Day 91, Wednesday June 5, 2024: Belleville, Illinois to Greenville, Illinois
- Mark Carl Rom
- 4 minutes ago
- 11 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Edwardsville, Pana, Mattoon, Arcola, Charlestown, and Greenville, Illinois
Days sober: 349
I don’t know which was louder: Interstate 64 or the birds. Either way, both woke me up at 4.30 a.m. It was gratifying that I was able to sleep that late, as the rear two windows of Goldfinger were wide open (although covered with black mosquito netting) and thunderstorms were forecast for 3 a.m. I slept with my natty black Adidas shorts and Enosburg Vermont t-shirt on, believing that I would need to leap out to roll up the windows when the rain came, and I didn’t want to do that buck naked. Greeting a bear unclothed was one thing; having to walk into the hotel lobby that early, had I mistakenly locked myself out of the car, would have been much worse.
The distance from Belleville to Greenville is only 30 miles and I plan to drive 200 more miles so that I can visit six Carnegies along the way, so my route looks like a Roy Rogers lasso. I’m hoping this will be a good day for a good day.
Just one year after Illinois became a state, in 1819, Edwardsville had its first public library, with 121 books and John Randle as the librarian. That library only lasted a short time, before “the essence of the library was preserved by a group of dedicated women,” according to the library’s website. In 1879, the library was formally rechartered. Sarah Coventry worked at the Edwardsville library for 46 years between 1891 and 1937, so she was there when the Carnegie grant was received in 1903. Local resident Mary Corlew remembers Coventry
"When I was about 12 years old, I went in one day to check out Spoon River Anthology and Elmer Gantry and [Coventry] said “Those books are not for you” and she wouldn’t let me check them out, and also we were not allowed to make any noise."
Deanne Holshouser, another librarian, served the library for 33 years, from 1980-2013. In 1956, most of the library’s collection was destroyed by a fire. As the library was being restored, local artist Miriam McKinnie “brightened the walls of the children’s room with whimsical scenes from children's tales. These scenes include ‘the pied piper of Hamelin,’ ‘hey diddle diddle,’ ‘sing a song of sixpence,’ and ‘mother goose’.” Surely these paintings delighted children and their parents. A bench memorializing Holshouser, presented by the library staff, is just outside the front door. Such tributes to the role that women play in our libraries are priceless.
I posed my questions about Coventry and Holshouser to Evan, who was staffing the circ desk, and his associate Gwen heard us and directed me to the library’s YouTube account. Eureka! Edwardsville’s YouTube has instruction videos, poetry and book readings, a “Talking Allowed” series of book and movie reviews, and two “flash mob” videos. (Remember when flash mobs were a thing?) Just in case you don’t, the first documented use of the term was in 2003, and by 2004 the Concise Oxford English Dictionary defined flash mob as “an unusual and pointless act.” The OED goes on to state that “Typically the action performed by a flash mob is bizarre or unusual and intended solely to attract attention and entertain” which is exactly what the library’s flash mobs accomplish. Seven videos show librarians addressing the topic “How the Freedom to Read has Impacted EPL Staff.” In these videos, a librarian identifies a book that has been challenged and why they believe that work to be important. In Evan’s video – and Evan is one of the few African American male librarians I’ve encountered on this trip – he speaks about Beyond Magenta, which showcases the life experiences of trans teens. Evan “enjoyed the book because it was a means of seeing a different walk of life, and I feel that stories that share real life experiences are important, now more than ever.” I didn’t learn as much about Coventry and Holshouser as I might have wished, although a tour of the library’s videos made my day.
The Carnegie-Schuyler Library in Pana was founded in 1900 through the efforts of four women’s clubs: Olio, Literary, Fortnightly, and Tuesday. (I’d love to learn about how these clubs differ, and I’m guessing the differences included social prestige.) These clubs approached the town’s council and persuaded them to levy a tax to fund a library, and the town established a library board. In 1901, this board approached Carnegie for a grant with a letter signed by a long list of citizens, including hairdressers, grocers, shoe dealers, and grain and hay dealers. Years of letters and delays followed, and the grant was finally given in 1911.
I got to meet Lisa Lynch. I mention both first and last names because those also happen to be the names of my first wife, although the Lisa here is a blonde who wears wire-rim glasses (unlike my ex-wife) and is not a size 0 (as ex-wife is). Lisa is the latest in a long line of female Head Librarians:
Nelle Reese
Nellie C. Russell
Jennie Long
Fannie Vidler
Marie Maisch
Marion Kuehnert
Kathleen Deere
Janet Hicks
Lisa Lynch
I wish I could send them all roses, and include Jeanne Budds on that list. Jeanne was not a head librarian, and I don’t know her story. The library’s kiosk (“Library Where Adventure Begins”) out front was given in her honor, so someone knows it.
In the library’s online history, Hicks reports that she had found a bound handwritten book of how the library was organized. Lisa, to her regret, was not able to put her hands on it when I inquired. None of the four clubs that promoted the library still exist, and I imagine that each merely faded away as their world moved on. The only women’s clubs listed on Pana’s webpage are the P.E.O. (The Philanthropic Education Organization, “where women motivate women”), the Moose Lodge #1015 Ladies Auxiliary, and the Delta Theta Tau Sorority.
When I arrived at what I thought was the right spot for the Pana library, a “Carnegie-adjacent” building was across the street and I mistook it for the library. What I saw saddened me: this grand church had been abandoned. I thought about how it was once full of worshippers, and how the pews gradually emptied until the offering plate, passed from hand to hand, could no longer support the church in its mission.
Like so many other midwest towns I have visited, its glory days have passed in “a wink of a young girl’s eyes” as The Boss sings it. Pana’s population peaked in 1960 and it has been in slow decline since then. And its history has not always been glorious: in 1899, clashes between striking white miners and the Blacks brought in to replace them led to violence, leaving several dead on each side. Some two-thirds of the 300 Blacks living there left to move to Kansas, and as recently as the 2010 Census only five African Americans lived in the town, which had the reputation as a “sunset town” (where no Blacks can be after the sun goes down) based not on the law but on a “strong oral tradition” according to the History and Social Justice website. Nicknamed the “City of Roses” due to the number of florists in town, others have referred to Pana as “people against [N-word] association.”
If one gazes out the window – put those phones down! – in Gays, Illinois (pop. 218), one might see what just might be the only two-story outhouse in America. It’s located in a small park, and the town is proud of it, for real: “Outhouses were once an important part of everyday life, and their historic contribution should be preserved for prosperity.” Built in 1869, it served a building that had a store on the ground level and an apartment above. The “crapper” served both floors, so those in the apartment didn’t have to trudge outside to do their business. The building is gone, yet the privy lives on. Latrina in perpetuum.
When Mattoon applied for a Carnegie grant in 1901, the existing library “was abominably situated in our present location, with the fire horse department in the adjoining room [with] all [its] noise, confusion, and annoyance…” Carnegie provided $20,000 and the new library opened in 1903. An addition added in 1995 preserved the feeling of the original so that “It is difficult to tell what parts of the Library are the old building and which are the new.” Bravo!
The elegant Classical Revival style Carnegie in Arcola and the more homely Carnegie in Charleston share a common characteristic: the lack of any published historic material to speak of. (The Arcola Carnegie does have a Wikipedia page, which lists the architect, style, and cost.) The Carnegie archives do contain a very long letter from the President of Charleston’s Library Board, which at one point extolled the virtue of the town’s unidentified librarian in 1901:
The Librarian, who is competent in every way to take charge of a library at least five times as large as ours, receives eight dollars per week, and devotes almost all her time to the library, mending the books and devising and carrying out plans to make our small number of books and periodicals go as far and do as much good as possible. She has established the Dewey classification, the Newark charging system, and has a complete card catalogue, so that we have made a right beginning which will not have to be changed with an increase in the number of volumes.
I only hope that the sentiments expressed in the letter earned her a raise, as her weekly salary in 1901 is equivalent to about $300 today.
The Ladies Social Circle of Greenville led the effort to obtain a Carnegie for that town, as it had been involved with library work for a half century. Formed in 1856, the goal of the Ladies Social Circle was to “promote the intellectual and moral elevation of society,” or so says an unsourced Wikipedia citation. This “source” states in addition that the Circle raised funds for a library for the next fifty years, with the first book purchased with the club’s cache being the Holy Bible.
Mrs. C.D. Hoiles was the correspondent in Greenville’s application for a Carnegie, and in her application she notes that the Ladies Library Association (the successor to the Social Circle) was maintaining Greenville’s library, which had 4000 books in two rooms. The Ladies pledged to donate their books and $1500 were a new library to be built, and to seek a special meeting of the city council to gain its approval. In subsequent letters to Bertram, Hoiles signed off as (Mrs. C.D.) Juliette W. Hoiles, and Bertram responded that Mr. Carnegie would be pleased to contribute $10,000. The library opened in 1905.
Over eighty percent of drivers are pulled over by the police sometime in their lives, according to a number I just made up. Data that are not pulled out of my ass show that Black and Hispanic drivers are much more likely to be pulled over than white drivers and much more likely to be searched for contraband, although they are actually less likely to possess illegal goods. The “less likely to possess contraband” element is key, although its interpretation is tricky. It’s possible to believe that minority drivers are more likely to be pulled over than whites because the former group is doing something suspicious. If that was the case, it would seem that they would be more likely to possess illegal goods. That whites are more likely to be carrying contraband when they are pulled over doesn’t necessarily mean that they are more likely to be carrying; it might just mean that they are unlikely to be pulled over unless they truly are acting suspiciously. For whatever reason, that Blacks and Hispanics are less likely to be found with guns, drugs, and bodies in their trunks after traffic stops seems to provide clear evidence of racially discriminatory policing.
Other than my encounters with police wondering if I were breathing or telling me to pee elsewhere, I haven’t had to think much about the popo on this trip because I haven’t been engaging in any illegal activity (well, except for the peeing thing). It’s not like driving while Black, yet driving while Tipsy carries its own risks and, unlike being Black, being under the influence is a choice, not an innate characteristic. In the rooms of recovering alcoholics, I’ve heard stories of alcoholics driving drunk thousands of times without being pulled over as well as the tales of those who were arrested over and over again.
I’m between those two categories. I was arrested once for a DUI. Here’s the story. A homeless family had been living with Lisa and me, in our basement, for a couple of months. We had met through our church. The mother actually had a decent job at a travel agency within walking distance (barely) of our home. Her oldest daughter, about 17, fully bilingual, couldn’t be convinced to get a job. Her 15 year old sister, who was not the sharpest, was already a mother and had gotten pregnant again. A younger brother was cheerful and fun, and the family also had another young daughter. They had been living in truly terrifying public housing in DC, the kind of housing project in which the family wouldn’t sit close to a window for fear of getting hit by a stray bullet and where the family members never walked alone. They needed to get out, and so we took them in. They were unable to find subsidized housing in Virginia, where we lived, because no subsidized units big enough for a family of six was available, and the waiting lists were longer than a punk’s rap sheet.
We had given them an ultimatum that the oldest daughter must get a job to help support the family; she’d rather go off playing with her boyfriend instead. So we finally told them that we would no longer house them, and so we paid for a week’s stay for them at a hotel out in Manassas. After I dropped them off, it seemed like a good idea to poke into a convenience store and buy a six pack. My wife and I had separated and I was living with my sister in McLean. The exit to her home was just past the drive leading into the CIA headquarters. It being dark, and me not being bright, I took the CIA drive. There was no place to make a u-turn before I arrived at the gate to the CIA entrance. I was stopped by the guards, breathalyzed, and arrested. Hey, but I was just barely above the legal limit! (I think I blew a 0.11 BAC, with the limit being 0.10) That wrong turn cost me as much as loading up on 30 year single malt Scotch for a Leaving Los Vegas. I lost my license for six months, although I was allowed to drive to and from work. I could no longer pick up or drop off my sons, so Lisa carried that burden. I was put on probation, so an officer came to my apartment every month to inspect it to ensure that it was “safe”. I was living in a dumpy one bedroom at the time, and the first time the officer visited he asked “Georgetown professors live like this?"
That episode taught me nothing. Two other times I was flagged down by a cop after drinking, and both times I narrowly avoided getting busted. One made me take the field test, walking toe to toe down a straight line, a test that is sort of worthless because how many people can do that sober? I passed. The other time the traffic patrol caught me on an exit ramp about a mile from where I was living. I passed the breathalyzer, which seemed to piss him off, and he threatened to arrest me anyway. We sat in his car until the tow truck he commandeered arrived to haul my car that last mile. I gave the driver the address about three houses down the block, so that after he unhooked my car I could drive it into my driveway like nothing happened. In the months before entering rehab, my daily prayer if I had been drinking was “Dear God, please don’t let me get pulled over today.” Maybe I should have instead sought the guidance not to drink and drive.
I watched the soft rosy glow of the setting sun silhouetting a grain silo, a spinning ornamental windmill, a sheet metal barn, and a lone ragged tree. A few of the hotel’s visitors were talking and laughing on an outside deck. I booted up the first episode of the K-comedy “Mr. Queen” and dug into the SmartPop.
