Wisconsin Journal Number 11 21 November 1997 Deer-hunting season has started here, and Green Bay has a big game against Dallas on Sunday. A local bar is featuring a male nude revue for "Packer and Hunting Widows." Must mean winter is just around the corner. We had some more snow about a week ago, just after a cold spell that drove the rest of the leaves off the trees. Kaye reported seeing our neighbor raking his leaves through the snow, and then mowing the snow and lawn after. We keep forgetting to take pictures. At the suggestion of Goetz Graefe, a former Madison resident, we headed off to Old World Wisconsin before it closed for the season. It is located near the SE corner of the state, south of the town of Eagle. OWW is owned by the State Historical Society, and is an outdoor museum that tries to capture farm and village life of early immigrants in Wisconsin. They have moved old farm buildings, houses and shops from around the state there, and have interpreters who run them much as they had been in the past. There are fields and gardens with old varieties of crops, as well as animal breeds that are typical of the period. Most museums in old buildings we've been in are crammed with period artifacts. The furnishings at OWW are spare, attempting to recreate what would have been in a house of the era. The buildings are set up as villages and farms, and are spaced quite far apart. It is about 2-1/2 miles to walk the whole loop, but we had a beautiful fall day. The areas include Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and three German farms (restored to 1860, 1875 and 1880 appearances). There are also buildings that belonged to Polish, Welsh, Irish and Yankee (American-born) settlers. Sarah did a detailed inspection of all the privies, which ranged from one-holers up to three-holers. (The family that craps together, naps together.) She also figured out that an outbuilding on the Finnish farm was a sauna. Her friend Suvi from Finland has been surprised that most American houses don't have saunas. Several of the farms had separate buildings for baking and other kinds of heavy-duty cooking, because of the fire hazard. However, one of the German farmhouses had a "black" kitchen in addition to the regular one. It was like a walk-in fireplace, and was used for baking, roasting, rendering and smoking. People actually had to work in it, tending kettles and such. I don't see how they can stand the smoke. There were several demonstrations of farm tasks going on--plowing a field with oxen, slaughtering a hog and making sausage, making head cheese, plucking and butchering a goose, cracking hickory nuts (smaller than a grape and very hard), making bread, baking pies, quilting, dipping candles, cider pressing, preparing pig's feet jelly and making soap. (The actual slaughtering of animals went on out of sight of the visitors, though the butchering did not.) The proximity of farm animals and cooking meant lots of flies were in evidence. Visiting OWW made me realize that many historical villages and farms I've seen have been "glamorized" with much nicer lawns, paint jobs, pathways, etc. than would have been common at the portrayed time. It made me think about how much further apart farm and city life were then than now. We stopped at a supper club for dinner on the way back. We've seen supper clubs all over Wisconsin. They are generally open evenings and sometimes for lunch on weekends. They tend towards steak and seafood, and there seems to be a state law that they must serve a fish fry on Fridays and prime rib on Saturdays. The kids had a four-day weekend at the end of the month, and we had talked about heading up to Lake Superior for a few days, but Sarah impressed on us the importance of Halloween to a 12-year-old, and the rare opportunity living in a dense neighborhood presented. So, we broked the time up into a day trip nearby and an overnight trip over to Lake Michigan. The day trip ended up being kind of a culinary tour. We started south towards Mt. Horeb, but Kaye suggested we stop first at the Bavaria Sausage Company factory store, which is right on the way. She had been there before to buy sausage for friends in Oregon. (Lois--don't forget there's a box of brats in your freezer.) We had a great time looking around, and ended up with weisswurst, calf liverwurst, German pickles, Landgjaeger (they were called gendarmes in France, because they always came in pairs) and freshly-made rouladen. A little ways down the road we ran across Candinas Choclatier. An unlikely shop in many ways. It's out in the middle of farmland, with no other stores within a couple of miles. The building has a fancy brass and glass showroom, like one would expect to see downtown in a European city. There is exactly one small display case in the showroom, with about eight boxes of chocolates in it. We were served some truffles off of a little mirrored platter as soon as we entered. I could see into the kitchen, and could see several-hundred-thousand-dollars worth of imported candy-making machinery. We were waited on by the proprietor, who seemed to be the only one around at the time. He was from Madison, but had spent several years in Switzerland learning the trade. We bought a box, and have been going through it slowly. I'm not sure how he keeps the bills paid, though he did mention he does a lot of mail orders. >From there we headed into Mt. Horeb. After a look around an antique store, we had lunch at Schubert's Bakery, which was great. I had a pork loin sandwich on a freshly made roll, and Kaye had cabbage soup and roast pork. We noticed a table nearby with what was surely daughter, mother and grandma, all looking very Norwegian, all eating lefse-- tearing off pieces and rolling them up with butter and sugar. After lunch, we headed across the street to the Mustard Museum, which is actually mostly a mustard store. They have over 2000 varieties of mustard on display, although they don't have quite that many kinds for sale. The did have a recently acquired collection of mustard pots, a private collection purchased with a gift from Beaver Foods in Beaverton, OR. We bought some smokey onion mustard (from Illinois) and some cherry preserves with Michigan cherries, plus a "Poupon U." pennant for Sarah. We looked at a couple more antique stores, and a bookstore, then started home. We stopped off at a cheese store along the way to buy some local gorgonzola (fair to middlin') and also a liquor store that featured microbrews. We got some Staghorn Octoberfest beer from New Glarus brewing. It's only made seasonally, and they only had four bottles left. I like it a lot, and did find one 6-pack left at the local supermarket, and Kaye found 4 more at Cost Plus, so I should be set into December. After Sarah did her trick-or-treating on Friday, we headed up to Manitowoc on Lake Michigan, which is about midway between Milwaukee and Green Bay. Our trip took us around Lake Winnebago--we passed through Fond du Lac (south end) on the way up, and near Appleton (north end) and through Oshkosh (west side) on the way back. We saw more of Wisconsin's industrial side on this trip then we had before: Presto and Mirro cookware, Hamilton, Metal Ware, Wisconsin Tissue and Kimberly-Clark. Migrating geese were much in evidence on the way up, as were Halloween decorations. We saw a two-story house completely covered in cobwebs. Our first stop in Manitowoc was the Maritime Museum, covering the history of the Great Lakes, especially Michigan and Superior. We learned about the rise and fall and rise again of the fishing industry. The most interesting pictures in the fishing section were of the Smelt Festival that ran from 1936-1941 in Marninette, featuring a Smelt Queen and Smelt Wrestling. As Luke put it, "they must have smelt pretty bad afterwards." There used to be a commericial fishery in Lake Trout, which can grow to be as large as their salmon cousins, but they were nearly erased by Sea Lampreys, which hitched their way into the lakes in bilge water. The decline of the Great Lakes fishery was brought about by overfishing, pollution and exotic species. The obvious actions have been taken to start bringing the fish back: limiting catches, reducing discharge and controlling foreign species with chemicals and natural predators. I was surprised to learn that there are now Coho and Chinook salmon in the lakes, having been introduced to bring alewives under control. There are now enough salmon that sport fishing is allowed. Another part of the museum featured shipbuilding, and there was a full-size cross section of a wooden sailing vessel, with all the various planks, joints and braces labeled. (About this time Kaye took off to go see the Rahr-West Art Museum, which also houses a replica of a fragment of Sputnik that fell to earth on the street next to the museum.) The kids and I toured a WWII vintage submarine, the Cobia, that is docked next to the museum, and is of the same class as submarines that were made in Wisconsin. Building warships on the Great Lakes seems a bit dubious at first, since the St. Lawrence locks could only hold ships up to 260 ft. at that point. The submarines were 310 ft. long, for instance. So how do you get one to the open seas? (Answer below.*) We headed back in to see the rest of the museum, where I found the explanation for the "carferry" signs around town. It turns out that a carferry is a ship that carries train cars. There is one steam-powered carferry in operation that crosses Lake Michigan from Manitowoc to Michigan. However, that carferry now carries automobiles. The last room we looked at had ship models. The most impressive model was of a Japanese ship called the Hikawa Mara (if I read my notes correctly), which weighs over 1500 pounds and has all the metal parts made of real brass, many of which actually work. We hooked back up with Kaye and headed over to Beerntsen's Candies to spoil our dinners. They have been at the same location over 50 years, making their own ice cream, toppings, chocolates and hard candies. We sat in one of their cherrywood booths and all had sundaes. They have a special line of chocolates that are decorated pigs: Pigasso, Jurassic Pork, Pig in Blanket. Sarah's sundae came with a chocolate pig and chocolate puppy, and was named Hog 'n' Dogs. The next day we drove up the coastline a couple miles to Two Rivers. Two Rivers claims to be the birthplace of the sundae in 1881, and also has a lot of people with French names, who are descended from French-Canadians who came to Two Rivers to fish and work in the factories. The manufacture of aluminum items has been going on since 1895 in Two Rivers and Manitowoc. (Mirro cookware is made in Manitowoc.) The old part of Two Rivers is dominated by the multiblock Hamilton factory. I think the company got its start making wooden type, but also made furniture, dental chairs, examining tables and the Hamilton Dryer, the first automatic dryer for home use. It wasn't clear if anything is going on at the factory, currently, though the Hamilton company still exists, making fume hoods, among other things. We visited the two museums of the Two Rivers Historical Society, one in a former immigrant hotel and the other in a converted convent. From the items on display, it was clear that Two Rivers has a largely blue collar past. There were lots of pieces of aluminumware on display, plus a shrine to four local brothers who formed a nationally known barbershop quartet (The Schmitt Brothers). At the convent, different groups in town had each been given a room to display in, such as the local town band, the Girl Scouts and the high-school sports teams. It was also interesting just to be inside a convent, a location mostly unfamiliar to me. >From Two Rivers we started home, passing south of Appleton, through the adjacent cities of Menasha and Neenah. Clearly many people made their fortunes in the lumber and paper industries here. Heading south out of town from Neenah were block after block of mansions that rivaled any I've seen in the state so far. It seemed like every town we passed through, no matter how modest, had at least one grand stone church, with a huge nave and a tall steeple. Perhaps they were the result of Lutheran-Catholic or town-town rivalries. Our last stop was the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) Air Adventure Museum. It is of comparable size to Boeing's Museum of Flight, but emphasizes private aviation rather than commercial flight (though neither museum is exclusively given over to one or the other). We got to see a restored "Aerocar" that converts between a car and and airplane. There were only a few built, designed by a man in Longview, Washington. The one we saw had been restored to flying condition, and used to serve as the KISN traffic plane in Portland. I also learned about a pilot based in Portland, who had to bail out during practice maneuvers, and managed to land on the roof of the VA Hospital. Other interesting items were a full-scale mock-up of the fuselage of the Voyager in which Dick Rutan and Jeanne Yeager circumnavigated the globe without refueling, and the gondola from a trans-Pacific balloon crossing. We also saw the world's shortest airplane and an interesting section on air campaigns of WWII. Odds and ends: - A UW student sustained critical injuries after falling/being helped down a trash chute in one of the dorms. Alcohol is suspected to have played a role. - Schools do actually close for the weather here. Sarah brought home a paper saying school will be cancelled if a windchill of -50 or below is forecast to last the whole day. - Very few of the many bikes I see on campus have fenders. Obviously a sign that little precipitation falls in unfrozen form (at least during the school year). - Motor scooters are popular on campus. I could see how something like that would almost be a necessity if you had back-to-back classes across campus. All for now, Dave * You build a floating dry-dock that can raise a submarine to just 9 ft. of draft, then take it down the Illinois-Mississippi Waterway to the Gulf of Mexico.