Xenia, Ohio

 It’s unfortunate that Harmony Korrine didn’t film his notorious debut feature, “Gummo,” that 1997 masterpiece that packed Facets for every one of its screenings during its one week run, in Xenia, where it was set, rather than in Korrine’s home town of Nashville, as if he had, he could have featured Xenia’s long-vacant and eerily spectacular Carnegie library.  His delinquent, glue-sniffing, bike-riding teens could have had a grand time romping in and around it.  Korrine would have been pleased to flash on its prominent “Free to the People” chiseled above the entry.

I almost thought I was in a Korrine movie when I passed a handful of raggedy demonstrators galavanting a couple blocks away from the library holding “Black Lives Matter” signs and others with a Korrine edge—“From Slave to Criminal” and “Stop Killing Us.”  It was the first evidence I had come upon of the demonstrations that had rocked the country over the weekend.  They must have been extreme, as the media was proclaiming they were the angriest and most out-of-control since the ‘60s.  

I had no idea what was going on other than an email from a friend in New Jersey that Chicago and elsewhere had been convulsed by rioting over the murder of a black man in Minneapolis by a police officer.  Once again I was glad to be off on the bike, divorced from the cacophony and tumult.  I couldn’t tell if signs I saw posted in front of churches reading “Fear Less, Love More” and “Do not be afraid, God is with you” had just been erected in response to this latest spasm or if they had been there awhile relating to the hysteria over the corona virus.  The most dominant sign though out in rural Ohio has been “Pray to end abortion” in the front yards of many homes.  

I thought I was returning to normal the day before when I had the great pleasure of coming upon a Carnegie that had reopened with no stipulations other than that those who had had “fever, dry cough and sneezing, headaches, chills, or difficulty breathing in the past fourteen days to please come back and see us another time.”  It was in the small town of Rockford.  Unfortunately, it was Sunday and the library was not open.  

But as I’ve experienced in the past in small town America, the door was ajar and I could walk right in.  I dashed back to my bike and grabbed the charger for my iPad and slipped in.  I gave a friendly smile to the Carnegie portrait off to the side above a wall of books and settled in on the floor beside one of the rare electric sockets in this century old building.  I almost hoped a police officer would come barging in, wondering if he’d have gun drawn.  I would be happy to explain my quest, but I continued my streak so far on this trip of not yet having to hand over my driver’s license to a leery officer of the law.

This was my first opportunity to do some charging in a library.  Usually that is my main source along with what juice I can conjure from my generator hub.  I have had to be a little more inventive with libraries and restaurants closed.  I’ve been taking advantage of outlets outside Dollar Stores and service stations. About one in three will have one.  When I was getting desperate I asked at one Dollar Store if I could use an outlet I noticed inside beside the row of shopping carts.  The cashier hesitated for a moment then replied, “Okay, but we’re not reliable for its missing,” as if her spellcheck had gone haywire. 

It was forty miles due south from Rockford to the next Carnegie in Greenville.  I glided along past the recently planted fields with a refreshingly cool tailwind.  After starting this trip with back-to-back sweltering ninety degrees days, a shift of the wind from the north has brought almost fall-like seventy degree temperatures that have dipped into the fifties at night.  I haven’t had to buy a cold drink, other than chocolate milk, since those first two days, nor be worried about having all my water bottles full in the evening.  On day two I found a cyclist’s water bottle along the road, an item I couldn’t resist scavenging even though I had four with me.  A fifth was hardly necessary, but I added it to my reserves for a little extra peace of mind.

The Carnegie in Greenville was a palace of a building with additions to its sides that nicely blended in, making it the most exemplary of the first ten of these travels.  It too carried that welcome of “Free to the People,” a reminder that libraries weren’t necessarily free in the early 1900s.  Greeenville is a much larger town than Rockford and wasn’t prepared to let its masses back in.  At least it’s WiFi was still operating, which someone else was taking advantage of.

I camped in another forest just outside of Greenville, then proceeded thirty-five miles to the mini-metropolis of Dayton, the sixth largest city in Ohio with 140,000 inhabitants.  Carnegie had provided two branch libraries, but only one remained, on the east side of the city.  In the center of the quiet city, which betrayed no evidence of the chaos convulsing the land, a tall building had a quote from Rita Rae Brown that could be seen from blocks away, that proclaimed, “When I got my library card, that was when my life began.”  I circled around the building, assuming it to be the main library, only to discover it was the administration center for the library system.

A couple miles further the Carnegie I had come for sat in a park all to itself in a residential neighborhood.  It was no longer a library, but now the quarters for a development company.  

Xenia was fifteen miles to the east of Dayton.  I took advantage of a well-used bike path most of the way. And on the way out of town I passed through a rare roundabout, reminding me that if it weren’t for the virus I’d presently be in France, roundabout heaven.  If Korrine had filmed “Gummo” in the region he could have included another Carnegie Library just three miles outside of Xenia on the campus of Wilberforce University, the first black college in the US, founded by the Methodists in 1856 and named for the British abolishionist William Wilberforce. Ohio can also boast the first white college in the US to admit blacks, Oberlin, which also has a Carnegie Library.  Wilberforce’s Carnegie now serves as the administration offices for the nearby National African-American Museum and Cultural Center.

Halfway between Xenia and Wilberforce is a national monument, the home of Charles Young.  He was born a slave in 1864 and went on to be the third black graduate of West Point in 1889 and last until 1936, a startling 47-year gap without a black graduate  Through much of his career he was the highest ranking black in the US Army and was the first black National Park superintendent.

Also in the vicinity, six miles down the road in Cedarvillle was another Carnegie Library on the campus of the Baptist Cedarville University.  It is now the Carnegie Center for the Visual Arts.