Day 88, Saturday June 1, 2024: Springfield, Illinois to Joplin, Missouri

Carnegie libraries visited: Waverly, Jacksonville, Griggsville, Pittsfield, Winchester, and Carrollton, Illinois; Carondelet, Carpenter, Barr, and Cabanne branches of the St. Louis system, Missouri

Days sober: 345

I didn’t skip Lincoln’s New Salem Park entirely. I pulled into it before it opened at 9, and the nice guy at the visitors’ center said that I was free to look around and use the bathroom. Gratefully, I did both. 

Lincoln lived in New Salem for six years beginning when he was a young man of 22 in 1831, before he was elected to office. He did various chores, and worked for a while at a small store there, as a surveyor, and as the Postmaster. The store was not a success (in Lincoln’s words, it just “winked out”), it seems because his partner was more interested in drinking while Lincoln was more interested in reading books. There are lots of legends regarding this settlement, although it appears that many of them are just that. Information about the settlement was gathered much later from residents or their relatives. All, it seems, wanted to enhance their families’ relationship with the great President.

Lincoln's New Salem Village

The Park contains two dozen rough hewn log cabins – only one has clapboard siding, at the insistence of the woman who lived there – all but one of which were built during the Great Depression by the CCC. Many were on the original sites, as determined by archaeologists, and all were outfitted with historically appropriate artifacts. The settlement itself was abandoned in about 1840 as other nearby towns provided greater opportunities.

A few of the buildings were staffed by “living history” employees who could provide additional insight into life in the village. On the gray Saturday morning I visited, the Park was nearly deserted, so in walking the paths to the various buildings it was easy to imagine how it might have appeared to the residents (sans paved sidewalks) on an early June morning in the 1830s.

I’ve had the chance to visit other historical towns (Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia and Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts) and love wearing my historical memories while doing so. When I worked at Philmont Scout Ranch, I spent three summers living history myself: at Cypher’s Mine, as a gold miner; at Black Mountain, as a pioneer; and at Clark’s Fork, as a cowboy). In these roles, we would present ourselves as if we were living the history. We couldn’t stay completely within these roles: if a jet flew overhead, we would not look up in wonder at the big silver bird. Yeah, it’s a jet, we’d say.

One of the best parts of working at Philmont is the stories we would collect, polish, and share over the years. It wouldn’t matter if we shared them with a Philmont staffer we actually worked with. Anyone who had ever worked at ‘The Ranch’ could identify with the stories, as they were timeless.

Let me share a couple of these stories with you from my summer at Black Mountain. As pioneers, we had black powder rifles and instructed the Scouts visiting us how to use them. We lived in a tiny cabin – no more than ten feet by twenty feet, with bunks for the four staffers who lived there. We had no electricity or running water, and we cooked our meals over an old Majestic wood burning stove. Our cabin was infested with mice, so we go on hunting trips inside the cabin hunting trips. We would place a snack on the table, load a rifle (with powder, but not bullet), and then pull the trigger, vaporizing the mouse. I didn’t say that I was proud of all the stories. 

We also had bear problems. We kept our burro feed in a storage bin behind the cabin. The feed was a favorite bear snack. One night, after my staff and I were all asleep, we heard the bear break into the bin and start munching. I thought I would scare the bear off by going near the bin and shooting off a round from my 55 caliber Zouave rifle. Otherwise naked, I pulled my boots on, loaded up the rifle (again, with no bullet, just black powder), and crept behind the cabin. I held the rifle up and fired into the sky. The bear just stood up and looked at me, and I looked back at him. I didn’t exactly have a plan B, and it occurred to me that I was butt naked and out of ammunition. I’m not sure what the bear did. I know that I hightailed it back into the cabin.

We had burro feed because we had burros. There were no roads leading into Black Mountain, so we brought all our supplies in on the backs of the burros. We kept them in a pen just downstream from our cabin. One morning, one of my staffers went to feed the burros and then came back to me to say “Boss, we have a problem. One of the burros is down and doesn’t look good.” When I got there, I saw that the burro looked much worse than not good. He looked quite dead, and enormously bloated. We had to get him out of the pen – we couldn’t just leave him to rot there – and so harnessed the other burros to drag him out, but they were having none of it: they wouldn’t let us get them close enough. So, I took matters, and an ax, into my own hands. Perhaps you have never chopped up a burro with an ax, and I wouldn’t recommend that you start now. I did my best Molly Hatchet routine and soon the burro was quartered, if not drawn. The burros disemboweled remains were put into a large bucket, which I then carried further into the woods, only once spilling it all down my legs.

I zippered south through Illinois today, stopping at libraries in New Berlin, Pleasant Plains, Waverly, Jacksonville, Griggsville, Pittsfield, Winchester, White Hall, Carrollton, and Jerseyville before arriving in St. Louis late afternoon. If these libraries have stories to tell, and I’m sure they do (or should), I’ll dig them up on my next pass through this travelogue.

New Berlin Public Library

Pleasant Plains Public Library

Waverly Public Library

Jacksonville Carnegie Library

Griggsville Carnegie Library

Pittsfield Carnegie Library

Winchester Carnegie Library

White Hall Public Library

Carrollton Carnegie Library

Jerseyville Public Library

I hadn’t arranged the four libraries I planned to visit in St. Louis in a logical map order (say, from north to south) and so I drove a zig-zagging route through the city. My image of St. Louis was that it was Baltimore west: a once thriving city, with pockets of affluence and swaths of poverty. My route led me to pass through both. In urban areas the affluent and poor neighborhoods appear to be demarcated by location and race; the richer the neighborhood, the whiter the street traffic, and vice versa. Some, delightful; others, bleak.

St. Louis Carondelet Carnegie Library

Each library resides in a distinct neighborhood. The Carondelet neighborhood, which borders the Mississippi river in the extreme southeastern part of St. Louis, has the most majestic library of the four, suggesting a grandeur that had slipped away. This community of seven thousand has some of the oldest houses in St. Louis and also a mixed-use industrial area along the river. It is one of the most demographically diverse towns I have visited, with a population that is 43 percent white, 39 percent Black, and 10 percent of Hispanic origin. The library was closed, so I couldn’t get a feel for the patrons, although I wish, but doubt, that they were as likely to come from the areas of decay as those of polished brass door knobs.

St. Louis Cabanne Carnegie Library

After WWII, the Cabanne neighborhood became populated by younger, poorer, non-white renters. It is now almost entirely non-white and low income, another casualty of residential redlining. Since the 1960s millions of federal dollars have been spent there in an effort to revitalize the area. The neighborhood was almost devoid of parks, and some of the federal funds were devoted to creating new parks.

St. Louis Barr Carnegie Library

The Barr library shows the brutality of some urban planning. It is located in the Lafayette Square neighborhood, before that community was butchered by the building of Interstate 44, which roars by the library’s shoulders, with two billboards towering above it. The area’s residential housing was protected until the state Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional; after that, many of the Victorian houses were converted to boarding houses and the neighborhood went into decline. The Carpenter library, in the Tower Grove/Shaw area was also infected by Interstate 44, although it has been somewhat revived in recent years.

St. Louis Carpenter Carnegie Library

In one of the neighborhoods I drove by – unfortunately, as I was driving I don’t know exactly which one – pedestrians were carrying their picnic baskets to a concert in the park, where a large crowd had already gathered. Another park was hosting a ‘Pagan Picnic’ which, unfortunately, I passed by. When I return to St. Louis, I plan to revisit these neighborhoods so that I can give a more personal account. 

My itinerary called for me to spend the night in St. Louis. Fayetteville, Arkansas, the home of what was once the Rom Family Orchard, was only 350 miles out of the way so, hey, why not drop down and visit my father and brother? It was only 6.30 in the evening, I could take interstate highways the entire way, and the  Arkansas Razorbacks baseball game would be on the radio. So I drove until the final Arkansas out, with the tying run on base, losing 7-6 to Kansas State in the NCAA regionals. Whoa, hogs.