Franklin, Nebraska

  

All day on our first day of biking south from Kearney to the first Carnegie of these travels people were telling us how lucky we were to have a calm day.  Wind is such a fact of life in these parts, when there is none, it is a notable event.  I sure experienced harsh winds a year ago biking in the north sector of the state and into Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota, accepting a ride from someone at one point after being forced to walk pummeled by a fierce side wind and retreating to a motel for a full day when the winds were near tornado strength, so I have been bracing for more and felt duly fortunate for a windless day.  

We asked one older outspoken gent, who was talking our ears off outside a supermarket, if there was any positive to the winds and he replied, “No, it’s nothing but the shits.”

When we got him talking on the sand hill cranes he said, “They kill ‘‘em in Oklahoma and Kansas, but not here.”

We saw none all day after we left our campsite along the Platte, though the sky was full of them at dawn squawking up a storm as they made their daily departure from their night time roosts in the river to go foraging for corn.  

People have been extra friendly to our traveling two-some, much more than I’m accustomed to when traveling solo.  A lone older touring cyclist bears the stigma of transient and hobo and someone to be wary of, but the two of us seem less threatening and more of a curiosity.  It helps too that Charlie is so personable.  A woman at Dick’s Grocery in the small town of Lawrence was so charmed by his affability that she wouldn’t let him pay for an apple and bag of nuts, not because she thought we were in need, but because we had warmed her heart making her want to endorse our efforts with a gift.

In a similar small town of three hundred residents on our route, Campbell, two different people stopped for a prolonged chat as we sat on the steps of its Community Center. Besides commenting on the lack of wind they were happy to pass the time of day with a couple of non-residents.

Charlie was gaining a fine introduction to the charms of travel by bike.  The motorists too have all been accepting and benevolent.  We haven’t had a single toot of “get off the road” and all but one have given us a wide, wide berth, often going all the way over into the opposite lane.

We were having such a wonderful first day we didn’t want to stop even after 81 miles, but an abandoned farmstead was too good of a campsite to pass up despite an hour of light remaining.  There hadn’t been a viable place to camp for ten miles in these wide open spaces, so we thought we should take advantage of it, though we had a town park as a back up six miles down the road in Nelson that a couple people had recommended.  The extra miles would have been nice, but Charlie was looking forward to an initiation into wild camping. We pushed past the dilapidated home and barn and other outbuildings and erected our tents well from the road along the fringe of a cornfield and could glory in a fine day of biking and a dandy quiet spot to sleep that none had slept on before.

Charlie also gained a fine introduction to chocolate milk. When we left Charlie’s home in Downers Grove four days ago his wife and daughter asked how I fueled myself.  I said I drank a lot of chocolate milk, as much as a half a gallon a day.  They were aghast that I could down so much and Charlie too.  

At out first supermarket of the travels Charlie bought a half gallon of chocolate milk thinking we’d share it.  He was startled when I came out with a half gallon too.  In the cold weather I assured him it would last for two days.  But by mid-afternoon he was surprised to discover he’d finished off his half gallon, and enjoyed it so much was looking to buy another.  He could have had some of mine as I’d only drunk a quart of it, but he waited until the next day and bought a full gallon, which we split.  It does go down easy and keeps the legs pumping and the hunger knock at bay.

It was eighteen miles from our campsite to Superior, near the Kansas border, and it’s Carnegie.  We planned on a stack of hotcakes at a diner for the ultimate of local color, but the town’s lone remaining diner wasn’t open on Saturdays.  Our only choice for breakfast was the Dairy Queen.  We passed on that and made do with our reserves and our fresh infusion of chocolate milk.

The Carnegie had a prime corner location with no other buildings encroaching upon it.  Its red brick exterior was much-weathered, adding to its distinguished air.  It now provided offices for local businesses, having been replaced by a new library a couple blocks away twenty-five years ago, though “Public Library” remained chiseled into its facade.

Its replacement didn’t open until ten.  As I sat outside using its Wi-Fi the librarian ducked out the door to let me know it would soon be opening.  I asked if the library acknowledged the renowned author Willa Cather, who’d grown up in nearby Red Cloud, in any way. “No, but we have many of her books,” she said, and added, “her good friend Evelane Brodstone, who in the early 1900s was the highest paid woman executive in the world, grew up here before moving to Chicago where she went to work for an English conglomerate, rising from secretary to a position of importance, traveling the world in the interests of the company.  She married one of the owners after his wife died.  He was an English baron, so she became a baroness. She donated a hospital here and Cather wrote the celebratory plaque.”

I verified it all on Wikipedia, which also mentioned she was an avid cyclist and racer and the only member of British royalty buried in Nebraska.  Her accomplishments were so wide varied that her Wikipedia page was longer than that of Superior.

We headed west out of Superior with only a minimal breeze from the north to contend with to Red Cloud 29 miles away.  The Willa Cather Museum on its Main Street wasn’t open, nor its library two blocks a way.  It wasn't a Carnegie, but it might as well have been, as a local entrepreneur was inspired by Carnegie’s largess to provide the funds for a library in 1918 just as Carnegie’s program was ending with the intention of upstaging the nearby Carnegies, which he may have done.  The library bears his name—Auld.

Just as we left town for Franklin and its Carnegie, 23 miles west, a few drops of rain fell from the sky, just as predicted, precisely at three o’clock.  We knew Franklin had a motel for a refuge if the rain persisted.  It let up, but an hour later began in earnest, whipping up from the south.  It was a cold rain with the temperature just forty degrees and had us shivering.  

As we closed in on Franklin Charlie suggested we stop and call the motel and reserve a room, not because it may be filling but out of concern that the proprietor might think we were too disheveled to rent to and turn us away.  I wasn’t concerned about that in the least, having many a time inflicted myself on a motel in a similar state.  My only concern was that the motel might have closed down.  Nor did I wish to fumble around in the rain trying to call the motel, so we pushed on.  The neon “open” sign in the motel window was a great relief.  And the owner had no qualms of letting us have one of his fifteen rooms with only three cars at that point outside his rooms.  I was expecting a South Asian proprietor, as in common these days, but it was a husky local wearing a baseball cap. 

It was too dark and cold and wet to pay a visit to the Carnegie.  That had to wait until the morning.  We were greeted by a slight dusting of snow. When we pulled up to the Carnegie a guy stepping out of his car commented, “It’s a bit cold to be biking in this weather.”  

Charlie replied, “No it’s fine.  We don’t have to worry about sweating.”  That wasn’t entirely true, as some of the long, steep climbs in this hilly terrain brought a few beads of perspiration, but his positivity was the right spirit.

This was another Carnegie given over to the private sector, but that didn’t diminish its luster in any way.  It had none of the grandiose accessories such as the columns of the Red Cloud library, but it had the noted Carnegie high windows letting in an optimum amount of natural light and distinctive light fixtures by the entry.  As is generally the case, there wasn’t another building in town to compare with its majesty.