Day 112, Tuesday July 9, 2024: Frostburg, Maryland to Mansfield, Pennsylvania

Carnegie libraries visited: Mansfield

Days sober: 386

The bathroom door opened, and a penguin walked out. The Mary S. Biesecker Library in Somerset, Pennsylvania, is an hour away from Pittsburgh if you take I-76 and drive 10 mph above the speed limit. Pittsburgh is home to the Penguins, its professional hockey team. The penguin in this library waddled into the children’s room and was encircled by several staring kids, who wisely kept their distance. I did not want to interrupt to ask the penguin to pose for me.

Mary S. Biesecker Public Library

The Biesecker Library was not on my itinerary, although Somerset was. Waze and Google maps want to direct drivers to the fastest route between points A and B. To get directions that follow the blue highways (or the even smaller county roads) I have to insert points C, D, and E along the route. The only Carnegie library I’m visiting today is in Mansfield. Without further instructions, Google would lead me there in three hours and 35 minutes and 218 miles. My planned route, which takes me through Somerset, Ebensburg, and State College, adds 50 miles and 1.5 hours. I shun the straight roads.

The Biesecker Library is named after Mary S. Biesecker (1862-1917), a local philanthropist involved in establishing the library. Her husband, Frederick, was a prominent local attorney, politician and businessman, who made a good chunk of his fortune from investing in land containing coal. The first Bieseckers came to Pennsylvania in 1789, the year the Constitution was ratified. Frederick, Mary’s husband, was named after his grandfather, one of these original settlers. He was, according to Pennsylvania Genealogy Trails, an “out-and-out Republican.” He married Mary Ogle Scull in 1886. Mary was educated in Somerset county schools and at the seminary at nearby Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. The Biesecker’s had no children. The library’s staff was busy during my visit, and I was not able to obtain further details on Mary’s life. I’ll need to reach back out.

Mary S. Biesecker

“Does anyone have a topic?” asked the leader of the Somerset recovery meeting. 

One guy said, “Yeah, it’s my brother-in-law. He has the compulsion to drink and gamble. He came over last night and told me how much repair work his car needs. He was hinting around that he needed some money, and I wasn’t going to give him any. He’d just spent it at the bar. I’ve tried to get him to go to a recovery group, but he won’t. I thought about paying him to come and knew he wouldn’t, even for money.”

The topic? Dealing with people still stuck in their addiction. Nice timing; I spoke about Sean and how I mainly listened while sharing a bit of my story and what little wisdom I have. Pretty much everyone had a story, with the punchline of “Don’t enable addiction. Don’t give money to anyone not in recovery. You can offer them help, like rides and food, and take care of their children. But no money.” One guy said he used to take drunks into his house, so long as they didn’t drink while there. One morning he found his living room littered with beer cans and his guest’s shirt was coated with puke. When confronted, the guest said “It wasn’t me” and his host replied “Do you see any vomit on my shirt?” He kicked the guest out. He learned that, a few months later, the guest had hung himself. The host showed no remorse for his actions: “I spread the message, not the mess. I am not responsible for that guy’s decisions.”

I spoke with Sharon after the meeting. She told me that she lived for thirty years at a famous Utah ski resort. “Park City?” I asked. “Yes. I used to hang out with Picabo.”  Picabo Street took the gold medal in the Super G at the 1998 Winter Olympics. You just never know who is going to show up at a meeting. 

Not every librarian is filled with joy, all of the time. I was the sole patron in the Ebensburg library. When I walked in and said hello to the librarian, she didn’t look up from her computer. I hadn’t exactly whispered. I did catch her attention when I was leaving. In revenge, I didn’t (apparently) take a picture of that library. My picture of the Carnegie library in Mansfield is my only memento from that visit.

Mansfield Carnegie Library

I parked behind the Hampton Inn in Mansfield, n the back of the hotel by a patio. A man was sitting there, watching golf videos on his iPad and drinking beer. Next to him was an 18 pack of Coors Lite. It was still hot at 9 pm, so I went into the lobby to watch Netflix on my computer. When I returned to Goldfinger at 11, he was still sitting there and still drinking. Finally he got up, put the beer box in the trash, and went into the hotel. The next morning, I peered into the trash and saw the box, packed with crushed cans. It appears that he drank all 18 beers before going to bed…