Carnegie libraries visited: Beaumont, South Pasadena
I could see a long line of cars snaking towards our southern border when I woke up in Calexico. What I could not see, and I was definitely looking for it, was a long line of people waiting to enter (legally or not) the United States. Or dashing over, under, or around border fences. I know that there is chaos at some parts of the border; order prevailed here. I drove around the city for a while on the lookout for gangs of drug and gun toting invaders, yet the only people I saw were harmless looking adults waiting patiently at bus stops, kids walking to school, or drivers getting their coffee at drive-thrus.
Today I’m driving north from the Mexican border along California state highways 111, 78, and 86 before I hop on I-10 into Pasadena. This route takes me through miles of agricultural land north of Calexico, desert along the edge of the Salton Sea, scrub growth leading into the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument and the San Bernardino National Forest, and then finally into the urban sprawl of southern California. I passed by the libraries in Calexico and the combination library and sheriff’s office in Mecca before arriving in Beaumont.
The Beaumont Women’s Club made the move to create a library in 1909, with Elizabeth Barrett, Bessie Balanger, and Bessie Wells named as directors of the new library association. The Club raised $71 and collected 81 books on their own. To raise more money for the library, they sold stock to Beaumont residents at $1 per share. The biggest stockholder was the Beaumont Womens’ Club, which invested $150.
In 1911, a year before Beaumont became incorporated as a city, the women campaigned successfully for a library district even though they could not yet vote. The measure to approve the library passed overwhelmingly 59-27 on August 12. A Mrs. C.J. Miner was selected as the librarian at the salary of $25/month; she served the library until 1918. She was assisted by volunteers from the Beaumont Women’s Club. Local voters were more sympathetic to the idea of a library than to the notion of women having the right to vote, as on October 13 of the same year, a California statewide measure regarding women’s suffrage barely squeaked by in the town by a vote of 71-67. Beaumont had the biggest anti-suffrage vote in Riverside county.
After the referendums, the Women’s Club disbanded and the shares it sold were refunded. In its place the Beaumont District Library was organized. There is no record, or so I have been told, of how the first trustees of the District Library were selected, but they were all men. In 1913 the district requested and received a $10,000 Carnegie grant. This Carnegie library, which opened in 1914, is the only one of four such libraries built in this county that is still open.
Over the next century, every one of the library’s directors has been a woman. Following Mrs. Miner, Miss E. Barrett Stafford (nee Browning) became the librarian in 1918. She was followed by Mrs. Pearl Samson (nee Kohler), Mrs. Irene Evans Lardner, Mrs. Janet Stickland Austin, and then, until 1936, Mrs. Elizabeth Bond. In that year an essay in the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express stated that “Beaumont seems to be unique among small towns, for it does not have a movie show – but more than 4000 books are borrowed from the library each month, making the library the center of community interest.”
Miss Helen Clapp was appointed in 1936 and she served until 1962, when Miss Mary Ellen Pippin served for a short time in an interim role before Gwendolyn Bronson was appointed Librarian in 1963 and led it until 1981. (Bronson, who served the library a total of 36 years, wrote the library’s history in her first year as Librarian.) Rhea Dawn McLughlin (1981-1990), Clara DeFelice (1990-2017), Luren Dickinson (2017-2024), and Kelly Van Valkenburg (2025-) round out more than a century of all female directors.
On this day, the Beaumont library looks great. In 1977 the original building was covered by a mansard roof, ostensibly to visually connect it to a new addition. The connection had the same beauty as an interstate highway bulldozing through a park to link two towns. I don’t know who thought to remove the mansard; I do know that they should be congratulated.
Tonight I saw Pure Bliss out the window of Goldfinger. Truly. Pure Bliss is the name of the CBD dispensary in downtown Los Angeles where, miraculously, a parking spot opened up for me less than a block away from the Freehand Youth Hostel. I had just checked in for two nights. I was planning on staying here only one night but added another to give my stomach a full day of rest. Digestion on the road is a challenge.
I am writing this from a soothingly lit lobby bar area. It is almost 9 pm and no one is at the bar. A few others are, like me, clicking away on their keyboards. The hostel has a swimming pool and bar on the roof and also a lounge for guests in the basement. The lobby has more of a boutique hotel vibe than a youth hostel. Cocktails are $18.
Neil King, who walked 330 miles in 26 days and wrote the book American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, might seem to have little in common with Juliana Buhring’s This Road I Ride about her record-breaking 18,000 bicycle ride circumnavigating the globe. One thing these books do have in common is the number of times they mention beer, bourbon, whiskey, etc. It seems to me that these otherwise disparate authors are frequently lifting a glass, downing a shot, or quaffing a beer.
I am guessing that only an alcoholic would have noticed this aspect of these books. Alcoholics are known for thinking about alcohol a lot and we are vigilant in noticing it in ways that “normies” (the AA slang for anyone who is not an alcoholic) probably do not. Last year, after I had quit drinking, I attended a donor reception at my alma mater. At dinner, a bottle of red and of white wine were placed on the table, so the guests could serve themselves. Between serving and clearing the plates, the waiters would replace empty bottles with full ones.
In my drinking days, I would have been preoccupied with those bottles. When first sitting down, I would maneuver to sit close to one of them. If the waiter did not appear immediately, I would fill the glasses of the persons sitting to my left and right. I would fill mine as full as possible without making it obvious that I was filling it as full as possible. I would be patient at first, waiting for someone, anyone, at the table to refill their glass before I would quickly refill mine. When a waiter would come by asking if I would care for more my only answer was “yes, please.” At the end of the dinner, I would be baffled by those at my table who had left their wine glasses half full. Who does that? Waste not, want not, was my opinion. If I could, and I could only sometimes, I would surreptitiously scoop up one of those glasses and toss it back, hoping that no one else would see me….
Here’s the log of where I slept while on this journey so far: Car. Car. Bed. Car. Car. Car. Bed. Bed. Car. Floor. Car. Car. Bed. Bed. Bed. Bed. Car. Car. Car. Car. Bed. Car. Car. Car. Bed. Car. Car. Bed. Bed. Car. Car. Bed. Bed.
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