Day 71, Monday, May 13, 2024: Knoxville, Iowa to Ames, Iowa
- Mark Carl Rom
- May 13
- 7 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Colfax and Ames, Iowa
I started my workday at the Coffee Connection on the town square in Knoxville. One group of women are engaged in lively conversation which I neglected to eavesdrop on. Another elderly – that is, older than I – clatch was having breakfast, while assorted individuals popped in and out to pick up their morning treats. I ordered the bottomless coffee for $2.50 (a single cup was $1.75) and sat by the window with an unobstructed view of the Marion County Courthouse. The courthouse was built in 1896, seventeen years before Knoxville's Carnegie library opened. The courthouse’s architecture is thoroughly American, in the sense that it’s a creole mutt: its Richardsonian Romanesque style incorporates elements from 11th and 12th century Italian, French, and Spanish styles.
The Blooms of Iowa florist shop is just around the corner from the Coffee Connection. I watched while one of the florists walked out of the shop carrying a flat of cut flowers that were bound for the cafe where I was sitting. The flowers were delivered and friendly words were exchanged. The Connection’s proprietor inserted a couple of the stems into colored glass vases and placed a vase on each table; my table received two rose orange tulips in a pink vase.
What a joyful moment! I don’t think that flowers were placed on each table to maximize the cafe’s net revenue. A parsimonious business advisor would probably have advised the cafe’s owner that fresh flowers were an unnecessary expense, and I think that advice may be correct. Those flowers might have been optional and man did they make me happy, and I would like to think that the flowers made the cafe’s manager happy too: I bring my community the essential (coffee) and the superfluous (flowers). The flowers’ purchase was essential for the Blooms of Iowa – it’s in the business of selling flowers, after all, and unless its customers buy the blooms the shop will go bankrupt. The essential purpose that florists serve is to provide comfort, solace, joy, peace to the community. I remember once learning that a community became a town only when it had a florist.
The Colfax Carnegie library is closed on Mondays. I’m glad I walked up to the front door, because next to it was a plaque reading “The Colfax Library is the result of the hard work and dedication of Colfax’s leading female citizens at the turn of the 20th century to bring a free library to town. Dr. Alice Turner led the fundraising efforts.”
Alice Turner was born in Mingo, Iowa, about ten miles from Colfax, in 1859. In 1884, she graduated as an allopathic doctor (i.e., one who uses modern medical practices) from the Keokuk College of Physicians and Surgeons in Iowa City; her husband, Lewis, was also a doctor). In 1890, she was admitted as the first woman to join the Iowa Public Health Association. Beginning in 1874, she kept a daily diary for most of the rest of her life, which I must assuredly return to Colfax to read.
In 1904 Iowa’s Library Commission began its report on the Colfax library by noting that it “sprang into existence as naturally as did her famous mineral waters.” Nature depended on the efforts of Dr. Turner and Miss Fannie Wilson. These two individuals were members of the local reading club, which had been formed in 1892. Frustrated by the paucity of books in the town, they pledged to establish a public library at the first opportunity, and they made their opportunities. A traveling concert company was unexpectedly delayed in Colfax, so Turner and Wilson twisted the company’s arms to hold a concert as a library fundraiser: $10 was raised. Ten bucks in hand, Turner and Wilson approached the town council to obtain a room for the library in the city hall which was then under construction. They were told that if they could raise $500, they could have a room. In 1893 the newly formed Colfax Public Library Association presented the city council the $501.64 they had raised, and the library was opened. Turner was chosen as the President of the Board of Trustees – she served as a Trustee for 23 years – and the Chair of the Book Selection Committee.
In 1903, Turner, along with the other members of the Board of Trustees, wrote to Carnegie of their interest in procuring a grant. Mrs. Hortense Vail, who was not a member of the Board, was not content to sit and wait. In a letter dated November 7 she wrote to Carnegie “Dear Sir, I called at your house yesterday to talk with your secretary about a library, but I was not permitted to see him…” Bertram did respond to this letter “Dear Sir [even though it was clear that he was responding to Mrs. Vail], Your letter of November 7 was received.” But, no dice. Mrs. Turner – who, by the way, writes in elegant hand – the Mayor, and others, persisted in their correspondence. They received their library in one of Carnegie’s smaller grants. If the town guaranteed to support the library to the tune of $500 per year, he would provide $5000. This amount was later revised to $6500 – the town begged for $10,000, indicating however that it could pay not a penny more than $650 annually for the library’s maintenance. The grant was originally awarded in 1904, yet it took nine more years for the library finally to open.
Alice was more than a doctor, mother, and library patron. She was an advocate of suffrage, and the first woman in Colfax to cast a vote, either in 1895 or in 1904; accounts differ. She was interested in “modern spiritualism,” the belief that it is possible to communicate with the dead. (In 1885, she gave the talk “Am I Led Astray, or Are Things as They Seem to Me?” to the Union Society of Spiritualists of Central Iowa.) She was a Unitarian, a U.S. Daughter of 1812 (both her grandfathers fought in that war), a member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Woman’s Relief Corps (whose primary purpose was to perpetuate the memory of the Civil War’s Grand Army of the Republic, the northern army), and the Order of Eastern Star (an auxiliary of the Masons). She was a charter member of the Colfax chapter of the Philanthropic Educational Organization, P.E.O., an “organization where women motivate, educate and celebrate women.” She wrote an (unfortunately) unpublished history of Colfax. All this in addition to the fact that “She was the original promoter of the Colfax free public library of 4500 volumes and it is due to her indefatigable, persistent and intelligent leadership that the library was finally provided a home in the elegant structure on Division and Locust streets” as the author of “A Brief Story of the Life of Colfax’s Leading Citizen, Dr. Alice Turner” tells it.
America’s towns are proud, each town in its own way. An undated article in the Des Moines Daily Capital newspaper has the headline “Season is Open in Colfax.” The article, which sounds like a press release from the Chamber of Commerce, lauds Colfax’s “at least a dozen mineral springs, the curative properties being already famous across the United States…” It boasts about the various local businesses, with the “citizens able to pull together for the best interests and advancement of the town.” Colfax also has “perfect drainage and a perfect sewer system [and] a public library well-stocked with the best books…” Perfect essential services, in other words.
I spent the afternoon in the Carnegie library in Ames, with its amazing digital archives. (More on this, tomorrow.) The library’s parking was metered, so I used my ParkMobile app to purchase a couple of hours. I absent-mindedly clicked through the various screens and purchased parking for ROK8 (the license plate for our Bethesda car) and not AWE-96Y, Goldfinger’s tags, so in the eyes of the guy writing tickets for parking violations I had not paid. I muttered a few soft fuck me’s – soft enough that no one could hear me, or so I hoped – as I walked to the car as I could see the ticket on the windshield. The parking enforcement guy, Tom, saw me and walked over to my car.
Tom: “Ticket or contest?”
Me: “What?”
Tom: “Do you want the ticket, or do you want to take a contest?”
Me: “Contest.”
Tom: “Trivial Pursuit or Know Your Music?”
Me: (Thinking, isn’t Know Your Music just a form of Trivial Pursuit?) “Know Your Music.”
Tom: “Name one song by Gordon Lightfoot.”
Me: “You mean by Canada's greatest songwriter – Justin Timberlake and Celine Dion can’t even compare – who has sold over six million albums and who died peacefully in 2023 at the age of 84?”
Tom: “Yes, that one.”
Me: “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which I don’t like.”
Tom tore up my ticket and handed it to me, and I gave him thanks that were profuse and sincere. We chatted a few more minutes – it was a lovely day, I was glad he didn’t give me a ticket, and he was probably glad that no one was shouting curses at him for a change – and then we wished each other well and went our separate ways.
On many days I’ll have some small, random, conversation like this. Later that afternoon I popped by the Chocolaterie Stam shop to get some gelato and, when scrutinizing the options, I asked my server Lindsay “Which flavor do you think would go best with the espresso chip?” She recommended the creme brulee (a great choice) and, because I was the only customer, we ended up talking about writing for a couple of minutes. Lindsay is in the MFA in Creative Writing and the Environment at Iowa State (the degree requires both writing workshops and environmental fieldwork); I tell her about my niece Zoė who earned a masters in journalism, with a focus on environmental science, at the University of Colorado. Our conversation lasted no more than five minutes, and I would like to think it made the day better for each of us.
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