Day 132, Monday October 14, 2024: Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey to Patchogue, New York
- Mark Carl Rom
- Nov 22, 2025
- 20 min read
Updated: Dec 3, 2025
Carnegie libraries visited: Perth Amboy and Elizabeth, New Jersey; St. George, Stapleton, Fort Hamilton, Williamsburg, Bushwick, DeKalb, Macon, Bedford, and Patchogue, New York.
Days sober: 480
If I don’t record the events of the day immediately, they slip away amazingly fast. It’s been more than two weeks since I made the drive from Avon to Patchogue, and I only remember fragments of the day. It was one of those days: I took pictures of 16 libraries, including about a dozen Carnegies, and conducted research at exactly none of them. My route took me north into Staten Island, then Brooklyn, and then Queens before entering Long Island. The traffic was light because it was a national holiday (Columbus Day; seventeen states celebrate it as Indigenous Peoples Day), even though it seems that almost no one actually does anything to celebrate it.
I somehow skipped the first library on my itinerary, which is a pity, because the Long Branch Free Public Library was one of only four public libraries nationally to be awarded the 2023 National Medal for Museum and Library Service from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries that demonstrate excellence in service to their communities. The library’s director, Tonya Garcia, received the medal, presented by First Lady Jill Biden, at a White House ceremony.
The library began In 1878 when the East Long Branch Reading Room & Library Association came together when thirty women “with a vision and a borrowed room.” In 1880 they built Library Hall on Lower Broadway to provide a place of gathering for the rapidly growing town. The population of Long Branch, which had become a popular beach resort, tripled between 1880 and 1910, growing from 3800 to over 13,000. Between 1868 and 1916 seven U.S. Presidents – Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Woodrow Wilson – came to visit (although during that time period Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft passed on the opportunity). “Seven Presidents Park,” near the beach, is named in their honor. Donald Trump has also visited. (He might prefer that the park be renamed “The President Trump and Seven Unknown Presidents Park.”)
When Mrs. C. Asa Francis wrote Carnegie in 1913 to request a grant, she addressed the letter to simply
Mr. Andrew Carnegie
New York City
It must be nice to have confidence that such a letter would be correctly delivered, and even nicer to be in a position where one could receive such a letter. Or, now that I think about it, I’m not sure I would want a stranger to be able to find me like that.
In a subsequent letter, Francis wanted Carnegie to promise the town money, and then she would use that promise to get local officials to agree to tax. Bertram’s response: No dice. Carnegie does not make pledges prior to receiving a guarantee of taxpayer funding.
Here’s where it gets interesting. While the library’s history seems to speak favorably of the Reading Room & Library Association, the Association actually opposed the idea of Carnegie’s money being obtained to build one. A headline in a local newspaper (the rag’s name is not on the article) states “Free Reading Against Carnegie Library for City.” The article goes on to state that, at a meeting of the Association, the members voted unanimously to approve a resolution stating that “That we do most decidedly object to working in any way for or with a Carnegie library and wish to be recorded as such.” It went on to say that “[W]e do stand ready to devote our property…and to work in cooperation with Long Branch a ‘Free Long Branch City Library,’ an institution which shall be a monument to Long Branch and to no one individual.” The Vice President of the Association, Maria Howland, wrote to Carnegie in 1914 to give him this news. The Carnegie archives do not record a reply.
In 1916, Miss Mary Sacks, who does not identify herself as a member of the Association and seems to be writing on her own behalf, writes to Carnegie to tell him that the citizens of Long Branch would be “greatly gratified” if he could provide the town a library. Bertram answers that, if the town does not have a library (it does) and if city officials request one, he will consider that request. Sacks brings this matter to the mayor, and then writes Bertram that his answer “did not prove satisfactory to me.” Sacks is not going to let it go, and again writes the mayor to make her request. She lets Bertram know that she will keep him apprised. I don't know what went on behind the scenes at this point; I do know the mayor brought the matter of creating a library to a public vote, and he reported to Bertram that the issue was approved by “a very large majority.” The vote concerned whether “some suitable library building should be erected” and it contained a resolution that the town “is ready to accept any gift or bequest” for such purpose.
Miss Edna B. Pratt, the “Organizer” of the New Jersey Public Library Commission, weighs in next. Writing Bertram, she recounts correspondence she had with Mrs. H.W. Green, who had been President of the Library Association until the town voted to take over the library. Green was “very much exercised” (um, pissed) that Bertram, in answering a letter from the mayor, had referred to Sacks: Green writes that “Mary Sacks is a little Jewish school girl whom no one had ever heard of before your letter to [the mayor]. Ouch. Burn. Bertram’s response to her is: “I did not know whether Miss Mary Sacks was a person of importance or not.” Whatever the case, he had advised Sacks that the Mayor is the one who should be doing the communication. Still, score one for the “little Jewish school girl” who seemed to have gotten the best of the library association president.
In 1917, Long Branch received funding from Carnegie and the Library Association turned the library over to the town. The Long Branch Free Public Library claims to be the final library built with Carnegie funds.
The IMLS award might have arrived as a delightful surprise, although it’s not surprising that the library sought it. When Garcia became the library’s director in 2011, she told her staff that she had “big, audacious, goals” and that she wanted to make the library one of the best in the nation. By “she” she really meant “we,” as she then asked her staff for ideas on how to achieve this goal, and they were gratified to be asked.
One goal was to get the raccoons out of the attic. Library staff told Garcia that they were hearing sounds coming from on high, and Garcia did what library directors – the good ones – do: she grabbed a ladder. Placing it against a wall in the oldest part of the library and pushing up a ceiling tile, she found a raccoon family, maybe having dinner or watching Parks and Recreation which, in addition to Amy Poehler and the others in the outstanding cast, prominently featured “trash pandas.” Garcia recalls “I also saw the magnificent windows and architecture of the original Carnegie design. I knew right there that we needed to bring the 1916 look back.”
Bringing back required a good chunk of change. Garcia applied for a state grant in 2019 and was denied. Denial, shenial. She and her staff reapplied in 2021 and were granted $3.1 million from the state, which the city matched, and “we are here today in this beautiful library.” As Dr. Michael Salavtore, the superintendent of the local school system and a longtime ally of Garcia, put it
More than 20 years ago, I first met Tonya Garcia as a dedicated parent at the Gregory School, where I was the principal and she was a tireless volunteer. As her own children advanced through the school system, Tonya’s commitment to our community only grew stronger, leading her to the role of Head Librarian at the Long Branch Free Public Library. Since her appointment, she has transformed the library into a hub for lifelong learning, ensuring that every child has access to a library card and meaningful programs that foster a love for reading.
The library’s renovation was not all magnificent windows and classic architecture. The renovated library “features energy-efficient lighting, a new three zone HVAC system, extensive waterproofing, a new emergency generator, additional spaces including a local history room, teen room, huddle rooms for private study, and a sensory room for children.” Congratulations, Tonya and your staff. And don’t forget to watch for raccoons. They’re sneaky.
My first photo stop of the day was at the Navesink Public Library, a charming white frame structure the size of a goodly merchant’s house, with a bright red door framed by carriage sconces and green shutters bordering the two oversized windows on each side of the door. In 1914 the library was founded in the “Old Baptist Church” by the Navesink Library Association. The NLA comprised a small group of distinguished local citizens, led by Anna Reed Parsons, daughter of a prominent New York City educator, and wife to Colonel William Barclay Parsons. The “prominent New York City educator” was her mother, Caroline Gallup Reed. Elected as a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and other professional societies, Caroline along with her husband, Sylvanus, established Reed College, a school for young women in New York City (not to be confused with the Reed College in Portland, Oregon) on 53rd Street between 5th and Madison Avenue, near Central Park. She wrote Mrs. Sylvanus Reed's English, French, and German Boarding and Day School, Young Ladies, 1885-86; I was not able to track down a copy, nor was I able to find out what happened to Reed College, which seems to have disappeared without a trace despite being incorporated in New York in 1883 “so as to assure the perpetuity of the establishment”). Caroline was also the “Organizing Regent,” one of the founding leaders, of the Manhattan Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. In short: super-establishment and also highly accomplished.
Anna traveled in elite circles. Her husband, Colonel Parsons, was an enormously successful New York City-based civil engineer. Parsons worked on the Panama Canal and he also led a team of engineers of the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I. Anna’s brother, Sylvanus, was the aerospace engineer who developed the modern metal aircraft propeller.
An old friend of hers, Ellen Duryea, was mourning the death of her husband, Hermanus, in 1916. Anna suggested that Ellen could best honor her husband’s memory by building a new library in Navesink. Encouraged by Parson’s offer to split the cost of buying the land for the building, Mrs. Duryea agreed to fund the construction of the building. To this day, Hermanus’ portrait hangs over the mantle in the reading room.
On the streets of New York, I would pull over, park illegally, take a picture of the library – most often, from only a single vantage point: head on – and then roll to the next one on my list. The streets were quiet. What else do I remember? Not much, really, not much at all. The days, while individually enjoyable, have become a blur. I was glad to reach Long Beach – one of Long Island’s barrier islands – in time for lunch. The sign on the awning out front read: “Beach. Read. Repeat.” Inside, a “Youth Services Art” display contained a series of scarified Barbi dolls placed inside coffins, presumably in preparation of Halloween, or maybe just from the artistic preferences of the local gothic youth.
Had I arrived 100 years earlier, I wouldn’t have found a public library. In the winter of 1926, a reporter from Long Beach Life bemoaned: “A stranger to the city might very properly ask, Where is the Public Library? And who would not be ashamed to admit there is no such institution here. Not only is there no public library in Long Beach, but so far as we can learn there are no provisions for the establishment of one.” What this reporter did not know was at that very moment three local organizations – the Long Beach Women’s Club, the Long Beach Lions Club, and the Property Owners Association, were promoting the establishment of a local library. In January 1925 the Women’s Club approached city officials with the hope of persuading them to fund a library. The women were not sufficiently persuasive, however, and their bid was rejected, and so they created a members’ only private library. The Lions Club – which as an international organization did not accept women as members until 1987 – started its own free public library in a store owned by Max Peck, one of its members. The Lions Club built a coalition of local organizations – including the Women’s Club? – which in 1926 was successful through a local initiative to create a public library funded by taxation and accessible to everyone.
My therapist has given me some homework: identify your most important values (and, if I want, my least important ones). You can find many ‘value lists’ online (you can find the best selling author Brene Brown’s list here). The list I used was developed by Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap and other books and is a practitioner of ACT cognitive behavioral therapy: A – accept your thoughts and feelings and stay present; C – choose a valued direction; T – take action. I don’t have any particular reason to recommend this list of values over any other list; they all have substantial overlap and idiosyncratic differences. The Harris list contains 56 values, and encourages you to add your own.
I had worked on my list a couple of years ago, and I hope my therapist can find it so I can compare them. Kamala Harris, in explaining how she had embraced many policy positions in 2020 before rejecting them in 2024, stated “My values haven’t changed.” Well, mine have, at least some of them. Some of the values listed have never been important to me: conformity, order, and power, for example. Other values have moved up my list or dropped off it. “Acceptance” made my top 10 list for the first time. A main reason undoubtedly is that repeating the Serenity Prayer (“God, grant me the serenity to accept that which I cannot change”) is now an integral part of my daily routine. Acceptance, which Harris (Russ, not the Vice President) defines tautologically as “to be open to and accepting of myself, others, and life, etc.” For me, acceptance means to live in the world as it is, not as I imagine or wish it to be. To be honest about myself and others, to the extent that I can observe without bias, or at least to recognize my biases where they exist. It has less to do with praising and blaming than it does with understanding.
Dropping off the top ten list: adventurousness (“to actively seek, create, or explore novel or stimulating experiences”). This may seem weird given that I’ve been driving around the country for most of 2024 while living in my car (as my friends would say “What an adventure! You’re so adventurous!”), and “flexibility” and “open-mindedness” made the list. What I’m trying to do is to find the perfect balance, the golden mean, of routine within novelty, of freshness on a base of stability.
So, after exploring the Long Beach library for a bit, I parked Goldfinger and moved into my lunch time rituals. Step 1: put a couple of teaspoons of Metamucil into a shaker bottle, add water, shake, drink, and rinse out. Goal: meet daily recommended fiber intake. Check. Step 2: put one scoop of Optimum Double Chocolate Protein Powder into the newly-rinsed shaker bottle, add water, shake, shake again, drink, and rinse out. Goal: meet daily recommended protein consumption. Check. Step 3: take one slice of Dave’s Killer Whole Grain Bread, one tablespoon of no sugar added chunky peanut butter, and one tablespoon of no sugar added four fruit preserves to make a fold-over sandwich. Eat this while drinking a Diet Mountain Dew and reading The Atlantic on my phone. Goal: Carbohydrates, protein, natural sugars, and thoughtful essays. Check. In the final step, I lick off whatever PB&J I’ve spilled on my plate.
I have similar rituals for breakfast and dinner. My meals vary only a little because I’m trying to lose weight while maintaining a health diet, because the food is inexpensive and tasty, because my body feels like it’s in a happy groove, and because these rituals take very little cognitive energy, so I can save that energy for other more important tasks like planning my routes and conducting library research. It is precisely because I keep certain routines that I can go exploring, without creating the kinds of psychic disturbances that might endanger my sobriety.
My lunch finished, I log off my The Atlantic app and go for a walk. One of my top 10 values is “Self Care,” to look after my health and well-being. I might want to try to listen more to my body on this, as I have a strong tendency to listen more to the data I generate on my iPhone than I do to the feelings I experience within my body. In focusing on the data, I also focus on concrete goals that are mainly arbitrary; for example, taking at least 10,000 steps each day.
As you probably know, the 10,000 step rule came not from biomedical science, but rather from a Japanese pedometer maker’s promotional campaign. The “best” number of steps – that is, the number that produces the optimal physical and mental health benefits at minimal welfare costs – is unique to each person’s unique circumstances, and for any individual it certainly must vary from day to day. On days when I am full of energy, have plenty of time, and am well-rested, maybe 25,000 steps are ideal. When I’m tired and busy, maybe I should be content with 5,000 (or even fewer) steps. When I got Covid at the end of July, I walked fewer than 500 steps on my lowest day and only about 1000 steps the day before and the day after. On August 16, while in Colorado with my brother Curt, I walked 20,000 steps one day and 16,000 the next (my hip was killing me during and after the 20K day). In 2023, when I started tracking my steps on my iPhone, I averaged 12K steps a day during August, September, and October before injuring my back and inflaming my hip on an ill-fated tennis outing. After that, my averages plunged: around 6K/day in November, around 4K/day in December and January, and then a slow recovery as I began my library adventure: 5200/day in February, 6100/day in March, 5400 in April, but then 7700 in May, 7500 in June, 8600 in July, 10K+ in August, 12K+ in September and October. Great! I’m now exceeding my daily 10K goal…but can I reach that goal for the entire year of 2024? The math is not in my favor, given that I walked less than that for the first seven months of the year. Still, every day now I take delight in seeing my 2024 average creeping up (my iPhone automatically gives me six step graphs: daily/weekly/monthly/yearly averages, trend comparing recent weeks to previous weeks, daily cumulative step graph, year-to-year comparisons, and day-by-day average over the past seven days). Today, I’m excited to reach the 10K mark before noon.
Wait a minute. I’ve devoted the previous paragraph to data details, without saying much about how I actually feel (other than “my hips hurt”), which is harder for me to do because, you know, I don’t have data on this. I sort of go back and forth, in the sense that sometimes I think “my body doesn’t feel so great – I don’t feel so great – so I must go for a walk anyway because it will be healthy for me (and it will help keep my stats up).” Other times, I think “look, Mark, you’re really tired, and your hip is hurting, so don’t be an idiot, listen to your body, and knock it off.” What I have a hard time remembering is that I don’t have to “make it up” today if I walked less yesterday. It’s hard for me to put this memory into practice, but I must do so if I’m going to avoid the yo-yoing, see-sawing of “I was tired yesterday, so didn’t walk so much, so now I’m behind and must walk more than normal today, which will make me tired and wanting a break…”
I’m also prone to care about streaks: the number of consecutive days I’ve done something. Not obsessed; just prone to care. The number of consecutive days I’ve taken my sobriety pledge, completed the Connections puzzle in The New York Times, walked 10,000 steps. And wait, there’s more! I’m now thinking about how much of my day’s activities are based on more-or-less random units of time. I usually ride the stationary bike for (choose one) 20, 30, 45, or 60 minutes, never 18 or 32 or 55. And precision! I stop pedaling precisely when the timer hits 20.00, not 19.58 or 20.02. Sometimes precision is necessary, of course: if the ferry is scheduled to depart at 3.15 p.m., I best be there by that time, or by no later than that. The recovery meetings I attend typically begin at the top of the hour and, amazingly considering that they are hosted by alcoholics, they actually begin as scheduled. If the library closes at 5 pm, you can be sure that the librarians will begin announcing this well before the bells chime (‘The library will close in 30 minutes. Internet access will be shut off in 15 minutes, so please save your work before then…”)
When the precise time is a “departing at” or “opening at”....I more and more often prefer to arrive early. When I was younger, I wanted to be the last person to board the jet. Now that I’m older, I want to board earlier enough to get some overhead space and settle in.
After lunch, I go for a walk on the boardwalk. My destination is chosen not based on time (e.g., walk 15 minutes) or step count (such as ‘take 3000 steps’) but instead on some landmark: I’ll walk until I reach a distant flagpole, or lighthouse, or the stop sign at the end of the block, etc. Today, I’ll walk to the end of the boardwalk in Long Beach’s Ocean Beach Park. I’ll head, as always, into the stiff wind on my way out (never finish, always begin, by going into the wind). And the wind is stiff today. I don’t wear headphones, the better to think. The leeward side of the boardwalk is a mixture of apartments/condos and abandoned buildings, its days of popularity having vanished decades earlier (there are a couple assisted living facilities along the beach, as well as one abandoned school). Most intriguing to me was one multi-level condo, balconies lush with plants and statues of Buddha.
Whenever I visit a town, I check out the Wikipedia page. I’m especially interested in the Notable People section. Long Beach has a higher ratio of women to men than most towns I’ve visited, with a ratio of 5:17 women-to-men. The women? Irene Castle, who with her husband Vernon introduced dances like the Tango and Foxtrot to US audiences in the 1910s; Eleanor Holm, Olympic swimmer and movie star; Joan Jett; Audrey Peppe, Olympic figure skater; and Amy Fisher, known nationally as the woman who shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco after having an affair with her husband while she was a minor. As athletes, entertainers, villains, and, often, politicians, the women on this list don’t seem to be much different from the men.
Each town has stories worthy of being told. In the 1880s Austin Corbin’s efforts connected Long Beach to Long Island by rail, bringing a reported 300,000 visitors in its first season, although only a tiny fraction of these could stay overnight at Corbin’s Long Beach Hotel, which he billed as the World’s Largest (it burned to the ground in 1907). William Reynolds, a politician and developer, wanted to make Long Beach the “Riviera of the East” and in 1906 brought in a herd of elephants, ostensibly to help build the boardwalk I was walking on but in reality just as another publicity stunt. Reynolds required all the buildings along the boardwalk to be designed in an “eclectic Mediterranean style” with red tile roofs and white stucco walls. His Castles by the Sea theater, which doesn’t exist anywhere on the internet, boasted the largest dance floor in the world, and it was there that Irene and Vernon introduced their exotic dances. Reynolds went bankrupt in 1918.
During the 1920s and 30s, Long Beach had its fair share of bootlegging, arrests for bootlegging, corruption, arrests for corruption, and sensational murders, with and without arrests. The town’s first mayor was convicted of misappropriating funds; almost the entire town turned out in support when he was released on appeal. Starr Faithful – that’s her real name, not her porn one – either committed suicide or was murdered in 1931. The evidence is clear that Starr was sexually adventurous and had a fondness for liquor, but despite extensive investigations (including two non-fiction books, substantial discussions in at least five others, and numerous articles) the mystery remains: did she, or did she not? In 1939, the Mayor was murdered by a member of his security detail, no doubt about that. Long Beach reached its pinnacle in the 1940s, when actors such as Jose Ferrer, Zero Mostel, Mae West, and other famous actors performed at local theaters, while Jack Dempsey, Cab Calloway, Humphrey Bogart, Rudolph Valentino, James Cagney and John Barrymore made Long Beach their home.
Then, faded glory, as the town and its boardwalk declined like a slow-eroding beach. The boardwalk hotels became run down and converted into temporary housing for welfare recipients and the elderly, and the boardwalk became a hangout for those with few other places to go, until the police made them go elsewhere.
The boardwalk is itself in good repair, and quite a few joggers, bikers, and strollers were pushing into the wind or being blown forward by it. Only one restaurant – Shakes and Shuckers – was open for business. Neither lessons nor laughter came from an abandoned school.
Patchogue was my home for the night, and it was a suitable one with a YMCA, a library open until 8 pm, and a magical projection lights festival (Long Island’s first and only!), a lucky discovery. Public art, just for the sake of art. Across the street from where I parked Goldfinger, a church’s facade was illuminated with psychedelic foxes; the bank next store had kaleidoscopic patterns that brightened and faded to some unheard song.
The Patchogue Library Association, formed in 1883, started the first subscription-based library, which never quite found its footing. It moved frequently during its seventeen years of existence, serving variously from a shoe store, a stationery store, a music store, the Lyceum Theater, and other locations. Financial stress, lack of dedicated facilities, and ultimately a precipitous drop in membership led to its demise in 1899. At the Board’s final meeting, it proposed that some other group take charge of the library.
Patchogue’s chapter of the Sorosis stepped forward. Sorosis, the first professional women’s club in the United States, was established in New York in 1868 by Jane Cunningham Croly, an author and journalist better known under the pseudonym Jennie June. After she, and all other women, were barred from a New York Press Club’s banquet, she and a group of other women writers joined together to form their own exclusive club. In 1889 Croly expanded the club nationwide as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
In Patchogue, the Sorosis Club lives on, in a way, through the Women’s Club of Patchogue, which celebrated its 95 anniversary in 2025. Thank the youth for this. In 1930, a group of women under the age of 25 started the Junior Sorosis Club, as they were too young to join their mothers in Sorosis. By the late 1930s, the “Juniors” concluded that they didn’t want to join their mothers’ club. They increased the maximum age of their members and continued to grow. In the 1940s, they adopted the modern name. Sorosis faded away; the Women’s Club remains.
Croly was sympathetic to the suffrage movement, although she was hardly one of its leaders, as she believed that women’s principal purpose was to be "the caretakers, the homemakers, the educators of children," according to Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger, the American suffragist, civic leader, feminist, and pioneer in the field of women's history. Croly’s message to American women was that financial independence and economic equality was as important as the right to vote, and perhaps even more so. Competent performance, not sex, should determine a person’s economic prospects.
When New York State Supreme Court Justice Wilmot Smith, a lawyer from Patchogue, wrote Carnegie to inquire about a grant, he did so “at the request of my wife, who is President of the Board of Trustees of the Patchogue Library.” He went on to say that “through the efforts of my wife…[the town had voted to approve] $600 annually for the support of the library.” Furthermore, “my wife, knowing of your desire to aid educational advancement…desires to call your attention to the situation here” and asks for Carnegie’s consideration. Smith made the request; Lizzie L. Mott, his wife, put him up to it. Patchoque’s Carnegie library, funded through a $15,000 grant in 1905, is now a historical society museum and teen center.
The next section doesn’t really fit here, so I’ll fix it in post-production.
The women definitely didn’t always get their way regarding Carnegie libraries, or it’s safe to say anything else. In Clarion, Pennsylvania, Mrs. Annie C. Phipps, who had been a houseguest at the magnate’s castle in Scotland in 1898, personally solicited Carnegie for a grant (Pamela Spence Richards, “Aborted Library Projects in Pennsylvania: Community Reactions to Library Offers in Carnegie’s Native State,” in Martin, Carnegie Denied, p. 21). She got him to agree to donate $10,000 to Clarion if the town would provide the library a six percent ($600) annual tax, less than the ten percent he normally insisted upon. The citizens were enthusiastic, and when it came up for a vote the townsfolk supported the measure by a ten-to-one margin. As the Clarion Democrat reported, “the taxpaying portion of the gentler sex of [Clarion having] the first opportunity they have ever had of casting their votes in a municipal election” (cited by Richards, “Aborted Library Projects,” p. 22).
The town’s council, however, hemmed, hawed, and then hemmed again, repeatedly delaying final approval of the tax. Then it hawed some more, and it never approved the plan, presumably as the council members deemed other purposes for the taxpayers monies were more important. The town wouldn’t get a library for another thirty years.
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