Bristol, Oklahoma

 

For the  first time ever in my travels I walked out of a Walmart with a gallon of chocolate milk, as it was the only size left at the end of the day.  Knowing that was a lot of milk to consume I bought some shredded wheat for my dinner and my breakfast to get a good start on it.  I could easily drink the rest in the next day or so, as I generally consume a half gallon container every day.  

It took a bit of shuffling of my gear to make room for the eight  pounds of fluid in a front pannier. As I was moving things around a talkative homeless guy who had been cadging money came over and expressed amazement that I’d bought a gallon of milk.  He was impressed with my racks and panniers, never having seen such high-tech equipment.  He also recognized I didn’t have standard pedals and had to have special shoes to clip into them.  

Before he could ask if I had some change to spare a store manager came out and told him he had to stop bothering customers and to leave or else she would call the police.  He didn’t put up any protest and scurried away.  The manager was a young Asian Indian woman. I was tempted to ask her if there was a motel in town knowing that they are frequently Indian-owned and she could well be connected to it. But she quickly turned away after dealing with the homeless guy, plus I wasn’t desperate as my GPS showed a Days Inn and some generic motel, which could well be Indian-owned and reasonably-priced.  

But before heading to the motel I dropped in on Wagoner’s Carnegie a mile-and-a-half away.  I was surprised to see it’s steps covered in snow and no tracks on them.  Wikipedia had indicated it was still in use as a library, but it was now home to a Genealogy Society as well as a literacy center with limited hours.  As had been the case with some  other of the Oklahoma Carnegie’s, it didn’t simply identify itself as a library,  but included the town name with it.  In this case below “Carnegie Library” was “19 Wagoner, Oklahoma 12,” expressing state as well as local pride.

The Sleepy Traveler Motel  I was looking for was on the road out of town in the direction I’d be heading the next morning. And it was indeed Indian-owner.  The owner and his wife were at the counter.  When I asked if their daughter worked at the Walmart, the wife said, “That was me.”  I didn’t recognize her as she had been wearing a mask and seemed younger.  “That guy comes around all the time,” she said, “And I have to ask him to leave.  I hope he wasn’t bothering you.”

As with the many Indians I encountered when I  bicycled across India twenty-five years ago, they were very inquisitive.  They asked how old I was, having not looked at the year of my birth on my driver’s license.  Then followed the typical Indian question of “What is your profession?” followed by “Is it a government job?”  

I had some questions for them too.  They couldn’t tell me when the library had been replaced, as they’d moved to Wagoner from Plano, Texas two years ago.  Lance Armstrong grew up in Plano, so that led to a long discussion. They called Armstrong a cheater and had no respect for him.  I defended him and showed them the Livestrong bracelet I still wear.  The conversation could have gone on a long time, but I had tired legs.  After I slipped out the door, the guy ducked his head out and said, “Come back in.  I want to give you a key to a better room.”

I was hoping Wikipedia had an interesting story on the origin of Wagoner’s name, but it was another town named for its first settler.  The same was the case with Sapulpa, where I had begun my day with another Carnegie, a town named for a Native American.  Tulsa isn’t named for a person, but rather takes it name from the Creek word for “old city.”  Jeff B., a cycling journalist and librarian, sent along the palindrome “A slut was I ere I saw Tulsa.”  Turns out there are more including: “A slut nixes sex in Tulsa” and “A slut did Tulsa.”  There is also a book (“A Slut Named Tulsa: Lust and Seduction in Oklahoma”) and a song (“Tulsa is just a slut spelled backwards”) related to the irresistible reverse spelling of Tulsa, which must cause no end of squirming over at Oral Roberts University in the city.

Sapulpa’s Carnegie has the distinction of not only being located on Historic Route 66 
but also on Dewey Street, a most appropriate name for a library using that shelving system.  

The entrance on busy Dewey Street had been replaced by a couple others on the side and back through additions to the library.  Above the original entrance was engraved “Sapulpa Public Library Erected 1917” just above “Free to the People.”  The password to the WiFi was “booksarecool.”  When I asked the librarian about the library and told her of my quest she asked if she could take my picture.  We did it in front of a plaque acknowledging Carnegie inside the door of the original entrance, as there was no portrait.

She gave me a brochure on the history of the library and a booklet of all it services. The brochure gave credit to the Women’s Library Club for applying to Carnegie for a grant.  It “rejoiced greatly when they found it had been approved.”  The brochure included a stunning photo of the library’s opening in 1917 with forty women seated in front of its  entrance all in long white dresses. There were other photos of the women’s club pre-library.  Some of the photos identified the women. It used the husband’s name of those who were married, such as Mrs John Sagan and Mrs George Monroe.

The booklet of the library’s services wasn’t dated, but it must have been awhile ago as it stated that forty-three per cent of Americans are functionally illiterate defining illiteracy “as lacking the literacy necessary for coping with most jobs and many everyday situations. These individuals read so poorly that they do not have the skills to properly fill out a job application, read a recipe card, read/dispute bills or read a prescription label.”

The Carnegie in Muskogee was another with the town name preceding ”Public Library” on its facade above “Erected MCMXII.”  It had long ago been replaced and was now the quarters of the Ark of Faith Foundation serving the indigent.  A small plaque posted along the street traced its origins and stated it contained two murals painted by the  Creek-Pawnee artist Acee Blue Eagle in 1937.  Unfortunately it wasn’t open on Sunday, the day of my visit.  

From Muskogee it was nearly 150 miles to the next Carnegie in Perry northwest of Tulsa.  After two days of cycling within the sphere of the second largest metropolis in the state, it was a relief to be back on roads with minimal traffic. The barbed-wire fences enclosing the pastures all along the road had me nervous about the possibility of camping.  I saw no breaks in the fencing and all entrances to the fields were blocked by locked gates.  I feared another night in a motel, but two miles before I came to Bristol, just before sunset, I came upon an ungated dirt road full of puddles that led into a forest and past an oil well with a pump chugging away.

I went far enough down the road to escape the sound of the perpetual-motion machine and slipped into the snow-dappled forest for my best sleep in several days. 

There was no melting of the patches of snow during the night as it got down to sixteen degrees, freezing the nozzle on my insulated water bottle in the tent.  I had to unscrew the top to take a drink in the morning.