Besayes, France

France abounds with plaques and monuments to The Tour de France. Whether its a small town with a sign simply saying The Tour passed through in 1977 or a plaque remembering an event of significance, each testifies to its place of prominence in the nation's culture and identiy.  Streets and plazas all over the country also carry the names of riders who distinguished themselves in The Race.  If the United States gave a similar regard to its once national pastime, one would see the names of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio and Ty Cobb and other baseball stars in every baseball town in the land.

After an eight-mile climb from the industrial city of St. Etienne in the heart of the country I came upon another of those ubiquitous signs at the summit of the Col de Republique recognizing the magnitude of The Tour.  The Race went over this pass in its first two editions in 1903 and 1904.  It was the second stage of the six stages that initially comprised The Race.  This one was from Lyon to Marseille. It was a significant climb, with the first two miles a steep eight per cent grade and summitting out at nearly 3,500 feet.  

It is one of the myths of The Tour that the 1905 editon was the first to subject the riders to mountainous terrain when the route ventured into the Alsace Mountains.  Tour director Henri Desgrange wanted to hype that Race in his typical grand manner wondering if the riders could make it over the mountains, even though they were no more demanding than the Col de Republique.  They certainly could and there is a monument at the top of one of its peaks acknowledging the first rider over it.  The Pyrenees weren't introduced until 1910 and the Alps the year after, both with great fanfare and trepidation. It was good to see this sign at the top of the Col de Republique giving it its just due.

The summit also hosts a monument to Paul de Vivie, aka Velocio, an early proponent of bicycle touring.  He published a magazine and also invented  the derailleur. The road to the summit is named for this seminal figure, "The Father of Bicycle Touring," who advocated "eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty."  He lived in St. Etienne, though he grew up in Provence. There is a plaque on the home he was born in, which I visited a few years ago.  He is buried in Lyon, on my itinerary after Cannes.  

I had hoped to camp at the summit of the Col to honor Velocio, one of my heroes. I had passed over it a few years ago and knew it offered a lush forest, but I fell fourteen miles short, ending up in a field on the outskirts of St. Etienne, a city of steep hills.  I might have pushed on into the dark if I hadn't know how demanding the climb would be.  It was much more of a pleasure the next morning with fresh legs.

The descent took me down to the Rhone.  I was suddenly in the southern half of the country amongst already leafing vineyards and fruit tree orchards being pruned by workers.  The Rhone, like the Loire and all the other rivers I had cycled along, were at flood stage after days of rain.  The south brought me my first glimpse of the sun.  At the first roadside picnic site I came upon, I emptied out my panniers and offered up all my gear to its warm rays.  Though my panniers are waterproof, moisture managed to seep into just about everything during three straight nights of soaked gear strewn all over my tent.  

After a few miles along the Rhone I crossed over it and headed to Bourg de Pèage, the first of two Ville Ètapes in this year's Race on my route to Cannes.  It straddled the Isère River across from its larger sister city Romans-sur-Isère, one of many French towns acknowledging its Roman past.   There were no signs to a tourist office so I dropped in on the city hall and talked to the young man in charge of The Tour.  He said a private company working for The Tour de France organization was in charge of setting up everything in the town.  He had no information on the route the peloton would follow to Gap other than its ceremonial route through the town from its starting point at a sports complex.  He also had the barest of information on the Fête du Tour, a pre-Tour ride that all the Ville Ètapes would be hosting on Saturday, June 6 for locals to ride a portion of the town's stage.  All he knew was that it would start at Parc Mossant, named for a hat manufacturer that once was one of the town's largest employers, but was no more.  I ventured to the starting point to see if there were any banners or posters in place.  There were not.  In my wanderings I stumbled upon the tourist office, not in the town center as they usually are.  It was after six and closed, but had no Tour banners up, either inside or out.

Bourg to Peage is a Ville Dèpart.  The previous stage would end in the large city Valence, fifteen miles away back on the Rhone.  On the way I paused at the small town of Besayes for a pre-camp site snack while I charged my iPad at its cathedral.  As I ate some yogurt and cereal, a white-bearded cyclist in his club uniform coming back from a ride stopped to ask if I needed a place to stay and invited me to his home just a block away.  His English was comparable to my French, but luckily his wife spoke a fair bit of English.  We both needed a shower, then enjoyed a marvelous meal of pasta and hummus and lettuce from their garden and ended the meal with three choices of cheese and fruit.  It was a quintessential French meal with a quintessential French couple--the epitome of graciousness and intellectual curiosity.  

They lived in a classic stone house built in 1850, had two grown children and three grandchildren with one more on the way.  They were life-long cyclists, tandeming during their courtship.  Dominque had fulfilled his dream of a ride around France several years ago.  Unlike Americans whose ultimate ride is   coast-to-coast or the English who can ride bottom-to-top of their countries, the French make a loop of their own devising for their ultimate ride, just as my long-time friend Yvon was doing when we met eleven years ago. Dominque set his route by visiting friends during his two months of travel.  Like Yvon, he did not camp, staying at bed and breakfasts when he didn't have friends providing lodging.  

Biking remains the center of his life.  He goes on a couple of club rides every week.  His ride this day had been seventy-five miles on a week day with several of his pals.  Every day I see older men in Lycra, alone and with others, out for a ride.  French men also share a fraternity with their fellows playing boules.  That is a familiar and pleasing site in small villages all over the country.  They are usually the big-bellied set, while the cyclists are the slim set, as was Dominque.  His club is hosting the Fête du Tour in June.  With luck I'll be back and have the chance to further our marvelous comraderie.

Nogent-sur-Vernisson, France

As I was awaiting my bike box at the oversize-luggage area of Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, a woman bearing a tray of flowers presented me with a small bouquet and a welcome to France, another of those small, caring features that makes France a place unto its own.  Giving flowers is a May Day tradition in France that just about everyone participates in judging by the numerous stands I passed along the road selling flowers as I cycled through the city.

I was delighted at this presentation of flowers, as my first destination was the grave of Octave Lapize, winner of the 1910 Tour de France.  I had been to the graves of seven other Tour winners, and not once had I come bearing flowers.  Lapize was especially deserving of such a gesture, as he had died in the service of his country, shot down by the Germans during the First World War.

Flowers weren't the only welcome gift I received.  A woman by the name of Monique, who oversees baggage claims for Air France, also welcomed me just as I completed assembling my bike and was about to make my departure. She was attracted by my loaded bike and curious about my plans.  She asked if she could assist me in any way before I was on my way.  She was happy to escort me to a shop where I could activate my dormant French SIM card in my mini-iPad.  As we walked through the crowds, she enthusiastically queried me about my travels.  The shop that handled telephone service was a general merchandise store selling all manner of souvenirs and snacks and reading material.  It was swamped, but Monique gained me priority service.  They sold me whaf I needed but they left it to us to phone the provider to activate the card.

We returned to Monique's office back in the baggage claim area, going through the exit doors that only officials are allowed through.  As she was on hold with the telephone service, she also tended to a couple of passengers whose luggage had been lost.  Then she took me back upstairs to give me precise directions on bicycling out of the airport after I had rejected her encouragement to use a free bus shuttle.  As she continued to express interest and amazement at my cycling around France over the years, I validated her interest by sharing with her a couple of the French newspaper stories written about me over the years that I had stored in my iPad.  One mentioned my blog.  She was delighted to learn that she could keep up with my travels.  She made my day and I no doubt made hers.  I pedaled off certain that I would seek her out whenever I'm at DeGaulle.

I was in no great hurry to leave the airport, as a drizzle had been falling since my plane touched down.  A couple hours later it was still dark and drizzly.  Not only was it wet, but it was cold, just fifty degrees.  For the first time in the twelve years that I have been coming to France in May for the Cannes Film Festival and The Tour de France, I had to wear tights as I began riding, and booties as well.  Just a few days before I had been riding in similar cold, wet weather on a two-day outing to Midewin National Prairie, about sixty miles outside of Chicago, with Janina, Tim and Carol.  The rain was heavy enough on our second day returning home that we resorted to a train for our return.  I had no such temptations here.

I was too happy to be back cycling in France to think this rain was my penance for having taken the train at all.  I was happy that it had further thinned the traffic, as May Day is an official holiday in France, as I negotiated the urban network of roads that led to the Communal Cemetery of Villiers-sur-Marne in the southern sprawl of the Paris metropolis of over ten million people.  It was twenty miles from the airport, including several inadvertent diversions.  With all my GPS consultations it took over two hours to find my way to the cemetery.  I was in no rush, so I suffered a minimum of frustration, just happy to be closing in on the cemetery every time I stopped to verify my whereabouts, even though it meant a few drops of precipitation on my iPad each time.

There was no map of grave sites at the cemetery nor an office dispensing such information.  On a rainy day I doubted there'd be anyone else visiting the cemetery who I could ask, so it looked like I had a daunting task ahead of me to find Lapize's grave when I surveyed the vast cemetery.

But then I noticed a woman in the distance.  As I headed in her direction to ask if she knew the whereabouts of Lapize, I glanced at the names on all the graves I passed.  About halfway down the aisle I was following the figure of a cyclist atop a grave ciaght my eye, and I felt as blessed as I had been at the airport.  Less than five minutes after arriving at the cemtery I had found the grave I had come looking for, the easiest of all my Tour graves other than that of Bobet, which Craig and I had been led to by the couple that lived in his childhood home.

As with all The Tour graves I have visited, other than those of the Italians Coppi and Pantani, who had grandiose tombs, this was a modest grave that didn't stand out from those around it.  Even that of  five-time winner Anquetil blended in with all the others in his small-town cemetery.  I laid my sprig of white flowers on the grave and paid silent homage to this champion.  There was no mention on the grave of his famous utterance in 1910, calling The Tour organizers "Assassins," for sending the riders into the Pyrenees for the first time.  It is one of the legends of The Tour.  No book on the history of The Tour is complete without recounting it.

I filled my three water bottles at the cemetery pump and then began my escape from the urban sprawl.  I didn't feel tired despite my minimal sleep on the flight over, but knew that I was.  I was prepared to make camp at the first forest I came upon when I had gained some distance from the metropolis.  That was another twenty miles. Along the way I came upon a bike path named for Bobet, three-time winner of The Tour in the '50s, the greatest French rider until Anquetil and then Hinault came along.  His museum that I visited several years ago in the town where he is buried said that there are over ninety streets and plazas bearing his name throughout France.

I couldn't pull into the forest immediately as there were a series of white vans parked along the road, portable bordellos.  Just off National Highway 4, a quick drive from Paris, beyond the exit ramp for Ozoir-la-Ferriera on D471 I was riding, I came upon an encampment of six or seven of the vans, giving customers a variety of girls to choose from.  Usually the vans are alone, not wanting competition.   I had never seen such a cluster.  One had to peer in through the windshield to survey the merchandise. 

Even if it hadn't been raining, the women wouldn't have been standimg out along the road in their scanty attire.  Prostitution is legal in France, but solicitation is not.  

It was a Friday night, but too early for any cars to be stopping just yet.  It might have made an interesting study to camp nearby and see what type of guy was attracted to having sex in the back of a run-down van, but I needed sleep. It is a topic I have never seen explored in a French movie.  This could be my long-awaited screenplay.  Maybe later.  It would give me the excuse to peer into one of these seedy vehicles. 

A little further down 471 I came upon a barricaded path into the forest, my welcome to camping.  I ducked under the barricade and biked until I could no longer hear the traffic and ventured into the woods.  The ground was squishy from all the rain, but I found a patch of high ground between trees that wasn't too soaked.  I ate a couple of cheese sandwiches.  By seven I disappeared into an uninterrupted thirteen hour sleep.

National Library Week

The last few days of my thousand mile ride back to Chicago from Atlanta coincided with National Library Week, a perfect week to be library-hopping through Indiana and Illinois.   Many of the libraries on my route were celebrating it in some manner.  One had a chicken-joke contest with the winners receiving an Easter basket of eggs and other chicken-related items.  The library in Clinton, my last Carnegie in Indiana before slipping into Illinois, offered cookies and juice without any restrictions on where one could partake of them, defying the usual "No food or drink" admonition of most libraries.

The Clinton library had somewhat bastardized itself with an addition that mirrored the original library. One couldn't enter the library through its original entrance up a set of stairs as it had been blocked and replaced by a street-level, handicap-accessible entrance right alongside the old entrance.  It was admirable that the library board chose a design that reflected the building's original design, but it could leave one feeling confused, thinking he was seeing double.

My now favorite library in Merom acknowledged that it was the week honoring libraries with a simple display on its well-decorated circulation desk.

I should be documenting all the Carnegie "circ" desks, as they are invariably marvelously crafted works of art with an array of drawers and special features that could keep a pack of monkeys busy for hours opening them all. The circ desks were constructed as mini-fortresses, strategically placed as was characteristic of the times, so the librarians could stand guard over their books. Kim was delighted to demonstrate her many favorite idiosyncrasies of her desk.

Beyond Clinton I turned on to highway 36, the Ernie Pyle Memorial Highway, that passed through the small town of Dana, his hometown just a few miles from the Illinois border.  A museum in the town is devoted to the Pulitzer Prize winning WWII correspondent who died during the War, shot by a sniper in Japan.

Shortly after crossing into Illinois I turned north on to highway 1, which would take me all the way to Chicago within a mile of my apartment, 150 miles away.  Right on the highway in the town of Ridge Farm was a matchbook-sized perfectly-proportioned gem of a Carnegie, as fine of an example of a Carnegie as one could find.  There were no other buildings nearby, heightening its splendor.  With a population of 900 it is the second smallest town with a Carnegie.  Its librarian well knew that Merom was the smallest, but she didn't know the next smallest after hers.

I had the library all to myself even though it was late in the afternoon after school was out.  The librarian had to turn on the WIFI for me and give me a password, which is regularly changed to discourage the general public from sitting in their cars using the WIFI rather than coming in to the library.

She gave me directions to the much, much larger former Carnegie in Danville, population 33,000, sixteen miles up the road.  It was right by the new library on Vermillon Street, named for the river that passes through the city.  Carnegie would not be pleased at all to know that his library was now a War Museum and had large guns in front of it.  Carnegie devoted the last years of his life advocating world peace, conferring with world leaders on both sides of the Atlantic trying to avert war. He was most distraught that his efforts failed.  He died in 1919 a somewhat broken man despairing over the senseless carnage of the First World War. 

On the eastern outskirts of Danville was one of the more unusual Carnegies, a library on the vast grounds of a huge medical complex of the Veteran's Administration that dated to the early 1900s, old enough to have served veterans of the Civil War.  It was like a small community with a library of its own.  The now vacant library sat in the middle of what resembled a large collegiate quad.

Just one final Carnegie, the twenty-ninth of these travels, remained on my route, and it made for a grand finale, not only with its simple majesty, but its extra warm neighborly feel. It was a couple blocks off highway 1 in Milford, a town of less than 2,000 residents thirty miles north of Danville. A fireplace flanked by two comfortable chairs lent it the air of a den. A biography of Carnegie and a book on the Carnegies  of Illinois were featured on a coffee table in front of the fireplace.  Carnegie's portrait hung on the wall to the right. The friendly librarian said that one of her patrons, whenever she enters the library, turns to the portrait and says, "Thank you Mr. Carnegie."  

A note on the library door warned of a cat on the premises, though the librarian said it was shy and rarely seen.  It hid in a box under the circ desk when others were in the library.  After hours she knew its favorite spot was a chair with a red cushion, as she had to brush hair out of it every morning.  It was the second resident cat of the library.  The first had been most friendly, often sitting on the laps of patrons.  Many used to come in just to pay it a visit.  

It didn't gain the renown though of a cat by the name of Dewey, who resided in the Spencer, Iowa library, and was named for the Dewey Decimal System.  He was immortalized by the best-selling book, "Dewey: The Small-Town Cat Who Touched the World," written by the town's librarian Vicki Myron in 2008 two years after Dewey died.  The Milford library had a copy.  After the librarian fetched it for me, her husband happened to drop in, a farmer who looked as if he might have played defensive tackle in the NFL.  He was as cordial and unpretentious as his wife, the epitome of small-town wholesomeness. We chatted about my travels and a bit about his farming.  He was waiting for the soil to dry before he could plant.  This was turning into more of an ice cream social without the ice cream than a visit to a library.  As always, I wished I could have lingered all day and then returned the next.  When I finally forced myself to leave, I turned to Carnegie's portrait and said, "Thank you Mr. Carnegie."  

Sullivan, Indiana

At last, after years of visiting Carnegie Libraries I can now say without any hesitation that I have a favorite, at least based on which gave my heart the largest leap of delight at that moment of first laying eyes upon it.  There hasn't been a one of the more than four hundred that I have visited so far that hasn't given me an instant surge of satisfaction, often expressed with a spontaneous utterance of "Wow," at that initial glimpse of its distinctive features.   Each of these seminal buildings, many of which are on the National Register of Historic Places, stand prominently in their community, and are as much of a joy to come upon as any national treasure, such as they are.

They all exude an unmistakable air of proud, yet restrained, dignity. One can't help but be moved, not only by their elegant, distinguishing features, but by the aura that accompanies them accumulated over the decades from having a special place in the hearts of generations of citizens from its community.  It has always been impossible for me to say which of the many I have paid homage to has stood out from all the others and given me the greatest thrill of discovery, at least until yesterday afternoon when I spotted the Carnegie in the small town of Merom, Indiana and saw my name on its message board, sending my heart to a greater height than any other Carnegie has managed.  

I didn't have to wonder how it could have anticipated me, as Emily, the head librarian at the Vincennes Carnegie thirty-three miles south (built in the collegiate gothic style according to a plaque posted in front of it),

told me she would let her childhood friend Kim, Merom's librarian, know that a Carnegie fanatic was on his way.  I wasn't prepared, however, for the greeting that awaited me.  Kim and I had talked at length with unrestrained devotion about Carnegies in her office.  Merom was her favorite, as it was her childhood library, and her mother was its librarian.  Merom is noteworthy for being the smallest town with a Carnegie.  When it was built in 1917 it had a population of less than five hundred people and is presently about half of that.  Its small town idyll  was reflected by the unlocked bike plopped down on the sidewalk in front of the library by some kid eager to rush into his library.

As with the majority of the towns that have drawn me because of their Carnegie, I felt lucky to have made the acquaintance of this out-of-the-way town.  It sits on a bluff overlooking the Wabash River, which forms the state line between Illinois and Indiana.  There was a lovely park giving a view of the lazily meandering river.  Merom once had a small Christian college based in a castle of a building that is now a conference center.  For decades the town has had a summer program attracting assorted luminaries. It is a rare town with a surviving general store/cafe, a nearly extinct species killed off by the ever encroaching Dollar Stores and Casey General Stores, as much of a menace to Americana as Walmart.  The town would have died long ago if a power plant hadn't been established nearby in the 1970s. It is surrounded by farmland and not on the route to anywhere, though well worth the effort of seeking out.  I will happily return.

I felt the same about the not much larger town of Owensville, another  classic, that I had visited the day before.  Its Carnegie had a block all to itself, nobly perched in the middle of a grassy park in the town center.  

Seven miles down the road, Fort Branch was another small town that hadn't grown much over the years and could boast a one-room Carnegie much as it was when it was built in 1917.

The Carnegie in Poseyville, seventeen miles away, broke the string of Carnegies that hadn't been added on to.  Its lovely yellow brick facade was a bright contrast to the red brick of most of the others in this region.

I had begun my latest Carnegie foray across Indiana with a series of four red-brick Carnegies before the yellow of Poseyville.  Immediately after crossing the Ohio River from Kentucky, rather than proceeding into Evansville for its two remaining Carnegies, I headed ten miles up river to Newburgh.  On the way I passed a cluster of Native American mounds in Angel State Park along the river that dated to pre-Columbian times.

Newburgh's Carnegie was now part of its City Hall with the wide river and a pedestrian walkway behind it.

Ten miles inland the Booneville Carnegie had been converted to the town's police station.  Booneville is the county seat and had a typical gaudy and grandiose courthouse in the town center, a stark contrast to the simple elegance of its Carnegie.  The county courthouses of Indiana do seem to vye to outdo one another.  One doesn't know whether to be impressed or overwhelmed by their screaming audacity.  They are almost more intimidating than welcoming. 

The pair of Carnegie branch libraries in Evansville both resided in large parks that they had all to themselves and had not been added on to despite the open space.  The first on my route was the East Branch in a quiet residential neighborhood.

And the second on my way out of town to Poseyville was the West Branch on a main thoroughfare with a set of picnic tables out front.

My first day in Indiana, from noon on, included four Carnegies, more than I had seen in three days in Kentucky.  Day two was a stellar five-library day, with all still serving as libraries.  After Poseyville, Owensville and Fort Branch came Princeton, a larger town necessitating an addition to its library, unseen from its front side.  But a canopy over the entry broke its tradition from its past.

The best riding of the day was the thirty-five mile stretch mostly on a quiet secondary road I had all to myself to Washington.  I stopped for a barbecue sandwich to escape a light rain in a small general store packed with authenticity.

 A sign on its front porch offered an invitation to "Sit a spell" on its pair of rocking chairs.

Two old-timers in overalls came doddering in with one bragging he could still move faster than the other.  A younger guy sitting alone reading a newspaper kidded the waitress about her age, which also seemed a regular routine.  The town-tinkerer in each of the small towns I passed through had a line of over-hauled lawn-mowers sitting along the road for sale.  The occasional farm wife fetching the mail from the mail box along the road also reminded me this wasn't suburbia.

Washington's Carnegie was another that sat majestically in the middle of a large park.  Its large, most compatible addition, actually enhanced its majesty, giving it the air of a French chateau.

Sullivan's Carnegie near sunset the next day likewise had a little extra grandeur constructed with limestone and adorned with a dome, a rarity among Carnegies.  As with the Carnegie in Vincennes, it acknowledged its significance with a plaque posted out front giving its history.

 

It was the twelfth Carnegie I had come upon in three days in the tiny corner of Indiana near the Ohio and Wabash rivers, not even ten percent of the 167 in the state, the most by far of any state.  It was as many Carnegies as I had visited in the previous ten days through Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.  And unlike those in the other states, most of them still thrived as a library.  How sweet it is.

Henderson, Kentucky

Easter is held in such reverence in the Bible Belt that the pastors of the region set aside their competition to attract customers with catchy sermon titles on their message boards and nearly universally simply adorn them with "He Is Risen."  There are a few benign variations such as "He Arose!,"  and other Easter-related variations that push the bounds on the ban on wit and word-play from pastors who just can't control themselves--"The Tomb Is Empty" and "Jesus--He Is the Sonrise"--that might earn one a hearing before the Sermon Review Board.

This deference to Easter included not just the week before, but the week after, making this a comparatively lackluster two weeks in the Bible Belt.  Without clever sermon titles ("Satan Subtracts and Divides, God Adds and Multiplies") diverting my thought from my private reveries, that duty has largely been left to road kill. The first two days of these travels with Don Jaime were devoid of roadside cadavers, as they do not turn up on bike paths. 

If it weren't for road kill, I wouldn't have known that armadillos had made their way to Alabama.  Otherwise its just been the usual coons, possums, squirrels, skunks and deer along with the occasional dog and cat.  There was a string of bloated and decaying deer alongside the thick forest of the Audubon State Park near the Ohio River.  The exceptionally warm spring with some days of eighty degree temperatures heightened the stench of the massacred.

I haven't needed the tights or long sleeve jersey or heavy gloves that I have in the past on these spring training rides, though I have worn my down vest a couple of nights in my tent.  The spring showers have been limited to just one afternoon in Alabama, and it was so warm it was almost refreshing.  

Even though I have been averaging over eighty miles a day in these ideal conditions, my three-day swath across Kentucky only included one Carnegie a day.  The first in Hopkinsville was vacant.  The town was fully cognizant of its significance and splendor and had just won a $50,000 grant to restore it for some other use than a library, as it had a new much larger library a few blocks away.

It was a pleasant town with few franchises and quite a few small local restaurants.  It was on the Trail of Tears and had a park named for it.  Don Jaime and I had earlier intersected with the Trail in Georgia.  It would make for a worthy ride.

The Carnegie in Owensboro has been turned into the city's Museum of Fine Art with a large addition behind it.  Its two-tiered inscription on its front facade acknowledged the era of its construction one hundred years ago when "public" libraries were a rarity with "Open to All" and "Free Public Library."  It is rare to come across a Carnegie with both pronouncements. Few even feel the need to use the word "free." Kentucky isn't exactly in the Plains, but among the sculptures outside the museum were a pair of bison.

As I was headed to my final Kentucky Carnegie in Henderson along the Ohio River just across from Evansville, I was listening to a Ralph Nader podcast from February 14 that I had missed while in the Middle East.  One of his subjects was how he and some of his Princeton classmates were collaborating to raise money for a class gift.  He said it was the duty of those with wealth to share it.  He called it "moving from success to significance."  And lo and behold, he cited Andrew Carnegie as perhaps the ultimate example of this and offered his quote, "a rich man who dies rich dies in shame."  He told how Carnegie, who was the wealthiest man of his time, gave away much of his fortune to build libraries.  Nader has a tendency to talk off the top of his head and did it here as well, when he said he had built 3,000 libraries in the US, when it was actually about half of that, still a significant number, nearly doubling the number of public libraries in the US at the time.  

His show of February 28 had a lengthy segment on the huge number of American prisoners being held in solitary confinement.  His guest told of one such person who is a very gifted writer.  Nader, with his bleeding heart, asked how could such a nice guy be so confined.  His guest said because whenever he is put into the general prison population he gets in fights with his fellow prisoners and guards.  End of the conversation.

The Henderson library had a Main Street address adjacent to the town park.  It had a large addition to its back, hidden though by the grandeur of its front side.  

I was eager to cross into Indiana, the state with the most Carnegies, where my diet would rise from one to several a day.

Ridgetop, Tennessee

After the initial perfunctory conversational parryings the friendly old-timer with a braided beard, who had initiated the conversation as I sat drinking a pint of chocolate milk outside the Dollar Store in Ridgetop, Tennessee noticed the hammer strapped atop the gear on the back of my bike and asked, "What ya doin' with a hammer?"

"I found it along the road and was looking for someone to give it to.  Could you use it?"

"I sure could.  I'm fixin' to tear down a shed. It'd be perfect for that."

"Its all yours.  I've been carrying it for a couple of days and it may have gotten me in trouble with an officer yesterday, so I'll be glad to let it go."

He was my second happy customer of the trip.  The first was Don Jaime.  He was willing to lug a wrench I had found, saying he could use it back at his Bed and Breakfast, little knowing that he'd need it sooner than that--to remove the pedals from his bike at the Amtrak station in Birmingham so it would fit in a box for the trip he decided to take to New Orleans after we went our separate ways.

Though I was happy to lighten my load of the hammer, I was becoming attached to it. It brought back memories of a friend who advised that I take along a hammer when I biked up to Alaska a while ago.  He wasn't sure if I knew of the many challenges of the road, and if I truly ought to be attempting such a ride. Books had been written for motorists about how to outfit themselves for the highway.   It hadn't been paved back then and was over a thousand miles of dirt and gravel.  The gravel thrown up by passing vehicles shattered windshields.  Sudden downpours washed out bridges.  There were only a handful of towns on the route.  Mosquitoes and black flies were voracious.  Bears roamed freely.  When I told him I knew all this, he was astounded I still wanted to do it.  "If you want to really to make it tough on yourself, you ought to take along a hammer and hit yourself on the head every so often," he suggested.

Besides the chuckles of that memory, having the hammer also gave me a minor degree of comfort, that I didn't really need, in my tent at night.  I have spent hundreds of nights camping wild over the decades and not once  would a hammer have defended me from an attack, not even the night a wild boar charged my tent in France.  It might have made me feel a little less concerned as it circled my tent after the charge trying to decide what to do, but the hammer wouldn't have made any difference.

Never have I had to fight off a critter attracted by the food I always have in my tent, other than in bear country when I find a place to hang it. It may be good advice not to have food in one's tent, but my experience has been it is a myth. What isn't a myth is that a camp spot of my own devising awaits me every night.  If I didn't have that  faith I would have been in a motel last night.  I was caught by pitch dark before I had escaped the sprawl of Nashville.  I passed several budget motels but pushed on fully confident that a wooded area or abandoned building or church yard would eventually present itself.  Before one did, I came upon a vast military cemetery, as good a campsite as I could ask for.  Its far end, nearly half a mile from the road, abutted a forest, so I didn't have to sleep among the tombstones, as I have on previous occasions.  No ghost has haunted me, nor did I expect one this night, but silly as it was, that hammer gave me a sense of security as I zipped myself into my tent. 

I was caught by the dark as I dared to intrude upon Nashville as evening approached, drawn by my Carnegie lust.   I hadn't seen any all day and knew that the four remaining Carnegies in Nashville lay along a ten mile stretch pretty much on my route through the city.  Rather than cutting short my day and camping before I reached the city, I thought I could see them all within an hour and then have time to get back out into the countryside.

The first two were on university campuses, Vanderbilt and Fisk.  I had addresses for them, but like most Carnegie libraries on campuses they are in the middle of quads with no discernible addresses and weren't readily identifiable.  I wasted valuable minutes on both campuses floundering a bit before I pinpointed the object of my search.

I had to confirm with a young librarian on the Vanderbilt campus that her library had been funded by Carnegie.  She didn't know and had to look it up.  The library was originally part of Peabody College, a women's teacher school, that was eventually absorbed by Vanderbilt.  It was large enough that it could still be used as one of the college's libraries, a rarity among the academic libraries that Carnegie funded, most of which now serve as administrative buildings.

It was just fifteen minutes to Fisk, a largely black college.  The Wikipedia address for the library was simply the intersection of two streets in the middle of the campus that were blocked to motorized traffic.  A towering grand building that had a sign welcoming new students and their parents seemed like it could be what I was looking for. A plaque out front said it had been built in 1878, before Carnegie began funding libraries.  There wasn't any other likely building nearby,  There was no one in the building to ask if Carnegie had later funded an addition to this castle of a building that served as a library.  I circled around, then noticed a building in the quad that had the bearing of a Carnegie.  Indeed it was, though it was now an administrative building and had no Carnegie marking on it, just a plaque out front stating that it had been funded by the "philanthropist Andrew Carnegie" and that its cornerstone had been laid in 1908 by the future President Howard Taft.

It was just a mile to a branch Carnegie that still served as a library.  It stood gallantly on a corner lot in a largely black residential neighborhood.  "Carnegie Library" was chiseled over the entry of this building that remained fully true to its origins with no additions.

My final Carnegie was another branch library fifteen minutes away on the road that would take me north out of the city.  I passed under the state capital building on a hill and then crossed the Cumberland River, turning on to Main Street.  The Carnegie was on a rise itself just after Main Street turned into Gallatin Road, preventing it from being another Carnegie on Main Street, by far the most popular Carnegie address.  Like all the remaining Carnegies in Nashville, one could fully appreciate its beauty without the distraction of an added wing.

I thought I had plenty of time to get out into the countryside before dark, but the all too common ugly gauntlet of franchises blighting larger American towns and cities went on and on for miles.  I didn't mind the added miles, as it gave me a chance for my first century of the trip.  I was two miles short when I came upon the cemetery.  My legs could have easily biked to one hundred and beyond, but this was a campsite I couldn't say no to.  I set up my tent extra aglow with all these extra miles as each adds to the exhilaration of being on the bike all day.

Huntsville, Alabama

In 2014 officers ran a check on my driver's license four times in four different states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Colorado) for being a suspicious character on a bicycle.  I can now add Alabama to that list--five down, forty-five to go.

The latest incident happened on the campus of Alabama A & M after I asked a security guard the whereabouts of its former Carnegie Library.  He told me it was just a couple blocks away, then asked if I had a pass to be on the campus.  I did not.  He wanted to know how I had gotten onto the campus, as all outsiders were required to have a pass. I could give him my precise route, as I had written it down, since I had to make a handful of turns to find the road the Carnegie was located on.  He found it perplexing that I had come through one of the official entries.

His suspicions might also have been raised by the hammer strapped atop the gear on the back of my bike, that I had just found along the road and hadn't found anyone to give it to.  

My color was a further object of alarm. as this was a predominantly black college.  I hadn't seen a white and asked the officer if it was an all black college.  He said, "Its a BHC--Black Historic College.  The enrollment is 95% black, 3% Caucasian and 2% foreign students."

He wanted to know what I was doing on the campus.  Seeking out its former Carnegie Library wasn't an entirely plausible reason, especially since I had come all the way from Chicago.  I told him of my quest and that I had already sought out three other Carnegies in the state. He didn't care to let me fulfill my nearly completed mission here without a look at my driver's license.  It showed I was from Chicago, just as I had told him. A driver's license in the hands of a law officer is an opportunity to run a check on it, and he couldn't resist the opportunity, if only to prove to his superiors that he was on the job.

He pulled out his two-way radio and said he had a "10-68," then read off my driver's license number.  This was the first time an officer had done this in my presence, rather than in the privacy of his car.  I was curious if I'd hear an alarm sound from the radio with the alert that this was indeed a suspicious character who had a lengthy record of being apprehended.  Evidently the government doesn't keep such thorough records yet, and since I had no other marks against me, I was cleared.  

The officer asked how long I intended to remain on campus.  "Just long enough for a photo.  If you'd like to see the photos of the other Carnegie Libraries I have visited on this trip, I can show you.  I have one of Decatur that I took earlier today?"

"You came all the way from Decatur today on your bike?  That's amazing.  You go on about your business and have a nice day."

The Carnegie was identified not only by a sign out front identifying it as "Carnegie Hall" (now a research center) but also by "Carnegie Library" still engraved above its entry.  It was on a rise looking down upon the campus.

The smaller, but equally dignified Carnegie in Decatur also still carried its "Carnegie Library" label above its entry though a sign out front identified it as the "Carnegie Visual Arts Center."  It was on a corner lot in a residential neighborhood two blocks from the old town center.  It was unmarred by any additions.

My route through the northeast quadrant of Alabama included another of the still standing Carnegies in Alabama.  There had been nineteen of them, but only twelve remained.  It was in Bessemer, a gritty steel town just south of Birmingham.  The library had been converted to the town's Chamber of Commerce in 1969.  It had less of the grandeur common to most Carnegies, fitting in with the working class nature of Bessemer.  .

My traveling companion Jim, who had grown up in Birmingham, was surprised to learn that there was a Carnegie in Bessemer, as he knew the town's character and also knew the usual magnificence of the Carnegies.  An uncle of his had lived in Bessemer.  He couldn't recall any building of a Carnegie nature from his visits there.  Unfortunately, Jim was delayed in finding flowers to put on his mother's grave so didn't  arrive at the Childersburg library by our agreed meeting time to join me on my detour to Bessemer. 

Our back-up rendezvous was at the hotel in Birmingham where Jim would be staying.  It was right beside Beer World, a huge bar with over 500 beers to choose from, right where I found Jim.  I didn't arrive until after dark.  I could have camped in any number of forests outside of Bessemer and met up with Jim the next morning, but Jim planned on flying out of Birmingham to St. Louis to meet up with some friends from Chicago, and I was concerned he might have arranged an early morning flight, so I pushed on in the dark.  There was minimal traffic and it was a pleasantly warm night, so I was delighted to be on my bike.

Jim said he had decided to skip St. Louis and hang out in Birmingham the next day.  That meant he could give me a tour of significant sites.  The first was the apartment building around the corner from the hotel where he and Marshia had first lived.  He was shocked that it had been torn down and was now a grass field awaiting development.  He was also saddened to see his favorite hot dog cafe in a sliver of a building sandwiched between two highrises in the downtown was closed down and awaiting a new tenant.  It was an institution dating to 1920.  He also pointed out his dentist's office in a high rise that he used to look out from as his teeth were drilled and also the building where his mother used to work.

Our meanderings took us by quite a few plaques commemorating Civil Rights marches in the early '60s.  At the time Birmingham was known as the most segregated city in the US.  Its population of 60% whites and 40% blacks were very much kept apart.  Jim went to all white schools and had no black friends.  Blacks had separate entrances to buildings and were barred from the city's parks.  It was against the law for blacks and whites to even play checkers together. Martin Luther King led marches in the city.  There were a number of marches of mostly children that the local authorities tried to thwart with dogs and high-powered jets of water.  The extreme racist culture had even infected Jim at the time to join the hoards of whites who lined the streets taunting the blacks with the n-word as they marched.  It is hard to imagine the Jim of today as such a person, but such was that era.  He showed me the exact spot he stood as a college student during one of the marches.  It was a block from the park where many of the marches originated, now known as Place of Reconciliation and Revolution.  A statue of King stood at one corner and statues of children being attacked by dogs and other statues filled the square.

Also in the square were two cyclists who patrol the city to provide assistance to those in need.  They can fix flat tires for cyclists or motorists and carry battery packs to jump start cars.  They also look out for the homeless, directing them to agencies that can assist them. They are privately funded by the local business association.  They brightened our day.

As we cycled about, Jim marveled at the scarcity of people and how little traffic was on the streets.  It was a stark contrast to his ride into the city the day before.  The outlying areas were more clogged with traffic than he had ever seen.  The downtown didn't seem to be in particular decline, but it wasn't thriving as in days of yore.  As always, I felt privileged to be sharing this experience with Jim.  It was a final superlative few hours after five days of travel with as sensitive and reflective of a friend as one could have.