Den Four, Buddy.

 Oppressive summer weather kept me inside a bit in late July.  And put me onto some tasks only marginally nicer than sweating and breathing the horrid Canadian smoke that blew in for a while.  Closet cleaning and organizing.   Ugh.

But you find stuff.  Here's something I hauled home from the clean up of my parent's house.  It dates to my days as a Cub Scout.  Some of the photos have helpful date stamps and/or scribbled notes.  The cover is plywood, with the letters burnt in with a soldering iron or something similar.  Not exactly safety first back then.  Join me for a jump back in time some six decades.

Scouts were organized in a sort of military fashion.  A Pack of Cub Scouts would be like a Platoon in the Army.  A Den was a smaller group, like a Squad would be.  Oh, not in the cool sense of the word that Squad was used until fairly recently.  Here's Den Four.

Statistically speaking, a couple of those smiling lads are no longer with us.

Below is a moment in time.  February 1967 in the kitchen of my parent's old house.  Making paper Mache puppets.  I have a grandson about the age I am here.  His spelling and penmanship is better than mine. 

A guy in uniform.

This next one is an oddity.  Not the same paper or quality as the other photos, which were taken on an old Instamatic camera with 'flash cubes'.  

I think that's my older brother.  He appears to be just about to step on that model train car and fall on his butt.  These are the stairs going down to the basement.  My recollection is that we had a Scout activity that involved taking pictures with an old school camera - something like a Brownie - then developing them ourselves.  I can call up a memory of swishing moist paper around in stuff that smelled like vinegar.

Just random glimpses of an earlier time.  A time when most everyone had three or four kids.  Heck, the Catholic family across the alley had more.  And there was a solid culture of volunteerism.  My mom was a Den Mother.  Had a swell blue outfit and everything.  She was also president of the PTA and a bunch of other stuff.  This despite having four kids, one with special needs.

Now its much harder to rouse people to any volunteer efforts.  They wanna get paid.  Or they wanna just keep playin' with their phones.

4th of July - America at 250

Fourth of July is usually a surprisingly personal holiday for most Americans.  We  get the three day weekend off - ER docs being the exception - and are expected to go do summer things that please us.  If you have a lake cabin, go there.  If there are jobs to do, keep them at a minimum.  Grill stuff.  Have a cold beer.  That's the Midwest paradigm at least.  As for other parts of the country, well, YMMV.

250 years seems like a less impressive feat than the Bicentennial was.  It's kind of like one's 40th anniversary.  A big number but less substantive than say 25 or 50.  That's not really fair of course.  With longer life spans lots of people reach their 50th anniversary.  Very few countries on earth last for centuries.  I mean, obviously the land does, the form of government not so much.  

There is a tendency of late to be very downcast about America and the future.  I don't share this pessimism.  

1976.  The bicentennial.  I was in college.  My waistline was thin.  My hair was not.  We'd just waded through the apparent defeat of Vietnam and the difficulty of Watergate.  Gas for our horrid 1970's cars was expensive.  Interest rates were ridiculously high.  Current home seekers despair over 6.3% mortgage rates.  Hey, try 18% on for size.  (ok, that was a couple of years earlier, but still....).

And for all that I don't remember people being nearly as disturbed as some are today.  

Times are different.  We are different.  Which changes which?

Fifty years ago there were still certainties.  Our parents were of durable stock, having endured the Great Depression and the Second World War.  There were even plenty of "doughboys" around whose lives started in an agrarian, isolationist country.  These were not stupid people, they'd seen a great deal come to pass.  But they kept their focus on making their lives and that of their families better.

Odd times for America on its 250th.  We are now exposed to continuous outrage on our electronic marvels.  But at the same time we have as a culture been sleep walking.  So many important questions just kicked down the road like an old tin can...a can that contains the accumulated debt that our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. You can be supportive, neutral or antagonistic to this administration but at least difficult questions are being asked.  Hopefully the right answers will be forthcoming.  If not, we'll elect a different bunch.   

So Happy Birthday.  Life is not perfect.  It is in fact always going to be a mixture.  That phone that brings you Tiktok slop and panicky dispair...it also contains more information that we could have imagined 25 years ago.  We are smarter than we used to be: the percentage of Americans with college degrees is up markedly.  Wiser is another matter.....

Well enough of this.  Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness means, get out there and enjoy the day.  Burgers and beer optional.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Our house was built in 1908.  Not old from the standpoint of our community, which got going in the 1840's, but it does represent an interesting moment in time.  The Lumber Baron era was just over.  The modern age - indoor plumbing, electricity, telephone lines - had arrived.

It was also a time of class distinctions.  Oh, not so much as in England, but there was a definite expectation that people of quality lived on the top of the hill, while smaller houses full of working class folks were further down the slope.  

I should really know the story better, but evidently our house was built by a guy who worked in a bank during the lumbering era.  His daughter lived there after he passed.

It's a nice enough house.  But today's focus is on the Upstairs-Downstairs world of early 20th century servants.

They were mostly women, mostly recent immigrants.  Usually from Scandinavia or perhaps Germany.  They were probably some combination of maid, cook, nanny.  I don't know a lot about the woman who lived here as a servant.  I've seen her name on a census.  My "office" a small room where I am allowed to set up computer, files, random junk, used to be her bedroom.  When we were new in the house it still had a sink.  This was pretty handy when we made it the nursery for our three kids.

Downstairs there is one room that was a bit fancy.  A dining room with decent woodwork.  On the floor there is a metal plate that used to have a button.  When the Man of the House, or perhaps the Woman of same, pushed a button with a toe there'd be a buzzer or bell that would sound.  I think we found a few remnants of this system's wiring during an early remodel.

And going from the kitchen to the Dining Room there was a swinging door.  You certainly would not expect people of quality to see pots, pans and dishes!  The door swung on a hinge.  Specifically, here:

I did say it was not all that Grand.  But lets focus on a little area down at the bottom of the doorway.....

There is a little square of wood there that does not quite fit with the rest of the flooring.  There used to be something else there, something that could be removed. leaving a gap between first floor and basement.  Small people used to like to yell things and drop messages down from above.

What used to be there was a very fancy hinge, the sort of thing that would articulate a nice door.  I could see the Servant Girl gently pushing it open while carrying in platters full of whatever upper middle class folks dined on back in the day.

And as it happens, I still have that hinge.  It's more interesting than most bits of 126 year old hardware...

OK, that's only mildly interesting.  Let's flip it over to read:

BOMMER FLOOR HINGE  PAT. DEC 25 1900

I've seen other things patented on Christmas Day.  It must have been a thing back then.  Certainly the Patent Office would not have been open on December 25th, so they must have had some sort of paperwork gimmick to make this the patent date.*

The Bommer Company is, remarkably still around.  HERE'S their story.

Alas, on a closer read of their website it appears that in the summer of 2025 they decided to wrap up the business, no doubt in the face of overseas competition, and it looks as if they are selling off remaining stock.  😔

--------------------------------------------

* The most famous patent date of this sort is on the "Christmas Coke" bottles that are the classic shape for CocaCola when it came in glass.

Lumberjacks (and Jills)

Timber Sports.  Now there's a phrase you probably have never heard.  It's basically modern people competing in lumberjack activities.  To some extent using modern tools like chain saws.  And there are Lumber Jills as well as Lumber Jacks.

Hayward Wisconsin, near where our up north cabin is, has quite the center of Timber Sportsdom.  In fact they have the Lumberjack World Championship competition there.  Really talented people chopping, sawing, log rolling, climbing poles, that sort of thing.  

There is also a regular "show" for entertaining tourists.  Not quite World Champs level stuff but with lots of banter, and still many amazing things to be seen.  We had some out of town visitors with us recently and they went to see the show.

Afterwards I got them to split a season's worth of kindling.  Happily with no mishaps.

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Three

Weather was The Usual.  Alternating sun, clouds, rain, driving rain, birds singing happily.  You get used to it after a while.  Here's the site during one of the sunny spells.

I don't have photos of what I was working on today.  It is work in progress and at this point does not photograph well.  Why would there be a ridge of debris from the circa 150 AD fort be running smack through the middle of a barracks room from the fort of 50 years later?  Something has been filled in or built up or dropped by aliens.  I'll try to do better on current events tomorrow.

Another thing about this spot is that it is next to the fence, so I get to talk to visitors.  Today I was chatting when a kid of about 11 asked me where I was from.

"Wisconsin", said I.

"Me too", said he.

OK that's unusual, and I wondered if just possibly the kid was putting me on.  No judgement mind you, I'd actually admire that level of brass.  So I asked him to prove it.

"Go Pack!"

"Nope, not good enough"

"Uh.....Culvers!!!"  Yep, he's from Wisconsin.  If you know you know.

Perhaps in a bit of similar vein is the fact that just this year wearing camo has become rather common.  Excavators and visitors both.  Here's a photo taken by my friend Pete.  It's me with one of the supervising archaeologists.   I suppose you could make up a story about how I ended up wearing her shirt or she my pants, but get real folks, these were in both cases outer layers!

Merrill Wisconsin - an odd gun in the Park

 Seen in a Veteran's Memorial park, Merrill Wisconsin.

It is of course an artillery piece, but what an odd one.  Huge springs!  Let's look for additional clues.  Here's a view that shows more, although with light that is less good.

And some helpful markings around the business end of things:

These read: 7 inch No. 48 Wt. 1689 lbs.  JPF Insp. Watervliet Arsenal 1900.  Elsewhere on the gun it says Model 1892 Bethlehem Steel.  Although that might be the gun carriage, not the gun proper.  Finally, there is a bronze bit that has stamped on it: No. 48 Model of 1895 Watertown Arsenal.  I'm a bit confused now.  So what is this critter?

To start things off, Watertown Arsenal and Watervliet Arsenal are not the same outfit.  The former mostly made gun carriages.  The latter made the guns, and as in this case, the howitzers.  Howitzers are short, stubby, larger caliber weapons designed to fire shorter distances and at very high angles.

So far so good.  But this is a very odd bit of artillery.  Most of what you see in assorted war memorials are either WWII surplus stuff or captured items from I or II.  This is neither.

It appears to be an item of obsolete coastal artillery.  That's a much less common variety of monument, but you can see how they'd get surplused.  I've run into one or two in my travels.  But nothing like this critter.

Even without the dated plaques it has to be 1890's tech.  Earlier artillery pieces would usually have wheels and/or some means to solidly dig into the ground or be welded to the deck of a ship.  Every time you fired it the recoil would move the gun and you'd have to reposition it.  In 1897 that all changed, when the French unveiled their 75mm cannon with hydraulic recoil dampening.  This was the model for all artillery for the next hundred years.

Before that there must have been assorted experiments with springs and similar gadgetry.  I've nosed about here and there in sources and can find nothing specific on this "thing", perhaps the internet will toss me an answer.

Was this some low production run experiment?  Some boondoggle project right around the Spanish American War when somebody in the War Office bought the fantasy that the Spanish fleet might sail into Boston harbor some day?  Who knows.  

Baseball with The Chicago Ladies

Well, here the Chicago Ladies are in 1908.  You'll notice a few Chicago dudes there as well.  We'll get to that in a bit.

This is an example of what became known as a Bloomer Girl team.  In the years before they had A League of Their Own, these barnstorming teams traveled about playing exhibition games.  Specific to Chippewa Falls and Athletic Park, the Chicago Ladies came to town in August of 1909.

A bit of explanation is in order here.

First of all, this was far from the "only" recognized professional ladies team.  There were an assortment of such teams touring about, with the Boston Stars seeming to be the most famous.

And, its a stretch to call the members of this squad Ladies.  I mean, there's no reason to doubt the virtue of the female players, but it was common practice for such teams to have several men on them.  Usually in the higher skilled positions like catcher and pitcher.  Sometimes these would be players that traveled with the team, sometimes locally recruited lads.  As they would be expected to wear wigs - and I'm assuming skirts! - these were sometimes referred to as "toppers".

For the record - and of course this was a decade before another Chicago team got into trouble with betting - there was a bit of money wagered on this game with the odds supposedly being near even up.  Guess the smart money got it right, because the Chippewa Falls team prevailed by a modest 8-6 margin.  

Interestingly it was mentioned that a certain Dorais would be pitching for the Colts.  It has to be THIS GUY, who not only went on to an impressive pro career in sports, but also has the current high school football field named after him!

Their stop in Chippewa Falls would seem to be fairly typical for the Chicago Ladies.  Actual details of the team's history are hard to piece together.  The manager was a Birdie Carleton, who was said to have been involved in women's baseball teams since 1902/03.  In 1908 she was described as being "about 30", so I'm going with born early 1870's.  

There's a book's worth of interesting material on Miss Birdie Carleton.  I sincerely hope somebody has already written it, otherwise...well, the last time I came across something like this I had to write it (POW Baseball in World War Two).  Maybe I can get away with just tossing out some bread crumbs and somebody else will take up the task!

There's much that is speculation.  But I think Birdie - probably not her given name - got her start in Bloomer Girl Baseball around 1902.  In 1906 Smokey Joe Wood, one of the "toppers" who later made it big in the Majors, seems to have played for her on the Kansas City Bloomer Girls.  

There were quite a few Bloomer Girl teams in the first couple decades of the 20th century.  It does not sound like a stable business model.  Games were arranged on short notice.  The gate receipts were divided up; in the case of Birdie's teams often with skimpy results.  One time, out in Montana in the summer of 1909....

I'm not quite sure what "making a rough house" would have been in 1909 out on what could almost be regarded as a frontier community.  But displaying themselves in an "unladylike manner" makes it seem they were showing a little too much of something.  Their ankles perhaps.  

There tended to be strong efforts to maintain an aura of propriety on these teams of traveling young ladies.  Teas and other social events usually followed the games.

In any case the Trouble in Bozeman soon was left behind.  The sheriff released the team's equipment which had been held pending resolution of the matter, new girls were recruited from somewhere, and the road show went on..

Another aspect of the instability of this venture was the frequent changes.  In general Birdie was listed as the owner and manager of the club.  Why the photo up top lists someone named White is not clear. 

As we've seen, the Chicago Ladies may not have always been, well, Ladies.  And the connection with Chicago seems tenuous.  It was helpful to have a big city associated with your team, but the players were recruited wherever they could be found, and the team did not seem to have any "home games".

By 1912 Birdie - by the way both Carleton and Carlton appear as last names - was the manager of the Boston Bloomer Girls, at that time probably the best known and most successful team of their sort.  In 1916 there is mention of a name change to "Birdie Carleton's Athletic Girls".  The last trace of Birdie that I have - so far - located is an article from 1920.  She's in Long Beach California, playing with her team.  It is again the Boston Bloomer Girls.  They were to play a game on the  high school team field against a nine from local Elks club.  One of the players, a Miss Treglia, was slated to catch a ball dropped from an airplane!  The line up for the "girls" team lists feminine first names for all but four of their players.  These presumably were the guys, the "toppers".  In a delightful "oh so close" moment I noticed that one of these players was named Ott.  Did Birdie give a start to Mel Ott, future Hall of Famer?

Alas, no.  Mel Ott was 7 years old in 1916.  But she probably did have one Hall of Famer to her credit. Smokey Joe' career was great, but cut short by injury.  He never got the call from Cooperstown*.  But Rogers Hornsby did.  And he got his start in ball at age 16 when he answered an ad in the newspaper and played a few games with the Boston Bloomer Girls in Texas in 1912.

So what happened to Birdie Carleton?  The novelty of Bloomer Girl Baseball waned, and the Great Depression finished it off.  I have to date not learned much about her.  She was a member of a couple of women's organizations, Eastern Star and Rebeccas.  She continues to be referred to as "Miss" to an age where marriage in that era was low probability.  But finding an obituary or a gravestone somewhere has so far eluded me.  Was her name actually Roberta, or Alberta, or something less common?  

Oh I hope somebody will see this and let me know.  I don't want to write another book.

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*Although to be fair the last one I wrote did mean that I got the Call from Cooperstown.  I was asked, and of course accepted, to give a talk there during a special Memorial Day recognition of Major Leaguers who had served in World War Two.  Fun, and a neat anecdote to tell people.  I rode in an elevator with Hall of Famer Bob Feller.  The hand that threw the then fastest ball in baseball history not only shook my hand but tousled the hair of one of my boys!

The Lactose Maniac

So much stuff coming up from the basement of my parent's house.  This is archaeology plain and simple.  You dig through different layers trying to divine the importance of strange artifacts.  For instance, there was a considerable assortment of mint condition pamphlets from various public health agencies.  No surprise really, doctor's offices still have them.  But these were often from before my dad was actually in practice.  From the 1920's, 30's and 40's.  Did he save them as historical curios?  And how to explain the Lactose Maniac?

This dude....

Looks to me like he's enjoying himself a little more than you'd expect from a bottle of milk.  Even allowing for the fact that it was all whole milk then, none of this wimpy Skim or 2%.

There seemed to be quite the enthusiasm for milk running clear through these pamphlets.  Pregnant women for instance were supposed to slam down a quart and a half every day.  The pamphlet on Diet of the Expectant and Nursing Mother says right on the front:

Drink More Milk, Eat More Butter - For Your Health and Prosperity.

Guess you can see where the Lactose Maniac got his start down this path.   In utero.

We'll meet up with him again in a bit.  But first...

I'm putting a discrete thumb on this image.  It had, shall we say, Coppertone Ad qualities.  

But in this age of heightened awareness and of AI scraping every word and image off the internet, I'm not taking chances.

This tome is from 1935, and was printed by the Department of Labor.  (This was a 1943 reprint).  Hmmm, maybe the Good Ol' Days of child labor were not quite over?

The actual advice was pretty simplistic.  Wear good shoes - unlike this tyke on the nude beach - stand up straight, don't get rickets or scurvy.

Various exercises and play strategies are endorsed.  Some of them involving climbing on ladders and unsafe things!

Oh, and here's the Lactose Fiend a bit older.  Maybe middle school now, but he's still a two fisted milk drinker.  He's finished his glass while little Bitsy sitting next to him hasn't touched hers.

The motto on this one says: We strike at one of the roots of physical unfitness when we teach good food selection to all children whether they appear to be malnourished or not."

It comes out very strongly for school lunch programs.  In fact, it makes vague reference to a study being done where white rats were fed on the lunches kids brought to school.  One assumes the kids were as a replacement, given more nutritious fare, washed down with plenty of milk.  Oh, and the rats?  "Many of the rats failed to grow and some died as a result."  

By now you've started to detect a theme, no?  On the back of one of the pamphlets (The Public Health Nurse works with you to Protect your Family) is this revealing logo...........

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???

Kingman Reef

Interesting times politically.  Some people are happy, some unhappy.  But there is certainly change in the air.  One thing that happens with every new administration is that political appointees are expected to tender their resignations.  Which are almost always accepted.  Ah, but what about other government employees, the theoretically non partisan ones?  It can be a lot more work to move them out.  It's simply hard to fire people in Washington D.C.

So, many of them just keep their jobs.  But if the new administration really does not like you or your work, they can always reassign you somewhere else.  Alaska gets mentioned.  As does Iowa.  I've been to both places and they are just fine.  Well, not Alaska in the winter I guess.

But if you want to send a pesky bureaucrat off to the farthest reaches of American territory, off somewhere so remote that you won't hear from them again, I suggest Kingman Reef.

Never heard of it?  Well, its the smallest piece of real estate under the US flag.  It has much nicer weather than Alaska, and sandy beaches that would be the envy of Iowans.

It is about halfway between Hawaii and American Samoa.  So my Off the Map tag is apt.

Even for an out of the way spot it did not get noticed for a long time.  An American sea captain discovered it in 1798.  I assume this was related to whaling, back in the Moby Dick era its about the only reason people were out that far into the South Pacific.  Another captain named Kingman got around to actually describing it in 1853.  He named it after himself.

Now, I've mentioned the Guano Act a few times before.  Big thick layers of seabird droppings were a serious commodity in the 19th century.  Great stuff for fertilizer.  Also for high explosives.  So its no surprise that the United States Guano Company claimed Kingman Reef in 1856.  The fact that there was no actual guano there was considered a technicality.

Not much happened after that.  Occasionally a ship would run aground.

Then in 1922 a certain Lorrin A. Thurston showed up and read a Proclamation declaring the Reef to be American territory.  He seems like a bit of a character.  In addition to various business ventures he was a "volcano enthusiast" and was deeply involved in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.  One assumes he brought along a flag to raise.

And that's about it.  It was very briefly used as a stop over for Pan Am clipper "flying boats" until a fatal crash.  Today it is a wild life preserve.  Nobody lives there or in fact, is allowed to visit.  

The entire island is 3 feet above water and a little over seven acres in size.  

It seems a pleasant enough place to relocate pesky bureaucrats whose job performance is deemed execrable.  They certainly can't cause much mischief there, and at last there would be a bit of guano being generated, although the United States Guano Company has long since gone bankrupt.

Baits and Bling - Merry Christmas 2024

Hope you had a swell Christmas and got what you wanted.  I did.  Some time with our adult kids, some hugs, high fives and "knucks" from the grands.  Material things, nah, I have enough of those.

Not that there is anything wrong with the giving or receiving of gifts.  It's another way to show you care.  Of course shopping is hard for some of us, so as a public service I offer this:

Baits and Bling, in beautiful downtown Chetek, Wisconsin.  As the sign says, "Everyone's happy!".  They are closed until Spring, but I can imagine fishermen coming in, buying minnows and night crawlers....realizing they are not being particularly attentive spouses, and buying "bling".  I think they are leaning heavily into ear rings fashioned out of lures.  Stuff like this:

The sign out front looks pretty swanky, upscale and new.  The one on the side has more of a "Bait Shop" vibe to it.  I bet it smells like minnows and night crawlers.  So do their customers, which is why the side line is probably working out pretty well for them.  Everyone's happy.

The Stockyard - a rare Business Review

Sometimes you just have to say nice things.

Vojtik's Stockyard is an unusual business enterprise.  Two locations a short distance apart, one is a meat packing business the other a classic Wisconsin bar and grill.  I've enjoyed the work of both.

When we were laboring in the heat of July, building that off grid house, The Stockyard (restaurant) was our go to place.  Food.  A cold beer.  Several glasses of ice water.  We left considerably restored.  That by the way is the base meaning of the word restaurant, and they did a darn good job.

They also have their earlier building just up the road a stretch.  This used to be the restaurant in front, meat packing out back.  Now its all meat, all the time.

And they do wild game processing.  Deer mostly, but I'm sure if you pulled up with a defunct bear or some such they'd rise to the occasion.

As I've mentioned the business side of this is delightful.  When I asked how to get the ball rolling when I had a deer I was told: "First, go to the bar".  Deal.  Paperwork done in five minutes then then up the road to drop off the deer.  I admit, this year's bag was of a rather small critter - which I consider a testament to my skill as an archer! - but the guys who pulled it off the truck were cheerful and enthusiastic.  "Nice deer!"

The process - inadvertent pun - on the other end is also simple.  They call you up.  You go to - you guessed it - the bar.  And they have a refrigerated trailer with everyone's processed steaks, sticks and sausage ready in a marked tub.  

Time did not permit a celebratory beverage at either end of the procedure but you sure could do that.

I have the deer in my freezer now.  I had cleared plenty of space.  More than I needed as it turns out.  And the first venison stick has been sampled.  Mmmm, good stuff.

So, on the off chance you are looking for cheerful, efficient game processing in rural Western Wisconsin, head to the Stockyard.  Or if you are laboring outdoors in 90 degree heat, also highly recommended.

Cheers

There's something you don't see every day.....

My deer hunting trips to my son's Homestead had me sitting in a tree stand for a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening.  So what to do in between?  Well, the occasional side trip is called for.  And on occasion you just run across odd things.  Such as:

As the old saying went: "Now there's something you don't see every day..."  Especially when you get closer and find out that it is on the National Registry of Historic Places!

This is the Silverdome Ballroom.   If you are curious about its history and construction HERE is a brief summary.  If you want a whole bunch more, here's the info from the National Registery.

If you are just casually interested....it was built during the Great Depression by a family that had earlier built a sort of "supper club" on the site that was actually a speakeasy.  It is btw still there and is called, logically, The Speakeasy Saloon.  The name Silverdome comes from the unusual use of aluminum elements to support the dome.  The Keller brothers who did the construction paid a $1000 royalty to the German patent holders for this process.  This is remarkable because A) that was a lot of money during the Depression and B) one suspects the German engineers got good at this stuff by building zeppelins.

Over the years the Silverdome has done pretty well.  It is in fact a going concern.  There are some odd businesses next door to it that also caught my eye....

This seems to have been a carpentry shop of some sort, the sign indicating a Mill Works.  But it is now a CBD joint and a barber shop!  I guess the slightly illegal business doings that started with the speakeasy (seen in the distance in this picture) are ongoing.  As I have not much hair and even less interest in quasi legal marijuana I did not stop in.

The Silverdome has seen quite a few known acts over its long years.  Duke Ellington, Johnny Cash, The Bellamy Brothers, Buffalo Springfield and Cheap Trick.  Also, and nearer to my heart, Whoopee John.  Or if you want to be formal, Whoopee John Wilfahrt.

Whoopee John was from New Ulm Minnesota, so it should not surprise any of you that his musical genre was Polka.  He toured extensively and was still a moderately well known name when I was a young lad.  

When I was a bit older, but arguably no wiser, I'd occasionally turn up to help dispatch a keg of beer at our friend Markie's house.  One of his housemates was a young man whose name I either never knew or can't recall.  Everyone just called him Wilfahrt.  Over a red plastic cup of some sort of affordable to the impoverished brew he told me he was a descendent of Whoopee and that the band's tour bus had on the back:

WHOOPEE JOHN WILFAHRT

           AND HIS BAND WILL PLAY 

 

CCC Camp Globe Revisited

My earlier post on CCC Camp Globe had too many loose ends.  I had gone there looking for remains of the place, particularly of the impressive gate posts that once held giant globes.  Instead I found scattered remains, and these big hunks of stone work.  Which seem to be too close together for gate posts.

And there were other problems.  Usually the signs marking the location of CCC camps were put pretty close to the main entrances of same.  This "stuff" was a couple hundred yards in.  So, it was time for a repeat visit.  Actually it took two, as on one occasion there were some rather unfriendly guys scouting hunting locations right there.  

With a few more leaves gone I was able to see more.  Down the road from the above photo was:

More stone, cement, even a cellar hole.  So at least I'd found a few more remains.  But what about the gate posts?

The cover of the CCC Camp Globe newspaper is helpful.  I've generally found such images to be reasonably accurate.

You can see my point about the spacing between the gate posts.  Also, see how the road is coming off what I suspect is the existing county road at a 90 degree angle, and then starts to curve to the right.  Same view today:

Alas, I think the gate posts are long gone.  Probably they were destroyed when the county road was widened and ditches added at some point.  

CCC camps are a real test of my archaeological "eye".  Most were only occupied for a few years, and most have subsequently seen logging activity.  This tends to create many ambiguous lumps and bumps, and to either re-use or destroy the roads of the original camp.  While of course adding new roads specific to the logging operation.  As CCC camps were laid out rather loosely on military principles the position of roads is critical to understanding them.  So Globe is a tough nut to crack, although I think the road seen above - now used only by hunters - was probably the main road of the camp.

I had a flicker of hope when I learned that there was a geocache hidden here, supposedly at an old building foundation.  Alas, it was a few yards from the mystery pillars, which I suspect were part of a gigantic fire place.  Cool cache container though....

Walk like an Egyptian....

I'm not a very "musical" person.  My assorted relatives a couple generations down were amazed that I don't own ear buds, don't have a music streaming service...heck, I don't even listen to music when I'm driving.  Meh.

But every now and then a song, or in this case a music video, captures a moment in time and I take a liking to it.  For instance....The Bangles, and Walk like an Egyptian.....

Here's the full video.....it brings back the 80's every time....

1986.  Women mostly had hair like that.  It was a silly era.  So what was the actual story behind this nonsense?

I assumed it was a call back to the famous Steve Martin appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1978.  And I bet there is some indirect influence.  He was very much, and very over the top, dancing like an Egyptian.

But the actual story is odd.  Apparently the song writer, a certain Liam Sterberg, was crossing the English Channel in a ferry during rough seas.  As the boat swayed side to side the passengers had to do a sort of "Egyptian" dance move to stay steady.  I've crossed the Channel back in the days before the hover ferry and the Chunnel.  I can relate.  The first few lines of the song seem to reflect this story when they mention "..if you move too quick...you're falling down like a domino.."

I was new in medical practice and a first time father when Walk Like an Egyptian came out in 1986.  So I probably did not notice it at the time or even know who The Bangles were.  But as they are my age contemporaries its nice to find on a bit of searching that they are all alive and seem to have had mostly successful lives.  

Not all the people appearing in the video did.  Princess Diana would die in a traffic accident 11 years later.  Muammar Quadaffi had a few brushes with mortality before meeting an unfortunate but not undeserved end in 2011.  And the fire fighters of Ladder Company 100, well, some of them would have a date with destiny on September 11th, 2001.  Which makes this image from the end of the video especially poignant.  The Lady who is doing various Egyptian moves has her torch directly above the Twin Towers.

Exploding Whale Day

  

At this point the majority of you are saying "What the heck?", while a few oddball savants are saying "A bit early, isn't it?".   For the second group I'll just say that given all the excitement in our political arena I'm not sure that one week after the election a story about putrid blubber raining down from the sky would stand out in the least.

So....

There is actually a considerable, er, corpus of data on dead, beached whales blowing up.  Sometimes just by the natural, if disgusting, process of decomposition.  But by far the most exciting example of the genre occurred back in 1970, and had the assistance of a poorly thought out half ton of dynamite.

A 45 ton sperm whale washed up on the beach at Florence Oregon on November 9th.  After three days in which the whale got stinkier, it was decided that the best course of action would be to blow the whale up with explosives.  The idea being that it would then be in smaller bits which would either be eaten by the converging mob of seagulls or be in small enough parts that hauling them away would be simpler.  Beaches were at that time under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Highway Department, an outfit who had a bit of experience in blowing up obstructions.  It did not go well.  No, not well at all.......

Delightfully this event has become part of local lore.  There is an Exploding Whale Memorial Park in downtown Florence.  Every November the locals hold Exploding Whale Days.  Delightfully, the cub reporter who appeared in the above video 54 years ago is still with us and will be in attendance!  I can't actually find out much more about the festival.  It seems to involve a funky art show and at 3:45, a public toast in memory of the whale.  I like that.

Florence Oregon is not too far from Eugene where they have a minor league baseball team.  It is somewhat in vogue - probably for extra merch sales - for teams to have special "alternate uniforms".  So last year the Eugene Emeralds played a few games as the "Exploding Whales".  

The logo is actually a lot cooler than the uniforms.....

Well, food for thought.  This probably caught my eye based on our own experiences sighting a similar beached whale on our Florida trip in March.  The folks in charge of that situation appear to have been well aware of the Exploding Whale legend, and learned from it.

So a Happy Exploding Whale Day to you, one and all.  When the actual official day rolls around on November 12th lets hope the air is not filled with panic and a fine mist of rancid goo.