Contents   

Idaho Librarian
Volume 56, No. 1

Gift Horses of Very Different Colors:

PART II

A RUN FOR THE BOOKS 

 

photos and text by
the Editor
          In Roberts, the Market Lake Day parade passes by B.J.'s Bayou,
                    where bikers assemble for the start of the Poker Run.

The Roberts Public Library is a small town library struggling to survive.  The city of Roberts is doing about all it can to provide support, yet the library cannot afford to be open more than a few hours a week.  A few years ago, the county government quashed the library's effort to form a library district.  Fortunately, Roberts Public has friends.  It has friends in the persons of Cheril and B.J. Berlin, for example, who own and operate a restaurant in town called B.J.’s Bayou.  As librarian Lee Karlinsey puts it, Cheril and B.J. “like to do things for the community,” and that includes fund raising for the library.   

Left, Flier for the Poker Run.  Right, Cheril Berlin, in blue, talks to the Runners in the Voodoo Lounge.  Behind her, a mural of a New Orleans cemetery with the Cathedral of St. Louis in the background.  Below, the Voodoo Lounge, exterior.
B. J.’s Bayou is a Cajun restaurant serving traditional Louisiana fare: crawfish, jambalyas, etoufées and, on special occasions, roast pig.  It even makes its own boudin sausage (with pork, alligator and rice).   B.J.’s is a down home sort of place and gathers a wide variety of diners, among them, bikers from around southeast Idaho.  Cheril, who is a member of the Roberts Public Library Board, and her husband, saw in that clientele an opportunity to raise some money for the library.  They decided to make use of a biker tradition, the Poker Run. 

For those unfamiliar with this particular form of recreation, a Poker Run is essentially a single poker game that takes place at a succession of bars spaced far enough apart to require several hours of riding before the game is completed.  The game itself is of relatively minor importance: what really matters is the socializing, the drinking and eating, and the riding.  This particular run covered over a hundred miles of south east Idaho, with stops in Mud Lake, Spencer, Dubois and Hamer (usually the bars therein) before returning to Roberts and the Bayou.  The day concluded with a pig roast and live entertainment. 

 
A group of library supporters mount up at the Spencer Bar for the run to Myra's Corner, in Hamer.

There were 37 bikers who participated in the Poker Run.  Most of them live in southeast Idaho and some, according to Librarian Karlinsey, stop by the Roberts library on occasion.  Each biker paid a registration fee to take part in the event.  Part of that fee was set aside as a contribution for the library;  the rest became the pot in the poker game.  The run generated $300 for the library, an amount that represents more than 10% of its annual materials budget.  Cheril Berlin tells me that the Poker Run will become an annual event. 

If there is a lesson in this particular library fundraiser, perhaps it's that there are always new ways to bring in money, and that friends of libraries   come from all walks of life -- which is as it should be.