York, South Carolina

 

For only the second time in twenty-nine days of these travels I was rained upon as I pedaled along.  The first time in Mississippi it was an all-day light rain that forced me into a motel. Yesterday in South Carolina it was just a sudden downpour that lasted less than half an hour.  I was able to pull into a shelter, an open car port along the road, before it began to really pelt down and hardly had to ride in the rain at all.  Just as it relented and I began gathering up the food I had been eating, a car pulled up and a teen-aged boy hopped out of the passenger door with a bag of chips and a banana for me, as if I had placed an order.

I had a little less southern hospitality the next day when the librarian in the Blacksburg library called the police because she didn’t like the looks of me and a similarly scruffy woman sitting on the concrete like a couple of ne’er-do-wells near the entrance of the library using its WiFi, even though she gave me the password (the name of the local book store) and told me  I’d have to sit outside to use it, as the library was only open for browsing, not sitting.  

The semi-homeless woman was sitting outside the library when I arrived, more for the outlet to charge her phone, than for the WiFi.  She had a couple of plastic bags of her stuff around the corner from her.  Evidently the librarian wasn’t aware of the woman, and when she noticed the two of us that was too much for her.  She came out and told us we’d have to move, as we were too close to the entry of the library, and she told the woman she couldn’t use the electric outlet.  I moved further from the entry, but remained in the shade.  

After the librarian went back inside, the woman said her tax dollars paid for the library’s electricity and there was no reason why she couldn’t use it, so she didn’t move. Not too long afterwards, a very portly, unmenacing white-haired police officer showed up. The woman immediately scampered away.  He went inside the library and when he came out, somewhat apologetically told me I’d have to leave. He didn’t want to know what I was doing in his small town or where I was going, just letting me be, unlike two officers who somewhat hostilely grilled me last year when I sat outside a small-town library in southern Georgia.  This officer did pass me a few minutes later, maybe making sure the sun wasn’t going to set on me within his jurisdiction. 

I hadn’t really needed the library’s  WiFi.  I was more interested in getting out of the heat for a spell.  Simply sitting in the shade doesn’t really cool me down that much.  Even half an hour of semi-refrigeration makes a huge difference.  An ice-laden drink helps a lot, cooling me off from the inside out.  I fill a 32-ounce cup with almost more ice than fluid at the self-help service station/convenience store outlets.  I’ll drink a quarter of it and put the rest in my insulated water bottle.  It can last for better than an hour.  No sound is more soothing in these times than the rattle of ice in the bottle when I raise it to my mouth.  Ice is such a prized commodity in these parts, self-service vending machines dot the landscape. They dispense ice in larger quantities than I can manage, but they still are a reassuring site.

I crossed over the Savannah River, just below the massive Hartwell Dam, into South Carolina from Georgia.  It was less than twenty miles to the first Carnegie in Anderson, now the Anderson County Art Center.  A very faint “Carnegie Library” remained etched in stone over the entry.  The vast new library was just a couple blocks away. It was fully open, with no restrictions on how long one could stay, as some libraries have.  Masks though were required.  

The traffic picked up considerably beyond Anderson as I encroached upon the sprawl of Greenville. New cloned homes in clusters of developments made camping the most challenging so far.  I feared I’d have to camp behind some monstrosity under construction and make a pre-dawn departure, but I found a small pocket of forest, though I had to clear fallen limbs that had been placed to block entry to it.  The rain resumed shortly after I set up my tent and continued for several hours.  I welcomed it, as it would keep dog-walkers and evening strollers, who might have glimpsed me, within their homes.

I stayed south of Greenville to the vibrant city of Spartanburg dotted with murals and public art and a Main Street blocked to traffic and filled with tables for dining. 

On the east side of the city I had to search for the former Carnegie Library on the campus of Converse College, a college of 1,350 students founded in 1890 and named for a local textile manufacturer, Dexter Converse.  I had to ask three people before I located the regal, domed building that still bore the name of Carnegie.  It now is home to various administrative offices.

The Carnegie in Gaffney, twenty miles to the east, was a much more modest edifice had also been converted to an office building, this for the city.  “Carnegie Free Library” adorned its facade.

A plaque out front gave its history.  

Another plaque on the front of the building, placed in 1922, honored locals who had died in WWI, the first such plaque I’ve seen on a Carnegie.  Below the list of thirty-six names were another twelve, identified as “Colored.”

One more Carnegie in South Carolina, then north.