Mystery in the Woods

Deer hunting approaches.  And while the main focus this year will be on our land a ways to the south, the area around our cabin is still public hunting, and I have a tag for it.  So I wander here and there looking for signs of deer, interesting trees, and...what the heck?

It's a well.

And some kind of cellar hole?

And a long stone wall with a flat area on one side.

Something is going on here.  Now it helps to know the local history.  This area was lightly inhabited by Ojibway folks for centuries, but they never built anything like this.  Lumbering came in circa 1870's, but initially it was confined to stands of prime timber near rivers.  This area did not get much attention until around 1890, when railroads were not too far distant.

Once the timber companies clear cut the land it was nearly worthless.  Just stumps with plenty of erosion happening.  Nearly worthless is not the same as totally worthless, so the land was sold off cheaply to anyone who wanted to try farming it. * 

Very few succeeded.  I've run across other remnants in my travels, but nothing quite this elaborate.  So, anything else knowable???

Here is Google Earth of the area.  The blue circle is roughly the location of the structures.  The X is what I suspect is the oldest habitation on the lake, at least my take on the circa 1905 whiskey and soda bottles that turn up there when the water levels are low is any guide.  "Supposedly" there was a log structure there from way back, that later became a lodge for a small mom and pop resort.  Few traces remain.

Period maps of this area are scarce, so the best I can do is this roughly 1906 image.

The odd thing here is that the east west road in the upper image - "Pioneer Road" - no less, does not appear to be present.  Look at where the road right at the number 34 lines up on the west side of the lake.  I assume there was some sort of track that went to the H.H. Fleming place.  I also assume that H.H. liked his whiskey.  Pioneer Road must have been created later.

So it looks as if my dog and I were wandering about - on public land it should be noted - where Peter Larson once tried to farm the miserable cut over land.  The long stone wall I'm seeing might well be a frontage onto the east west road that was then just south of his presumed dwelling.  It's too big for any barn he'd be likely to need.

So what happened?  That's going to be hard to know.  Larson is a common name.  And the story of little hardscrabble farms failing in the Great Depression is even more common.

________

* An old timer told me once that "back in the day" you just had to go to the county extension office and you could sign for as much World War One surplus free dynamite as you wanted!  And you'd want a lot to clear the stumps out that kind of land.

Illogical Measures

There are times when the world seems particularly illogical.  Among the many reasons people give for this, our system of measuring things gets the occasional mention.  Why, if only we used logical metric stuff everywhere!

In large measure the system you use on a daily basis is what you are used to.  When in England I get acclimated, so to speak, and know that a 30 degree day there is sweltering hot, while the same 30 degree day back home (in my usual excavation time of April/May) is dreary and has a nasty chill.  

If used regularly any system works.  Perhaps not for scientific endeavors but just fine for staples of conversation like the weather.  Some of the old measures actually have a basis in our daily lives, or at least the daily lives of our predecessors.

One foot used to be the length of, well, one human foot.  Logical, although people have always had feet of variable sizes.....

Consider the "Big Foot" Roman shoes unearthed at the Magna site recently...

In fairness this specimen is being held close to the camera, in the manner of proud fishermen everywhere, but its pretty darned big.  There's a whole video on these guys....

An inch derives from a foot.  In Roman times an "uncia" was one twelfth of a foot.  Uncia gives us the word inch.  Efforts in later times to standardize it as say, the width of a thumb, encountered obvious difficulties.

If you are having a hard time fathoming these off hand measuring units, well, a fathom is simply the distance of the outstretched arms of a good sized mariner.  That's about six feet.

Early folks were big on measurements that related to their daily lives.  Most of them were farmers.  So an acre - although initially just a term for forest land - evolved into the amount of land a team of oxen could plow in one day.  Distantly the word might have a joint origin with agri as in agriculture.  

And of course we have miles.  As I have documented previously, one Roman mile was one thousand strides of a soldier, or mille pacem.  As measurements go its pretty useful.  As are yards, the rough distance of one such stride.  I'm still using the latter getting ready for deer hunting season where distances to sight in rifles and crossbows are not given in meters.

The meter of course is a French construct.  But lets not let them off the hook entirely.  If you go back to define an acre it once was considered one furlong (660 feet) by four rods (66 feet).  Rods are an almost entirely extinct form of measurement but weirdly portages in the Boundary Waters Canoe area are still given in rods.  Why? Well its a bit obscure, but I blame the French.  That part of the world was explored and mapped by Voyageurs, who were using canoes about one rod (16.5 feet) long.  So a canoe length as a standard of measurement made as much sense as anything else.  Considering that most of these guys were traveling light and not bringing along the marking chains to survey a furlong!

 

 

 

 

Strange Fish - Smallmouth Buffalo

Perhaps because it is the "in between" times where not much is happening, but some of my hobbies might be getting a bit out of hand.  Several years back I picked up Geocaching.  It's harmless enough.  You follow gps coordinates and clues, you find something, you sign your name on a log.  Easy.   

But I decided it was more fun to make custom geocaches.  And series of hides.  Hence the Strange Fish series.  

The latest entry features this guy.  The Smallmouth Buffalo.  

This is actually an impressive fish.  It can get big, the Wisconsin state record is 81 pounds.  They can live a long time, perhaps a hundred years.  And while you've probably never caught one, or if you did thought it was just a carp, they are an important fish commercially and a prized target of bow fishermen.  This combination of growing big and being targeted by both commercial fishing nets and arrows has put their populations into a decline of late.....

So I needed a really good container for this geocache.  I started out with a slab of weathered, broken up railroad tie.  These are full of creosote and therefore pretty water resistant.  Here's the cache....

I think that's sneaky enough to avoid the casual eye..... But to those looking closely.....

These letters are engraved with a Dremel and highlighted with Sharpie.  A bit too evident at the moment but they will "age in" nicely in a month or two.  Oh, and if you open it up...

Hinges are straps of nylon from an old deer hunting harness.  Feet belong to me and to Hank the Dog.  Looking closer....

I've carved out a fish shaped hollow in the lower section to contain the waterproof inner container.  The latter has a laminated, hopefully waterproof picture of a Smallmouth Buffalo.  To help keep it waterproof there are various drain holes drilled into the bottom of the cavity.  The whole thing locks together with a peg that you can't see in this view.  Next time around I think I'll add some sort of locking pins making it a "gadget cache" to be figured out.

Here's the cache designation and coordinates.  Strange Fish #14.

Evil Smurfs

This started as me reading too quickly.  And without my glasses on.  Someone had written a piece about the lackluster summer movie season and among the listed films I saw The Smurfs 28 Years Later.  Of course there was a comma in there that I missed, but the idea of a Smurf Zombie movie intrigued me.  I mean, they already start out a sort of putrid blue color, and frankly zombies capable of biting you on the knee cap is a disquieting thought.

Because we live in times that defy satire I can report that the nasty little critter shown here is not a figment of my imagination.  No, there is a subgenre of Smurf lore in which some of them are not the cheerful little hypoxic Communards they usually try to pass for.

There actually was a Smurf episode called The Purple Smurf in which one of the standard blue Smurfs - Lazy Smurf as it happens - gets bitten by a weird insect and turns into effectively a zombie.

He becomes angry and hostile, hops around saying "Gnap, Gnap, Grnap!" and bites several other Smurfs who also transform.

Papa Smurf of course saves the day.  How?  Don't matter, most Zombie stories are short on logic and actual science.

The Purple Smurf episode aired in 1981, so just a few years after Dawn of the Dead.  The episode is considered by aficionados of Smurfdom to be a bit of a spoof.

But I ask you, is it fair that Smurfs be portrayed as villains?  Darn right, because that's basically what they are and always have been.

The Smurfs were created by a Belgian cartoon artist named Pierre Culliford, aka Peyo.  They first appeared in 1958.  They were a spin off from an earlier (1947) series he did called Johan and Peewit, which was set in Medieval times.  In it the titular characters encountered a little guy with blue skin.

If this sounds a bit, well, derivative its because  it is.  Or if you are being charitable there are only so many sources of inspiration, and Sleeping Beauty dwarves, the Roman era adventures of Asterix, even the Hobbits of the Shire all have common themes.  Asterix btw is roughly contemporary with the Smurfs, while JRR and Uncle Walt's creations were earlier.

The pointy hats, well, those are what are called Phrygian caps.  These are very well known from Roman times, and are sometimes called Liberty Caps.  Here's a coin commemorating the assassination of Julius Caesar....

Some Roman deities also went Smurfy style.  Notably Mithras and his attendants.  Oddly, the goddess Libertas usually did not.

As to the Smurfs being villains, well, sure.  But it was not as pejorative term as you might expect. The late Roman era and the early Medieval times had no sharp demarcation.  Rulers changed. Latin, which was probably not much spoken by the rustics anyway, moved over to the churches.  People mostly still lived in the same places as before, mostly did the same work.  Even Roman villas, the upgraded farmsteads where a gentleman could supervise his peasants then enjoy a hot bath and a bit of culture were not totally abandoned.  They just had new owners with a bit less class.

But the peasants who worked there?  Well for them it was pretty much Same Old.  By the Middle Ages, the period in which Peyo set his early work, the term Villain appeared.  Around 1300 if you want to be specific.  At that point villanus, meaning farm hand, had the connotation of "base, or low born rustic".  From there it was pretty much downhill, as in a few centuries it meant a man capable of any manner of gross wickedness".  Villainy if you prefer.

Well that's a long march from my mistaken - or actually was it? - concept of Smurfs as zombies.  One of the other people commenting on the initial discussion did run the basic idea through Chat GPT, asking for a synopsis for a movie script.  AI of course spat out predictable and unremarkable drivel.  I suspect that's all it will be capable of for many years to come.

Responding to the Bat Signal

In the course of exploring Forgotten Brewery Caves and other underground places I occasionally encounter bats.  This has led to collaboration with the Department of Natural Resources and their "bat people".  With the emergence of White Nose Syndrome and its disastrous impact on hibernating bats I sometimes show them new places where bats exist.  In return they've taken me on the occasional bat counting survey.  So I know my Wisconsin bats pretty well.

I can't say I'm a big fan.  They are still creepy, and if they bite you there is the matter of painful rabies shots.  Also, they have issues with boundaries.  More on that presently.  But I'm appreciative of all the bugs they eat, and on some level I am rooting for the under loved underdog species.

Recently I've gotten acquainted with some Big Brown Bats.  In the last month or so there have been five that have turned up in our house, usually doing frantic circles around our bedroom.  Here's a pleasant face to abruptly wake up to:

Yes, no fun to have that whispering squeak nothings in your ear, even if they are largely out of the range of human hearing.

In an old house this happens, so there's a routine.  I'm alerted to the presence of a bat.  I get out of bed, collect my gear, don additional garments, catch the bat with a fish landing net, then release it to the Great Outdoors.  How exactly they are getting access to our Great Indoors remains a mystery.

The other night I did a nifty mid air interception and brought the captive out to the front porch.  But his wing was pretty tangled up in the netting.  I tried this and that, eventually putting on gloves and snipping some parts of the net free.  Bat hopped, flopped and chittered away.  I hope all is well, there still seemed to be some net stuck to one wing.  I'm only going to do so much for my squeaky pals, not gonna risk rabies shots.  But it was time for an upgrade.

The landing net was now basically useless for fishing purposes.  Guess I'd snipped a few more strands of net than I'd figured.

So I decided to modify it as a dedicated bat catcher.

On the right is an old pillow case.  It almost but not quite fits over the aluminum parts of the net.

I affixed the pillow case to the inner aspect of the net, with the extra ballooning out the now enlarged holes in the net.

This way I can dispense with the trash can I generally bring on bat missions.  With this it should just be net 'em, then flip it over and trap the bat in the long "tail" of the net.

Various things could be used to make the attachment.  I had brown duct tape on hand.  And I figured Big Brown Bats might like it.

And of course, I asked my long suffering but occasionally appreciate wife to take a picture of me kitted out for the next Bat Capture.  Probably this level of preparedness means they'll quit sneaking in.  That would actually be ok.

In the Shadow of the Great Prairie Dog

I have not been traveling much this summer.  But some family members are.  Steeling themselves for the ordeal of long distance vacation driving my son and his family headed Out West.  Somewhere generally around Phillip South Dakota, on the edge of the Bad Lands, they encountered the World's Largest Prairie Dog.  It watches over a sort of gift store.

 

Well, that's not actually one of the pictures they sent me.  I borrowed it from Roadside America.  The latter is a fun site, I've sent them a few curiosities over the years.  Here's their write up on The Ranch Store and its guardian totem. 

The picture I actually was sent was taken as the blistering sun was getting low in the sky.  Still, it was 102 degrees at 5:30 pm.  Yikes.  I think the big guy looks a bit sinister seen from this angle.....

Mooching around in the only available patch of shade are a batch of actual prairie dogs.  They live there, enjoying an indolent existence where there are no predators, but a steady stream of tourists willing to feed them for one dollar a bag of "Dog" chow.

And, ya know, they are pretty cute little buggers.  Unless you happen to know a few things about them.  Like that they have been documented to transmit several diseases to humans.  Monkey Pox would be kind of bad.  And would require a bit of explaining.  But, helpful hint of the day, prairie dogs can transmit bubonic plague!!!  Lookin' a little less cute now???

And the Seasons Change

The official starting and ending dates of seasons are just dates on a calendar.  Life has other markers for change.  For instance, when I start to hear the sounds of the high school marching band practicing, summer is drawing to a close.

Of course there are other clues.  It's been a great year for growing things, so my hops are heading for a record crop.  Maybe I'll even brew beer with them this year.

The other day it was time to sign up for fall deer hunting tags.  Over the past months we've seen the deer on our land go from pregnant does, to skinnier does with spotted fawns, and now onto various family groupings.  The bucks seem to all hang out together, wandering around in a gang.  Sure, they all look friendly now, but when they all go crazy during mating season it will be another story.

No real summer trips.  Not much fishing, and only one new species to show for it.  Lots of robot stuff.  That season never really ends.  But it does have pauses.

We just finished the summer build with middle schoolers.  They did excellent work, and most of them seem to have caught the bug.  They've all signed up for our fall "Robot School".  And evidently invited all their friends.  So now I'm trying to figure how we can accommodate 20 students when we think our capacity for good instruction is about 12.  Hmmmm.

Well, its good to be busy.  In this brief interval between things I've got projects long delayed to take on.  And potentially some really big tasks in the year ahead.

See you around.

Ketchup, Mustard and their Little Pal RoboDog

I'm not an engineer, but its funny, there are some engineering concepts that translate to the real world.  Apply a lot of force to something and it moves.  Less force, maybe not.

Over the weekend we brought two robots to an off season competition.  One was "Mustard" the robot built by the high school team over a couple of months of  work.  Complex.  Had a rough outing at its first event but was heroic in the second tournament.  At its third event - the unofficial state tourney - it flagged a bit.  And it was mostly just sitting around since then.  A couple of the high school team members who had never driven it took a couple hours to see if they could learn it.

The other robot was Ketchup.  Built by middle schoolers over the course of 6 sessions.  Rugged, single minded, it was designed to do one thing.  Pick up those white pipes and drop them into the lowest tier of the scoring platform.  They worked hard on this project.

So....how did it turn out?

 Mustard, the high school robot struggled.  It was

designed to do one thing, score those pipes on the highest

scoring point.  Alas, just as one dog year equals seven

human years, so also with robots.  One month is about

seven human years, making Ketchup an old timer.

Old timers have aches and pains, things that go amiss

We had wiring issues deep inside the mechanisms, and

several matches the darn thing just sat there.  Worst

record of all robots there in the qualifying rounds.  True,

it got a bit happier towards the end.  Pit crew and the

new drivers learned a lot.  It got picked for an 

elimination round alliance based on how it ran its last few matches.

As for Ketchup, the middle school built machine...it was designed to do one thing and to do it very well.  Pick up those pipes and get them to the lowest scoring level reliably and fast.  10 per match please.  It's lining up for the shot in this picture, with its temporary number 9996.

And it did just that.  True, it only managed a bit more than 7 per match but to be fair it was called upon to play defense a few times or it would have come close.  The event kept detailed stats, and Ketchup finished ahead of several regular season robots in the won lost column (including its big brother Mustard) and number one in those L1 scores.  Design objectives achieved.

Ironically the two robot sibs were both on the same alliance in playoffs and did very well together.  They did not quite make it to the final round, but came close.

The matches will be available on Youtube in a few days.   I'll post some links then.  We may also put together a "Making of Ketchup" video down the road a bit.  In the meantime here's a bit of entertainment from the displays out in the lobby area.  Robot Dog.  Hank would go nuts seeing this...

Baby Bullhead Ballet

Immature bullheads are pretty darn cute.  Cuter than the adult version for sure.

I have not done much fishing this summer.  Lots of family stuff.  Lots of robot stuff.  But in my relentless quest to catch new species I have been out a few times.  Always in the odd places, backwaters, ditches, etc.

In one such place I came across a school of baby bullheads doing a very elaborate Bullhead Ballet.

Middle Schoolers and their Robot

It's been a hectic six weeks.  So, how much can a group of middle schoolers accomplish in that time?  Well, here's the numbers.  Once a week sessions, 11-4 on Tuesdays.  We usually had 6 to 9 students working, with two or three adult coaches and one or two invaluable high school team members.  In that time they went from nothing....to this:

Impressive.

They'll be taking it into competition on Saturday.  If interested, the live stream should be at:  https://www.youtube.com/@frcteam8744  

I've seen a lot in 27 years of working with kids and robots.  Wonderous things.  Alarming things.  But surprising things?  Not very often of late.  But this group, this robot....surprised me.  In a good way of course.

We Watch Deer. Deer Watch Us.

Trail cam photo from a week or so back.  Since starting deer hunting five years ago our number of functional trail cams has gone from three down to one.  Temperature swings, ant infestations.  Just cheap Chinese electronics.  

We'll be up doing some hunting prep in the days ahead.  So some functional cameras would help.  I took Hank to one of "his stores", dog and guy friendly places.  He was creeped out by the giant inflatable black cat lawn decoration.  Halloween too damn early, I was creeped a bit myself.  But here he is helping me pick out a couple of low cost 'cams.  

This is about the maximum of his Brave Hunter mode.  Chipmunks frighten him and he thinks skunks want to be his friend.

"Made in Scotland, from Girders"

You'd probably had to have traveled to Scotland or the northern reaches of England to get that reference.  It is one of the many slogans of a peculiar beverage called Iron Brew.  Or if you want to be picky, Irn Bru.  The busy bodies in some agency said they had to change the name because the stuff is not technically brewed and contains only trace amounts of iron.

But it sure looks like rusty water.  And the first time I ever drank it - also the first time I'd ever eaten Scotch Eggs - rusty water was my general impression.*  And yet, it is the most popular soft drink in Scotland.  By the way, another of their slogans is "Scotland's Other National Drink".

As this time line of cans shows, the stuff has been around for a while.  Weirdly it got started in the US in the 1880s, and did not make it to Scotland until around 1900.  Sometimes peculiar American products thrive in new environs.  See Spam for instance.

In general adverts in the UK are far wittier than what we see in the US.  And for a product aimed at Scots?  Very over the top and with that delightful accent.  Here's a highlight reel of just some of the Best of Iron Brew ads.  Uh, as with anything that spans decades there is some humor that you could not get away with today.  That does not make it any less humorous.

Enjoy.

*/When I was over last May I tried it for a second time.  And...they seem to have changed the formula.  It was bad in different ways!  Some of the ads above allude to variations on the basic "Bru".  They make a diet version.  And for a while at least, an Iron Brew based Energy Drink. I'm fairly brave trying food and drink on foreign travels, but that would be too much.

America's Got Talent (probably with Flute-Girls)

My grandkids enjoy America's Got Talent.  I doubt they watch it, or in fact anything, on broadcast TV, but they sure like the YouTube videos of some of the acts.  Mostly my wife watches these with them.  I can enjoy them too, as there is considerable skill, energy and creativity on display.  But I have the sort of pesky analytical mind that wonders how many takes for each act, how scripted the apparently spontaneous banter with the judges really is, how many acts an audience is expected to sit through in a day.  That sort of thing.

And when my mind wanders thusly, etymology can never be far away.  So, what does Talent really mean?

It goes all the way back to Greek.  Specifically to Talantan which means "a balance, a pair of scales".  I've dug parts of these at Vindolanda.  Here's an example found at the "sister site" of Magna back in 2023.

You could weigh all sorts of things with these, but with the word at hand we need to concentrate on monetary matters.  A "Talent" in ancient times was a measure of silver.  Specifically, 6000 of a silver coin called drachma.  This is about 57.75 pounds of silver, assuming nobody has fiddled with the content, and would be more money than most people of that era would see in their lifetimes.  A drachma was roughly the equivalent of a Roman denarius, and each were about one day's wages.

Why, I've even found the occasional denarius

The Parable of the Talents.  Most of us remember it.  It appears in both Matthew and Luke, in versions that differ enough to suggest they did not come from the same primary source.  Essentially a Master has to take a long trip.  He gives three servants money.  One gets 10 talents, one gets 5, one gets a single talent.

As you recall, the first two servants invested the money and doubled it.  The more cautions third one buried it in a hole - about the equivalent of keeping it in a checking account - and was severely chastised for his caution.

In the middle ages the meaning of talent morphed from a big pile of money into "a gift given for one's use and improvement", then into the abilities - lets call them talents - that enable a person to make good on such an opportunity.  

I have questions.  Did this bit of metaphorical advice have anything to do with the antagonistic attitude of Christians towards Jews regards lending money for profit?  I mean, it seems like the Big Guy specifically endorses this business model.

I also wondered how much trouble a servant would have been if he hadn't even preserved the principle, but lost it all.  This happened pretty often even before cryptocurrencies came along.  One common avenue for investing was backing a trading expedition.  Ships sink.  Bandits gonna bandit.

And I was surprised to learn than an alternative version of the parable occurs in a fragmentary and apocryphal text called The Gospel of the Hebrews.  In it, one of the servants actually blows the entire sum on "prostitutes and flute-girls".  Now, I'm not sure quite what that second category actually is, but it sounds like something you'd find on America - or perhaps Judea's- got Talent!

Robots goin' Places. Robots doin' Things. Summer 2025.

There's been....a lot going on.  The high school team has been doing outreach visits.  School Board, sponsors, that sort of thing.  These are fun for the kids.  Also, work for me.  But necessary.

At most of these events we are given a specific time slot.  But we always go way over.  It's because our audience always has lots and lots of questions.  Gather engineers around robots and its hard to pry them away.

One new wrinkle to this summer's visits is that we brought along both the high school robot and the one we have middle school kids building for an upcoming off season scrimmage.  Here's the two machines side by side.

The one on the left is "Mustard" our 2025 competition robot.  Its lil' pal is "Ketchup".  Ketchup is designed to pick up the game pieces - called Coral btw - off the floor and deposit them on the low shelf of the scoring structure.  Often.  I've told the tyke's drive team I'd like to see them do ten scores in a match.  Here's how it works.....

Of course you want those game pieces to be as far away from their point of origin, and therefore close to their destination.  So we had the next year 7th, 8th and 9th grade kids practice launching the Coral as far out onto the floor as possible.  Kids this age are good at scattering things around on the floor.

Lots of fun.  With more and better ahead.

Brick Yards of Chippewa Falls - Part Three

The Laycock and Barrett brick yard probably got off to a great start.  Chippewa Falls was growing, and they had the inside track.  But times were changing.  There is a gap of several years in the on line version of local newspapers, so all I can say for certain is that sometime in the mid 1870's this partnership went away.

There were a few mentions of brick yards in the 1880's.  There was a George Robson of whom it was said: "He will probably operate his brick yard in this city the coming summer if he does not sell out before the season opens".  That was in March, 1888.  In August of the same year an I.B. Taft was supposedly intending to start a brick yard on his farm.  

But a real revival of the industry had to wait for J.B. Theriault .  As you can see from the link, we've met him before.  He caught my attention early as his are, to date, the only marked bricks from our town.

Theriault's brick yard was on the western edge of town.  From the various descriptions of earlier yards I'm assuming they were all in the same general area.  There was, still is actually, a nice vein of good clay to be had there.  But as we shall see, that's not enough.

John Theriault got his operation up a bit late in 1890 but still had a good season.  He sold all the bricks he could make, employed 20 men, and was aiming to double production the next year.  I've shown this in the linked post, but here's a view of part of his plant.  Keep in mind that brick yards are sprawling places.  Lots of kilns, drying racks, clay pits, etc.  

There were actually two brick yards working the same vein of clay by about 1900.  Below is a Birds Eye view that shows the adjacent Goulet brick yard and gives a better sense of the scale of the operation by 1907.

A reporter for the local paper visited the Theriault brick yard in 1893, and had a lot to say about it.  The clay was said to be of a quality equivalent to the highly successful brick yards in Menomonie.  The proprietor had invested $11,000 in the buildings and equipment and employed 25 men.  Some of them lived on site at a boarding house with "a first class cook". * 

The capacity of the plant was 40,000 bricks a day, although it was only doing 30,000.   It was mentioned that the new addition to St. Joseph's Hospital, as well as many buildings up in Rice Lake, had recently been completed using Theriault bricks.  But there was that recurring problem.....

Theriault was handicapped by having no rail road spur.  Efforts to obtain one came to naught.

Eventually this impediment proved fatal.  Bricks, so long as the quality is good, are all the same.  And for big projects it would only be natural to go with the lower bidder, this usually being the yard that could eliminate some contribution to the expenses.  Like that extra shipping.  

By the mid 1890's Theriault was making 1,200,000 bricks a year.  But was still only running at half capacity.  The other yard, adjacent to his, had several owners.  French Lumber Company brick yard, Goulet and Bergeron yards, and the Chippewa Brick Manufacturing Company. 

Although both brick yards dwindled in the early 20th century and seem to have been gone circa 1915, there are still traces of their presence.  It now has nice new homes on cul-de-sacs, but there are three ponds, at least some of which were clay pits where material for making bricks had been excavated.  Potentially since the late 1860s!

* The first class cook at the Theriault brick yard boarding house was Zele Fourboul.  We've met her, her unfortunate spouse and her murderous step son in a previous installment!

Brick Yards of Chippewa Falls - Part Two

 Spring of 1872 found the Winans brick yard under new management.

A contemporary account gives a bit more information.  Henry Laycock was described as being "..the leading brick layer of this section", and mentions that he had built the new Tremont hotel and other structures in town.  J.E. Barrett was described as a young man, new to town.  

Laycock was the more interesting of the two men.  He was born in Scarborough England in 1842,  He came to America in 1861, joining the Union Army shortly after Bull Run.  

He had a busy Civil War service,  at the end of which his regiment was involved in hunting down "Mosby's Raiders" in Northern Virginia.  On the night of April 14, 1865 they were summoned to Washington DC with the news that Abraham Lincoln had been shot.  Immediately on arrival they were dispatched as part of the search for the assassin.  

They almost caught up with John Wilkes Booth at the home of Dr. Mudd, who had treated his injuries.  Booth was captured hiding in a barn a few days later.  Mudd, whose guilt is debatable but likey, was arrested and sentenced to a long term.  The phrase "your name is mud" comes from this incident...

Laycock came to Chippewa Falls in 1870, moving to Eau Claire in 1877.   He had a long career as a builder, also continuing to make bricks.  

His Chippewa Falls venture does not seem to have prospered.  It faced a new challenge when the railroad came to town in 1874, namely the reality that bricks are a very expensive item to ship by wagon.  

As we shall see in Part Three, the location of the Chippewa Falls brick making enterprises was always about the same, and never got a rail spur.  

His competitors, while making equivalent products, did not have this hindrance.....

Brick Yards of Chippewa Falls, Part One

To understand the history of brick making in Chippewa Falls you have to remember the reality of a community built around a giant sawmill.  The buildings were made of wood.  They were heated with wood stoves and lit with kerosene lanterns.  There was probably scrap wood everywhere.  You can see where this is headed..

In February 1869 a fire broke out that destroyed most of the commercial district of the town.  Following this there were ordnances passed that required any structure built in the down town area to be fire proof.  That is to say, not out of wood.  Although this does not seem to have been universally adhered to it was obviously a major boost to making things out of brick.  And an entrepreneur stepped up shortly.

This is the earliest known photo of Chippewa Falls.  Undated it dates from either late 1870, sometime in '71 or early '72.  It shows substantial brick buildings as new construction.  So where did the bricks come from?

The first brick making enterprise that I know of - and bear in mind that all the local papers also went up with the fire of '69 - was started by a Captain George Winans.  Why, the embers were only just cooled off when this appeared in the Chippewa Union and Times:

It sounds like an up and coming operation by early summer of that year.  Note the location given, "about two and a half miles west of town".  This will factor in later when I try to locate this pioneer enterprise.  A "lost cow" notice in September of 1869 quotes a Martin Roch, who says his residence was "..one and a half miles from the Falls, near brick yard".  

Business seems to have been good in 1869, despite the loss of 40,000 bricks which were destroyed in the drying process by heavy rains in August of that year.

George Winans was an interesting character.  Like almost everyone else in the early days of Chippewa Falls he was in the lumber business.  Specifically he guided rafts of cut timber down rivers.  Hence the title "Captain".  He continued in this line of work far past the end of the prime timber years, actually sending rafts down the Mississippi quite late in the 19th century.  

One of the big projects for the brick yard was the building of the Tremont House in 1871.  It was a very swank place, and was actually "under the management" of George Winans!  But as it happens, brick buildings can also burn, and that's exactly what happened on a cold January night in 1874.

By that point Winans had sold the brick yard.  In fact he sold it to two men, one of whom had done the brick work for the Tremont.  We'll meet Laycock and Barrett in our next installment.

Sycamore Gap, Wisconsin

 To make any sense of what follows you need to know about this tree:

It is, or rather was, an elegant sycamore tree.  It stood in a low spot between two hills right on Hadrian's Wall.  It's just up the hill from Vindolanda where I excavate each spring.  It had become more than a bit iconic.  It turned up on logos, guidebooks, the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood had the protagonists chatting right under its branches.  

Then there was a stormy night.  And in the morning this is what was revealed.

Under cover of darkness, the sound of their chainsaw drowned out by the winds, villains had cut down the Sycamore Gap tree.  It landed btw on Hadrian's Wall and did some minor damage.

People were angry.  Speculation ran hot and, I'm sad to say, for a while the wrong guy was suspected.  But honestly the pool of suspects could not have been large.  This was done by a professional tree cutter.  To pull this off in just a few minutes time?  Not something drunken yobs would be capable of.  Heck, they'd likely have cut off a few of their own limbs in the dark.

Eventually a couple of real prize specimens were arrested.  The trial was going on when we were over in May.  I won't give them any recognition, they don't deserve it.  Even their defense was crummy.  

My car was there?  Oh, sometimes people borrow it.  Your phone gps put you there and there was a photo on it of a gigantic slice of wood?  Oh, sometimes I loan people my phone too.  Say, didn't you used to own a plus sized commercial logging chain saw?  Where is it?  I don't remember.

Eventually each tried to blame the other.  Helpful hint, when you both try to put the other under the bus you just, well, both end up there.  The verdict was Guilty.  I'd have said Guilty and Stupid.

I'm mentioning this sordid episode only because my son and I cut down a dead tree in our side yard recently.  In case somebody gets all het up about the Chippewa Falls Crab Apple I'm prepared to say that my phone gps did show I was there.  'Cause its where I live.  That's not my (adorable little) chain saw.  And I don't know where either it or that section of wood are.  

I rest my case.

Memorium

My father in law passed away over the weekend.  He was 102, so as my Brit friends would put it "He had a good long innings".  

The family reunion I mentioned last time was from that side of the tree.  The schedule was complex, some of us had already gone home when we got the news.  But others remained.  I'm sure stories, tears and a few toasts were on order.

When you live that long your grandchildren get to know you.  And not as "grandpa", that silly mix of performance art and vague authority.  They know you as a person.

Various legacy stuff came to them when the old gent moved.  First from Indiana to Pennsylvania, then to Michigan, then to an apartment, and finally for the last few months of his life, to a nursing home.

This is Major Hoople.  It's a vintage lawn tractor that one of my sons trailered all the way back from the east coast.  When he got word of the Passing, my son took it out to the back yard and fired it up for a lap around the acreage.  It still runs, still has various warranty voiding modifications done back in the day.  It still has the dates of oil changes written inside the hood!

Major Hoople, incidentally, was a character from a comic strip called Our Boarding House.  It started in 1921 and kept going until 1984.  Not bad, but a short run indeed by the standards of my father in law.

Godspeed, George.

Reunion

Every year or so we have a reunion of the American and Canadian branches of the family.  Long story, involves a bit of draft dodging back in the 60's.  Anyway, in times past I was pretty involved in amusing small people.  Lots of games, silly treasure hunts, frog races.  That sort of thing.

Well, they are not so little these days.  They show up with their attendant devices and their chargers.  My own internet access slows to a trickle.  Seriously, I've not seen things load so slowly since the late 80's when I had a dial up modem!

But its all good fun.  The grandparent gen gets to sit back and take things easy.  The parent types just have to keep the teens from being too "teeny".  The youngest generation just gets to play.  They amuse each other pretty well.

The interactions from top generation to bottom are less now.  Less important too.  I think the most precious connections are of the "half generation" variety.

Anyway, stuff happened.  Most of it not of general interest.  There were for some reason a batch of quail.  

And potato chips.  This is part of a long running "taste test" between US and Canadian products.  Who knew that Pringles made what looks to me to be "Assassin" chips.   Actually pretty tasty.

There were additional chips in bags, all of which popped due to airline pressure changes.

And breakfast cereal.  There was supposed to be a detailed survey of these comparing the variants, but everyone stayed up too late and was groggy when they stumbled down at what might be a very late breakfast hour in their time zone, but closer to lunch here in the Midwest.

Well guess that's Mass Confusion Family Time for this year.  Back to a quieter life with 21st century internet availability.