Iowa has its own set of Great Lakes—a trio up near the border with the state that claims to have ten thousand lakes. A Carnegie resides in the town of Spirit Lake, the most prominent of the three lakes. I wasn’t able to appreciate them, as low-lying clouds dispensing a cold rain obscured them.
I could hardly look around anyway as there was an abundance of traffic to contend with in the semi-resort communities surrounding the lakes. There is enough affluence and vanity in the vicinity to attract a cosmetic surgeon who advertised his services with a giant billboard reading “Fear No Mirror.”
The Carnegie relinquished it’s status as a library thirty years ago and presently serves as a Christian youth center. A much faded “Carnegie Library” adorns the still regal building. The new library a few blocks away would not attract anyone’s attention and has no chance of being placed on the National Register of Historic Places, as most Carnegies are.
The forecast called for a lull in the rain from two to four. The lull arrived with amazing precision. The sky lightened enough that I hoped the forecast had been bungled and the rain had past, but no it resumed right on schedule just as I was arriving at the next Carnegie in Estherville. I had been hearing about its magnificence from librarians for days, partially because it had had a much lauded addition a couple of decades ago.
The library is the town’s centerpiece, sitting in the middle of a large grassy block in the town center allowing its grandeur to be seen from all round. The addition matched the grandeur of the original, but unfortunately usurped its original entrance, rendering it obsolete, even though the columns and arch with “Public Library” above lured one into wanting to follow the footsteps of the thousands over the decades who had entered that way.
In the portico of the old entrance were two locked cabinets containing books from the outlets that had served as the town’s library in the 1880s and 1890s before the Carnegie was built. One was a doctor’s office and another a popular store in the town. The books included a complete set of Dickens.
When I left the library I had two-and-a-half hours of light to reach Emmetsburg and a motel, which I was going to need again if the rain didn’t relent. My tights and shoes and gloves were damp and wouldn’t dry in my tent. The cold drizzle continued with the temperature now below fifty. I needed plastic bags over my gloves to keep my hands warm. At least a fellow cyclist in the Estherville library had told me of a cheap motel on the outskirts of Emmetsburg.
I arrived right at dark, dripping wet. Before I could register I had to go back to my bike to get a wipe for my glasses to see. The Indian owner leerily asked how many days I wished to stay, as many of his residents were there for extended periods, and figured I might have just lost my housing, kicked out by a wife or landlord.
Its bargain price was enhanced by a modest breakfast of cereal and rolls. The owner appreciated that I provided by own bowl and utensil and was even more impressed by my minimal consumerism when I told him he didn’t need to change the sheets in my room as I had slept on the floor on my sleeping pad in my sleeping bag, preferring the hardness of the floor to the squishy softness of the bed, which gave me a hint of sleeping outdoors on the ground. “There’d be some hope for the planet,” he said, “if more people were like you.”
The rain had past, but it was still cold, not even fifty. My shoes were still a bit damp, but with heavier socks my feet were okay. I began the day with a Carnegie right there in Emmetsburg except it wasn’t at the address listed on the Wikipedia page. I was suspicious when it was several blocks from the town center and when I approached it I could see the narrow stucco building didn’t have the bearing of a Carnegie. A sign out front identified it as a history museum, and its cornerstone read 1920, a year after Carnegie died. It had actually been a church, not a library.
I went back to town and stopped at the first open business I came to, a small printing shop. The Carnegie was just a block away at 2008 10th street near the City hall. The Carnegie now served as offices for Iowa State University. It was somewhat obscured by trees, but “Library” could still be discerned on its facade.
Not only had the rain stopped, but for the first time in several days the wind was blowing from the West with just a little northerly in it to keep it cold. It could be my first day-long tailwind since my first day two weeks ago when I was headed north and had a southerly. The 87 miles I did that day was the most of the trip. I had the incentive to top it today to make up for a couple of paltry days in the rain. I even had visions of a century. I fell twelve miles short, stopping 45 minutes before dark when a rare small forest was too inviting to pass up. I didn’t care to camp in a cornfield that could be extra muddy from two days of rain.
I could have camped in a state campground on Clear Lake, where I stopped for the lone Carnegie of the day that was still a library, but there was two hours of light left and a tailwind that I couldn’t relinquish. The Carnegie in Algona, thirty mikes before Clear Lake, was being converted into the Carnegie Center for the Arts. A side door still had “The Carnegie Tea Room” on it, it’s previous incarnation. It was a rare Carnegie with no mention on it of its past as a library, just the allusion by the name taken by its tenants, and a cornerstone of 1904.
Clear Lake’s Carnegie had a large addition to its side, another that detracted from its original entrance. If one’s gaze scanned the building above street level, it would be puzzled by “Carnegie Public Library” over the old now blocked entrance and the new one next to it with “Clear Lake Public Library” over it. I was equally puzzled by several shelves in the library of “Christian fiction.”
Ten miles further on a busy four-lane highway that took me past an Aldis, whose dumpster provided orange juice, muffins, avocados and bananas, I came upon the day’s fourth Carnegie in Mason City. It was a grand edifice that now housed a construction company and an architectural firm. It was now known as “The Carnegie Building.”
I let the wind blow me east for another five miles before I had to turn north for the first time of the day towards Osage. Leaving the city I passed a sign to a campground, but was happy I continued on to one of my own devising in a forest beside a stream. No worries of mosquitoes with the temperature threatening to plunge to freezing.
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