Belton, Texas

Once again inclement weather prompted a good-hearted soul to go out of their way to press some money upon me.  It was a dank, heavily overcast day just above freezing with a mist in the air that had all the vehicles on the road using the interment setting on their wipers.  

With no such feature on my glasses I was having to wipe them every so often with a gloved finger.  My goretex jacket was dripping water on my pants, but it wasn’t soaking in, rather drying from the heat my legs were generating.  Earlier in the day when the temperature was in the twenties, the moisture adhering to my helmet had coagulated into tiny icicles.  I noticed an appendage on my visor and was quite surprised to discover what it was when I brushed it off.  These were conditions such as I had never experienced before.  

Mid-morning a motorist pulled off onto the shoulder ahead of me and a middle-aged woman hopped out of the car and held out a ten dollar bill for me.  “Here, take this,” she said.  “Treat yourself to something nice.”  

When I checked the weather forecast a little later using the WiFi at a Taco Bell, it didn’t say anything about rain in the hourly forecast, just cloudy and cold.  The moisture in the air was considered fog, not rain, as it wasn’t actually falling.  The road was more dry than wet, so my tires weren’t spraying me with water.  I was damp, not soaked, but I needed the air to clear so I could dry if I were to camp, as my gear certainly wasn’t going to dry in the tent with the temperature falling below freezing when night came.  

At four-thirty I came to the small town of Goldthwaite at a cross roads of two highways.  It had two non-chain motels.  I passed up the first one as it was so unexpected and I hadn’t made the mental commitment yet to not camp.  As I pedaled on I  feared that might have been a mistake and I ought to turn back. But I kept going. 

When I came upon a second motel a mile later and saw the road ahead disappearing into a thick, low-hanging cloud cover, I opted not to risk pushing on, as it could be my last chance for a dry place for the night.  It was Indian-run and the owner said the other motel had an Indian proprietor as well, though they didn’t speak. There could be a movie in that, but I didn’t pursue it.

My early halt left me eighty-five miles from Belton and its Carnegie, a little further away than I cared to be if I wanted to safely reach it the next day before dark and have time to find a place to camp, but it was more important not to be in a tent full of damp clothes.  I hated to quit riding with two hours of light left and lose the pleasure of the tent, as finding a place to camp is much, much more preferable than retreating into a motel, but I am becoming somewhat used to it on this trip.  

It was a joy to behold a clear sky becoming illuminated by the rising sun the next morning.  It was below freezing when I set out so I was a bit wary of black ice.  There was no traffic early on a Sunday morning so I could ride in the middle of my lane, which had a slight hump to it, which whatever water might have collected would have drained off of.  After an hour when the sun had risen high enough to melt what film of ice there might be I could relax and ride with some vigor.  Even early a row of wind generators pointing towards me were slowly turning, indicating I had a bit of a tailwind.  This was hill country, so all the climbing kept my average speed to around twelve miles per hour, but twelve would get me to Belton in adequate time.

Twenty-five miles before I reached it I passed by sprawling Fort Hood with multiple guarded entrances.  A cluster of sizable towns extended for miles before and after it full of tattoo parlors and cheap motels and moving companies and used car lots and tonic restaurants (African, South Korea…).  I was looking for a military surplus store, as I could use a back-up to my tiny military can-opener.  The spare I had acquired a few years ago in Kansas City thanks to blog-commenter Bill had disappeared from my wallet a while ago.  But there wasn’t a surplus store to be seen.

Belton’s Carnegie was another dandy, of such beauty it almost appeared to be a mirage. The last four have been quite striking, making it all the more sad that twenty of the thirty-three in Texas had been razed.  The majority no doubt were crowning glories as well that merited preservation, as was the one in Ballinger.  Belton’s was now part of a museum with a large glassy attachment that one entered through.  And with it I have now gotten to all thirteen of the still standing Carnegies in Texas, completing another state, my thirteenth. 

Now it’s on to Louisiana, where I’ll drop by its two westernermost Carnegies and complete that state.  My route will take me by two Texas Carnegies that Janina and I visited in 2014 on our way to Greg in Dallas.  It fills me with great anticipation, as they are still vivid in my memory eight years on.

Ballinger, Texas

Rather than heading directly from the Carnegie in Stamford to the next Carnegie in Belton, I added fifty miles to the direct 223 mile route by swinging over to Ballinger to revisit a Carnegie I’d previously been to.  I owed it to Ballinger, as it was the first Carnegie I’d discovered and was so blown away by its magnificence, that it launched my desire to search out all the others.  In the years since I have gotten to 980 of them (including twenty-three so far on this trip) in seven countries on four continents, each a gem, all thanks to this Carnegie in Ballinger.  

On that previous visit to Ballinger in November of 2005 (http://georgethecyclist.blogspot.com/2005/11/comanche-texas.html ) I was in the midst of a long, circuitous ride back to Chicago from the Telluride Film Festival, via friends in Northern California, San Luis Opisbo, Los Angeles and Arizona, as always stopping at libraries along the way to use their internet and rest the legs.  

As I approached the Carnegie in Ballinger on that first visit, two blocks off the Main Street of the modest town of 3,500 residents, I thought I had been given the wrong directions,  as the building in the distance on the right where the library was supposed to be was a towering  building constructed of limestone with a pair of columns and such majesty I thought it had to be a church or a shrine of some sort.  I had never seen a library of such stature. 

A stone slab out front verified it was a library and a Carnegie. I remember gasping that a library in such a small town, or anywhere,  could be so stately.  In the back of my mind I recalled Andrew Carnegie had funded some libraries, but i didn’t realize the magnitude of his beneficence, providing for over 2,500 of them all over the world.

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As I approached it a second time I hoped it lived up to my memory of it.  I was not disappointed in the least. Countless others have recognized its distinction, writing about it and coming to its rescue when it was in danger of being torn down. The most friendly librarian, Carolyn, gave me three articles written about it (a six-page article in the January 1989 “Texas Highways,” a six-page article from the April-June issue of “Texas Hill Country Magazine,” and a one page tribute entitled “Thank You, Mr. Carnegie” from the August 2011 issue of “American Way”).  Carolyn enthusiastically shared many anecdotes of its history, some included in the articles and some that weren’t.  

The library included an auditorium upstairs that could accommodate up to two hundred that Carnegie contributed an additional $5,000 for above his original $12,500 bequest.  When the town asked for the extra $5,000, Carnegie’s assistant who administered the library program, James Bertram, categorically said no.  But a local Scottish rancher, Jack McGregor, sent Carnegie a personal note “from one Scot to another,” asking for the money and Carnegie obliged.  

The auditorium has been a tremendous civic asset hosting dances and church services and weddings and graduations and bridal and baby showers and other community events, including wrapping bandages during WWI. During WWII the Army-Navy Club used it for recreational activities for the enlisted men who trained at nearby Bruce Field.   It features a vintage jukebox from the ‘40s.

Carolyn said the library nearly went the way of twenty other Carnegies in the state as it had fallen into great disrepair and was slated to be torn down in 1975.  The town was already making arrangements for a new library when Mary Sykes, a granddaughter of McGregor, led a drive to raise the funds to save and restore the library.  An architect’s plans called for half a million dollars to do all that needed to be done, a seemingly impossible amount for a small town to come up with.  But she persevered getting incremental donations.   She got it up to $38,000 with garage sales and benefit concerts and food sales and such.  Then an oil executive who grew up in Ballinger contributed a few thousand dollars and then a few thousand more, eventually amounting to $32,000, and the company he worked for gave an additional $52,000.  National organizations began to take notice and eventually all the money was miraculously found.

For awhile the town couldn’t afford a librarian, so volunteers from local service organizations filled the role.  Carolyn had been on the job for six years after managing a Pizza Hut. She said it was a perfect job for her as she likes people and books.   She handed me a sheet listing all the Carnegies in Texas  and their status.  She said she could make a copy of it for me.  I told her all the information was on Wikipedia.

“What’s that?” she asked.  I told her it was an incredibly comprehensive internet encyclopedia that had information on everything, even Ballinger.  Its information on Ballinger mentioned it had once been home to a Cincinnati Reds minor leaving baseball team in the ‘50s and listed two notable citizens, a golfer and a musician, obscure information that was news to her.  

Our talk was interrupted by a couple of phone calls and a couple of patrons returning books, all of whom she told of someone who was biking around the state visiting its Carnegie libraries. Before I left she took a photo of me with the Carnegie portrait in the background.  It was quite a contrast to my previous visit.  When I walked in the person on duty, a husky older guy, was on the phone with his feet up on his desk.  He blurted into the phone, “I’ve got to go, I’ve got a situation to deal with.”  It was in my pre-ipad days, so asked to use the computer.  He wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to visit any porn sites.  Even though no one else was in the library he ordered me off the computer after thirty minutes saying others were waiting to use the computer even though there was no one else in the library.

He didn’t diminish my appreciation for the library.  I was certainly glad to have returned and learned its fascinating history, not unlike many of the Carnegies.  A few miles down the road the cycling gods rewarded my detour with my second neckerchief of these travels, a black one with snaking white swirls, a beauty in a class of its own, just as the Carnegie Libraries are.  

 

Abilene, Texas

 


Another winter storm, three weeks after the last one that derailed me north of Tulsa, has me stuck in a motel in Abilene.  Not as much snow fell here as in Oklahoma, so the plows weren’t activated to clear the roads, which meant the vehicles on the road packed it down, rendering the roads icy and treacherous.

It was an early morning snowfall starting just before dawn.  I was camped fifteen miles north of the city on a lightly traveled county road in the most unlikely of campsites behind a CAT way off the road in an empty field, which shielded me from the gusting wind from the north that blew in the storm.  

The light fluffy snow was whisked off the road by the strong wind, so I could ride along at a good clip.  But once I reached the city, the wind wasn’t strong enough to clear the road, allowing the traffic to compact it. I hoped if I could get through the city I’d be back on wind-cleared roads, but there was more traffic and more snow on the road heading out of the city, and with a predicted high of just twenty-two for the day and no prospects of the sun penetrating the thick cloud cover to do some melting,  I had to cut my day short and detour to the nearest motel two miles away, wasting the best tailwind of the trip and limiting my mileage to just twenty-three for the day.

Half a mile from the motel my bike slid out, as I had been fearing for miles, and I hit the pavement.  It happened so fast I luckily didn’t stick out my arm to break the fall.  Instead, my rump took the brunt of it, but I wasn’t going more than five miles per hour, so it wasn’t much of a bruise.  A motorist stopped to ask if I was okay.  It actually happened right in front of a hospital, which I had noticed before the fall, leading to the thought, “How nice in case I fall.”

It was a little after noon, but the Indian owner of the Antilly Inn made no fuss about an early admission and even kindly told me I could help myself to the cereal and bread out on a counter for breakfast, even though its hours were from 6:30 to 9:00. As I filled my Tupperware bowl with cornflakes, she brought out a couple of bananas as well.  It was the second act of kindness of the day.  

While I sat at a McDonald’s eating pancakes, staring out at the road hoping a plow might come along and clear the road, an eight-year old girl came over and gave me a twenty dollar bill. It wasn’t the first act of goodwill in a McDonald’s of these travels.  A few days ago the woman at the cash register brought me a second McChicken as I sat eating the one I had ordered.

If I were to actively prey upon the kindness and generosity of strangers, my coffers would be overflowing.  I met a homeless guy two days ago who had been traveling the south from Texas to Florida the past four years by bicycle, who plops down in small towns with a sign reading “Traveling America, Any Help Appreciated,” and would raise twenty bucks in no time.  It’s been his sole source of revenue the past four years.

I met him while I was taking a rest along the road on one of those thirty mile stretches between towns, my bike propped against a sign, eating a pecan pie and cleaning the gunk off the pulleys on my derailleur with a small screwdriver.   My back was turned to the road, when I heard, “Are you okay?  Do you need any help?”  

It was a surprise that it came from a guy straddling a bicycle pulling a trailer, the rare sight of another touring cyclist.  Except he wasn’t a touring cyclist, but a bike hobo with all his worldly possessions.  He was totally detached from the world with no phone or electronic devices or GPS, relying strictly on paper maps.  He was such a full-fledged dropout he didn’t even carry ID.  

Nor does he use the internet.  He said he’d just learned Trump was no longer on Twitter and wondered how that could be.  

I asked if the cops bothered him much.  He said, “All the time.”  

“What do you do when they ask for ID.?”

“I give them my name and date of birth.  They can look me up, as I’ve done time, a year for manufacturing meth. My picture comes up, so they can confirm who I am. Sometimes they offer to give me a ride to the next county, but I had one give me a hundred bucks.”

It was after he got out of prison that he took to the road.  He’d been a carpenter.  He sold all his tools and belongings and hasn’t looked back.  He’s fully content being outdoors all day, pedaling down the road and spending the night in his domed tent.  He has no monetary concerns with his sign generating all the revenue he needs.  He’d need less if he didn’t like to drink a couple or three beers in the evening.  While we talked he rolled and smoked a couple of cigarettes.

He said he’d only encountered two other traveling cyclists during all his years on the road,  two guys in Georgia on their way to hike the Appalachian Trail, so encountering me was an unimaginable surprise.  I figured he might be my age, but he was just fifty-one he told me after asking my age.  “You’re a ways from collecting social security,” I said. 

“I won’t be collecting any as I never put anything into it.  I always only worked for cash.  I’m not sure if I’ll live long enough anyway to collect any if I had some coming.”

It was the lone pessimistic comment he uttered.  He’d read the Bible ten times and mentioned a few times how blessed he was.  When his bike fell apart a couple years ago, someone gave him the Giant he’s presently riding.  A year ago he figured out how to attach a gas-powered motor to it.  He long ago tired of ramen, replacing it with macaroni and cheese, supplemented by beef patties from Dollar Stores.  He knew a storm was coming, so figured he’d be off his bike for several days.  He needed to add a couple of gallons of water to the gallon he normally carries, figuring he’d be camped somewhere isolated for several days.

He doesn’t take advantage of libraries, so he couldn’t tell me anything about the upcoming Carnegie in Stamford, fifteen miles away.

 

It was the first of the four I’ve visited in Texas to still serve as a library, but just barely.  The upstairs two floors had been closed off for years, and only the basement was being utilized, the space given to the children’s room in many present-day Carnegies.  The room was utterly characterless, other than the yellow walls of the children’s corner the new librarian had recently painted.  She pointed out a corner that was still the original color, as she had run out of paint.  At least one was greeted by the Carnegie portrait behind the circulation desk when one opened the downstairs door to the room.

If it weren’t for this storm I’d also be writing about the Carnegie in Ballinger, fifty miles south of Abilene.  I may have the pleasure of renewing acquaintances with it delayed another day what with another early morning storm predicted and temperatures below freezing until mid-afternoon.  But by Sunday it will be back in the sixties.  I haven’t had a rest day since Tulsa, so the legs can use the time off, but I’d sure much prefer being on the bike than being in a motel with all the news channels blathering on about Ukraine.  At least it spares the media trying to find something more to say about Covid.

Breckinridge, Texas

 

Greg sent me off with a Dallas Video Fest neckerchief, not because I’d complained  about not having found a neckerchief along the road yet, but because he had a bunch of them and he noticed I had a neckerchief dangling out of the rear pocket of my pants.  Fifteen hundred miles into a tour in the US without a neckerchief is unheard of.  I have six license plates already, three since I crossed into Texas. I’m approaching my carrying capacity, at which point this trip will have to come to an end.

Fifteen miles down the road from Greg’s place, halfway to Fort Worth, what do I find but a nicely faded red neckerchief, and a traditional cotton one.  It could be the first of many now.  It took quite a bit of rinsing to squeeze out all the dirt saturating it.  It must have been astray for quite some time, mournfully abandoned along the road waiting to be rescued.  

Texas has a primary next week.  Bunches of signs for candidates are clustered all over. 

And with all things Texas, they were oversized, or Texas-sized, as is the popular term here.  The term appears on signs advertising all manner of items, from burgers to hotel rooms.

Through Fort Worth, mixed in with the campaign signs, were signs for the Cow Town Marathon next week.  There was no indication of it being Texas something-or-other.  

The large star on the state flag is a popular decorative item on homes and fences and elsewhere, emphasizing this is the Lone Star state.  It goes back to the flag that flew over Texas after it won its war to gain independence from Mexico in 1836 before becoming a state in 1848. 

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State pride is also reflected in the abundance of historical markers.  Road signs warn of one coming up in a mile.  Small towns will have a handful.  They are numbered and there are thousands.  

There was little separating the towns for over seventy miles west of Dallas.  I ended up camping in an overgrown vacant lot surrounded by trees within the city limits of Weatherford, a college town of a sort.  It was a large enough town to have an Aldi’s, which have been few and far between.  I was leery about making a mile detour to check out its dumpster late in the day, especially since the two Aldi’s I had checked in Dallas had huge industrial trash compactors as their dumpsters, but I couldn’t deny my curiosity of what I might find and I was amply rewarded.  

It being a Sunday with no garbage pickup the dumpster was packed.  When I was done with it my panniers were bulging with bananas, avocados, two jars of cheese spread, a loaf of bread, two boxes of vanilla wafers, a sealed pack of chicken strips with a pack of Alfredo sauce, three boxes of chocolate cookies, and a bag of grapes.  And the capper was two pecan pies which I lashed on top of my tent and sleeping bag.  The pies were a great score, but I was most excited by a box of a dozen chocolate Swiss rolls, as it brought back fond memories of scoring ten boxes of them with Chris two summers ago in Ohio when I introduced him to the bounty of the dumpster.  

It may have been a day without a Carnegie, but it was still a great day.  And the day ahead would also be without a Carnegie, as it was two hundred miles from Irving to the next in Stamford.  But the cycling was great and that’s what it’s all about.  I was joined on route 180 by an occasional motorcyclist, the first I’d encountered, endorsing the road as a scenic route, slightly hilly and windy through scraggly brush.  The cattle had plenty of vegetation to disappear amongst. A generous shoulder gave added pleasure to the riding, though a ghost bike dangling from a tree was a reminder to remain vigilant. 

It may be a week since the Super Bowl, but some of the sports podcasts I listen to are still discussing it and its half-time show and all the commercials.  The commercials certainly make an impact. People enthusiastically recall the Payton Manning commercial paying homage to the Big Lebowski and another Sopranos-themed.  No one mentions though the bold Expedia commercial concluding with the wisest words of the whole Super Bowl extravaganza—“When you’re old you’re not going to regret the things you didn’t buy, but the places you didn’t go.”  

That could have been considered a public service commercial worthy of being run after every touchdown and at the end of every quarter and twice at the end of the game.  On the other hand all the other advertisers, especially those selling cars, could have deemed it un-American and threatened to pull their commercials if it had been run.  It should have been the most talked about commercial, but it was totally ignored.

Irving, Texas

 

 After a night in the forest, camping at its best, I was back camping behind a building for the fifth time in six nights, though this time it was fully sanctified, the home of an old classmate of Janina’s from her collegiate days at Indiana University, who lives in Irving, west of Dallas.  I could have slept inside, but my preference is always for the tent.

I had met Greg eight years ago, when Janina and I included him on a drive around the South visiting friends, and took an immediate liking to him.  He’s an athlete/artist whose Cow Pope Mobile caused quite a stir in the 2002 Art Car Parade.  There had been some big changes in his life since then.  He had retired from his teaching position and head of the art department at the Dallas branch of the University of Texas, and had moved into an old stone farmhouse with a huge yard that one prospective buyer wanted to break into three lots.  

He hated to give up the house he had lived in for over twenty years, but the railroad behind him had increased its use and it had become untenable.  He was okay with the neighbor’s roosters, but not the roar of the locomotives. He couldn’t be happier with his new location, two miles from his studio and half a mile from a bike path that leads to Dallas seven miles to the east. 

He wouldn’t be biking for a while though, as he had just had a horrific, freak bike accident when he fell failing to unclip his pedals and snapped his arm, leaving him with ten inches of fresh stitches from his bicep down.  His forearm and hand were still purplish and swollen. The doctors discovered he had an infection that had weakened his bones, resulting in the calamitous break.  All his friends say he should give up the bike, but he’s not prepared to do that.

Among his latest art projections were a couple related to Trump, one entitled Trumpkin and the other Deep Fake.  Deep Fake came with a witch’s cap with Hoax on it and an elaborate accompaniment including a full size piano and a six foot tall Statue of Liberty beneath it befouled by Trump’s slime.

The statue normally resides in his yard.  All his neighbors missed it, asking “Where’s Lady Liberty,?” during its several months absence while it did time in a gallery.  

It was the second Statue of Liberty of the day for me, as I had seen one of those “Strengthen the Arm of Liberty” statues the Boy Scouts had distributed around the country in 1950 in commemoration of its fortieth anniversary.  Dallas has one near the Cotton Bowl in a huge park with many museums.  The Statue was by the museum devoted to the state’s history.  It was greatly dwarfed by the many other larger statues on the grounds. It had slipped my mind to seek out the statues in Arkansas and Oklahoma, which was a drastic oversight as there were some in towns I had been to including Fayetteville.  Texas has four others, only one of which i can include in my traversing around this huge state the size of France. 

I was lucky to be arriving in Dallas on a Saturday, as the traffic was greatly reduced entering and passing through the city.  The downtown wasn’t without tourists, as I passed a group of cyclists in matching vests being led around to the various assassination sites and another group on Segways.

I rode on a frontage road with no traffic alongside a busy four-laner for quite a few of the thirty-five miles from Terrell to the east where I enjoyed my first spontaneous, orgiastic wow of this trip upon sighting its Carnegie.  I approached it on a quiet residential street when all of a sudden there was this spectacular, majestic building.  “Wow” was the only response one could have.  It was adorned with three names—Carnegie high above and Homer and Virgil in almost the same sized letting above two windows below.

It is now a museum.  A corner was devoted to Carnegie with his official portrait and photos of the thirty-three libraries he funded in Texas, twenty of which have been razed, including the first four dating to 1899, two in Dallas and two in Houston.  One of those in Houston was referred to as a “segregated library.”

The exhibit also included a four-cent stamp of Carnegie issued in 1960.

The museum was the first building I’d entered in a while that required masks.  My travels prompted the woman in charge to tell me about a story she’d just read in the Washington Post about a Mexican who had won the New York marathon years ago who was presently running the length of Mexico in marathon segments.  

Sherman, Texas

 

For the fourth night in a row, and my first night in Texas, I camped behind an abandoned building, the latest a forlorn mobile home halfway between Gainesville and Sherman, my first two Carnegie stops in Texas.

My last night in Oklahoma was spent behind a closed down small factory on the outskirts of Healdton.  It was the first time in these travels that I staked out my rain fly, rather than letting it hug the tent proper to retain what heat I managed to generate, as rain was predicted to hit at one a.m.  

The rain arrived a little late not coming until three when the wind switched from the south to a northerly, plunging the temperatures once again, though not quite cold enough for snow.  It came down hard initially giving me concern that it could pool into the tent. The ground I camped on was soft enough, I hoped, for the rain would soak in, which it managed to do, though I was prepared to evacuate into the factory if need be. Fortunately the rain didn’t last long and I could continue my streak in the morning of not having had to bike in the rain on this trip.

By morning the temperature had fallen to right around freezing and stayed there all day long, despite heading south into Texas, quite an affront after afternoon temperatures of seventy the previous two days allowing me to trade my long pants for shorts.  It was cold enough that I could see my breath on occasion.  I had to wear my heavy gloves all day, making plucking nuts and such out of my handlebar bag as I pedaled along an impossibility, forcing me to stop to eat a little more frequently. Nor was I able to spread peanut butter, rather cutting thin slices to lay on the bread.  It was a rare day when the sun never appeared, denying my solar light any direct light for charging.  Luckily it had retained enough of a charge that I didn’t need to resort to my headlamp that evening.

My final Carnegie in Oklahoma came after twenty-five miles in Ardmore.  It was a humble little gem sitting in a park in a residential neighborhood.  It was highlighted by a pair of globular lights on the walkway to its entrance. There was plenty of space for expansion, but the community opted to build a new library.  The local garden club now uses it as its base.  

Texas was thirty miles south across the Red River.  The only bridge for a forty mile stretch was on Interstate 35. It wasn’t clear if bicycles were allowed, but I took the risk of heading that way.  An entrance a mile before the river didn’t have a sign prohibiting bicycles, so there was no need to break the law.  A cluster of four cannabis dispensaries were at that first exit for Texans coming to Oklahoma, indicating I won’t be seeing any more of them while I’m in Texas.  

Nor billboards related to the business, as there have been a few.  By far the most common billboard simply read  “Available,” an indication that the economy isn’t so good in these parts, though I hardly needed that enforcement, as boarded up businesses were an all too common site in small towns.

Just over the river into Texas the only business at the frontage road exit was an adult video store.  

It was ten miles to Gainesville and the first Carnegie on my rounds in Texas.   It was at the corner of Denton and Main Street and had been turned into the Butterfield Stage  for plays and other performances.  It acknowledged its significance with an official Texas Historical Commission plaque along the sidewalk.  It too featured globular lights at its entrance, but not as ornate as those in Ardmore.

I lost the tailwind I’d had from Ardmore as I turned east to head to Sherman.  The hilly terrain continued otherwise I might have had my first century of these travels, having to settle for eight-four miles for the day, better than the sixty-six of the day before when it had been a day of headwinds and also a rare day without a library.  

I had hopes that the town of Comanche would have a library when I passed its large high school and football stadium, home of the Indians, on the outskirts of the town, but the town was without.  I had to resort to the WiFi of a small cafe for my lone Internet time for the day.  I ordered a hot dog.  A couple minutes later the cook came to my table and asked, “Would you like a hamburger on the house?  It’s quite good.”  It certainly was, not a mere patty, but a thick, juicy hunk of beef, and it was accompanied with a pile the tatter-tots, a feast of calories.  The cafe had a drive-up window as well by the entrance.  The strip of pavement by the entrance was littered with pennies.  It had become the local wishing well of patrons expressing good will for this delightful cafe.   

Sherman’s Carnegie was now a museum.  It too had an plaque out front detailing the town’s library history, which began on a subscription basis out of the city hall.  A local architect, John Tulloch,  designed it in a “simplified beaux arts style.” Embedded in its side like a corner stone was the Carlyle quote I had earlier seen on the Lawton Carnegie with the addition of the words “of these days.” 

This was the version of Lawton’s, compliments of the Masons.

Lawton, Oklahoma

 

With Cordell began a veritable avenue of Carnegies with four in a one hundred and sixteen mile stretch, the tightest bunch by far in Oklahoma.  Twice I’d had stretches of over one hundred miles between Carnegies.  And there would have been a fifth in this cluster if the town of Carnegie had fulfilled the requirements to earn a library. 

The community had hoped by renaming itself in 1903 as Carnegie that would suffice to earn itself a library, but it wasn’t, perhaps because it had a population of less than a thousand at the time.  It wasn’t the only town to rename itself to gain a Carnegie, as a town outside of Pittsburgh tried the same gambit, the birthplace of Mike Ditka, and succeeded. The name change may have caught Carnegie’s attention, but that wasn’t enough to win the town a library, as it was necessary to meet the strict guidelines Carnegie established for a grant, including passing a bond issue to maintain the library and to provide a piece of land for it near the town center. 

The Cordell Carnegie was now a historical society and museum.  The librarian at the library that replaced it said many suspect it is haunted, as windows were inexplicably found opened and books knocked off book shelves.  The ghost couldn’t possibly be a former librarian, she said, as no librarian would knock books off shelves, but it wss possible some disgruntled patron may have returned from the afterlife for some vengeance.  

She said there was a librarian in the 1940s, a Miss Annie Cardwell, who was a strict disciplinarian. People still talk about her, she said.  She once told a young mother cradling her child that she couldn't check out a book of romance saying it wasn’t appropriate for her.  She was also known to examine every returned book to see if any pages had been turned back.  Woe to the patron who checked the book out if she she found any.  She might have found the county jail just down the block from the Carnegie as just the place for such a person.  

Cordell with a population of just 2,700, less than a thousand more than when the Carnegie was built, was another town with a marijuana dispensary.  Many have clever names, but its could be the most catchy. 

The Hobart Carnegie, twenty-two miles south,  had an addition to its rear, so it could continue to serve as it was meant to, though the original entrance with 1912 and Carnegie Library above it was no longer in use.  There was no browsing on this day as it was closed for Valentine’s Day, evidently considering it a national holiday, as the door said it was closed on all national holidays, or else it was going along with the Cincinnati school board which announced a week ago that all schools would be closed on this day in anticipation of the Bengals winning the Super Bowl, a jinx if ever there was one.  

I fell twenty miles short of a three-library day, as a dastardly wind from the south stymied me from reaching Frederick, forty-eight miles to the south, until the next day. The wind continued even stronger for those final miles to Frederick the following day, which had me greatly regretting that I hadn't ridden further the evening before, as I uncharacteristically stopped riding before the sun had disappeared below the horizon. I was coming up on the town of Snyder as the sun made its final descent, and feared I might not get far enough beyond it before dark to find a place to camp, so seized upon an abandoned shed beside a cotton field as my campsite as I approached Snyder.  

There was a full-fledged abandoned farmhouse three miles down the road past Snyder that would have served me even better.  I was reduced to eight or nine miles per hour when I had been doing fifty percent better the night before.  When I got to within three miles of Frederick, I kept telling myself for the next twenty minutes that I would have been there already if I had kept riding the night before, another lesson not to quit riding when there’s still daylight, especially when there are limited amounts of it.

When I reached the Carnegie at ten it was thirty minutes until it opened.  If I had arrived twenty minutes earlier I would not have been inclined to wait for it to open, especially since one needed a password to use its Internet, so I had been wise to camp where I did after all.  I sat on its steps and added some chocolate milk I had just bought at a Dollar Store to the last of my shredded wheat.   Luckily the librarian showed up early at 10:15 and let me follow her in, though she had at first said she’d be opening in fifteen minutes.  I could have accepted that if she had given me the password to the WiFi , but she said she couldn’t give it to me until I had signed in.  

The last person on the sign-in sheet had been a week ago.  The password was Vermont14.  She had no explanation for it, as she said the head librarian was the one who chose it, which he regularly changed. 

The library had not been expanded and only minimally modernized, though a second rest room had been added in the basement and there was an elevator in the back for the handicapped.  The electric outlets were few.  There was a charging station, which I could use for my batteries, but I needed to intrude on a strip of outlets so I could charge and use my iPad at the same time.  I checked the weather to see if there had been any change in the prediction of a strong south wind all day.  That was still the case, which wasn’t all bad, as I was turning east from Frederick and angling a bit north to Lawton, forty-six miles away.

I wanted to reach Lawton with ample time for its Carnegie and also the first McDonalds in over a week.  There was still an occasional Walmart off in this sparsely settled region of Oklahoma, but not enough people for McDonalds to gain a foothold.  The afternoon temperatures had been in the 70s, warm enough for shorts, and I wanted to take advantage of the McDonalds self-service ice dispenser. I arrived by four, but it was the first McDonalds of these travels with drive-through only.  Fortunately the Taco Bell next door had inside-dining and also a self-serve ice dispenser, but no electric outlets for customers. 

Its Carnegie was now the town hall and the first of these travels with a corner entrance, Kirk’s favorite.  Carnegie Library remained on its facade over the new sign identifying it as the town hall.   A sign on the door gave directions to the new library a block away.  A plaque to the left of the entrance quoted Carlyle: The true university is a collection of books. 

Now it’s another long haul, ninety-eight miles, to the next and final Carnegie in Oklahoma in Ardmore.  Then it will be a quick forty-one miles to a Carnegie in Gainesville, Texas, one of five in the state that I have yet to visit.  I had previously  gotten to eight others in previous visits to the state.  Texas had thirty-three Carnegies, but has torn down twenty of them, by far the highest percentage of any state other than Nevada which razed its lone Carnegie in Reno.  So Texas, here I come.

Elk City, Oklahoma

 

Just what I didn’t need, the fiercest wind of the trip blasted me for one hundred miles as I headed north to Woodward.  The twenty-mile per hour wall of air had me in my small chain ring as if I were straining up a steep climb.  It was a rare wind that blew through the night dropping the temperature into the low teens.  The chocolate milk in my insulated water bottle didn’t freeze in my tent, but when I commenced riding the nozzle of my water bottle froze, so if I wanted a drink I had to stop and unscrew the top.  I didn’t mind stopping at all, as my legs welcomed any reprieve.

My effort lessened a bit when the road angled northwest and I wasn’t inflicted with the full brunt of the wind. Somewhere along the way I passed a thousand miles for this trip, but there was no celebrating it.  There were no wind breaks out in these wide spoken spaces.  I took advantage of a big roll of hay just off the road to duck behind for a spell to get some food into me and revive the legs.  A slow freight train on tracks paralleling the road slightly blunted the wind for a few minutes.

After one day of it, the wind finally blew itself out and diminished to a slight breeze, though the temperatures remained frigid, not getting above freezing until early afternoon.  I counted off the miles to Woodward and it’s Carnegie.  That would put an end to my ordeal, as from there I would turn south to Elk City and have the wind as an ally.  

Happily the northerly persisted, so I was able to fly along at fifteen to eighteen and even in excess of twenty miles per hour the seventy-seven miles to Elk City.  I was so intent on taking advantage of the tail wind I stayed on the bike until near dark trusting I’d be able to find a place to camp, passing up several possibilities.  It was a strong act of faith as there were stretches of many miles of nothing but fenced in fields.  

As dark settled in I came upon a large oil refinery.  I could have set up camp along one of its fences, but there was a dirt road on the opposite side of the road with overgrown brush between it and a rickety barbed wire fence.  I was hoping I might find a break in the fence as I had the night before, but none appeared. Half a mile down the road I came upon what looked like an abandoned farmstead.  The gate to it was just a looped chain without a lock.  

Rather than intruding I pitched my tent in the brush under a pine tree, assuming there’d be no traffic on this seeming long driveway of a road.  And there wasn’t.  It was another fine night in the tent after my first eighty mile day in a while, leaving me less than forty miles to Elk City where I had a reservation in a Motel Six for Super Bowl Sunday, my first motel since the Indian-run motel in Wagoner a week ago.  It was a rare occasion when I was actually looking forward to a motel.

 

My three days of strong winds were not a fluke for this region, as it was my first encounter with wind turbines.  I had begun to think that turbines were banned in this oil-rich state, as all I had been seeing were oil wells along with the stray herds of cattle. 

The Carnegie in Woodward now served as the base for the city’s fleet of maintenance vehicles.  It was a latter-day Carnegie, less ornate than the early Carnegies, when communities tried to match or outdo nearby Carnegies in their grandiosity. Carnegie came to discourage attention-grabbing features. His libraries were still notable, well-constructed buildings with a quiet dignity, but without the wow-factor of many of its older sisters.  Carnegie’s okay for the dome in Guthrie was an aberration, obliging the request of the women’s group who asked for an additional five thousand dollars to the original twenty thousand dollar grant so their building could have a dome to make it a truly special building in the territory that had yet to become a state. 

The Elk City Carnegie was likewise without columns or accoutrements that could steal one’s breath, but still a deeply satisfying building that retained all the nobility it had when it was built over a century ago and could hold one’s gaze beholding its charm.  It was presently undergoing a significant enough renovation that all its books had been removed to a store just down the street. The library resided on Broadway Street just a block over from Route 66, the third and last of the Carnegies I have visited in a town intersected by the “Mother Road.”  

 

I will have one last ten mile stretch of Route 66 when I head east towards the next Carnegie in Cordell.  Of the eight states the 2,448 miles of Route 66 passes through from Illinois to California only one has more miles than the 432 of Oklahoma.  It is New Mexico, but with an asterisk, as fifty of its miles are an unnecessary loop up to Santa Fe. The road has long held the fascination of the public. Elk City held a convention of Route 66 enthusiasts in 1931.

The hotel where it was held is just a block from a bank with a striking sculpture of two comboys on horses shaking hands with the words “Binding Contract” beneath.

The town also had a less bold, but equally striking, sculpture of an Indian in front of the library.