Okolona, Mississippi

Thanks to it being the only town in Mississippi with a “Strengthen the Army of Liberty” Statue of Liberty, I was drawn to Columbus. I was rewarded with several bonuses including the childhood home of Tennessee Williams, which served as the city’s tourist office, though it wasn’t open in these times.  Williams spent the first seven years of his life in this bright yellow Victorian home, then moved to St. Louis when his shoe salesman father was relocated there in 1918.  He returned to Columbus from time to time, but he committed to St. Louis enough to attend Washington University and to choose it for his burial site.

Along with Williams, Columbus is also the birthplace of the great Yankee broadcaster Red Barber, but its most fascinating curiosity is that it is the home of the first women’s college in the United States—Mississippi University for Women.   Among its students was Eudora Welty from 1925 to 1927.   When it was founded in 1884 it was known as the Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls. It changed its name in 1920, but not its policy of excluding blacks.  That was rectified in 1966 and sixteen years later the Supreme Court ruled in favor of some guys who wanted to attend the school’s nursing school.  It still calls itself a university for women but it’s enrollment is now twenty per cent male.

The Boy Scouts contribution to the city resides in the middle of its Main Street surrounded by flowers, half a mile from Williams’ home, also on Main Street.  Columbus is one of three cities forming what is called the Golden Triangle, a marketing ploy from the ‘60s to promote economic development.  One of the other city’s of the triangle,  West Point, twenty miles to the northwest, formed a Golden Triangle for me of towns with Carnegie Libraries, the only minor cluster of the state’s thirteen Carnegies of which just ten remain.  These were the only three I had yet to visit, so I entered this triangle with great eagerness.

I was fortunate that the Carnegie in West Point caught my eye as approached the city center, as it was hidden behind a cluster of trees, and came three blocks prematurely, as Wikipedia gave the wrong address for its location on Broad Street.  If I had gotten to 510 and seen no Carnegie I would have been befuddled, and with hardly a soul around would have had a hunt on my hands.

Carnegie Library in large capital letters remained above its entry, fully obscured by trees.  A sign out front identified it as the Chamber of Commerce.  The noble red brick building hadn’t had an addition and its interior hadn’t been altered much since its initial incarnation as a library, other than the absence of book shelves and the circulation desk.

It was going on seven and the off-and-on day-long rain was just resuming.  The forecast called for it to keep raining until midnight.  I was hoping to get into the shelter of a thick forest before I got soaked again, but when I saw the Relax Inn on the town outskirts, I recognized a refuge I couldn’t resist.  It was Indian-run and a bargain compared to the chains.  It was good to spread out the contents of my panniers on the bed and unroll my tent, wet from the rain of the night before, and let everything try to dry.  Most did other than my shoes and the soaked items I washed. 

It was thirty-eight miles on lightly-traveled roads, with nary a toot of a horn, continuing the trend the last few days since the assault of horn blasts on the busy highway out of Oxford, to the next Carnegie in Houston .  The road took me under the Natchez Trace.  The entry had a sign barring commercial traffic.

Houston’s Carnegie had a plaque along the road giving its history as the first Carnegie in the state, built in 1919.  It had an unobtrusive addition to its rear.  One had to be buzzed in to limit the number of people in the library, though that was of little concern at the noon hour on a week day.  After I looked around, the fifty-year old librarian at the circulation desk under the Carnegie portrait posed that question I’m frequently asked, “Are you from around here?” It comes across as a friendly conversation-starter.

When I told her I was from Chicago, she said she was too.  She had moved here seventeen years ago from the South Side, as she had family here and it was a much cheaper place to live.  And safer too.  She was driving up to Chicago next week to place flowers on her brother’s grave on the one year anniversary of his death.  He had been killed (stabbed) during the rioting over the George Floyd death.  He was a security guard trying to defend his building.

Before she moved to Mississippi she worked for the University of Chicago law department when Obama was teaching there before he ran for Senate and got to know him.  She laughed when I told her friends said if I were black it would be dangerous for me to be biking around Mississippi.  “Hell, no,” she blurted.  “It’s all good down here.  Best thing I ever did was to move here.  It’s hardly safe to even be driving around the South Side of Chicago, no matter what color you are, with all the car jackings and gun fire.”

Those who regard Mississippi as a den of racists with a bent to lynching are as misguided as those who think all men rapists and that no woman could go off on a cycle tour on her own.  Thousands do all the time.  I just read the account of Sara Dykman, who bicycled 10,000 miles in ten months following the migration of the monarch butterfly from Mexico to Canada and back in the recently published book “Bicycling with Butterflies.”  She wildcamped most of the time.  The only unpleasant male encounter of her travels was when she accepted the invitation of a retired high school principal to stay at his place and he made some unwanted advances.

I completed my Golden Triangle of Carnegies in Okolona, twenty miles east towards Alabama.  It was another red brick building with a small addition to its rear.  It still served as a library, but had limited hours, so I could only peer in.  And with it I finished off another state, my sixth of the forty-eight states that have a Carnegie, all but Alaska and Delaware.

I thought I was wrapping up my time in Mississippi with the ultimate roadside souvenir for the state when I saw a car flag still attached to its rod on the shoulder of the road that I presumed from its red color to represent the state university—Ole Miss.  That would be a great one to add to my collection.  But I was denied that pleasure, as it was a San Francisco 49er’s flag. 

The roadside pickings have been meager these first nine days with not a single neckerchief, but at least a license plate.  There have been more armadillo carcasses than any other item.

Some have had vultures feasting on them.

There have been a few bungee cords, mostly the heavy duty, black rubber ones.  If I’m not speeding along I’ll stop for them and leave them at service stations.  I’ll stop for garments of clothes on climbs and redistribute them too.  I left a pink purse that had nothing in it at the Relax Inn.  I’m eager to see what Alabama will offer.