Andalusia, Alabama

If the forests of southern Alabama weren’t so pervasive and so easily accessible, I’d have abandoned homes as places to camp, either behind or within.  I have to give them a close look, as it isn’t always easy to ascertain whether some of them are being lived in or not.

I have been able to partake of secondary roads with little traffic on my hops to the three Carnegies in this part of the state.  It has been interval training of a sort with all the loose dogs giving chase impelling me to sprint.  Spring-like temperatures have returned allowing me to ride bare-legged and bare-armed as I was able to do through most of Florida and, of course, all of South America. The strong sun in the tropics has left my shorts two-toned, the bottom halves bleached.  

The last couple of days have been idyllic, days meant for being on the bike, though I’m the only one with the wisdom to be doing so.  I’d like to be flying a banner “Save the planet, ride a bike,” but I know that would get me run off the road.  

At least no one seems to object to my benign presence on their roads.  I’m very careful though to make sure that there is no motorist within sight when I leave the road for the forest, as I’ve been reported in the past, and the police have come looking for me with bright lights in the dark.

The South likes to make rules giving those with some authority something to enforce and to remind the populace to stay in line.  The libraries often have excessive admonishments rarely seen elsewhere.  The Carnegie in Union Springs had the usual “No Food/No Drink” sign, but added “No Gum” to it.  One had to sign in not only to use its WiFi but also to go to the downstairs rest room.  The new, very palatial library in Troy, replacing its Carnegie, stated “All children under twelve must be accompanied by an adult.”  And as I reported previously, the library in Palmetto, Florida doesn’t allow bedrolls or bulky luggage.  

The head librarian at the Carnegie in Eufaula come out of his office to accost me as I wandered about his library early on Monday morning, the first patron of the day.  He turned very cordial when he learned I wasn’t a ne’er do well come to take up residence in his fiefdom.  He went to his files and pulled out a sheet of paper detailing the history of the library, one of the first in the state opening in 1904.  There had been fourteen, but only eight remain with only two still serving as libraries.

He took me upstairs to a large auditorium complete with a stage.  He didn’t realize this was a rare feature in a Carnegie, assuming they all had one. The auditorium gets considerable use.  One of the state’s senators would be there the next evening for a community meeting.  It hosts a weekly dance class.  

The Carnegie in Union Springs, the other still serving as a library, forty miles to the west, was a more typical one-room school house version, not much different than when it opened, other than the computers and the Carnegie portrait offered to all the Carnegies in 1935 on the centennial of his birth.  It was propped in a corner atop the built-in bookshelves that surrounded the building’s interior.  It maintained its splendid fortress of a circulation desk at the top of the stairs into the library.  Eufaula had lost some of its charm when it replaced its original circulation desk when it expanded, also doing away with its original entrance.

The Carnegie in the larger city of Troy, home to Troy University, the fourth largest in the state, was another with a second floor. 

It was enhanced by a staircase with a spiral in it and a chandelier and a set of four stately columns in its foyer.  There were no shelves of books as it had been replaced as the city library in 1982 and was now the city hall.  

Thus ended my four-day string of Carnegies from Tallahassee through Georgia and Alabama.  It is over two hundred miles to my next in Gulfport, Mississippi.  I have hardly any libraries to look forward to in this stretch, as my route will largely take me through towns too small for a library.  

I’ve biked over eight hundred miles from Miami, putting me over five thousand miles for the trip, about what I bike my three months in France every summer. This could turn out to be a record setting year for miles ridden.