Wisconsin Journal Number 32 25 June 1998 It's definitely summer here, and warm weather alternating with a thundershower every few days means that the lawn grows about an inch a day (and the weeds at least that much). We are in the final throes of packing and cleaning here. If all goes as planned, Luke and I leave for Oregon tomorrow. (Luke just got his license, and one of my colleagues here suggested I just let him drive the car himself, and I fly back. Right.) The outrage in Madison recently has been the grand opening of the first Starbucks Coffee in town, down on State Street. There have been demonstrations, petitions to the city council asking them to ban large national companies and letters to the editors. Lots of handwringing about how it will mean the demise of all the little independent coffee shops. In a particularly silly editorial in one of the student newspapers, the writer admitted she hadn't researched where Starbucks came from, but she could pretty much tell it was from the East Coast, and certainly hadn't started as a mom and pop operation. Lost in all the rhetoric is that Starbucks coffee tastes better than what is served at many shops in town. Anyway, I move on to our last (and final) family trip in Wisconsin. We wanted to see Door County before we left. If you picture Wisconsin as a big mitten (an appropriate image in the winter), then Door County is the thumb, sticking out into Lake Michigan. Between the thumb and the hand is Green Bay, and there is a small island off the tip of the thumb (a thumbnail trimming, perhaps). The treacherous passage between the thumbtip and the island is called La Porte des Morts, or "Deaths Door," hence the name Door County. At about the knuckle of the thumb is Sturgeon Bay, the largest city on the peninsula, and the 45th parallel cuts across Door County a little north of there. (I hadn't realized until then that Portland is further north than most of Wisconsin.) Door County is famous for its Montmorency cherries (which are sour) and is also big into tourism, probably having the most shoreline per square mile of any county in the state. On our way up, we stopped off in Appleton. We saw the original AAL headquarters downtown (there is also now a huge office complex out by the freeway) and also the Outagamie County Museum, which has a Houdini Museum next to it. Ehrich Weiss (Harry Houdini's real name) was born in Appleton in 1874, and lived there until 1882. He had various odd jobs growing up, including as a helper in a locksmith shop. His first magic act was called the Houdini Brothers, which he did with his brother Theodore (who was later the magician Hardeen) and Jack Hayman. He did all kinds of magic, but by around 1900, he was featuring escapes. His fame really came during a tour in Europe, around 1900-05, where he managed to escape police manacles and holding cells in all the countries he visited. His fame spread back to the US, and he had a successful career here after that. He devoted a lot of time towards the end of his life (around 1920-25) to debunking spiritualism and the tricks of mediums. The museum is small, but has a lot of material on him. We saw the milk can he used for his submerged escape, handcuffs in his collection, some of his picks, and little gimmicks he made to hold keys or picks so he could turn them with his teeth or with his hands behind his back. There were reproductions of many "challenges" placed in local papers in places where he was performing, daring him to escape from a packing case or boiler that would be built by a local company. We also heard a 1914 recording of his voice, as he introduced one of his tricks at a New York performance. Several newspaper articles talking about his were written by Edna Ferber, who was a reporter for the Appleton Crescent before she became a novelist. I also learned that he started doing his straightjacket escapes while suspended above the crowd upside down, because they didn't believe he was really exerting himself when he was hidden behind a screen on stage. (One reason he was suspended, however, was so the spectators couldn't observe him too closely.) I bought a book there that explained a lot of his tricks and escapes. What struck me was the great variety of ways in which he effected his escapes. He often used hidden keys or picks, along with his detailed knowledge of the kinds of locks and handcuffs used in the country he was in. Some of the escapes were due purely to his dexterity and strength, while others depended on faked or tampered props. (The milk can was actually two telescoping cylinders, latched together with a bayonet fitting.) Sometimes he relied on his audience volunteers not to notice some critical item. For example, to escape from a giant paper bag that had a flap glued shut at the top, he would simply slit the top open with a razor blade, cut off the original flap and fashion a new one, then glue it shut with glue he had hidden. The volunteers would never think to measure the length of the bag before and after. And sometimes he used simple deceit, such as having a confederate among the audience volunteers, who would pass him a key or pick right after he'd been thoroughly searched. We didn't have a lot of time, so we went through the rest of the museum pretty quickly. There was a temporary exhibit on coeducation at Lawrence College there in town, which was coed from its founding in 1847. (About the only major college that was coed before was Oberlin in 1837.) One panel talked about the theory advanced last century that if a young woman spent too much time on her studies, it would divert her body's energy from the development of her reproductive system, and she could end up sterile. Teddy Roosevelt even said once that the real duty of middle and upper class wives was to have four children apiece. Lawrence College tried to minimize the danger by having a physical education program for women students, and there was actually a women's gym more than a dozen years before there was anything for men. The rest of the museum was mostly concerned with history and manufacturing in the area. Manufacturing centered around wood and wood products. (Kimberly Clark paper is based in Appleton). We saw "wood dogs," which are horseshoes with the ends pounded to points, and used to pin pairs of logs together to form the perimeter of a log raft. In the basement there is a large loom that weaves with wire, used to make the screens on which paper is laid. There were also old wooden toys on display, from the Appleton Toy Factory, which was later bought out by PlaySkool. The kids and I watched a promotional movie made by GE in 1915, featuring all the different electrical appliances available for your home. Some of it was a little scary, like when the man of the house plugs in an electrical soldering iron, heats it up to melt a little solder, then leaves it plugged in and hanging at eye height in the middle of the room. (Early homes were only wired for lights, so appliances had plugs shaped like lightbulb bases that could screw into light sockets.) Some of the appliances didn't seem to catch on, such as an electric shaving mug and what appeared to be an electric bedpan. After a bit, the kids were getting a little bored, so I started narrating the movie for them: [Man of the house offers his guest a cigar and hands him an electric cigar lighter shaped like an upright telephone] "Here, Joe. Now just stick your cigar in the receiver, ring up the operator, and have her yell 'Fire!'" We ended our visit at an exhibit on hair. I'm not sure if there's any special connection between Appleton and hair (there is a bobby-pin manufacturing company there), but it was kind of a fun exhibit nevertheless. Remember those pink 60's hairdryers with hoses and hoods? >From Appleton we headed more or less due east, until we hit the lake, and then headed north, through the towns of Kewaunee and Algoma. We found our motel in Sturgeon Bay, and then went to walk around town a little. Sturgeon Bay is named for the shape of the inlet, which extends almost the whole way through the peninsula. That natural cut made it a logical place to amputate the rest of the thumb, and there is a short canal now that makes the end of the peninsula technically an island. This cut shortens the trip for boats headed to Green Bay. Sturgeon Bay had a significant shipbuilding industry up through the 80s, but now the largest boats being built are luxury yachts. There is a boatyard boasting a large drydock with a "straddle" crane that rolls over it, and it gets refitting and repair work, mostly during the winter. Kaye wanted to try a Door County Fish Boil, and we found a restaurant featuring one that night. The boil is done outside in a big pot. First new potatoes go in, then small onions are added, along with carrots. The fish (whitefish steaks) goes in last, in a rack over the vegetables. The pot where we were was heated with propane, but traditionally it's a wood fire, and fuel oil is tossed on the fire at the end. The fire flames up, causing the kettle to boil over, getting rid of some of the fish oil and onion scum. It gets served to you on a sectioned plate or tray, with butter ladled liberally over the fish and potatoes. Cole slaw and rye bread are standard accompaniments, and dessert is always cherry pie. The next morning, we drove over to a vacation house our friends David and Julie have by the lake. It has an interesting layout, with bedrooms and a sitting room stacked 3-high over the kitchen- living-dining area. You get to the upper rooms via a spiral staircase. (After we left, it all of a sudden struck us that we didn't know how the furniture got into the upper rooms. David told me later that there is a removable panel between the living room and one of the bedrooms.) Julie had breakfast for us, which we got to eat out on the deck. (Great weather both days on our trip.) The entertainment was two pair of goldfinches, contesting ownership of the birdfeeder, and a very lugubrious frog, who had been hanging out around the deck since the previous day. He scarcely moved the whole time we were there, until just before we left, when he leapt onto Luke's knee. Much to Luke's credit, he didn't smash the frog or jump to his feet, though he was startled. The frog hopped to a nearby chair after not long, so we didn't have to leave Luke there for the day. >From there, we continued our loop of the peninsula that we started the day before, heading up the east side. We stopped to buy some cherry wine and cherry preserves at a farm stand, and then stopped again at a shop advertising "Ho-Made Products". I guess Kaye was interested in this rehabilitation program, but didn't get to meet any of the ladies involved. They tend to be late risers. We ended up at the towns of Gilles Rock and Northport, at the tip, where there are ferries over to Washington Island. We didn't cross over, but headed back down the west side, stopping in Sister Bay for lunch. We ate in Al Johnson's Swedish restaurant, which features a sod roof with about six goats on it. ("Dad, why are there goats on the roof?" -- "To keep the grass down." "Well, why is there grass on the roof?" -- "So the goats won't starve.") After looking around the town a bit, and watching a parasailer float over the bay, we got some great ice cream at an old shop at the edge of town, then continued on south back to Sturgeon Bay. There were a few stops to check out baskets, including one place that carried Nantucket lightship baskets, which we weren't expecting. One of the owners carves scrimshaw, and some of the basketmakers now include a scrimshaw inset in basket lids, so he had worked out some kind of exchange. We got back to town in time to have a quick visit at the historical museum. I learned a little about cherry growing, and saw a picture of a wedding conducted in a large vat of cherry juice. Read a little about the dairy industry there, and saw the Babcock Milkfat Tester, which all museums in the state are required by law to exhibit. Someone had also donated a sample set of early contact lenses, which were about 1" in diameter, shaped as a cup that fit over most of the front of your eye. One case was devoted to the Peshligo fire of 1871, which burnt out of control on both sides of Green Bay. It wiped out a village of Belgian immigrants, burning everything and killing all but a handful of people, who had taken shelter in a well. Another part of the museum talked about the German, Scandinavian and Belgian settlers in the area. The Belgians were concentrated at the south end of Door County, where there are place names such as Brussels and Namur. Belgian farmers always tried to put up a wayside chapel on their property, for the use of travellers. We saw some the next day on the way home, along with the distinctive brick farmhouses they built. That evening we went to a little Italian restaurant in the old train depot, which shares the space with Cherryland Brewery. If you ever see their Cherry Rail brew, give it a try. While we were waiting for our table, I walked over to the back doors of the Palmer-Johnson company, which makes large aluminum motor and sailing yachts for very rich people. There was a 110-foot yacht under construction, and a 82-foot high-speed motor yacht, which is supposed to top 60 knots. On our way out of town the next morning, we stopped in at the new maritime museum. I learned that the land-sea shipping container was invented in Sturgeon Bay in 1945 by Leatham Smith, who also ran a boatyard. There was a large section on Peterson Builders, who used to build ships in Sturgeon Bay, but now run a marina, a procurement business, and a few light manufacturing operations. They made an enormous variety of boats and ships over the years. One of the last ones was called the "Sea Stalker", which carries 16 Navy SEALS and a crew of 5. They also built rescue and salvage vessels, gunboats, ferries, tugs and fireboats. During WWII, they built Liberty ships, sub chasers and aircraft rescue ships. In the Korean War, they became expert at building minesweepers, which were they were still doing as late as 1994. Minesweeper hulls still have wood in them (lots of Douglas Fir planks), and Peterson Builders was at one time the only boatbuilder in the world simulaneously building hulls in wood, steel, aluminum and fiberglass. We got to see some videos of ship launchings at their docks, including a hull barge that mislaunched. There were other videos about the the Christy Corp. and Leatham Smith boatyards. Smith also designed a self-unloading coal vessel that has a huge a scraper inside the hull that drives the coal towards an unloading conveyor. In another section of the museum, the 1943 deep-water salvage of an ore freighter by John Roen was described. He devised an intricate "piggy-back" mechanism that connected a lifting barge directly above to the wreck below with blocks and lines. After unloading the ore holds with a ship-borne crane, the salvage process was started. The lifting ship would flood its holds, tighten the lines, the pump out its holds while air was pumped into the sunken ship. This action would raise the wreck a few meters, and it could then be propelled to slightly shallower water, where it would rest on the bottom as the "boost" process was repeated. When it was finally dragged into shallow enough water, a more conventional salvage method could be used, with two ships lifting on either side of it. In this same area was an example of a Marine Travelift, which can lift boats out of the water and move them around a boatyard on wheels. The next area was a model room, with models of ships that different area boatyards had built for customers. Kaye pointed out the Japanese fishing floats in one case, and wondered what current carried them here to the Great Lakes. There was a PT boat, a couple of *Army* ships--a tug and a cargo ship (I didn't realize until then that the Army had its own ships in WWII), a torpedo retrieval vessel (sounds like great duty--"Hey, go catch these torpedos we shoot.") and the Alcoa Superprobe, used for sea-floor exploration. Palmer-Johnson contributed a model of a fast 86-foot yacht they built, as a gift from the King of Suadi Arabia to King Juan Carlos of Spain. The last part we saw had a bridge of a tug, complete with working horn (ask Sarah). We watched a video about the history of Peterson Builders, and found out they had built a floating exhibit area for the Boston Aquarium, as well as the rescue and salvage vessels that were used to retrieve pieces of TWA flight 800. A video on Bay Shipbuilding showed the construction of their last ship there, a 1000-foot freighter, where the 350-foot stern was built in their large dry dock and the 650-foot bow section was built on land, then launched and floated over to be joined with the other part. We then started off toward home, with a stop at the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. How can you pass up Vince Lombardi's baby picture, or a genuine Packer bowling ball? The kids enjoyed a film of football bloopers, and we also watched a video on the history of the team. The team's periods of greatness corresponded to coaches Lambeau, Lombardi and Holmgren, and when you leave, you can stand at the corner of Holgren Way and Lombardi Avenue and get a good look at Lambeau field. There are team pictures from every year, and I noticed that the first team, in 1919, had only 18 players and 2 coaches. Spent a little time in the gift shop. The most unusual item was a kit to make your own Packers Christmas wreath. We stopped at a fast-food restaurant as we left Green Bay, where I heard the best line of the trip: "Sorry your sandwiches took so long, sir, but we forgot to make them." Our last stop was a small museum on the Oneida Indian Reservation, southwest of Green Bay. The Oneida are originally from New York, and are part of the Lotinuhsumi (Iroquois) Confederacy, along with the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. (The Tuscarora joined in 1720.) Their articles of confederation were known to the drafters of the US Constitution, and influenced that document. This band of the Oneida came from New York in 1822, and is currently the largest band, though the one in Ontario has more remaining native speakers. (There are also a few who remained on the 35 acres that the Oneida were left with in New York, after the state signed some questionable treaties with them.) Oneida means "people of the standing stone," and they are divided into the wolf, turtle and bear clans. Clan membership is matrilineal. The oldest woman in each clan is the "Clan Mother." She is in charge of naming all children in the clan, and the Clan Mothers collectively choose the chief. They can also "de-horn" the chief if they determine he is not abiding by their rules of peace. The museum had several wampum belts made of blue and white shell beads, and a small store, where Kaye got a really ornate ash basket. (Made of black ash, not for ashes.) Outside the kids and I investigated a long house being constructed of branches and bark, but had to dash for the car when a thundershower let loose. And that's it. Kaye and I are off to a Moody Blues concert tonight with the Madision Symphony, and then tomorrow Luke and I leave for Oregon. I hope you've all enjoyed these missives as much as I've enjoyed writing them. Dave