete this quest to get to all of Ohio’s 103 still standing Carnegies. We biked right past it, as it had been greatly altered and was unrecognizable as a Carnegie or even a library.  It’s original entrance facing a grassy square with a cannon had been turned into a window.  The other larger windows of the red-bricked building were laced with narrow cross-pieces giving it the resemblance of a penitentiary.  It’s new entrance was behind the building through a large addition adjoining a vast parking lot.

We were way early for its opening at 11:30.  We were ready for a break, so plopped down on a bench by the entrance.  We had just settled in when an older guy came by and asked about our travels, then told us he had hitchhiked around the country in 1969 for three months with a fifty-pound backpack right after he graduated from high school and before his induction into the army.  He said he had a great time getting picked up by all sorts of amazing people.  “Things were way better back then than they are now,” he said.  “You couldn’t do anything like that these days.  It was the era of the hippies and the Beatles.”  Then he turned to Chris and asked if he’d heard of the Beatles.

He was barely started.  On and on he went.  There was no stopping him.  He said he was a retired cop and postal worker and that the world was in the biggest mess ever, but if we thought it was bad now, it would be nothing compared to how it would be “if Sleepy Joe got elected.”

“At least we don’t have to worry about that commie Bernie Sanders,” I said.  He didn’t take my bait, but instead expressed concern for Chris, wanting to know how much money he had been earning before he lost his job and if he had enough to get by. Instead of complaining that he didn’t get a $1,200 check from Trump because he earned more than the dividing point, he told him he’d been given a severance package of three months pay, so was fine.  The guy offered to take us to lunch, so happy he was for an audience, but we had to decline as we had four more Carnegies to get to.  I wouldn’t have minded listening to him rant some more, but Chris could barely tolerate what we had heard and kept his distance so he couldn’t be further engaged in the conversation.

The next Carnegie in Madison was almost as nondescript as the one in Willoughby and was another disappointment.  It wasn’t much more than a red brick cell block, only enhanced by its light fixtures and large windows.  It had recently transitioned from the town’s library to it’s historical society.

As I took a photo of the next Carnegie in Geneva an older guy passing by exclaimed, “You don’t want to take a picture of that.  I hate that place.  I liked it as a library, but not anymore.”  It was now a court house, which he evidently had some experience with. Unlike the previous two it conveyed some majesty with columns and high ceilings and steps leading to its entrance and a plaque, though not related to the library but to a local who developed a system of handwriting. 

Although these towns were all along Lake Erie, they were set inland enough that we only occasionally could catch a glimpse of its inviting turquoise waters.  When we approached the Carnegie in Ashtabula in a vast park, we could celebrate at last a Carnegie of stature.  The library was thriving, enhanced by a large addition, though the city was in some decline with rooms at a nearby motel going for $119 a week.  “That’s about what I was paying per day for my last apartment,” Chris commented.  

The library was open through the new entrance in the addition behind it.   Masks were required and sitting and lingering not permitted.  The library had suffered a fire in the late 1990s before the addition, causing considerable damage including the portrait of Carnegie.

Then it was on to the final Carnegie of this Ohio-quest in Conneaut three miles before the border with Pennsylvania.  It would have been a stunner in its day, but had clearly fallen on hard times.  It was tattered and decayed, but still retained a great majesty and grace.  A dreary “No Trespassing” sign taped to its door was a shameful indignity.  This great relic desperately needed to be restored.  It’s stripped interior gave hope that might be in the works.

We were able to celebrate and gaze upon it a little longer from a McDonald’s across the street, the first we’d been to that had indoor seating, though very minimally with just three tables bearing available signs.  Ten minutes after we sat down we were politely told the walk-in service was closing, as it was seven p.m., and we’d have to leave.  Chris was just finishing his ice cream cone and I was happy to save the rest of my McChicken for dinner at our campsite. 

We had our eyes set on a vast green patch on our GPS identified as “State Game Land” abutting the lake.  We were hoping to find a spot overlooking the lake to pitch our tents with the sound of lapping waves.  We were able to follow a path right to a cliff overlooking the lake but it was too visible for camping nor could we find any other site, so we headed down a gravel road back into the forest.  

We saw a clearing that looked promising but a car was parked there and a dog came charging at us.  The owner, a gruff, disheveled guy, called him off.  They were just leaving, so we pedaled back down the road a bit, plotting to return after they cleared out.  We paused along the road pretending to look at Chris’ phone.  The guy pulled up and said, “It doesn’t look like you boys are from around here.  Are you lookin’ for a place to camp?”  He was a sinister, somewhat  threatening “Deliverance” character, not friendly or helpful at all.  We didn’t like his tone nor his look, so said we were looking at our map for a hotel.  He was smart enough to know that was a bunch of hokum, but offered no suggestions and went on his way, hopefully for good.  

We returned to the clearing and an overgrown Jeep trail into the woods.  It was a little too soggy for us so we retreated to the road and as we did the guy drove slowly past us again.  I kept my head bowed but Chris said he stared him straight in the eye. There was plenty of other forest to disappear into.  We just hoped the dog hadn’t caught a scent of us and might be able to track us down. After we got deep into the forest a quarter mile away and had our tents set up we could hear the sound of a barking dog.  Chris hadn’t seen “Deliverance,” so if there had been the sound of a banjo he wouldn’t have been further creeped out.   The barking dog was unsettling enough, but it didn’t come any closer.  It soon gave up, allowing us another fine night in the forest.  

We had a long stretch along the coast through Pennsylvania and into New York before the next Carnegie.  Our only library the next day was on the outskirts of the large city of Erie, PA, one of its branches.  We were enticed by a large banner mounted on posts along the road advertising free WiFi.  Even better than the WiFi was the most electrical outlets we had ever seen dotted around the outside of a library.  We were as delighted as a mushroomer coming about a huge patch of chanterelles.  

We each took a socket on either side of the front door.  Before we had a chance to sit down and connect to the WiFi a masked librarian came out and said we were welcome to use the WiFi but she had to call and see what the library system’s policy was on using its outdoor sockets.  “If the library was open,” she said, “you’d be welcome to come in and use the electricity, so maybe it would be okay.”  

All was well though once we engaged Colleen in conversation, and told her of our travels, Chris coming all the way from California and me circling Ohio dropping in on Carnegies.  We talked enthusiastically for nearly half an hour, charging all the while, interrupted every few minutes when someone drove up to pick up or drop off books.  She told us she had taken a course in college on bicycling taught by a woman who had biked coast-to-coast.  What she most remembered of the woman’s ride was that she ate heaps of pancakes and had clean clothes shipped to her at points on her route a week apart.

I wanted to applaud a college with a course on cycling.  She said it was a small religious college outside of Philadelphia.  She was there in the mid-‘90s and was a Swedenbourgian.  I told her there was a small Swedenbourgian community where I grew up in Glenview.  She knew it, the second Glenview connection of the week.  

She told us of a local woman who had written an article for the “Erie Reader” on visiting libraries in the area, then went in and got us a couple samples of the bi-weekly, though not of that story as it was from last November.  It was easy to find on line, looking up articles by Liz Allen in the paper.  The article included the mention of a Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh.  She also sent us off with several patches promoting her library.  Our only wish for her was that we hoped we might inspire her to ride her bike to work.  We were certain that if she did it once she’d want to do it all the time.

We fell six miles short of reaching the Carnegie in Dunkirk, partially because Chris had a flat tire and then another half a mile down the road when the patch didn’t hold on his thorn-resistant tube.  While he was engaged in the first repair a touring cyclist came by, the first I’d seen in a month on the road.  He was on a little less than three hundred mile ride from Cleveland to Buffalo for his father’s retirement party, who didn’t know he would be arriving by bike.  He had a campsite reserved in the Lake Erie State Park thirty miles up the road.  We thought we might stay there too but hadn’t gotten a site yet and asked if we could share his.  

He’s a Warmshowers host, so naturally said yes.  We arrived at 6:15 half an hour after he did.  It was the earliest we had stopped to camp by over an hour in the week we’ve been together.  Chris likes to ride late to minimize the chance of being spotted.  Our host Andrew was a lawyer and hadn’t had the time for any epic trips, but had spent two weeks bicycling Iceland last year.  He had actually been to Iceland twice as there was a super cheap fare from Cleveland.

He muttered an “Ugh” when I mentioned I was surprised to learn Columbus was more populous than Cleveland. “That’s just a technicality,” he said.  

Chris and I had seen a spurt of Biden signs after seeing none until the day before.  Andrew said he had been making a survey of Trump versus Biden signs on his ride and it had been three to one Trump, but that could mean anything.

He was as ardent a Buffalo Bills fan as cyclist, a season ticket-holder who makes the three-and-a-half drive to Buffalo, where he grew up, for every game. He’s greatly anticipating this year with Tom Brady out of the division.  It looks to be the best Bills team since their Super Bowl team of 1999.  He attended that Super Bowl in Jacksonville, though he didn’t bike there as I did to New Orleans in 1986 for the Bears Super Bowl, perhaps my most audacious ride, leaving Chicago with the temperature 14 degrees and eleven days to bike 900 miles with it getting dark by five each night.

It was nice to be able to talk some sports, even though there are no sports going on.  Chris and Andrew were happy to learn they are both on Strava so they could follow each other’s rides.  Andrew is in competition with a group to see who can ride the most miles.  He was in the lead even before this trip, so he’s jumping way ahead.  His mileage will continue to improve now that he can start going in to work again and make the fifteen mile round-trip commute on his bike.  He couldn’t have been happier to be off on his bike, just like Chris and I.