Walk in the Parkeology

 My archeology pals overseas are always picking up odd little bits of artifacts.  Bits and pieces of pottery and such from the Roman era on down.  Here in the US of course it is much harder.  I suppose there are arrowheads and such in some places but you have to look long and hard for them, and have your eye "tuned" for same.

Which is not to say that I don't come across anything on my frequent walks.  On one of my usual routes I go through a city park and recently started noticing bits of glass at the base of a hillside.  Over a couple of trips, and helped by heavy rains, I picked up a glittering pile of shards.  So what can be learned from them?

Here's the collection.  It is mostly shards of thick glass, the sort you find with beer bottles or especially soda bottles.  They have to be thick to handle the pressure of carbonation.

Most of the identifiable shards are from the Alb. Nunke soda bottling works of Chippewa Falls.  This makes sense, his factory was not far from the park, although I should point out it is NOT at the site of my finds.  (For some reason digging up hillsides for objects of minimal value remains popular!)

There were examples of both small and large Nunke bottles.  Here's what the smaller size looks like in one piece.

But there were some other things in the assemblage as well.  This base has the markings of the Wisconsin Glass Company of Milwaukee.  It is a bit early for Nunke, and none of his bottles are known to bear this marking.  It might have been a competitor's bottle that came his way as a misplaced return.  These usually were tossed.

But I don't think that this collection of discards was directly related to the Nunke bottling works. There were some other bottle fragments as well, things that had nothing to do with soda pop.  This shard is of a particularly notorious patent medicine, Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup.

This medicine was first marketed in 1845, and despite increasing criticism and scrutiny it was still being sold in the 1930's.  It claimed to ease the discomfort of infants with teething or colic.  And it probably did, as it contained alcohol and morphine.  There were many deaths associated with the use of this and similar concoctions.

So what to actually make of these findings?  Probably not much.  The location would not fit as a dump for Nunke bottles, and in any event such sites would have thousands of fragments, not dozens.  It is not likely to be someone's household dump either, it is along a road that would not have had houses on it in the 1885-1910 time frame that is represented by these shards.  Remains of a picnic?  Well, maybe.  The area became a park in 1906, and the only thing definitively older is the mid 1880's Wisconsin Glass Co base.  But more likely this was just "stuff" tossed over a hillside.  That's been human behaviour from time immemorial.

Signs of the Covid Times

Maybe not the best message in a time when we are worried about both infection and preserving the  economy...

No Beer for the Bears - Final Answer

 I've returned several times to the beginnings of my Forgotten Brewery Caves series, the "bear den" cave in Irvine Park, Chippewa Falls.  It is an interesting site and is on my frequent walking route.  It is also the site of a geocache I placed called "No Beer for the Bears" that explores the connection between the beer storage cave and the bear dens.  

Oddly after all these years the question of whether the bears actually lived in the beer cave is still elusive.  Well today I hope to put it to rest.

The basics.

The beer storage cave was excavated in the early 1870's by Francis X. Schmidmeyer, the first brewer in Chippewa Falls.  He must have had an earlier cave that proved inadequate.  It is said that it cost him $1,000 to excavate and blast this cave but this is based on the sketchy recollections of one of his children about 80 years after the fact.  When the Schmidmeyer brewery went out of business in the late 1870's the cave supposedly was taken over by Leinenkugels.  This would have been back up or overflow storage as "Leinies" had their own cave right behind the brewery.  I'm assuming that the advent of refrigeration machinery circa 1890 would have made this cave superfluous. 

Irvine Park recalls the name of its original benefactor William Irvine, who in 1906 arranged for the donation of 165 acres of land.  Whether the cave was in the original parcel or acquired in the next few years is unclear.  But with the establishment of a zoo in 1909 a set of bear caves was built adjacent to and by some accounts, incorporating the beer cave.  On the surface this would make sense, bears do like caves.  

But I have always been skeptical.  This cave has a natural spring that keeps water running across its floor year round.  Very good for cooling beer.  Less good for living in.  And since the bears were the star attraction it would not seem ideal to have a dark cave for them to retreat far into.

Recently I ran across a couple of potentially helpful images.  This one purports to date to 1909 but everything has a bit of a finished look to it so I suspect it could be later.  Note also the bear looking with interest at the free roving turkey on the left of the photo.

Next photo is a postcard.  This makes the reported 1910 date a bit more likely.  It probably has a post mark.  And it is in the collection of the State Historical Society.  They tend to pay attention to this sort of thing.

This shows the cave with no cages in front.  There are a couple of benches, on one of which you can faintly see a woman with a light scarf on her head.  This would fit with the alternate notion of the cave as a shelter for visitors in bad weather.  So which is the view that's true?

If you go back to the first image, I've tried to line up the sidewalk and the cement that marks the front of the cages.  Those should be in the same place.  Here's approximately the same view today.

I don't think it fits.  The sidewalk still curves, heading towards the historical marker.  The cave is barely glimpsed behind that cluster of trees.  But in the 1909 view there is a substantial projection of rock that I just can't see here.  The sidewalk in fact has to veer away from it. So what gives?

Well one theory is that the historic photo has been reversed.  This happens sometimes.  Flipping it around we see:

 This would put the rock projection on the right of the bear cages, i.e. on the opposite side from the cave.  I think this is a better match if one accounts for a bit of erosion and soil wash down.

I have to say, this is a tough call.  But from what I can figure out the extension of the cages on the end is not the full depth of the caves.  Perhaps this was a storage area.  

A lot can change in 111 years.  The remaining cement and brickwork could easily be from renovations.  But the essential illogic  of letting the bears skulk in a dark wet cave coupled with the picture of it being used as a shelter for humans (it's quite a nice place to ride out a thunderstorm, and also cool and soothing on a hot day), helps me overcome a few lingering geometric doubts.  And it is also worth noting that nowhere around the cave entrance will you see any sort of foundation remains.

No beer cave for the bears.

Hopportunity Knocks

I had a chance on a recent very hot day to help with the hops harvest.  Oh, I've long had a few on my back fence for home brewing purposes but these folks have a couple of acres growing.  In these difficult times it is crucial that we have a supply of decent beer to be enjoyed....in moderation of course.  So this was a sort of public service project. 

Hops are really quite lovely, and smell great.  They do however cause itching with prolonged contact on skin.   And with 90 plus heat long pants and sleeves were hardly practical.

Here we have the trailer piled high with vines just cut down from their wires out in the hop yard.  Bella the dog is, well, Bella does not actually do much but chase butterflies, but she's pretty good at it.  The big red machine separates the hop cones from the vines quite effectively.  The conveyor belts and such are exactly the sort of tech that our last robot needed.

Then it's back to the yard to cut down another batch of vines.  On the return ride I got to just lay among the hops.  Even with a bit of sweating in the heat I figure I smelled great.

I never consider it a good day unless I learn something.  Although there are elaborate rigging systems that allow you to lower the hop vines to the ground, it is easier just to snip the vines at the base and just pull on the ropes to break them loose from the overhead wires.  Because it combines just the right mix of strength and breakability, the rope you want for this is made of coconut fibers.  It can only be purchased from Sri Lanka.

There, now you've probably learned something too.  Have a good day!

Strange Fishing Challenge. Day Two.

 The ongoing saga of my attempt to catch 20 species of fish in seven days of angling.

Day Two

I had not planned on fishing on a Sunday.  I like tranquility when I fish.  But it turned out to be a very nice day and I figured that given the places on my list for the day, crowds were unlikely to be an issue.

The agenda for the day was the Yellow River and its tributaries.  Why?  No particular reason other than that streams of various sizes have unusual fish, and that I had a geocache or two up that way to look into.  And so we're off...

Drywood Creek

You won't come close to 20 species without targeting various bottom feeding suckers.  And also the many glorified minnows that are out there.  I'd never fished this stream but had heard it had promise.  

I liked the crumbling bridge abutment.  There were also some old hunks of rusty bridge parts in the water.  When you are on the hunt for unloved species of fish these hillbilly flourishes are appreciated.

Here's what lives there.  The Common Shiner.

And... our old friend the Creek Chub.

From my experiences at Chub Fests I am a proficient minnow angler, so this was in my wheelhouse.  I also nabbed a couple of other smaller specimens that I had hoped were something else, but my consultant decided that they were just immature versions and color variants.  Still, not a bad morning.

For the afternoon expedition I fished several locations along the Yellow River with a quick stop at another tributary creek.  Hey, it had a new culvert!  No chub fisherman can pass those up.  Some were at places with rapids and pools, others at quiet spots.  The plan was to put one bait on the bottom with a big pole capable of handling carp and so forth, while using the light tackle to target other species.  Some locations had established hobo fishing spots.

The afternoon portion of the program was less successful.  Oh I caught fish.  Quite a few in fact.  But so many repeats of species I already had.  Chub after chub.  And when I put a hook full of worms on the bottom to try and entice bottom feeders it kept getting hit by a parade of hungry small mouth bass.  So...no additional species.  And a distressing amount of lost tackle.  There's a lot of logs and such on the bottoms of creeks and rivers.

Lessons learned:

This is not going to be easy.

I will probably have to fish at inconvenient times of day.

Forgetting my polarized sunglasses was not helpful.

Small mouth bass will attack anything.

Species tally:  2. Runny tally 5.

Enjoyment factor:  Let's see.  Plenty of fish caught but insufficient progress on my goal.  Lots of scratches and bug bites.  On the plus side, although I saw a bit of poison ivy I am as of this writing 24 hours out and seem to have avoided trouble.  Also, there were frogs.  Many frogs.  More frogs than I've seen since I was about the age of my amphibian obsessed grandson.  He'd of loved it.  So....7.5/10 on the day.

Re-equipping and planning for the next stage.  As I am not doing this on successive days my next report could be down stream a bit.

Strange Fishing Challenge. Day One

Yes, time has been wearing a bit on us all.  With so many enjoyable pastimes having become problematic it is but skimpy compensation to find a few that are well suited to diminished times.  Fishing for instance.  A Social Distancing Activity if there ever was one.

Not that it is solitary.  I am in the middle of a five generation chain of anglers.  My grandpa Hanson was a serious fisherman.  It probably reflected his young adult life during the Great Depression.  I went fishing with him a lot when I was but a minnow.  Everything we caught got cleaned and fried up in butter.

My father was pretty tied up in his career,  but did spend his rare vacations up at the lake, and the three of us were often found trolling - the fishing kind of course, this was decades pre-internet! - for pike and such.

I managed to disengage enough from my own medical career to give my oldest son a good taste of fishing and he has gone on to become quite accomplished.  His son, now approaching five years old, will eclipse us both.

We got to talking a while back about how many different kinds of fish we had each caught.  A species tally if you will.  Not counting Alaska and Florida trips I have about 18.  My son somewhere in the low 40's.  The grandkid already has 20.

Right then and there I decided to set a challenge.  Could a mediocre but wily angler catch 20 different species of Wisconsin fish in seven days?  I also got to set my own rules.

- If you can catch it on hook and line it counts.

-The seven days need not be contiguous. 

- Obviously rules, regs and laws must be followed.  So, here we go....

Strange Fish Challenge Day One.

Location: Namekagon River, Sawyer County. I occasionally tag along on DNR fishing surveys and this was a chance to get a few oddball river species.  My catches in order, with first fish getting the photo.

Shorthead Red Horse

This is one of those peculiar river species I was hoping to "score".  Pretty red fins give them their name.  A good thing to catch, they indicate above average water quality.

Small Mouth Bass

One of the five or so main game fish species popular in the area.  These guys were the actual research target of the day so I was happy to contribute a few to the study.  Minus a clipped off spine they all went back in the drink.  When you are hanging around people who spend a lot of their time thinking like fish you just assume that the fish are trying to say something.  This guy was asking to go back in the river and apologizing for not being able to grant the customary three wishes.

Walleye

Arguably the most prized game fish in Wisconsin I was happy to get this one.  Not a common catch in a shallow river.  I had tossed the camera to the back of the canoe for this photo.  It looks like the fish is whispering something in my ear.  

Scorecard for Day One

Enjoyability of the day: 9/10, points off only for mild sunburn and a few aching joints from prolonged sitting in a canoe.

Species count 3.   Running tally same 3 after one day of seven.

How it went:  I was hoping for a few more strange river fish.  Several other species of red horse were around but I didn't get any.  Still, the walleye helps.  After Day One I decided it would take not five but seven days to make a decent run at 20 species.  I'm gonna catch up to that four year old yet!

More Covid Cancellations. A farewell to Machines Behaving Badly.

 Roughly two weeks until the start of school.  Different areas of the country, even adjacent communities, are struggling to figure out what school should "be" this fall.  Some are going all virtual.  Some are hybrid.  Some, and this is the case in our community, are taking the plunge and going in person school five days a week.  It's a tough call.

I had predicted that football would be the bellwether.  If that gets the go-ahead then surely other activities with much less nose to nose contact would be good as well.  But....

With a changing situation and with guidelines from the State that can charitably be described as vague there is a fair amount of "making it up as they go".  And for now it appears there will be no non-district employees involved in whatever reduced extra curricular activities actually do occur.  This hits very hard at the middle school Voyagers program, so it seems likely that Machines Behaving Badly is done.  

So it appears that just short of the 20th year of chaotic pint sized combat robots....it's Game Over.  I had hoped to have a special Total Destruction Tournament at the end of this year's class.  But it is not to be.

Oh, one could try to run it in the Spring but to be honest things will by that point be different.  If they are better I'll have travel back on the menu.  If they are worse, then restrictions will be the same.  Or perhaps tighter.

And as to FIRST robotics at the High School, well, we've had to scrap the ambitious summer program that we had contemplated.  The move into the new STEM center is in limbo.  And if the strictures imposed at the middle school level are logically applied to the high school then our hard working, talented pool of community volunteers will be locked out.  Hardly an encouraging prospect.

Travel, robotics, giving various in person talks, attending the local tech school.  These were all major elements of my post retirement life.  Gone and no clear prospect of return.  So one tries to stay busy.  I've got assorted home improvement projects to take on.  These are fairly good time consumers due to my basic inefficiency at many such tasks.  On a recent trip to the Big Store o' Guy Stuff I spotted something that in any recent summer I'd have considered a real score.

The FIRST robots all have padded bumpers.  The specs are quite specific, they have to be made of foam pool noodles covered with durable fabric.  As the FIRST build season is in mid winter these can be difficult to find, so a late summer sale can be very helpful.  Well...

A dollar a piece.  And I bet the silly dolphin head would be thrown in to boot!  Sadly I ran my fingertips over the colorful hoard, thinking of a season that at this point seems unlikely to be.  And left empty handed.

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Quality Control?

Evansville Wisconsin is a very appealing little town in the south east corner of the state.  Lots of great architecture and very well preserved.  Oh, there's a bit of odd political vibe to the place, but to a casual visitor this is not apparent.  

The cemetery is on the outskirts of town and in general is well kept up.  But I did notice one "Tree Shaped Tombstone" that caught my eye and held it.

Actually a fairly commonplace specimen.  But let's zoom in closer....

Yikes!  That's a bit of a typo.  Due to weathering and some pesky light angle issues I can't quite tell when Mr. Robinson died but I must assume it was before his wife passed in December of 1916. I think we can also assume that there were no children around to take notice of this shoddy craftsmanship.

It makes me wonder just how the lettering was executed.  In many cases the tombstone would have been put up when the first spouse died, then the additional data added later.  Sometimes you see big blank spaces that one's imagination can freely populate with tales.  I figure there must have been some kind of portable cutting tool, probably powered given the clean nature of the cuts.  Did they have a little steam engine or some such?  Or would they actually take the stone down and carefully take it "back to the shop"?  With the various cranes and such that their trade involved this would have been possible.

So many of the early stone cutters were immigrants, especially from Italy.  Whether out on the grounds or back in the shop they might have been working from written notes.  And when doing crosswords I have occasionally heard from my wiee that my penmanship is imperfect.

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Way Over the Top in Janesville, Wisconsin

I had occasion recently to pass through Janesville Wisconsin.  It is the sort of older, mid sized community that is prime hunting for "Tree Shaped Tombstones".  I was not disappointed.  At the Oak Hill cemetery I ran across this gem of a family plot:

In addition to the large central "tree" there were little stumps marking each corner of the plot, and for good measure a pair on either side of the stone in front with the family name CULVER.    It seems the Culvers really liked this style.

But what the heck are those things on either side of the main monument?

They must have been custom carved from "segments" of a generic tombstone.  And what's with the tops?  At first glance you'd think these were seats, a place to sit and contemplate the Departed Culvers.  But are they?

Looks a bit uncomfortable even if that lump did not have initials carved on it.  Purpose unknown.

The craftsmanship on this set of "trees" is quite good.  Take a look at the base area:

Now take an even closer look!

Either a mouse or squirrel, and in either case a nice whimsical touch.  Well done Culvers!

Tree Shaped Tombstones - A Double Oddity

Spotted south of Green Bay Wisconsin by one of my roving correspondents....

This is a sort of Tree Shaped tombstone that I call "His and Hers".  It is generally arranged so that there are two trunks growing separately...but with intertwined branches.  Often there are nice little sayings carved on them, or on occasion symbolism such as a pair of clasped hands. Overall the quality of work on this one is pretty good.

But there's something a bit off about the composition of it.  As seen from the better lit back side:

The crossing branches are blunted and the base of it looks, well, rather crotch-like.  The effect is rather suggestive of a naked person diving down a rabbit hole!

For comparison here's a much nicer example:

Not an Easy Find

Most people enjoy the hunting aspects of geocaching.  And that can be fun as well as a bit of exercise both physical and mental.  But I actually prefer the creation and hiding of custom caches.  It gives me a chance to tell little history stories.  And to build custom cache containers.

Most caches you find are commonplace.  Pill bottles or small plastic jars, often with camo tape or black paint.  After a while you just start tuning your eyes to look for them.  So creating a custom cache, something unexpected, is part of the fun.

A cache should be sneaky....but not go too far.  I've heard tales of caches hidden in fake dog poop or with a half dozen decoy caches in the same general area as the subtly hidden true cache.  

Recently I started working on a basic cache that can be easily modified.  Cheap, waterproof, and big enough to hold not just a log book but a few pictures and some laminated text.

Here's the "base version".

And here's how to make it.  And to make it sneaky.

The white square tube is plastic.  The Menards surplus store had a big box of these.  As we shall see it takes paint and glue well and is easy to work with.  Of course aluminum tube would also work.  Steel would be less good, unless rusty metal is your camo idea.  But it would stain the contents too.

I doubt there is a widget on earth that you can't order from McMaster-Carr.  I  did some careful measurement and found these inserts that fit the tube perfectly.  Just a bit of sanding involved, then glue the bottom in for good measure.  The top can have a variety of decorative and/or functional pull knobs added.

Outdoor welding table is a great place for painting.  The paint is mottled and multi-color by design, it just has to be peeking through in places.  See those strips of bark?

Base model and nasty, sneaky version.  I don't have a specific location in mind yet, this was just one of a series of ongoing experiments.  For finishing touches perhaps a bit of black Sharpie ink on the places where the shiny glue shows through.

C.C.C. Camp Pigeon Lake

The Civilian Conservation Corps camp east of Drummond Wisconsin actually is referred to variously as "Camp Drummond", "Camp Pigeon" and "Camp Pigeon Lake".  The latter seems most sensible, as it is in fact on Pigeon Lake.   Maybe there was some long forgotten convention on length of names.

The story is a familiar one.  It was opened in October of 1934 by CCC Company 640.  This was one of the older companies in the area, as evidenced by the low number.  The 1933 date on the sign likely refers to their formation that year, although they were at other camps before Pigeon.

Here's part of the traditional group photo.  Notable in this one are a fair number of hospital personnel.

When you travel through the area today it is densely wooded, making it easy to forget that in the early 20th century it was a logged over mess of stumps and washed out gullies.  Company 640 spent a lot of time on erosion control and reforesting.

Also noteworthy in the montage of photos below are the nice ambulance in front of the camp hospital, and the camp orchestra.  I've puzzled over an enlarged version and can't quite make out their name....CAMP PIGEON ????TEERS.

The camp baseball team was good, although the basketball team was better, taking second in the state CCC tournament.  The fellow who looks like the manager seems to be wearing a jersey that says CAMP PIGEON CCC.  Very cool artifact, I've never seen anything like it that survived.

A 1937 tabulation listed what Camp Pigeon had accomplished in the previous 31 months. 

"..more than sixty miles of trails, one ranger station built, 1,568 acres planted with trees, 1,944 acres of timber stand improvement completed, two fire towers constructed, 249 miles of lineal survey run, twelve miles of telephone lines constructed, and ribies ( maybe rabies?) eradicated to the extent of 2,430 acres, besides considerable work in lake surveying and planting fish."

At the close of the CCC era most camps were abandoned and were soon nothing but ruins.  But a few had a different fate.  From 1938 (reported but probably in error, 1948 would make more sense) to 1959 the camp was used by a variety of groups...Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and church groups.  In 1959 it was purchased from the Forest Service by the regents of the state college system.  This was under a "surplus property" program so presumably ownership had been retained during its summer camp era.  It became a most associated with the University of Wisconsin River Falls branch, who ran art, biology, business and teacher's education classes there.  It is a "second act" story rather like that of Camp Taylor Lake.

The facility was considerably expanded during that era and quite well maintained.  Sometimes it was loaned out to other groups such as the Elder Hostel program.

A few pictures from the summer of 2020.

Definite summer camp vibe.  I'm not seeing much of the earlier military style layout. 

But here and there, if you know what you are looking for.....

Faint traces of the CCC past.

The place has an eerie quiet to it now.  Evidently the last active use of it was in 2014.  At that point it was closed, supposedly with dinner plates still on the tables of the mess hall waiting for another batch of hungry campers.  Enrollment in Field Station classes had declined.  Maybe the more exotic lure of semesters abroad was just impossible to match.  The property reverted to the State of Wisconsin.  Several years of trying to find another educational use having failed the property is now for sale.

A Nostalgic Review - Planet of the Vampires

My little foray into classic movie theater history stirred up a few old and curious memories.  Born in the late 1950s I was around in the era when TV had just started to overwhelm cinema.  I suspect I was trucked along to a few wholesome uplifting movies early on, but my first clear memory was from just a bit later....I was probably 8 or 9 years old.  The theater was The Capri.  The movie was "Planet of the Vampires".

Now you might well ask, why would my brother and I be off watching horrible stuff when under 10 years old?  Well, there's a tale for another day.

It certainly left a powerful impression on both of us, and had interesting ripple effects both on our future cinematic preferences and on one of the true classic films of a later decade.  First some basics.

As it says in the fine print, this was an American International production from 1965.  That means it was filmed on the cheap in Italy (budget $200,000) with an international cast.  Evidently they all spoke their native languages during filming, so part of the surreal quality of the film is that English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese were being tossed back and forth with quite variable levels of comprehension.  Italian productions always somehow manage to make cheap  look good.  This stands as a classic example of Spacemen - and Space Women - in leather outfits.

You  see a lot of mist in the background.  They did not skimp on the fog machine budget.  Indeed, they could not afford to.  It was the only way to cover up the fact that they filmed all of this in a couple of very small areas.   Oh, and they needed to make the rocks look good.

They had exactly two of these cool looking alien rocks left over from a previous movie.  Literally using smoke and mirrors they made entire unearthly landscapes from them!  Once or twice somebody bumped into them.  They wobbled.

I won't bother you much with the plot, beyond wondering what the actors and actresses thought they were making as opposed to how it emerged from editing.  But the set up is that an strange message is received from a supposedly uninhabited planet.  So naturally they have to investigate.  See if you can figure out any parallels with that later film...

They encounter a derelict spaceship:

Within they find the skeletal remains of a gigantic alien crewman:

Of course by now you have figured it out.  When Dan O'Bannon, writer of the movie Alien (1979) was first asked about the similarities between it and Planet of the Vampires he first demurred, but then later admitted he may have seen some of it and perhaps it had a few stylistic influences!

There are obviously many other parallels.  Both movies have strong male leads...who make the absolute worst possible command decisions.  Doors left open that should have been sealed.  Crew members who are not what they seem to be. Lone sentries left peering out into the mist saying "Uh....is somebody out there....?".   Catastrophic events that make destroying their ship necessary.   Many of these themes of course go much farther back than 1965.  Echos of cold war paranoia,  also every haunted house movie ever made.

On a final, happy note I discovered that the Capri Theater not only still stands, it is in fact being extensively renovated!  It is the last classic era movie house left in North Minneapolis although it is shut down for the duration of the Current Unpleasantness.  Looking at the pictures I could actually summon up a few images from 1965, although in general they were of eerie lighting and shadowy recesses.  No doubt with "something" waiting to leap out.