Soda Bottling in Chippewa Falls - Part One, the Early Years

When you study the history of a Wisconsin community the Brewing Industry looms large.  Most medium sized towns had several breweries and they were a significant element of local culture.

Soda pop bottling is mostly unrecognized.   

So I guess it's time to revisit, update and extend the history of soda pop bottling in Chippewa Falls.

I've covered some of this in the past.  For instance the brief attempt by Schofield, Garon and Hebert to establish a soda pop factory in the late 1860s.  They seem to have set up shop, ordered the equipment and bottles, gotten things going....and then quit after a few months in 1868.

I think that, among other problems, they had a measure of competition.  Matt Johannes had come to next door Eau Claire in 1860, starting the areas first soda pop factory a few years later.  He may well have operated in Chippewa Falls too.  Fragments of his distinctive 1870's bottles turn up on occasion, and he is known to have owned commercial property in town. 

A 1936 newspaper article with the headline "Landmarks in Chippewa are Being Razed" has this to say:

"Two of the oldest landmarks in Chippewa Falls are being torn down.  They are the two buildings located at 409 and 411 Bridge Street, owned by Mrs. Albert Nunke of this city.  Both are frame buildings and were erected about 60 years ago (Note, that would only put them in the late 1870s)....The properties were formerly owned by Mrs. Nunke's father, the late Math Johannes of Eau Claire."

The article mentions that various businesses were carried on there, including a tailor and a barber shop, but the logical thing for a soda pop bottler to do with a building in a near by community would be to sell pop there!

While a storefront operation would do just fine to store, sell and most importantly to collect your returned bottles, it would take a bit more involvement to actually set up and start manufacturing soda.  Perhaps after a while business was good and the bother of hauling wagon loads of clinking bottles with sticky residue all the way down to Eau Claire just got to be too much.  And Johannes also needed to do something with young Albert....

Albert Nunke was born in Prussia in 1853, emigrating to the United States in 1867.  In 1874 he joined the army, serving five years and supposedly being engaged in various skirmishes with hostile Indians.  He turns up in Eau Claire circa 1879 and spends the next few years learning the 

soda business from Matt Johannes.  While also apparently making goo goo eyes at the boss's daughter Mary!  After marrying the gal Nunke started his own bottling works in Chippewa Falls, with the most likely starting date of 1882. 

Nunke's factory and his home - still standing btw - was on Jefferson Street.  In the 1880's this would have been on the edge of town.  But it turned out to be a pretty good location.  Because eventually it would be right next to the biggest park in the city.  Irvine Park specifically.  But the benefits of that would come to the next owner of the business, as the park was not officially established until 1906.

Albert Nunke's life, at least the part after the Indian fighting days, does not sound very interesting.  He bottled soda pop until 1904.  I found one mention of him at that time also being involved in, of all things, selling washing machines...maybe bottle washers?  His second career was selling insurance, something he did up until his death in 1920.  He was also a City Councilman for many years.

His later life was characterized by ill health.  He had heart troubles and was diabetic, in an era before effective treatments.  So his passing was not a surprise.  But....he went out with class.

It seems his daughter Mayme was getting married.  With Albert's failing health there was discussion of whether the ceremony should be delayed.  But he insisted that it go on as scheduled, saying "Never postpone it on my account.  I will be there to eat a piece of wedding cake."

Strong words, but his strength failed him.  But the wedding went off as planned.  When he was told that it had happened he was too weak to speak, but is said that a "smile of satisfaction" came over his face.  He died the next day.

Here's a photo of the Nunke House.  The soda plant was back behind it.   

For the continued story of soda pop in Chippewa Falls, there will be a Part Two shortly.

Barking at The Hobyahs

Hank the Dog has many good qualities.  In particular he takes his duties as Watch Dog very seriously.  Too seriously I've often thought, raising a loud Red Alert if he sees someone wearing a shirt slightly suggestive of a mail man two blocks away.

But maybe I've misjudged him.  I'm sure he regards me as a worthy Master but clueless as to the dire perils of the world.  Some people claim that dogs can perceive things beyond our senses, and I suppose they could be right.  Which brings me to The Hobyahs.

As I've had to pick through the Detritus of my parents' household, all manner of old artifacts and old memories are unearthed.  Here's one:

At Lowell Elementary School the reading material on hand was dated and, how can I say this, not always up to modern sensibilities.  So I definitely remember reading about Little Black Sambo.  There were tigers involved.  It became an unfortunate thing to mention with regards to Black America.  In a sense this was incorrect.  The story of Sambo was written and illustrated by a Scottish author who had lived in India for many years.   But that's not related to Hank.  He'd turn tail and run at the sight of a good sized cat, never you mind a tiger.

No, I recall another story.  That of Little Dog Turpy and the Hobyahs.  I thought it was a West African tale.  Basically an old man, an old woman, and a little girl live in a small house with their Little Dog Turpy.  Every night evil creatures called Hobyahs come and say they are going to devour the adults and make off with the little girl.  Sheesh, I guess it took more to "trigger" people back in the 1960's.

Turpy barks, well, barks his fool head off and the Hobyahs run away  His foolish master cuts off Turpy's tail as punishment.  On subsequent nights this happens again and again, each morning the really stupid master chops off a leg, etc, until eventually Little Dog Turpy loses his head.  Literally.  That night the Hobyahs break in and do all those horrid things.  (The little girl does eventually get rescued).

This was in story books for grade school kids!!!!!

As it happens, the story is not West African.  Yep, another one from Scotland.  Supposedly it was included in a collection of fairy tales compiled by a Mr. S.V. Proudfoot.  Who learned it from somebody in Perth Scotland.   Hmmmm, something seems a bit off here.

If you know your Tolkien, oh and I do, there is a family of Hobbits by the name of Proudfoot.  Somebody once asked JRR if he knew the Hobyah story, and if it had anything to do with his creation, the Hobbits.  He denied it, saying he'd never heard this particular fairy tale.

Well, there you have it.  I shall conclude with two observations.  As I am planning our spring trip to the UK there is some discussion of a side trip up into Scotland.  Out of curiosity I took a look at where Perth actually is.  The first thing that came up on Google was a Lost Dog notice!

And finally, as no actual description of the Hobyahs seems to exist, I guess I'll just have to keep trusting Little Dog Hank to keep them away.

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Week Two Report

Bit of an odd week.  The last half of it had bitterly cold temps.  The sort of numbers that don't really matter if you quote them in F or C.  There was also - good timing - mid winter break, and some kids off doing college tours/Science Olympiad, etc.  But still, progress marches on.  (Yikes, makes me think of March, when our competitions start!!)

Lots of clever new mechanisms being prototyped, with a few approaching final production versions.  This is version 2.0 of the ball launcher, with an adjustable hood to change angle of launch.

This shows the Version 1.0 of the ball intake, and some crude duct tape experiments with the conveyor that will bring balls back to the launcher.

And, we have the robot's frame cut and ready for motors and mechanisms.

Here's the Week Two progress video.   

Video production has stepped up this season.  We are doing two a week now.  Here's a short, fun one where the "Hub", that's the field element you shoot the yellow balls into, is pulled out and assembled.  And then, well, suffice to say there is an option for a "Human Player" to launch a few from the sidelines....

And so it goes.  Decent progress but a few key systems need to get past the cardboard and duct tape stage of prototyping.  The nasty weather has slowed down parts delivery a bit....

Family Portraits from the early 1960's

At least I sure hope these are from when I was in roughly first grade!

There are faint captions on some of these.  This is My Family.

Now, I have three brothers but only two are shown here.  I think it probable that I, as the artist, did not include myself.  Yes, mom presumably looked like that when pregnant but the math does not work with regards to when I was in early grade school.  Also, the concept of Conception was still some years off in the future fort Young Me.  By the way, my dad  never sported a ZZ Top beard.  I think that was supposed to be a tie.  Also, as brothers we'd occasional tussle but would not kick each other in the butt when our parents were standing right there!

Probably our beloved dog White Tip.  Or an obese cat.  I cannot explain the wheels.

This one is labeled My Mother.  Evidently my youthful impressions were that she dressed nicely when she went to the grocery store.  And that she had huge feet.  Hmmmm, is the tendency for children to show adults with giant feet an inevitable side effect of us growing up down at knee level?  In some respects this image raises more questions than it answers.  What is the meaning of S P on the grocery bag?  I think our family mostly shopped at either Red Owl or Piggly Wiggly.  And, am I trying to be helpful here?  Or does the subtle creative nuance of showing my tongue hanging out mean I am ravenously hungry and trying to grab the bag away from her?

Well this one is clearly labeled My Father.  It's an interesting study, no?

The figure is tall, see my earlier comments on the knee high perspective.  He's lean and fit.  That wasn't dad at all.  He was, for as far back as my memories go, rather round in the middle.

Here he is wearing a blue shirt, something  I never know that he did back then.  It was standard white shirt and tie every working day.  Which was darn near every day!

Yet work is implied.  I've written earlier about the old doctor's bag that came out of the same cluttered basement as all these works of "art".

Well, there it is.  This seems to confirm that he was still using it in the early 1960's.  (for reference I was born in early 1957, and frog marched off to Kindergarten at age 4 in what would have been fall of 1961).

As to details, well, he was certainly bald and wore glasses.  I don't think he customarily had this determined facial expression nor the confident striding out into the world pose.  He was probably up and out of the house doing hospital rounds before we arose, and returned home tired at about 7pm most days.  The garish red lips?  Hey, when you hand a young artist a red crayon you get this sort of result.   Here's what he looked like towards the end of his days.  He's happily talking over Old Times, still smiling at the joke I just told him.  I confess to recycling some of my better ones.  It's the only nice thing you can say about memory loss.  It makes you a great audience!

Yeah, I Have a Question about This

Exactly what sort of vandalism involves lipstick?  Well, I noticed this at the middle school so darn near anything is possible.  A much belated National Custodian's Day.  I salute you.

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Week One Report

Pictures and video from our first week of build season:

Old robots being taken apart.  We need those parts, and new builders learn.  If you see how something comes apart you should understand how it went together.

An early build season task is always making accurate field elements.  We once torpedoed our entire season when a game piece delivery component was made with a ramp that was about 15 degrees from the spec.  Never again.

I never know how to illustrate what software does.  It's basically magic.  We thought this was going to be a weak spot on the team this year, but through a combination of alumni helping teach, a couple of smart 8th graders getting the call up to the Big Leagues, and another student with multiple talents helping out....looks promising.

OK, but where's Robot doing Robot things?

Intake prototype.  It has to be able to "touch it own it" for lots of game pieces.  We hope to have a capacity of 40.

And, once you have them, we need to be able to shoot them accurately on target.  Lots of 'em.  Fast.   In this one we got 8 balls airborne in 3 seconds.  Early "reliability" tests were hitting about 80% on target.  Not bad.

You may notice that we have adults holding this prototype down for testing.  It's not secured down, and it has a couple of flywheels that have a lot of stored energy.  There's a time to be a little extra cautious, and the end of a long Saturday session is one of them.

Of course consistency will be important, and it would be best to be launching them in pairs.  So a feed system is our biggest remaining challenge.   

Oh, and about flywheels.  We just happened to have a couple on hand.  They came off the fall Robot School machine which was designed and built with the sneaking suspicion that this would be a year to launch things.

Cardboard Technology

Just for fun, at the joint teams kickoff of the FIRST season, we threw together a mock up of of the playing field made out of cardboard, cafeteria chairs, etc.  And put kids on rolling chairs to be "robots".  A once a year exception to the general rule that we expect them to build robots, not become them.  

Progress on the actual robots is ongoing.  Report on Monday.  Likely every Monday for a while.

How Smart was my Father?

Dad grew up on a farm.  One that still was doing things the way they'd been done, well, forever.  There were still a few horses.  The language spoken at home was German.  That's also what was used at the nearby school house for younger kids.  My memory is telling me this was referred to as "The German School".

Maybe some people thrive on the daily routines and the long repeating cycles of farm life.  Dad, not so much.  He had the motivation to get off to the big city and do something different.  And the ability.  He was Valedictorian of his - admittedly small - high school class.  I never asked him, but its my assumption that the student body got smaller as kids decided, or were told, "Enough of that nonsense, we need your help at home."  (Google Translate would put this roughly as: "Genug von diesem Unsinn, Zeit, nach Hause zu kommen und zu arbeiten", but that would be classic High German, they spoke a sort of rustic dialect called "Plattdeutch" 

Going through the detritus of my parent's house I found many artifacts.  Lots relating to my own academic career.  These are sobering.  I clearly thought I was smarter than the record indicates.  Also, a few fascinating things from my father, who appears to have been smarter than I thought.  Or was he just an exemplar of a generation that valued learning more?

Here's a notebook from what seems to have been his sophomore year in college:

Notebooks were classier back then I guess.

It was from some sort of anatomy and physiology class.  There's detailed, hand written charts describing how frogs respond to assorted stimuli after various parts of their brains have been destroyed.  Macabre stuff, but interesting.  

Also various stuff on human anatomy, bones of the human skull for instance.  In addition to the elegant hand writing it looks as if some of the illustrations - also quite good - were his work.  Examples of my own work from that era would do me no credit.

It's interesting to see where our careers overlapped in time.   I found a few examples of his hospital dictation work.  All of it precise, detailed, and with perfectly fluent thought....

This was from 1987, when he'd been in practice for thirty plus years and I for a couple.  The procedure for this work - it was a discharge summary as it happens - was to sit down with the chart and dictate it.  Later it would be transcribed and you'd sign it.  The point, at least then, was to tell the story, and to tell it in a fashion that would make it easy to follow in case some other physician had to figure out what was going on.  You have to prioritize things.  You also have to include anything that might become important at some time in the future.  It is a difficult form of writing.  

Now of course this is essentially a Lost Art.  I've written in the past about the Pros (able to access and link to other information) and Cons (templates make doctors lazy) of Electronic Medical Records.   As I've said earlier, my dad was never lazy.  If he said - as in this summary - that a patient had "..an indurated saphenous vein in the right calf..."  Then she damn well did.  

What exactly makes one an excellent physician?  Hard working helps.  Smart helps.  In the era my dad was practicing being "Old School" probably helped too.  I remember one of his colleagues describing him as "One of the Great Gentlemen of Medicine". 

It's probably the epitaph he'd be most proud of.  If he probably had the intelligence to succeed in some other field he may not have had the instincts for say, business.  The one mild regret I heard him once express really surprised me.   Evidently when he was stationed in Germany he had the chance to travel around a bit.  At one point he was interested in visiting Vienna, which was then the mecca of the new discipline of psychiatry.  How my father, that smart but in many ways naive man would have dealt with the outer fringe of a crazy world is hard to imagine....

 

FIRST Robotics - The 2026 Season Kicks Off

Well, here we go again.  The "reveal" video for the 2026 game......

As in years past we hosted a joint Kickoff with the other teams around our area.  

And this year...something different.  The just announced game played by humans!  Not bad considering we threw the entire thing together in under two hours!

I'll try to get the video of chaotic game play up in the next day or two.....

MONDAYS will probably be robot update days for the next couple of months.

The Object in Hand - Haitian Beer!

Time for a bit of mid winter tidy up.  Boxes are being pulled out, rummaged through.  Some things are being kept, others tossed.  Never quite enough of the latter.  Sometimes you find things that just are askin' for a bit of research.  Behold:

Out of context this might be considered a bit sketchy.*  But context we indeed have.

When my Better Half was in college she spent a semester abroad.  Not in Paris or any such fun location, in Haiti! This was towards the tail end of the Duvallier dictatorship, Papa Doc and Baby Doc, but before it descended to its current state of anarchy.  

This beer coaster came back with her.  She recalls that the drinks available in 1978 were Coke, beer and rum.  All warm.  She never tried the beer, but has always been a fiend when it comes to using coasters for drinks.  So what's the story behind this, er, colorful item?

Prestige beer is, or perhaps was, a product of Brasserie Nationale d Haiti, or BRANA.  This was founded in 1973 by Michael Madsen.  Madsen was Haitian, from a Danish family of some prominence.  Prestige beer was first produced in 1976.  My wife was in Haiti a couple of years later.

BRANA's other lines of business historically were mostly soda.  Pepsi, 7Up, and more recently their own products King Cola and an energy drink called TORO.  

BRANA had some early investment from Heineken.  In 2011 Heineken effectively took over the company by buying up 95% of the stock.  So, how has that investment worked out?  Well, there's still a nice looking website but it does not seem to have been updated in years.  There's also a facebook page, similarly showing no recent posts.  So, how about Google Maps?  Well, its pointing me to a plant called, oddly, cocacola lachine canada.  It claims to still be in operation, and the satellite view shows trucks there.  I tried to get a street view, but no go.  I guess the conditions in Port au Prince are such that driving around with a Google car is not practical.  Someone did leave a review 3 months ago speaking highly of Prestige, so I assume it is still being made there.  

This is apparently a picture.

It is vanishingly unlikely that I'll ever sample a Prestige but if one comes my way I at least have the proper coaster.  And I'm sure it is, as it has been for fifty years or so, the best Haitian beer.  

That's a low bar considering it appears to be the only beer brewed there.

______________________________________________-

* Regards sketchy status.  In something current it might be considered offensive to show a black guy with exaggerated features and platform shoes.  But this was the 1970's.  All of us, black and white dressed badly.  My college room mate was from the South Side of Chicago.  Great guy, like me he became an ER doc.  Alas, gone too soon.  He had a big 'fro and shoes just like that.  The 1970's, ugh.

How Frugal was my Father?

Hmmm.  This is a tough one.  Frugality has been handed down from generation to generation in my family.  When they came to Minnesota Territory in the late 1850's they bought their farmstead for cash from a guy who got it as a reward for fighting in the War with Mexico.  

My dad grew up on that farm.  My own early memories of the place were that everything needed a new coat of paint.  It was old fashioned to the point that they were still hauling milk around in  big round cans.  Absent a modern, all sealed system they could only sell Grade B milk, for making cheese and such.  I didn't realize it at the time, but the farm was locked into a Great Depression sort of mindset.  When years later we cleaned the place out there were coffee cans with hundreds - maybe thousands - of buttons in Grandma's sewing area.  When clothes got old they were used as rags, the buttons taken off for potential future use.  As if your rate of button loss would use up this stash anytime before the 25th century!

That's how my dad grew up, and in most ways that ethos never left him.  I have early memories of him shaving.  Squeak! turn the faucet for a drip of hot water, turn it off, shave a little section.  Then Squeak! get another teaspoon of hot water for the next bit.  

But he was inconsistent.  He loved cars, especially somewhat gaudy ones with extra chrome.  He paid too much for them.  When I was, oh, 17 or so I went with him car shopping.  The salesman got him very interested in a yellow Ford Galaxy 500.  Not a great car, as if the 1970's had many of those, and the asking price was a bit rich.  "Dad, try offering him $______ instead".  "Really?"  He just had no idea of how the world worked other than charging a few bucks for office and hospital calls.

Yep, something like this.  Ugh, what a pig.

While cleaning out my parent's house we found various relics of fiscal imprudence.  Stock certificates from, iirc, The Las Vegas Gold Exchange.  Of course it, and several other companies whose fancy certificates we ran across, went bankrupt, taking the investors money down with them.  Down to Mexico most likely.

Perhaps the charitable explanation is simply that money did not matter much to him.  Not enough to spend time thinking too much about it.  

Eventually all those dollars slowly generated by a solo physician practice did add up.  You'd be surprised how much frugality helps in long term financial planning.  I suppose when my mom passes a share of it will come my way.  And I will immediately hand it over to my kids, his grand kids.  Frugality is useful, and money comes in handy,  But I also learned from him that some things are more important.

How Hard Working was my Father?

I've been looking over my dad's ledger book from his first year in private practice.  Prior to this he was in an accelerated Med School track for the Army, then spent a few years as a base physician in Germany.  On return he went back for a couple more years of training, then hung out the shingle.  I still have that shingle btw.

Let's take a peek at this bygone era of medicine.....

Obviously long before the age of electronic office management and accounting software.

This records not the actual appointment schedule, just charges and receipts.  But you can fill in the gaps fairly easily.  At this point in time I think my dad had not one but two offices, in different parts of town.  And did house calls, nursing home calls, minor surgeries, etc.

It makes for fascinating browsing.  Office calls were usually 2 or 3 dollars.  Delivering a baby? $85.

He worked seven days a week.  Saturdays were just as busy as Monday through Friday.  On Sunday he took it a little easy, his office(s) must have been closed.  But even on the Day of Rest there were Hospital Calls ($3) and Home visits ($5).

He kept very detailed records.  In an average month he took in about $1500 and had expenditures of around $500.  

Needless to say this is a world of medicine long forgotten.  Although to put things into perspective a bit, it was a time when as I understand it there were price controls on what physicians could charge.  And, if you take his total profit on the year of $12,813 and multiply it by the inflation since 1953, you get just over $150,000 in actual equivalent purchasing power.  Everything was a lot cheaper back then.  He was still making about four times the average wage for 1953.

Picking through a ledger book you find little details.  His office rent was $50.50.  As I'm only finding one such expense perhaps the second office came later, or perhaps I got that story wrong. At the start of the year he had one employee, a certain Marianne Peterson.  She made about $190 a month.  By the end of the year she was sharing the work load with a certain Mariel Hanson.

Interestingly, M. Hanson became M. Wolter and drops off the payroll in 1954.  But by then I'm sure she was de facto Office Manager!

Dad's generation had a different attitude towards work.  He grew up on a dairy farm, and an old fashioned one at that.  There were still a few horses around when he was a young lad.  He did chores.  Oh, so many chores.  Somehow he found a way to be Valedictorian of his high school class, so there must have been a fair amount of studying after all the work was done.

College-Med School compressed into, I think, 5 years instead of the usual 8.  Then his Army doctor service, most of the time being the only post doctor on a base that was essentially a small town of GI's and their dependents.  Maybe starting out in his own practice seemed easier, as he was nominally his own boss.  

Eventually even he got tired.  He had a well concealed literary streak.  Once he wrote a  lengthy poem entitled "And the Patients Lose their Patience".  He got to where he felt as if the work was in charge of his life.  And it was.  

I did learn from dad, but sometimes learned what not to do. I worked hard, and was no slacker in my generation of physicians.  But I spent more time with my boys.  And I was a much better businessman.  So when it came time to retire I could do so on my terms.   It's been good years since I hung up the stethoscope.  Dad, not so much.  Work was his life.  He eventually joined a group practice that had a mandatory retirement age of 70.  He worked right up to the end, and so did not get the enjoyable decade I've had since 60.  Sadly, after retirement he was idle, a bit lost.   And what he'd lost was the thing that structured his schedule, his days and his nights.  I think he genuinely enjoyed being a doctor; helping people.  To some extent he also used work as his way to avoid difficult things at home.

As is sometimes the case I start out writing one story and end up somewhere unexpected.  

Remembering Dad- Ten Years On...

It's that curious gap between the holidays and the swirling chaos of robotics season.  There's not that much going on.  Perhaps its time for a bit of reflection.  Specifically on the subject of my father, who died ten years ago this month.

I remember a lecturer in Med School saying "It is a wise man who truly knows his father".  Now, as it happens, he was being a bit of a smart aleck at the time.  It was a Genetics course and he was alluding to the question of official vs actual paternity, one that vexed many who studied the field in early days.  Now, heck, a simple swab will show you the twisty branches of your family tree on both sides clear back to Adam and Eve.

I didn't know it at the time, and maybe he didn't either, but he was quoting Homer from the Odyssey.  

But I'm certainly not talking about knowing who my father was in the sense of DNA.  No, as I get older, and as I pass the same way posts he did, I wonder if my image of him grows blurrier or clearer?

Obituaries are such terse summations.  I have creative offspring, and do expect a better effort.  In whatever format exists at that point.  Perhaps I'll be in the last generation who will have eloquent obituaries and eulogies.  It will just be easier to have AI write them all before too long.

Anyway, bear with me for a few memories of dad in the weeks ahead.