As I was closing in on Upper Sandusky my less than full stomach jumped with delight at the sight of a large billboard featuring a heaping plate of hot cakes and eggs and sausage advertising breakfast at Bob Evans. I always welcome a stack of hot cakes, preferably from a local diner. If the Bob Evans was open I’d have to make it my first stack of the trip. It was. My first restaurant sit down meal in months. I hardly knew how to behave. The staff was all bemasked, but none of the diners, mostly older couples.
Bob Evans must not be popular with laptopers, as when I asked the hostess for a table with an electric outlet she had to go searching. There wasn’t one at any of the booths, nor in a side room. We had to go off to a far corner in the main room to find one. I just needed a quick glance at the menu to find the hot cakes section and ordered the basic four stack.
It was my second Bob Evans meal in two days, as the the day before I rescued a pound package of Bob Evans mashed potatoes from an Aldis dumpster. I could have had half a dozen and regretted I didn’t take at least a second. But I did supplement it with a fourteen dollar slab of Alaskan sockeye salmon sealed in a plastic pouch. It was early morning and still chilled. It was easily the best eating of the trip. I felt no hunger for hours, just as I felt after the hot cakes, which were more than I could eat at one sitting, saving one for later in my trusty Tupperware bowl. Though I left with a hot cake, I had an overall deficit in my load, as I was able to dump twenty of the quarters given me the day before.
The Upper Sandusky Carnegie was the second in two days that had joined the medical field, this one a doctor’s office. It was in a residential neighborhood and blended right in. A woman was sitting on her porch in the house next door. I asked her if she missed the library. “I can’t hear you,” she replied. “I don’t have my hearing aid in.”
When I approached closer she waved me back in a panic though I wasn’t even within twice the six-foot social distancing range. I spoke a little louder and she said it was kind of nice to have a doctor’s office next door, but a lot of people didn’t like having to walk up the steps to get in, a feature of most Carnegies.
It was a quick fifteen mile hop north to the next Carnegie in Carey, a beauty of bright orange brick. It remained a library and was open, though not for computer use other than one’s own. It’s WiFi required a password—read1234. The librarian had to fill my water bottle in the employee’s room as the drinking fountain was taped up. All the chairs at the tables were stacked. I had to get permission to remove a chair to sit near the lone socket in a corner of the adult’s reading room. The library had had several small additions over the years, but none detracted from its magnificent front side. There was no Carnegie on the exterior of the building, but his portrait hung over the circulation desk with a piece of white tape across the bottom saying he contributed $8,000 for the construction of the library.
Another fifteen miles north closing in on Toledo the Carnegie in Fostoria had been totally consumed by a massive addition and bore no recognition of the magnificence of a Carnegie. All that remained of the original was a stone sidewall. There was no acknowledgement of Carnegie nor of its origins other than the date of its construction along with the date of the reconstruction on a wall near the entry. The library was open, but by appointment only, so I was not allowed to wander in this desecration.
I was done with my northward swing and could begin heading back east to Tiffin for twenty miles into a slight wind. It’s Carnegie had been retired decades ago and had had a series of tenants since, the latest the juvenile court.
Just half a mile away was another Carnegie on the campus of Heidelberg University. It was now the Pfleiderer Center. The new library was the next building over separated by an expanse of grass. As at the several other universities I’ve visited on this trip, it was completely deserted. It completed my first five-Carnegie day of the trip and was sandwiched around a pair of three-Carnegie days, bringing my total to forty for the trip.
The first of my three the next day came in Bucyrus, a name so unique it’s origins are unknown. It’s grand library had a corner entrance and a large addition behind it. It was another that allowed entry by appointment only. I arrived before it had opened or turned on its WiFi. The janitor exiting the building said that the WiFi had been attracting such large quantities of people, some bringing deck chairs, that it had turned into a party and was a threat to the safety of the community, so it no longer left its WiFi on when it was closed as many other libraries were doing as a community service. It was doing extra service though by providing lunch and breakfast three times a week for needy children.
The Carnegie in Galion ten miles east was one of those that strike awe, seemingly built with no expense spared, as if the town wanted its own Taj Mahal or Pantheon. Unfortunately, it was closed and I couldn’t behold the interior of its dome and all else.
Mansfield’s monumental Carnegie was also closed. It was showing its age and had further diminished its luster with the loss of its steps leading up to its original entry beneath “Open to All.” They had been replaced by glaringly bright marble and glass doors for a non-climbing entry that made no attempt to blend in. It was akin to putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Perhaps if I’d gotten inside and could have been impressed by its interior it might have softened the sour taste I left with. But I could cling to the great majesty of the Carnegie fifteen miles away in Galion.
I had arrived at 3:30 hoping to meet up with Chris at four. But with no internet access I hadn’t received confirmation that he would be there. But right at four he rolled up with a broad shining grin. It exuded that easy, fully-content aura of the touring cyclist and within moments we were conversing as if we were long-time friends, even though we were just meeting. He noticed immediately that we were wearing the same Shimano touring cleated shoes.
We chatted for ten or fifteen minutes and then headed down the road for Akron and the next Carnegie sixty-five miles away, the longest stretch between Carnegies in a while. There will be much to be said in the next post or two about Chris and his five months and eight thousand miles of riding from the Bay Area and his career as a physicist with a PhD from Stanford, the second Stanford PhD of the trip after Kurt in Columbus.
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