Time Capsule - W

Cold weather means doing a bit of cleaning and discarding.  I was moving a file cabinet and found this bit of history behind it.

I can date it precisely.  Late Summer of 2004.

We had a German student staying with us for a month or so.  It was not an official Foreign Exchange situation, just providing a bit of US experience for a kid as a favor to a friend.  It  worked out although I recall our own kids being lukewarm to the concept.  I think its important for foreign travelers to see something of the US beyond what they see on TV and what they encounter in the usual destinations:  New York, Florida, Washington DC and, God help us, Vegas.  Germans also are, in my experience, infatuated with Texas.

So we took the lad to a Demolition Derby.  Car obsessed Germans have a hard time getting their minds around the concept of purposeful destruction of automobiles just for fun.  We sat close enough to get sprayed with mud.  He was impressed.

Not long after that we asked if he'd be interested in seeing the President.  "Really?" he asked.  Sure.  There was an election coming up and George W. Bush was coming to town for a rally.  A phone call or two got us tickets.  

It was held at a local factory that made cardboard products.  I don't remember it being especially remarkable.  Big crowd.  Helicopters overhead.  A brief speech that was pretty much a recitation of the usual stuff.

But for a German this was a unique event.  Given their troubled 20th century history political parties don't hold big rallies.  Too "Nuremburg" I guess.  But there we were.  We each got a big cardboard W to wave around.  Maybe he liked President Bush a bit more because of his Texas origins.

A few years later we did visit the student back in his home country.  Later still I understand he moved to the US and started a successful restaurant chain.

It was in Texas of course.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

Christmas is over and we are in that odd in between week that divides Yule and New Years Eve.  So....what did I get for presents?  Nothing much, unless you count the presence of friends and family.  And I do.  Very much so.  It's the simple things you cherish.  And besides as the old saying goes, you can't buy happiness.

Nonsense.

Despite being, and proudly so, an ol' softy I  believe that certain varieties of happiness can indeed be purchased.  Confining ourselves to those that are both legal and acceptable for the general internet reader here's a list.  And because the State of Being Happy should not be exclusive of those with less cash I have suggestions at various price points.

Price range zero to $5

A nice pint of ale.   Perhaps the ultimate value with respect to the cost/happiness ratio.  You can close your eyes, let the cares of the day fade, take a deep sip and remember times, pints and friends past.....

Price range under $20  

We like our house.  We've been here for about 35 years.  And for all that time we've been complaining about a few small flaws.  It has a laundry chute that drops from the top floor to the basement.  That's cool.  But the grungy duds end up in a small enclosed space that has always been difficult.  You bend over and lean in.  There are dark corners were mismatched socks hide.  As the decades roll by our backs start to complain more.  It was time to do something.

As usual the best answer was a collaborative effort.  Initial Guy Solution.  Cut a bigger hole so that we can slide the laundry baskets in, perhaps sitting on a platform so they are at a nice lifting height.

The Gal Modification of Guy Solution.  Get a cheap laundry basket of the proper dimensions!

Around $100

Sometimes modern technology is just different ways to waste time.  But a few things come along that are outstanding.  When sitting out in the cold tree stand deer hunting there is nothing as nice as a garment or two heated with Lithium ion batteries.  Ah....warmth.  Why it even helps a bit with the chilly toes and fingers.  I got a shirt like this and it's great.

This is, I must point out, a male model not your humble correspondent.  He looks a bit dweeby to be out in the woods but at least he's allowed the usual foolish unshaved  look grow out into the beginnings of a proper Hunting Season Beard.  

Several hundred, but worth it.

I live in Wisconsin.  It snows a lot.  I don't want frostbite and/or a heart attack.  Gotta have a snow blower.

OK, not cheap but so appreciated.....

A garage.  Leaving a car outside to get frozen is bad enough.  If you have to park it on street and move it on plowing days....ugh.

Christmas goes to the dogs

Most of the time our house is a pretty quiet place.  Not so at Christmas when kids, grandkids, friends of same....and dogs descend upon us.  I don't show a lot of people pics, but them dogs....

Old Dog snoozes on the sofa.

The young dogs tussle and growl at each other.

The first dog drama of the holiday actually came a couple of days earlier when one of the hounds, noting the tree in the house and recalling what trees are especially good for....well, use your imagination.  The incident was later memorialized in block construction with the grandkids.

Oh there was also the usual stuff.  Good food and plenty of it.  Presents for those of an age to be interested in same.  One of our boys got this interesting gift, a Willie Nelson Chia Pet.  I'm not sure just what kind of seeds this comes with.  As Mr. Nelson says on the box:  FUN TO GROW!

Editing Yeats - Christmas 2022

I've always had mixed feelings about the Yeats poem "The Second Coming".  It is powerful stuff, but speaks to us from such a cynical and broken time, the aftermath of The Great War.

That's not a fair representation of the human existence.  There will always be good and bad in the world; always be things happy and sad either in your current life or just over the horizon.  The difference between a basic optimist such as myself and a pessimist like Yeats is what you choose to see when peering into the coming dawn.  Yeats had an unhappy family life.  If you can't find happiness and inspiration in your children and grandchildren then you are not reporting, but contributing to the cynical and broken aspects of the human condition.

Here's my re-write for Christmas 2022.

Slowly widens the Family band

Yet still they hear the Call of Home

Things hold together.  The Centre is secure.

The Anarchy of grandchildren and dogs is loosed upon us again.

Innocence persists in a benighted world.

The Best love each other with passionate intensity.

And the Worst we can forget for one blessed day.

Herman Dettloff

Today we have a look at another early druggist of Chippewa Falls, and at his surviving building.

Herman Dettloff was born in New York state in 1854.  He moved with his parents to Wisconsin in 1858 settling in Bloomer for a year.  The family then moved to Chippewa Falls where the father was an early blacksmith.

The first mention I could find of Herman Dettloff was in a school report from 1868.  He got good marks for deportment.  He supposedly started working as a drug store clerk the same year, making him only 14 at the time.  At a still very young age he was in partnership with a man named Beauchene but that business dissolved in 1872 leaving Dettloff - now all of 18 - as the sole proprietor.

He was the usual civic minded sort.  Quite early on he was treasurer for the City Fire Department, even being briefly appointed chief in 1893.  He was also City Treasurer in the late 1870's and a director of the 1st National Bank in the 80's, so he must have been a fairly sharp businessman.

In fact he is at various points in the 1880's said to be doing business in St. Paul as a wholesale paint and oil dealer, only dropping in occasionally to look in on his drug store interests.

In 1880 he purchased a 2 story brick building on Bridge Street for $5,500.  This was somewhat damaged in a very destructive down town fire in December of 1884.

Five years later Dettloff built a brand new brick store at 120 Bridge Street.  It still stands today.

By the mid 1890's the firm was doing business as Riester and Dettloff.  This name was still in use in the 1920's although Herman Dettloff had died in 1918.  The later history of the building includes a stretch as Nelson Drug and later the Q Bake Shop.  It is now some sort of boutique.

120 North Bridge, December 2022.

Many pharmacists made up a few of their own preparations.  Here's one from Riester and Dettloff circa 1910.   Courtesy of Ryan Metzenbauer.

Variable Luck at the Good Luck Drug Store

L.W. Stapleton needed some good luck to compete in the drug store trade in Chippewa Falls.  After all he was literally next door to one of his main competitors.  But maybe he was the kind of guy who relied on luck here and there.  Some of his non business interests suggest that.

In 1912 he announced that he was leaving the trade after 30 years in business.  So lets put his arrival on the scene at 1882.  I start seeing ads for his store in 1884 so that seems about right.

In the 1880's he was manager of the Chippewa Base Ball club, an undertaking where Luck is not unhelpful.

And he was a serious fisherman.  He was a member of the Home Fishing Club which later changed its name to the Chippewa Fishing Club.  They had a club house at Chetek and at one point were said to be buying a 14 person boat!  He also had his own place at Chetek, called The White Lodge.

Luck, in business or in angling, can be good or bad.  In 1896 there was a big spring ice pile up on the Chippewa River and downtown businesses had extensive water damage.  The Good Luck store was no exception but as a partial compensation in the process of moving stock out of harms way Stapleton supposedly found a pocketbook full of cash!  In another bit of bad luck The White Lodge burned to the ground in the middle of the night in July of 1908.  A party of young people from Chippewa were staying there and accounts of the ladies scrambling out in various states of undress and the young gentlemen enjoying the whole situation are a bit saucy.

Stapleton's farewell message is worth presenting as is:

Stapleton's Luck ran hot and cold.  But he did have very nice bottles.  Several versions are known all of which feature a horseshoe.

His house also remains at 707 West Grand.

The Collette Pharmacy through the years.

Digging through the history of Pharmacies in Chippewa Falls prior to 1910 you have a lot of names to deal with.  Something on the order of 29 or 30 individuals operating in various partnerships.  But in general there would be four or at most five drug stores in town at any one time.  These long running enterprises - such as the Eagle Drug Store we recently visited - continued on for decades with different men behind the counter.  Here's an example of a store, or at least a building, that has survived into the modern era.

Now a very nice Thai restaurant it was once.....

Urgel Collette was born in Quebec in 1857.  He came with his family to Chippewa Falls at age 13 and began clerking at one of the established pharmacies circa 1874.  Six years later he started his own store.  I suspect he actually took over the store he worked at but as drug stores came and went pretty quickly in the 1870's I can't say which one.  If I had to guess I'd say Leahy and Jesson as they went out of business at about the right time.

In 1888 he built the handsome brick structure that still stands on Bridge street.  Business was good and in addition he took on the clientele of a druggist named Wilcox who died in 1891.

That same year a notice in the paper says that:  "Joseph Nolte after taking a course at the School of Pharmacy passed a successful examination and is now a registered druggist.  He has resumed his place at Urgel Collette's."  As the 19th century inched closer to the 20th pharmacy was becoming a more professional business.  Just being a hospital steward or a long term clerk was by that point not considered sufficient qualification.

Collette had the usual small town life.  He turns up in various minor civic jobs.  When he and or his wife go out of town their doings get reported.  At one point Mrs. Collette was said to be "..quite sick with brain fever" but she recovered uneventfully.

In 1898 Urgel Collette dies and the business is taken over by long term employee Joseph Nolte in partnership with a man named Ihle.  Nolte is said to have worked at the store for 13 years and to be fluent in French and German.  Ihle came over from a pharmacy in Menomonie.

Nolte and Ihle kept the Collette name.  Partly to preserve the tradition but I suspect also out of respect for the founder.  

In 1919 Nolte died unexpectedly.  The next year the building was purchased by other parties and converted into a meat market.  It has been other things over the subsequent century.  At one point it seems to have been a drug store again, run by a man named Oleson.  I see mention of a business called Kookers North, whatever that was.  I vaguely recall it being a barbershop called Gentleman's Quarters when I moved to town in the mid 1980's but I could be confusing it with the many similarly named establishments.  For a while it was an interesting hamburger joint with a railroad theme.  That proprietor was a guy whose main interest was renovating old buildings and he did a good job at that.  At running the restaurant maybe not as well.  Its been Mahli Thai for about a decade now.  I recommend their food highly.

When the original building was sold in 1920 the drug store, I assume run now by Ihle, moved down the street to 224 North Bridge Street.  This was in the "Ihle Block" no longer extant.  But next door there was still a pharmacy when I came to town.  Was Konsella Drug in the direct lineage of Urgel Collette? Konsella's has been closed for about a decade.

Urgel Collette bottles are relatively uncommon given the length of time he was in business.  This one still has some residue of the circa 1895 prescription gumming up the insides.

Nolte and Ihle bottles on the other hand are very common.  It was still the Collette Drug Store a decade or so after its founder had passed.

Still Lifes with Snowblower, Berries and Little Free Library

 

Robotics - Farewell to 2022

Last robotics work session of 2022.  We'll have one pre-season session left before the Build Season officially begins on January 7th.

Last week the team was a bit off, holiday distractions and all.  It's also a really big team, now at 35 students.  So we've divided up into five sub teams with an adult coach or two on each.  Six kids get way more done that 35 do.

And we had a less intense session.

One student has acquired a Mascot Suit!  This is not the full outfit on display.

We have the four swerve drive modules actually mounted onto a temporary wooden frame.  Enough for software to start working the complicated programming.  Or it would be if two of the four units were not missing a teeny, tiny little spacer that I pointed out to the kids two weeks ago.  Ah well, a quick fix and much better than powering them up and seeing things break.

Team photo time!

And after that....Venisonfest.  Four of our hunting families brought stew or chili.  Excellent fare and a good end of the year send off.

Wisconsin Man

The epitome of Wisconsin Manliness.  Posing, rifle over shoulder, with a deer in the bed of a pickup truck.  It is my rifle.  And my deer.  The truck belongs to the guy whose land we were hunting on that morning, an old friend.  But since he's a car dealer maybe I'll end up with that too.....

"Never Act with Children or Animals"

This quote is often attributed to the famous misanthrope W.C. Fields but the sentiments are so timeless that I have no doubt it goes back to the very beginnings of what we understand as public entertainment, the Greek Theater.  I'm sure they took a particularly dim view of fauns and satyrs, those goat/human hybrids who combine the baser qualities of each.

Everything old is new again.  And so on a recent winter afternoon I found myself helping on a video shoot for the robotics team.  We'll see how it emerges from editing but the premise is that maybe you can teach goats to write code.  

Goats of course being Chaos Engines it escalated quickly....

Ah, What's in a Name?

Let me say from the start that I generally disapprove of vulgarity.  It shows a lack of imagination and rarely does it express an idea better than words your grandmother would approve of.  But rarely is not the same as never, and I have an even greater dislike of not calling things by their True Names.

Recently we had the robotics team over to visit one of our sponsors.  They have a new facility and it is awe inspiring.  But I couldn't take my eyes off something up in the ceiling.  It was a fan, slowly turning and something like 25 to 30 feet in diameter.  It looked like this:

When I stood directly beneath it I could read something on the hub.  I'm playing around with a video camera so figured I might get a decent shot here:

Big Ass Fan.  Yep, that certainly describes it perfectly.  

The company that makes these started out being called something else.  But their customers just started referring to their products as, well exactly what they are.  So they changed the company name!  In case you are in need of a ridiculously large ventilation fan here's where to go.

Big Ass Fans.  If that's what you need why look anywhere else?

The Eagle Drug Store of Chippewa Falls

Although this is my third article on early drug stores of Chippewa Falls this one, the Eagle Drug Store, has the most to look at.  Due to a combination of easy to photograph location and some very attractive artifacts there is a lot to like visually.

The beginnings of the Eagle Drug store are a bit confusing.  1875 was a year that saw a great deal of change in the local pharmacy community.  As best I can piece it together, here is what happened.

1. Thomas McBean, the first druggist in Chippewa Falls, opens a new store at the corner of Bridge and Spring Streets.

2. McBean sells a half interest in the store to Hiram S. Allen - who was pretty much the founder of Chippewa Falls - with the intent that Allen would set one of his sons up in the business.

3. Ads for H.S. Allen and Son's Eagle Drug store begin to run in August of 1875.  I'm assuming no formal training for Allen Jr., as a Dr. H.B. Losey and Mr. J.F. Bieg are listed as being in charge of the prescription department.

4. By November of 1875 the store has been renamed Goddard and Company, Eagle Drug Store.  Goddard owned another store in town and must have bought out Allen.

There is in this sequence of events something of a lesson about small town business communities.  McBean and H.S. Allen had known each other since 1856, when Chippewa Falls was a frontier hamlet full of lumberjacks, river rats and sawyers.  It looks like McBean wanted to get out of the drug store business and Allen wanted to set up one of his sons in a stable profession.  It is telling that at least in my first pass research I can't even find out which Allen son this was.  It seems to have not worked out, with ownership passing to Henry Goddard after just a few months.  Goddard on the other hand, kept running the store for 25 years.

Henry Goddard was born in New York state in 1844, moving with his family to Beloit Wisconsin two years later.  Like McBean he served as a Hospital Steward during the Civil War.  He came to Chippewa Falls in 1875 purchasing a drug store owned by a man named Hinckley.  He must have barely had time to unpack before switching over to the new Eagle Drug store.  His ads prior to the switch were pretty good too, although I don't believe he made the Elephant part of the store name!

At various times he had partners.  A man named Chisholm joined him in 1875 or 76, having previously clerked for the enterprise run by Leroy Martin.   After Chisholm left circa 1882 Goddard sold the store to a man named Spence around 1888.  In 1892 Spence retired due to ill health and the Eagle store along with another store on the south side called The Model Drug Store were purchased by a partnership of Goddard and a father son team named Watson.

This photo shows the Eagle Drug store probably in the 1890's.  Its on the corner of Bridge and Spring.  And right next door to the Good Luck Drug store.  An interesting situation and one that speaks to the demand for and competition between pharmacies.  We will consider this in a future post.

When Goddard retired from the store a second time in 1899 Frank Watson ran it solo.  Despite being a Pharmacy school graduate his ads seem to run towards patent nostrums with his name associated with them.  By this point the drug store trade had become very competitive and it perhaps Frank Watson's health was in decline.

In 1910 Watson died in his rooms above the store.  He had been making final arrangements to sell the store.  In fact a gentleman named Muggah from Ellsworth was in town to sign the papers transferring ownership.

The business was still occasionally referred to as Eagle Drug after the sale but after a while it just became Muggah Drug.  And with that closing out of a 35 year run perhaps we can finish the story of The Eagle Drug Store.  Founded by the man who was the first permanent resident of Chippewa Falls in the 1840s it lasted long enough to see automobiles go past on Bridge street.

The bottles of Eagle Drug Store

From about 1880 to 1910 it was common for druggists to order bottles with their name embossed on them.  Usually these were clear glass, but for light sensitive prescriptions, or perhaps just to be fancy, you sometimes find colored ones.  This is a real beauty from the Goddard and Chisholm era, very early 1880s.

Here's one from circa 1890 when Spence ran the Eagle and Model stores.

Then the late 1890's when Goddard came back into the business and ran it with Watson.

The Look of Robotics 2022/23

Here's the logo for the 2022/23 iteration of the FIRST robotics team.  It will look good on shirts, pit artwork and a new team flag.  

I have heard idle chatter from the Media/PR subteam that I'll have to wear a bright pink wig if the team achieves certain benchmarks (which are very much under discussion!).  I think this will look as good with that ridiculous get up as anything would.

Thomas McBean and the First Drug Store in Chippewa Falls

Occasionally a topic of local history catches my fancy for reasons related to my past profession.  When I was a practicing physician I called in/wrote out a lot of prescriptions.  I got to know the area pharmacists reasonably well and became interested in the history of the small town drug store.  In our times an awful lot more pills are moving around the system but most are sold by mail in services or soulless Big Box outfits and we have lost something of our culture.   Back in the day the drug store was a place to pick up medicines of variable efficacy, get a fancy drink at the soda fountain, perhaps buy a few magazines and other small items.

Getting to the beginning of the pharmacy business in my little town is not entirely straightforward.  The best sources are archived newspapers and county histories and both have gaps especially in the early years.  But near as I can tell this was the first drug store in town:

Thomas McBean had an interesting line of wares.  Interestingly compounded prescriptions were one of the few things he did not advertise as being for sale.  Then as now drug stores made a large share of their profit from things other than prescriptions.  Patent medicines were very popular and profitable in that day and age.  Many of them were just fancy versions of the alcohol "for medicinal purposes" that were also a staple.

Note the date, January 26th, 1867.  We know the store was in existence earlier than that as the following "Business Card" ad goes as far back as the extant copies of the Chippewa Union Times run:  ALEX McBEAN PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON Offices at the Drug Store, Chippewa Falls, Wisc.  2y1.  The last notation is cryptic, I speculate that it means the ad had been running for two years, i.e. from 1865.  That would fit with the biography of the McBeans.   Notice that the reference is to "the" Drug Store.  While I can't exclude a small earlier enterprise it seems McBean had the field to himself by the mid 1860's.

Alexander McBean and Thomas were father and son.  The family moved to Chippewa Falls from, of all places, Jamaica.  The winters must have come as a surprise.  Arriving in 1856 they were true pioneers of the community.  Alexander was the first physician in the area.  Thomas was 13 and described as "a small boy in knee pants".  It seems he had a grand time growing up in a rough and tumble village that had perhaps 300 inhabitants on his arrival.  In later life he became a nostalgic historian and had his reminiscences of early Settler's Days published often in the local paper.

In the late 1850's McBean the younger clerked for H.S. Allen the pioneering timber magnate.  But with the outbreak of the Civil War both father and son enlisted in the Union Army.  Alexander was an Assistant Surgeon with the Second Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry regiment.  Thomas was a hospital steward in the same unit, no doubt working directly with his father.  It must have been a busy education, the official record of the Regiment indicates that during the war they lost 312 men.....288 of them to disease!  We tend to forget that non combat deaths in earlier conflicts outnumbered those caused by enemy action, especially in units such as the 2nd Cavalry.  They spent a lot of time patrolling and chasing irregular Confederate bands, very little in major battles.

When the Second Cavalry mustered out in Austin Texas in 1865 one assumes the McBeans returned home.  Three years spent as a hospital steward plus the direct supervision of his father were more than enough credentials to start a drug store circa '65 or '66.  As is often the case with early institutions the paper saw no need to give an address....everyone knew where the Drug Store was.  The store was probably on Spring Street.

Perhaps it was the improvised training, perhaps just the tendency in times past for Men of Prominence to wear multiple hats, but other than ads there is not much substance to McBean's history as a druggist.  He is known to have had a partner named Frank McElvey in the early days.  By March of 1867 McBean bought him out.  There seems by the way to have been a very early club of local Scotsmen in town....McBean turns up on the membership roster of this "Caledonia Club".

Perhaps reflecting his other interests Thomas McBean became County Clerk in 1869, and is said to have studied law although never to have taken the bar exam.  The drug store business was becoming competitive as 1870 approached.  An energetic new firm called Foles and Hinckley had arrived and another man named Leroy Martin had a store.  The picture with Martin is very unclear, McBean is said to have sold half his stock to Martin who then set up in direct competition.  Martin being a former dry goods and grocery proprietor did not thrive in the business and was gone by the early 1870's.  

 

In 1875 two things happened in close succession.  Thomas McBean opened a new store on Bridge Street "At the Sign of the Golden Mortar", and he again sold a portion of the business this time to H.S. Allen, the same man he'd worked for almost 20 years earlier.  This seems to be at or near the end of McBean's career as a druggist.  As the story of drug stores in Chippewa Falls subsequently gets a lot more complicated lets set it aside for now.

After his days as a druggist McBean pursued other interests.  He was prominent in the local Democratic party.  He used his legal training to assist his fellow Civil War veterans, on numerous occasions helping destitute old soldiers receive improved pensions.  Eventually he settled into a career in real estate with a particular interest in selling land in the northern parts of the state.  But there was still a sense of restlessness to his career.  On several occasions the papers reported that he was about to relocate to take up a new business situation but these generally did not come to pass.

Later in life both he and his wife began to have declining health.  It was at this point that he began writing extensively for the local paper, with spirited accounts of the early days of Chippewa Falls.  His memory seems quite clear, but as to the total accuracy of his stories, well its hard to tell when he speaks with the authority of "One of the Last of the Old Settlers".

Supposedly he was going to compile these into a history of the community but was unable to bring the project to completion before his death in 1924.  Proud to the end of his Civil War service he died in the Old Soldiers Home in Waupaca but was buried in Chippewa Falls.  His tombstone in Hope Cemetery is a simple one.  Just his name and HOSP. STEWARD 2 WI CAV.

We'll resume the history of early drug stores another day...

 

 .

 

 

Memories of The Golden Goat

Sometimes it is a small thing that can set me off on a journey of discovery.  Recently in a conversation somebody mentioned the automatic can collecting machines you used to see here and there.  This brought back memories.  Memories of The Golden Goat.

These don't seem to have ever been common, but you'd run across them sometimes.  Bulky, shed like machines, they would usually be sitting in the parking lots of grocery stores.  They had a hopper into which you'd toss aluminum cans.  There would then be a remarkable series of spinning, clanking and rattling sounds and - if it was working properly - a few coins would plink out into your hands.  It was a bit like a gigantic slot machine where you always won just a little.  They looked like this:

Back in the early 90's we had a Goat down the hill from us.  And it made an impression on one of my kids who was then roughly five years old.  He and I would gather up cans, from our own use, that of the next door neighbors and others from who knows where.  Down the hill we went pulling a wagon load.  In go the cans.  Clanking and rattling commenced.  Coins dropped into a small eager hand one at a time.  

This young lad went on to become very mechanically adept, as well as being quite the capitalist.  I credit The Goat.  So what's the story of these machines?

They were invented by a John "Tyke" Miller of Phoenix Arizona.  He applied for a patent in 1979, receiving it two years later.  Miller died soon thereafter and I have to date learned nothing more about him.  The machines appear to have been manufactured by the Golden Recycling Company of Golden Colorado.  They were marketed primarily in the West and Midwest.  

One account I read says they compressed the cans into 20 pound cubes that were referred to as "biscuits".  These would then be bundled together into larger units that weighed 2,240 pounds and would be hauled off by semis to be recycled.

There were issues with these machines.  They didn't always work for one thing.  Sometimes they'd take your cans and give you nothing.  More valuable life lessons for the lad, but not good for repeat custom.

They were also messy.  Throw in thousands of empty cans, squish them into compact biscuits and you can easily imagine what happens to the drips of beer and soda that were often present.  They would be squeezed out, intermingled and ooze out the bottom of the machine.  This was messy, smelly and attracted yellow jackets.  

Mentions of Golden Goat machines - mostly complaints - are scattered through the 1990's and beyond, but after the Millennium they were probably in decline.  The last definite sighting I ran across was in Appleton Wisconsin in 2016.  Our local example used to sit on this spot.  The power that ran it came out of that adjacent pylon, which I think once held the sign of the grocery store on the site.  The yellow color is coincidence.

A curious footnote.  When looking for internet mentions of the Golden Goat machines I kept running across references to marijuana.  As this is a subject in which I have no interest at all it took me a while to figure out the connection.  Evidently a marijuana breeder in Topeka Kansas had an inadvertent cross breeding event.  One of the parent plants was called "Romulan" for some reason.  The resultant hybrid had a distinctive odor that reminded the breeder of the peculiar smells that emanated from the local can recycling machine.  Thus was born the Golden Goat strain of cannabis.  

It's never a good day unless you learn something new.

Old Badger Philosophizes about the Hunt

Deer Hunting camp is obviously much more about family time and establishing traditions than lesser concerns like putting meat in the freezer.  Per last posting one of the traditions has become....the deer outsmart Grandpa.  This amuses the grandchildren considerably and I try to play my role with good grace.  I call it the Old Badger scenario.

Old Badger is one of the central characters in a book we read to the small ones.  A old badger, presumably a grandparent, is off in the woods showing Young Badger how the world works.  It is organized around a series of questions framed thusly:

In the book the little imp is always inquiring as to whether OB can still do things like climb trees.  The revered ancient replies that He probably could if he had to but prefers to sit under the tree and let the apples drop down for him.

Regards my relative lack of success in deer hunting....

"Old Badger, can you still climb up into a tree stand?"

"Well yes, Young Badger I can, but it takes a bit longer and its a lot less comfortable than it was at your age"

"Old Badger, can you even see the deer when they walk by?"

"What the.....well, yes Young Badger, I still see 'em.  Maybe not from as far away as when I was your age.  At which point in time I had far better manners."

"Ha, ha!  Old Badger, would you drag a deer out of the woods or would it drag you?"

"(unintelligible mumblings) Now let me tell you a couple of things you insolent scamp.  When Uncle Badger needed help dragging one in it sure wasn't you that he called!  And when I got a deer a couple seasons back I dragged it over a mile to get it in.  Uphill."

"Old Badger, that wasn't a very big deer was it?"

"(further unintelligibal mumblings in which the word possum seems to feature).  You just wait ya cheeky little cub.  I'm not done hunting yet.  And who do you think Old Badger can still fool?"

"Gee, I dunno gramps, maybe toads 'n fungus?"

"Nope........Old Deer."

Deer Hunting - November 2022

The official record of our family deer hunts is recorded in The Book of Deer.  This year my grandson rather artistically summarized my hunt...

That's me in a tree stand.  A large bird is pooping on my head.  I'm aiming my rifle in the wrong direction and a gigantic deer is making rude noises at me from both ends.

It's not a bad summary.  My only quibble would be that it looks like I'm wearing a black mini skirt and that would be pretty chilly.  If a deer came along that was at my eye level in a tree stand I absolutely would freeze and take whatever abuse it chose to deal out.  That thing is 25 feet tall and although I appear to be wielding a small cannon I doubt it would do more than make this Eldritch Beast hoppin' mad.

Four days of hunting.  Did not get a deer.  I saw some.  Even had a couple in my sights but decided that the shots were either too long or at too weird an angle to be Sportsmanlike.

Both boys got deer, for one of them it was his second.  So I have venison.  

There is still the tail end of the nine day season and probably a second chance season in December, but with the kids, grandkids and dogs all departed deer camp is a quiet place.  Time to head back to civilization.

Deer Hunting 2022 Opening Weekend

 View from my ground blind opening morning.  

Lots of snow.  While pretty and useful for tracking if you get a deer it does crazy things to deer movement patterns.  I saw one deer briefly, just long enough to take the safety off but not long enough to line up a shot.  On the other hand both of my sons got nice deer opening morning.  Our friend Eddy and I are still shut out as of mid day Sunday.

With their deer already "hanging around" some of our hunting party have leisure for other things.  One of my boys remarkably saw two bears out and about.  Dude, you should be hibernating.  While this was taken through a scope bear are clearly not in season and were left alone.  Presumably they stumbled off and found someplace to sleep where deer hunters were not stomping around.

The tea party/deer camp/Happy Birthday event went off well.  I'm tempted to wear my blaze orange tiara crown out for the evening hunt.  My son says it will at least make other hunters keep their distance.  You should try to steer clear of apparent lunatics with rifles.

Well you'd think that would have worked but alas, no.  I did see a couple of deer at a range that perhaps my marksman son would have managed but I let them go.  Tomorrow is another day.  For me.  For them, maybe not.

Enigma Staff Challenge 2022

Time for the second annual Enigma staff challenge.  My little band of middle school cryptographers only had four weeks of work time and one of prep time.  But they learned quickly and are a devious bunch, so the challenges they put to an All Star Team of teachers and administrators were actually a bit harder than last year.  One of the things I taught them is how very much fun it is to see someone wander off track in exactly the direction you led them off into!

Four envelopes.

The usual rules.  Students are now the teachers and vice versa.  No unauthorized use of electronic devices.  All questions are fair game and encouraged.  Considerable latitude is allowed in the answers.  Oh, no outright fibbing, but there is nothing wrong with leading your student to the correct answer by a route that is both educational and entertaining....

Here the District Superintendent labors over a complicated cipher.

One challenge could only be solved with the help of a specific book in the library, which was adjacent to where we were holding the challenge.  It took them quite a while, perhaps because I threw in a bit of distracting bait in the wrong places...

Some things worked remarkably well.  It is human nature when you are handed something, say an encoding grid, to assume that things written on them should be read right side up.  But why would you assume that in a challenge where the stated intent is to mislead?  The students, who had of course fallen for this a couple of weeks back, found the struggles of the staff on this one to be quite humorous.

On the other hand the gps component of the challenge did not go that well.  It snowed over the last few days which made my tracks visible as I placed the clues an hour before the challenge began.  Of course I had to make several tracks go off into the adjacent woods!  And one clue was previously oriented with respect to a tree....which had been cut down in the intervening three weeks.  The gps hunters came in cold and overdue.  But they did find them all.

Mantra of the day was:  Be the kind of student you wish you had every day.  Be the kind of teacher you wish you had every day.  I think that was mostly adhered to but this batch of students had a delightful wicked streak and made the administrators and teachers really work for it this year.

We'll be seeing some of these kids again in future endevours.