Day 103, Thursday, June 27, 2024: Oscoda, Michigan to Armada, Michigan
- Mark Carl Rom
- Aug 12
- 7 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Owosso, Lapeer, and Armada, Michigan
Days sober: 371
[Author’s note: I worked off and on revising this section between July 30 and August 12, 2025. I had hip replacement surgery on July 27, and it took me awhile to clear my head of the oxycodone, tylenol, celebrex, aspirin, and a couple other pills, which didn’t leave me in a Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas fugue state, but didn’t contribute to any clear thinking.]
The birds didn’t wake me up, as I had burrowed deep down in my sleeping bag and their cheerful morning songs were just murmured rumors. It’s in the low 50s at dawn, just like it should be on the edge of the Great Lakes in late June. I had breakfast at the Oscoda Beach Park, which was deserted except for a flock of lake gulls and a couple of dog walkers. I’ve long heard of the wonders of Lake Michigan’s beaches, and it seems to me that Lake Huron is like the younger brother no one pays attention to. I’ll be driving south along the lake until I reach Bay City; then, I continue south and east into the center of Michigan’s “thumb.”
I Zoomed into the breakfast meeting of the Metro Bethesda Rotary (MBR) Club. As deeply engaged as I have been with this club for the past five years, I’ve usually skipped its meetings while on this trip even though I could have attended every week if I had wanted to. I rationalize that, unless I’m in the Eastern time zone, the meetings begin too early for me (the Zoom is open for chat at 7.30 a.m. DC time, with the program running from 8.00 until 9.00). Our member Alan, who dialed in from Washington state at 4.30 this morning, made me recognize that the main reason for my not usually attending is laziness. If the meetings were truly important to me, I would make them; that I normally don’t indicate they are not. I’m becoming more aware of the difference between believing something is important – a mental state – and acting on the belief. True beliefs are manifested in action.
The MBR members are my friends, actual friends. It’s a sad fact that, after three decades of working at Georgetown, I had no true friends there. Sure, I had lots of friendly work colleagues with whom I routinely socialized at receptions, special events, or over lunch. Not a single one would I have been comfortable calling up and saying “I’m in a jam, and I need your help” without expecting a response along the lines of “Isn’t that what your therapist, doctor, lawn guy is for? Need a ride? Call an Uber!” (I can imagine any number of my colleagues who would reject that characterization, and so I understand that my perceptions may not equal reality.) Before I went into rehab, I wrote to everyone in the MBR club that I was doing so. I did this because I wanted them to know, and also because I could trust them to wish me well and to assist me along the way. Our club has about 75 members, so it’s not like I told only a small inner circle. I told everyone, and they were universally supportive.
Michigan is covered with a lush green carpet of cannabis stores. It seems that they are more common than liquor stores; in one town I passed through, two dispensaries were literally across the street from each other. Almost 400 shops have been licensed to sell either or both medicinal or recreational pot. I couldn’t easily find how many liquor stores Michigan has, although I did learn that $666 million had been spent on vodka in the “Great Lakes, Great Times” state in 2020.
While I saw signs such as Lake Leaf, Puff, and House of Dank (Free Weed!) – cannabis purveyors, all – what I was really looking for were fruit stands. Yesterday, near Traverse City, fruit stands dotted the road. I wasn’t ready to take a break, so I didn’t pull into any of them. Then, they vanished. After the twenty miles or so where you could throw a cherry from one farm stand to the next, I found no more. Lesson? Take a break when you see a billboard reading “Cherries,” not when you want to take one.
When I saw the sign for Bruce’s Smoked Fish outside Omer (“Michigan’s Smallest City”) I jammed on the brakes and swerved into the lot. A Trump banner fluttered outside. The shelves were lined with mainly Trump tchotchkes, including a bobblehead with the words “Election Interference PO1135809 [this was Trump’s booking number at the Fulton County jail] Never Surrender” on the base. We had a nice chat, not about politics, and I bought ten bucks worth of smoked trout. I didn’t ask him if he was going to watch the Trump-Biden debate tonight.
The Lapeer Carnegie library was closing in 15 minutes when I walked in at 7.45 on this Thursday evening. The historical marker outside stated that “Founded in 1859, the Lapeer Ladies Library Association gathered the community's first collection of books for lending.” Hoping that even in the last little time that the library was open a librarian could give me more information, I apologized to Jan for my last minute question “Do you know anything more about this Association?” Jan, with short gray hair in a Charlize Theron cut circa 2013, was wearing cargo pants that matched her hair and a t-shirt that read “less sun.” That’s what I thought it said, given that it was half covered by a black cardigan. When the sweater opened up as she moved around the reference desk, I could see that it actually said “Endless Summer” reading program. At first she hemmed and hawed a little about helping me. Yes, she had given a public presentation on the history of the library; however, the file would be too big to email me. Her various notes were in various files, and they weren’t well organized. Still, after the loudspeaker boomed “Fifteen minutes to closing,” “Ten minutes to closing,” and “Five minutes to closing” she said “Don’t worry about it” and walked to a file cabinet, from which she pulled out a fat white binder. Quickly leafing through it, she slipped a couple dozen printed sheets out, made copies, paper clipped them together, and handed them to me saying “It’s nice when someone does your research for you.” Jan had written a book about the local insane asylum, she told me, and she sighed as she described how tedious, time-consuming, and frustrating it had been to collect research material. She wanted to make my life just a bit easier.
It would be nice if I could find this folder. I’m sure it’s around here somewhere, and that someday soon I’ll find it. I better, not least to honor Jan’s kindness. What I have found this morning is the “Ladies' Library Associations of Michigan: Women, Reform, and Use of Public Space,” a Ph.D. dissertation by Sharon Carlson of Western Michigan University. How the link appeared on this page is unclear to me although, as I added it while visiting Lapeer, I’m guessing that Jan pointed it out to me so, again, thanks, Jan.
I’ve put that dissertation on my “I’ll read it soon” list which, perhaps you can relate, tends to grow longer rather than shorter. Right now, I’m more interested in writing about Sharon, its author and, as of 2025, the President of the Kalamazoo Ladies Library Association. Carlson grew up in Shelbyville, Michigan, a speck of a community thirty minutes north of Kalamazoo, where her parents were attending Western Michigan University. Because “I’ve always been interested in the places I’ve lived,” as she told one blogger, her parents took her to the Waldo Library – WMU’s main library – so that she could conduct research on her home. If you want to see her in action, you can watch Carlson’s presentation on the Stuart neighborhood in Kalamazoo, where she lives, here. Carlson first moved into the neighborhood as a 22 year old college student, and she has since lived in three different houses there. As she puts it, "You stay here from any period of time, you start to wonder who lived here before and what was their story."
And what a story! In 2021, Carlson and her husband Tom Dietz (also an historian) lived in what they call the “Richard Pengelly House,” a modest green-on-green Italianate home at the corner of Willard and Elm. Richard was a minister and physician, best known for developing the medication Zoa-Phora. Advertised as "a woman's friend," it was labeled to be useful for
all forms of female weakness, painful, scanty, delayed or declining periods, spasms at month…impaired complexion, sick headache, neuralgia, debility, goneness, falling of the womb, arising from want of tone in the system, preparatory treatment for confinement, after-pains, change of life, hot flushes, wakefulness, bloating, etc.
Yet even if the woman was not suffering from
those ailments known as Female Complaints…When a woman has been working about the home, or sewing, teaching, taking care of children, or of sick ones, until her nerves are all unstrung, and she feels as though she would fly to pieces, and everything irritates and annoys her, a dose of Zoa-Phora will strengthen and soothe her nerves.
Its active ingredients include mandrake, black cohosh, blue cohosh, life root, roman chamomile flowers, false unicorn root, and “cramp bark” – herbal remedies that indeed might have produced relief – its primary “inactive” ingredient appears to have been alcohol.
Which brings us to Dietz’ wife, Mary, who was a prohibitionist. She was the founder and leader of the Kalamazoo’s Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1877 (in 1898, the local chapter was renamed the Pengelley WCTU) and so may not have approved the use of Zoa-Phora unless for dire medical circumstances. Mary was also involved in pushing for social reforms, supporting women's suffrage and opposing gambling, smoking, and prostitution. In 1901, she became the first woman to vote in Kalamazoo’s municipal election. The tombstone she shares with her husband labels him “A Good Man” and her “His Wife.”
Carlson, who has a masters in public administration and a masters in library science, as well as a Ph.D. in history, worked for WMU for 35 years, retiring from it as the Director of the Archives and Regional History Collections in 2020. In her current career, Carlson is an archival consultant. Thanks to her, and others like her, we know the stories about our homes, neighborhoods, and libraries. Thanks, Sharon. I don’t (yet) have permission to post her picture, although surely she won’t mind if I share her professional link.
I set Goldfinger’s parking brake for the night just before 9 pm when the debate between Presidents Biden and Trump was set to begin. I listened to the first ten minutes or so before, feeling too sick to continue, I shut it off and watched something, anything, else.
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