Marietta, Ohio

It wasn’t until Day Thirteen that someone with a gun and a badge wanted to know what I was about.  I had stopped when the bike path out of Athens ran out and was looking at my GPS device to decide what to do next, whether to continue on the shoulder of the busy four-lane highway 50 to Marietta forty miles away, or to take the slightly shorter secondary road route that would probably inflict me with more climbing.

After deciding on the shorter and more scenic and lesser traffic of the secondary roads I put away my iPad and was about to resume riding when an officer pulled up and asked if I needed any help.  He said he had a bunch of detailed county maps and could recommend a route on lightly traveled roads.  He told me the route I had decided on attracted a lot of motorcyclists and could be treacherous.

That was actually an endorsement. If it attracted motorcyclists that meant it made for a pleasurable ride and it also meant the possibility of finding a neckerchief, as they often blow off the heads of the riders. 

“Motorcyclists never give me a problem,” I told the officer. “They often give me a thumbs up.”

“Not me,” he replied.  “It’s the middle finger.”

The officer told me the route I had chosen had been flooded a week ago just before Amesville.  I told him I was seeking out Carnegie Libraries.  Knowing that I had an interest in libraries, he told me Amesville had a Coonskin Library Museum.  That closed the deal.  Even if it wasn’t open, that was a town I had to visit.  

Before I was on my way the officer said, “I grabbed a couple extra Gatorades this morning.  You're welcome to them, if you’d like.”

I couldn’t say no to that.  In exchange I gave him a black rubber bungee cord I had picked up and was waiting to bequeath to someone who did me a good turn. He said he could use it for his chicken coop. He asked if I had a cell phone so I could give him a call if I had any problems. He was shocked I didn’t have one.  He gave me his card anyway and said to give him a call if I had trouble of any kind.

I was surprised that I didn’t have an encounter with an officer earlier in the day as I roamed the totally desolate Ohio University campus in Athens in search of a Carnegie Library.  It was a virtual ghost town.  Barriers had been placed blocking various routes through the campus and fencing erected to prevent entry elsewhere.  I was enjoying the tranquil collegiate atmosphere, but was nervous about being evicted.  My entry to Athens via a roundabout just before crossing the Hocking River, my first roundabout since Xenia, had given me an initial good taste for the town which only increased.

I had to go around some fenced-off areas on the campus and ride on a sidewalk through a quad before reaching the Carnegie, now Scripps Hall.  It was next to the new library and was on the fringe of the campus.  It had actually been the city's public library before it was replaced and taken over by the university and greatly expanded.  There were no plaques indicating its origins.  It was a bit frayed with its wooden window frames all peeling white paint.

I’d had a steady twenty-five mile climb to Athens from Pomeroy and the Ohio River where I saw a handful of fishermen in the evening hour in a cluster of boats on the West Virginia side of the river. 

The Carnegie in Pomeroy was a block up from the riverside road.  It was now a law office.

The quaint Carnegie in Middleport, just three miles before Pomeroy, still served as a library and had just reopened six days before.  The circulation desk was entirely encased in plastic hung from a network of unfinished two by fours.  It looked like a construction site.  The young librarian said there had only been “five or eight” cases of the virus in the county, but the plastic barrier still made her feel safe.  Rather than a Carnegie portrait there was a portrait of an older woman behind the circulation desk who had been on the library board from 1908 until 1964.

Middleport took its name from being the halfway point between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.  It was much smaller than Pomeroy, which had a McDonald’s right on the river, maybe the most scenic location of any.  It had a gazebo one could eat under.  It offered walk-in orders, but no seating indoors.  Quite a few were happy to walk in to place their order rather than wait in the long line of cars at the drive-up window.  All those idling cars spewing pollutants were making up for the diminished numbers of cars on the road.

There was no library in Amesville, a town of just 154, but there was a set of lock boxes for locals that books they ordered from the Athens library could be deposited in.

 That was almost as noteworthy as its heritage of establishing a rotating cache of books in 1804 that had largely been funded by the pelts of coons.  A historic marker in the town park recounted the story as did a mural including a coon reading a book.

The forty miles to Marietta were the hilliest of the trip, mostly up and down with rarely a flat interlude.  I was lucky it was ten degrees cooler than the day before with the temperature hovering around 80.  Those two bottles of Gatorade wouldn’t have lasted long if it had been in the 90s.  Instead I only needed one and saved the other for the next day.  The officer was right about the motorcyclists.  There were quite a few but they weren’t a menace at all, always passing wide.  They were a fine sight, especially those with a helmetless, bare-shouldered woman with hair blowing in the wind on the back. And I did find a neckerchief, a black one, still knotted having blown off the head of some rider.  It was my second of the trip, half as many as license plates.

Marietta, back on the Ohio River, offered up a pair of Carnegies, one at the university and the other for the public, both on 5th Street less than a mile apart.  The public library was built on an Indian mound of the Hopewell tribe.  It had reopened but was only allowing one patron at a time.  That didn’t effect me as it was Sunday and not open.

There was an even bigger mound between the two Carnegies that had been turned into a vast noteworthy cemetery where more Revolutionary War officers are buried than in any other.  The Carnegie at Marietta University was now an administration building with the office of the president and others.