Forgotten Brewery Caves - New London Wisconsin

Today lets swing through New London Wisconsin and a "maybe" Forgotten Brewery Cave. 

Below is a nice brick building along the river at 327 E. Wolf River Avenue.  It was built in 1876 as The City Brewery.  It appears to have diversified fairly early, producing both beer and soft drinks.  Later it was called the New London Bottling Works and made soft drinks exclusively. The enterprise seems to have gone under in the 1920s.  It is worth noting that they had local competition for a rather small market, the Knapstein Brewery was a slightly earlier business and was just a couple of blocks away.

The City Brewery is now an apartment building.  This limits the scope of possible exploration a bit.  In the front view above I suspect the stone ring is where an old well was located.  But for the enigmatic feature that caught my eye we need to stroll around to what is the back side of the building in the above view....

A much newer metal building on the left, the City Brewery on the right.  But what is that slanted structure that extends out onto the cement slab?

The only thing that makes any sense is a set of stairs going downwards and into "something" along side the brewery.  This would be the likely location for a storage cave.  The river lies to the back of this photo and there is nothing there that looks like a road access.  Behind me the land is level, no place to pull wagons in to load the kegs on.  I have seen similar layouts on Sanborn maps from other breweries where they have an elevator to bring the beer up.  Its a fine theory.  It is probably even correct.  But darn it all, here is a photo from 1973 that shows nothing at all useful.  

The later building does not show.  It is an appliance repair shop that seems to be only intermittently open.  The cement strip looks to be more of a patio than anything else, but I do note that it appears to be on a built up berm.

Something must have happened when the later pole barn structure was built.  I think when digging the foundations they ran into a long forgotten brewery cave.  And I bet those stairs go down into it.

Alas on a day when the TV repairman was not in and the apartment residents were all behind closed doors there was nobody to ask.  Put this in the category of "needs an update".  Anybody out there know more?

Last Stand

I am just back from a visit with my father in law.  He lives ten hours away and has been in declining health.  The visit was partly social, partly "it could be the last time", partly to get my retired but still somewhat helpful professional opinion on things.

The old gent is 94 and still living alone in an apartment.  He is just barely hangin' on, with bad balance, bad vision, bad hearing.

Two days of visits bookended by twenty hours of driving.  We probably had less than an hour of real conversation.

When he nodded off I would watch the vintage cowboy movies that he had on continuously, even though he can't see or hear much of them any more.  It was sound off for me as the system was plugged into his headphones.  But I got to where I could quickly figure out the stock characters.  School Marm.  Spunky Cow Girl.  Dance Hall Lady.  Square Jawed Hero.  Shifty Eyed Villain in a black hat.

Of course there were plenty of fist fights and six guns were regularly "blazing".  

Looking about the little apartment where he thought he would be spending his last days, and comparing it to the silent action on the big screen I realized that you don't always get to decide where you will make your Last Stand.

No matter how stubborn or strong you start out it is just not possible to anticipate certain things.  What parts of you will fail first.  Whether your spouse dies before you.  Just living to a ridiculous near century age.

I imagine he will be moving to Assisted Living soon.  The alternative is a likely fall, with the undignified death spiral that so often ensues after a broken hip.  Or even after a lesser injury.

This is not the way he would have wanted things, but you don't get to write the last pages of your life's script.

No, actually you can.  You just don't have any assurance that it will be followed......

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It was late morning and the sun was bearing down with purpose on the little town square.  Mario was opening up his cafe for the day's trade, rearranging the chairs and tables jostled askew by the previous nights revelers.  

As always he stopped by the smallest table which was positioned to best catch the light while giving a pleasant view of the valley below.  He reached into his apron and pulled out the table's marker, a small silver badger.

Soon the American "friend of the house" would stir from the room he rented in the back.  It was a small space and he paid too much for it in Mario's opinion, but "il Vecchio Americano" said he would have no other.  He liked the fact that the rear wall was authentic Roman, once part of a grain warehouse according to the district archeologist.

Soon he would emerge for the day, always wearing black although his reasoning for this varied. Some days he would say he was still mourning his wife.  Others that he needed every bit of sun-warmth he could get in his old bones.  

Mario had a list of detailed instructions issued by Don Carlos, the old man's far away son who was reputed to be an Industrialist of considerable wealth and influence.  "Give him as much wine as he wants.  After his second glass start making him drink one water for each glass of vino della casa. If he ever fails to appear by noon....call me".

It was getting rather late for il Vecchio to turn up.  But he had been busy the day before.  He had spent the afternoon doing crosswords in both English and Italian and had stayed up until almost midnight celebrating with a wedding party.  He had told some stories of his long ago medical career that were new to Mario and had caused not only the bride but the groom to blush.

The Scicilian sun was now bright across the valley, highlighting the ruined aqueduct.  The Old Man always said it was a beautiful and evocative sight, although privately Mario wondered if those 94 year old eyes could make out much beyond light and shadow.  

It was almost noon now and Mario was, if not exactly worried, a bit curious.  Would this then be the day he would be calling Don Carlos?  The day he would open the envelope in the safe for a final set of instructions?

Perhaps.  Or perhaps not.  In any case there was a routine to be attended to.  The little silver badger was straighted to face the morning sun.  A fresh flower was put into the vase.  Breakfast, and the first glass of wine, could wait to see if they were needed today.

Stepping Carefully on a Sensitive Topic

My part of the world was settled first by Native Americans then quite a bit later by French and English fur traders.  That's our History.  The sensibilities of that era would totally be OK with this truck I noticed parked in front of the courthouse on a fine spring day.  Modern sensibilities?  Mmmm, a little borderline. Steel traps give almost anyone a twinge.

OK, and as a car ornament a steel trap that says YOUR LAST STEP does seem a bit excessive...

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Odd ones from Here and There

The "here and there" today is mostly from our July road trip.  The eastern third of Wisconsin is prime hunting ground for "Tree shaped Tombstones".

A couple from Sheboygan.

This one is remarkable for having the lettering painted white.  Obviously this monument is still being cared for by the family.  Note the fresh flowers.  So did all or many of these have original paint?  One would imagine that a few traces would have been preserved on other examples.  I mean, we still find traces of paint on the ruins of Roman walls, albeit in more optimal situations for preservation.

I'm not even going to guess on this one.  It is a weird hybrid of some sort.  The lower turn of the century monument remembers the Zelle family.  The upper red granite "log" is a style I usually see in 1930s markers.  Was Luecke a daughter who for some reason did not get buried with her husband?  

I have seen planters as separate elements in a memorial plot but this is the first time I have seen one "built in".  Note also the blank scroll.  Where are the names?

Here we have a magnificent specimen.  It was near Beaver Dam Wisconsin.  I suspect it is a local style as I had spotted something similar as we sped past another nearby cemetery.  Rain clouds were threatening and stopping at each opportunity was not in the cards that day.  We did pull in for this one.  I guess it fits into the "Stack of Logs" category but is more elaborate than any I have seen to date.  Darn I wish the craftsmen who did this kind of work would put their names on somewhere inconspicuous so that I could give them the posthumous credit that they richly deserve.

Bag and Tag 2017

Another build season, another robot is "in the bag".  Build Team hands the keys over to the drive and software teams.  My crew gets a well deserved week off.

How will it do?  Unknown.  But it appears to be hard to break and easy to repair.   

Not everything we did worked out perfectly, and there is still the chance of catastrophic failure. We might for instance have the climbing mechanism chew through our rope as happened once in practice.  Probably a three foot drop onto its snout would be the real test...

We finished the season with an unserious practice.  Anybody who wanted to could drive the robot.  No collisions but you can sure tell the difference between our novices and our veteran drivers from last year.  We finished the build season in high spirits, unlike last year when we had some needless High School High Drama to contend with.

Goodnight robot.   See you soon.

Tournaments are still a month off so robot posting will be scaled back for a bit.

FIRST Robotics 2017 Build Season Week 6 - Wrapping Up.

Final week of robot building. We do have Monday and Tuesday of the following week but that's not a good time to be finding and solving major problems.

In the week concluded we did find and solve some minor ones.

A careful read of the rules suggested that depending on the mood of the judges our robot's frame might be a quarter inch too long.  A hat tip to the build team who were able to make the modification in under an hour, and actually made the frame cleaner and stronger in the process.

It is very helpful to occasionally test drive the near finished product.  We had done careful measuring to set up our gear pick up and delivery systems at optimal heights.  But in testing an odd thing happened.  When our winch mechanism was not mounted the gears did not slide into their designated carrier easily.  And when it was, they did not come out cleanly. Hmmm.  Much pondering at, as is universal, the end of a work session.  There even seemed to be some contribution from the slightly uneven floor of our century old build HQ.

But the real issue was the weight of the winch.  When it is off the robot is "nose heavy" and tips forward.  When on, "tail heavy" and tipping up a critical quarter inch.  Sigh.  Still time to do something.  Various somethings were debated.  We wanted a solution that would accommodate the wear and tear that is to be expected on the arena elements in a rough and tumble event. Springs don't always stay perfect and the retaining spike could get beaten up.

Solution: a tiny rectangle of polycarbonate attached to a little servo.  

When the gear is released this should push its lower edge forward and make a clean drop.  I met with some resistance on this addition.  The originator of our simplistic gear release wanted to assume that the springs at the event would be forgiving.  But as I explained, the robot is only as strong as its weakest part, and the difference between victory and defeat could be a single gear handled cleanly or dropped.  As the pressure has stepped up in the last week or two I have become a continuous font of platitudes.

By Friday we were done enough to:

Run a mock inspection of the robot.

Make a very nice set of bumpers.

Do drive practice on a section of carpet we rolled out to better simulate the actual field surface. 

Put on signage for our much appreciated sponsors.

And Saturday was mostly frosting.   Oh, we had a minor issue with our rope grabber missing too often.  But it turns out that the red duct tape we had applied for visibility and general safety had frayed and balled up from multiple use.  Replacing it, probably often, with slick, thinner electrical tape solved the problem.  Looks pretty safe, no?

We finally have the ball shooter mounted and are trying out various feed systems.  We should have been at this point two weeks ago.  As our build space did not have high enough ceilings we took the robot down to the loading dock....and set as our target a trash can balanced on a forklift!  I really think that for a FIRST robotics team we are a bit weird.

We probably only have an hour's worth of real work to do before we bag it.  So even though the kids have Monday off of school we will forgo extended practice hours.  Our Pit Crew motto applies from this point forward.  "The Robot is Always Ready".

At least that is our hope.

A New Academic Experience at Age 60.

I started kindergarten at age 4.  Hey, my parents had a house full of rambunctious boys and were very motivated to pack us off to Lowell Elementary as soon as they could swing it.

After going straight through from that point to the end of Med School I continued to regularly take CME classes.  Upon retirement I went directly into the local Tech School and had an enjoyable fall semester learning things.

But recently I did something that I had never before done or even considered in a 56 year run as a student.  I dropped a class.

In my Carpe Diem mode post medicine I see time differently.  One one level I have an abundance of it.  Just ask my better half who regards me lolling about the house as an affront to the Natural Way of Things.  But from another perspective we never know how much time we have.  Decades.  Years. Or maybe not.  Time should be considered precious as we really don't know how great a supply of it we actually have.

So when the pneumatics course I was signed up for did not develop as I had anticipated I just dropped it.  I quit.  And that is something I rarely do in any path I have set my feet to.

The instructors were nice guys and the subject matter interesting if not immediately practical for me.  But when much of the learning is on line and the "in the lab" skills test outs appeared perfunctory it got me to wondering if it was the best use of my time.  I guess I am still Old School enough to prefer traditional teaching methods.  Like we had in School.  In Old times.

I might start up classes again in the summer or more likely fall sessions.  But short term this frees me up to do more with robotics and to get back to studying Italian in prep for a spring trip.

Not something most people can say they have become in retirement.  Tech School Dropout.