Turlock, California

With a population of 72,000 and intersected by the Freeway that connects the quartet of Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto and Fresno, the sprawling city of Turlock offered a handful of motels for me to choose from to watch the Oscars.  I began the day nearly eighty miles from Turlock, camped in a vineyard outside of Lodi, where the first of four Carnegies for the day awaited me. With the Oscars starting at five, an hour before sunset, I hoped I wouldn’t be contending with a darkening sky before my day on the bike ended as has generally been the case.  

At least the terrain was flat, the first day in over a week that I wouldn’t need my small chain ring.  The day was sunny and with the temperature heading for the sixties, the warmest yet, it promised to be an even greater day than usual to be on the bike.

Lodi’s Carnegie now housed government offices.  It was in pristine condition and the addition to its rear seamlessly blended in, enhancing its majesty.  It’s most distinguishing feature was a pair of dazzling ornate light fixtures with tentacles flanking its entrance and its pair of stately columns.  No vestige of its having been a library remained on its facade, but it proudly acknowledged its benefactor, now calling itself the Carnegie Forum.  

The plain new library two blocks away expressed some flair with a bike rack featuring a large-headed bespectacled insect reading a book

The Carnegie in Oakdale had gone to the private sector, home to Stickman Ventures, a software company.  It’s sign out front was happy to remember its past, as the library was now identified as the “Carnegie Building.”“Pvblic Library” still graced its facade. A young woman was sitting on a ledge in front of the property eating her take-out lunch in a styrofoam tray when I pulled up.  She mistook me for being a member of the homeless clan that were hanging out at the nearby library and asked if I was hungry.  “Not really,” I replied. “I’ve been nibbling all day.”

“If you’d like the rest of my lunch, you can have it,” she said.  “I can’t eat it all.”

“I’d hate for it to go to waste,” I said. “Thanks.  I’ll just add it to my Tupperware bowl of ramen.”  This was my first offering of food, not coming until day seventeen of these travels, longer than usual on a tour in the US.  It included some lettuce and green beans, welcome additions to my diet.

Riverbank was just five miles down the road on the Stanislaus River.  It’s very modest bungalow-style Carnegie was now a museum, soon to be expanded.  Even though the plain wooden building blended into the neighborhood, it had been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It was two hours until Oscar time and Turlock was twenty-two miles away.  There was no direct route so I had to pay attention to the turns.  I didn’t miss any, but with the many traffic signals slowing me down it was going to be close meeting my five o’clock deadline. The Carnegie in Turlock had been turned into the Carnegie Art Center with enough art to have a huge glassy addition to its rear.  There was nothing on its exterior denoting it as a library, just a plaque stating it had served as a library from 1916 until 1968 and had placed on the NRHP in 1993.  

It was two miles to a Travelodge Motel, one of the two cheapest on bookings.com, and my choice since it offered breakfast.  I wasn’t checked in until after five and I had to delay my Oscar-viewing longer as the television in my room didn’t work.  The clerk said it was in the process of being changed and the man doing it would be there in five minutes.  

Usually the first award goes to the best supporting actor, but luckily it was one of the later awards this year, so I got to see my favorite, Mahershala Ali, win for his performance in “The Green Book.” His partner Viggo Mortensen was denied the best actor award by the “Bohemian Rhapsody” juggernaut, which won the most Oscars with four, but “The Green Book” won the most important, the Best Picture award, another that I could celebrate.  I didn’t get to hear all the acceptance speeches, as I had a rare evening opportunity to talk to Janina, who was back in Bloomington to give an artist’s talk on her work before taking it down the next day.  

It was a significant day for me too, as I went over one thousand miles on this trip and brought my total of Carnegies to fifty-one, my most ever on a single trip and more than thirty still await me. Of the two I saw the previous day, the one in Antioch had the most extreme bungling of the facts I’ve ever encountered on its plaque, even more outlandish than the one in Alameda the day before that said it was one of 3,500 built in the US. The number is actually 1,679 with 2,509 worldwide.

Antioch claimed its Carnegie was just one of twenty-six still standing of the 2,500 Carnegies built in the US, way off on both numbers. There are over eighty still standing in California alone and over three-quarters of the 1,679 built in the US are still in existence.  Surely others have brought this butchering of the facts to the attention of Antioch, but the library is now vacant and it would not be cheap to replace the metal plaque, so they let it be.  The simple stucco building had last been a church.  It had gone through a series of incarnations since it closed as a library in 1967—senior citizen center, city recreation department, historical center.  The drab building could encounter the wrecker’s ball next.

The Carnegie before Antioch in Richmond was another of the many that have morphed into being a museum, and also with an addition.  “Library” has been replaced by “Richmond Museum” on its frontside, though it’s columned majesty leant it the unmistakable look of a Carnegie.  

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My Oscar-Sunday was also a productive day of scavenging.  I gathered a light-weight blue tarp with grommets, just what I needed for a ground-cloth for my tent, replacing the strips of plastic I had been picking up and that had to suffice for its maiden use on a muddy bank along a creek in a gulley.  I also found a bungee cord of the precise length of the two that had been snipped by the thief and the first license plate since the theft and a small satchel for it and the ones to come.  And I also picked up a few coins, including a quarter, a rare find.