Friends of the Tellico Village Library asked the community to hit the road for a good cause.
Saturday’s creative Literature and Local History Road Rally fundraiser collected nearly $3,000 from 120 participants for The Public Library at Tellico Village.
From 10-11 a.m., rally participants stopped by the library for a packet filled with book-related clues. They were encouraged to follow clues to solve riddles or puzzles and bring a cellphone to take photos of locations to allow their imagination a chance to decipher book titles.
“What we tried to pick were names of books that people would know like ‘Oliver Twist’ or ‘David Copperfield’,” Peggy Kahr, Road Rally Committee chairwoman, said. “Those are all Dickens books, but even if you hadn’t read them you’ve heard the name. ... There’s different places that they’re looking at tableaus to guess the title of a book. For instance, in other words, there would be maybe two maps of Chicago and say Detroit and what would be the book title that would leap to mind? ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ and that’s going to be in different driveways, different tableaus with the book titles are supposed to be the answer. Then some of the historical locations around Lenoir City, here and Vonore.”
The road rally was not a race but kept a leisurely pace. Participants returned packets 3-5 p.m. to qualify for a prize.
The prize for the most number of clues solved was a $100 gift card from the Carmichael Inn in Loudon as well as bottles of wine for runners-up. The back of every ticket had a 25% coupon from AWE Hospitality good through Thursday.
Kahr considered the rally a good, safe way to get Villagers involved.
“Something fun and still support the library, because we are having to come up with ways to pay the $5,000 mortgage,” Kahr said. “... We have to replace income from the 4 Bs and the big book sale to pay for the $5,000 a month mortgage. We’re a unique situation, the only one in the country where the Friends of the library own the building instead of — I mean, Loudon County doesn’t own it.
“We thought about online auction but we didn’t have enough time to get that going,” she added. “Because we have to go out and solicit prizes and solicit stuff. Right now it’s a hard time for businesses to give away anything.”
The auction is still a possibility, she said.
Sandi Jorgenson, committee member, thought Saturday’s success was evident because “we’ve had such enthusiasm.”
“People are dying to get out of the house right now and do something and this was our answer to COVID,” Jorgenson said. “You can be isolated from the world but you can still have a good time. That was the whole point. Plus the fact that we’ve had to cancel every fundraiser this year and this is helping. It’s a success for us and we think it’s a success for the community because it’s getting them out and having a good time.”
Rob Ballantyne thought he would give the rally a shot after learning about it online and seeing signs along the road. Ballantyne with a laugh said he hadn’t been in a road rally since high school.
“I think it offers a little bit of a challenge, an opportunity to meet people,” he said. “It should be fun. And an opportunity to visit the sites in the area.”
Kahr believes the rally could make a return next year.
Committee members thanked John Cook of Cook Bros. Homes and Doug Ewell of Realty Executive Associates for donations to the effort.
