Turtle Creek Parkway, Tanks and White Line Frankenstein

Posted on August 7, 2023 by admin

Tooling along one of southern Wisconsin’s two-lane highways a week ago Friday, the radio station I happened to be tuned into – I’m not giving up terrestrial radio on road trips – introduced a new song by Alice Cooper, with a few words from the artist himself. That got my attention. Alice Cooper, shock rocker of my adolescence, is still making records?

He is, at the fine old age of 75. I never was a big fan of his, except of course for “School’s Out,” but I was glad to hear that all the same. Keep on keeping on, old guy.

For my part, I kept on driving, passing the greens and golds of high corn and the utilitarian buildings that support farming, intersections with gravel roads, hand-painted signs and, now and then, another vehicle. It was an obscenely pleasant July day, clear and warm and not nearly as hot as much of the rest of the country.

The new song came on. Title, “White Line Frankenstein.” Remarkable how consistent Alice Cooper has been through the years. What does he sound like, now that he’s a senior shock rocker? Sounds a lot like young Alice Cooper. A good showman finds something that works and sticks with it, and there’s no arguing his showman abilities.

About half way through the song I was inspired to pull off to the side of the road near where a rail line crossed the road, and take pictures.

Missed the last half of the song, but oh well.

Near Beloit, Wisconsin – close to the town of Shopiere, but not in any town, is a spot called Turtle Creek Parkway, a Rock County park. At four acres, it’s the rural equivalent of a pocket park, with its star attraction across a field next to Turtle Creek: the Tiffany Bridge, or the Tiffany Stone Bridge, vintage 1869, which as far as I know is still a working railroad bridge. (Tiffany is another nearby town.)

More than 20 years ago, I visited the bridge, accompanied by small child and pregnant wife. It wasn’t a park then, just a wide place in the road to stop. Enough people must have stopped there for the county to get a hint, I guess, and acquire and develop the land by adding a boat launch on Turtle Creek, a small rental event building, and a small parking lot.

Regardless, it’s hard to take a bad up-close picture of the structure.

Just a hunch: the arches are too sturdy to destroy in a cost-effective way, so it abides.

Rather than return to the Interstate right away, I headed out from Shopiere onto the small roads where I eventually heard about Alice Cooper. Not long before that encounter, I spotted a tank in the hamlet of Turtle, Wisconsin.

Another former Wisconsin National Guard tank, an M60A3.

It’s part of a plaza honoring veterans of the area. Interesting to run into another tank in southern Wisconsin so soon after the last one. I decided to keep an eye out for tanks on the rest of the drive, and sure enough I spotted more as the drive progressed.

Around Lake Superior

Posted on August 6, 2023 by admin

Long stretches of the Trans-Canada Highway along or not far from Lake Superior are lightly traveled, even in summer. Driving the road isn’t exactly solitary, but traffic-free enough to allow your mind to wander. And by your mind, I mean mine, a few days ago.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister, I thought.

There must be a correct way to address the prime minister of Canada in a formal letter. Who writes formal letters to politicians any more? Still, the formal must exist, and I could look it up. Never mind, on with the letter.

Your Excellency,

I’m about mid-way through an enjoyable six days in your country, traveling from the port of entry at Grand Portage to an exit at the grand international bridge connecting the two Sault Ste. Maries.

I have noticed that very few places in Canada sell postcards, even tourist shops, and especially Parks Canada units. I had to struggle to find cards to send to my friends back in the United States, which is a minor hobby of mine.

Market forces, you might say. An erosion of Canadian heritage is what I’d call it, and I am writing to urge that your government do something to reverse the loss, against the day when – fully dismayed by electronic media — people return to physical media.

I leave the details to you and your Minister of Canadian Heritage (cc’d on this letter). Certainly Parks Canada can be persuaded to stock them again. For private shops, perhaps tax incentives to produce Canadian-content postcards and to stock them, and a public service campaign to encourage their purchase and use.

It might not be Canada’s most pressing challenge, but it is certain worth a little of your government’s time.

Despite the minor postcard annoyance, it was nice to be back in Canada.

Every bit as scenic as the U.S., but a lot cheaper. The current judgment of the currency markets is that the U.S. dollar is strong against its Canadian counterpart (unlike in 2006).

Canada wasn’t the entire trip. Leaving on July 28, I drove from northern Illinois northwestward through Wisconsin, then to the shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, reaching the border on the afternoon of the 30th. I left Canada yesterday, August 5, proceeding home through the UP and then southwestward back through Wisconsin, arriving home today.

In effect, I went clockwise around Lake Superior: 1,937 miles all together, though some fraction of that was measured in kilometers.

This particular drive has been in the back of my mind for years. Years and years. In September 1989, I drove to the UP and went camping. One day I headed north from my campsite to Munising for breakfast, and then on to Marquette. Somewhere along the way, around the time I first saw Lake Superior, I also saw a sign like this (except not Ontario).

I’d seen Lake Michigan Circle Tour signs in Illinois and Wisconsin. Those were brand new in those days, created to encourage tourism in the Great Lakes region, and if you asked me a brilliant bit of design. Drive around the lake, the sign says. You will be well rewarded.

I agreed: The ’89 trip itself was around Lake Michigan, though I’m sure I would have done it without the signs.

I’d never seen a Lake Superior Circle Tour sign before, but I liked the idea immediately.

The prospect intoxicated: around Superior would be mean driving to Minnesota, through that remote part of Ontario, and the back through the UP. Or vice versa. What was up that way? Exotic boreal territory; small towns; few services; moose? At the time, my experience with Canada was limited to a rewarding but short stay on Vancouver Island.

The actual Circle Tour follows a specific set of roads around, and during this trip I followed them on the whole, mostly because that was often the only option, but in some places I took other roads, usually since they were more convenient. So I can’t claim to be Circle Tour purist.

Even so, now that I’m done, driving around Lake Huron seems like a good idea too – either by way of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitouline Island, or the long way around Georgian Bay. I don’t expect to have another 34 years to get around to that, so it will be have to be sooner, if at all.

Rotary Botanical Gardens, Janesville

Posted on July 27, 2023 by admin

Time for another summer break. Good to take those when you can. Back to posting around August 6. Or maybe the 7th. Not good to structure summer too much.

Didn’t get around to seeing either Oppenheimer or Barbie lately, though I’m much more likely to watch the former in a theater. I actually read The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1987) back when it was fairly new, and before that (’83) took an undergraduate seminar on the Manhattan Project, which involved much interesting reading, of course, and watching an excellent documentary, The Day After Trinity (1981), all of which inspired awe and dread.

As for Barbie dolls, I share the indifference that most men feel – though I suppose if there are men who like My Little Pony, there must be secret Barbie admirers as well, and not just out of solidarity with Ken. Ann, on the other hand, has a sentimental attachment to the dolls, even nostalgic feelings, whatever that can mean at 20. So she went on the movie’s opening night, helping it set its high box office. She reported enjoying it.

I did get around, yesterday, to finishing The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Well worth watching, though uneven to the end. The arc of Midge and Susie and Joel formed the core sympathetic heart of the show, to good effect. The older characters – Abe and Rose and Moishe and Shirley – pretty much went off the rails in the later seasons, which was too bad. Old people are just a hoot, eh?

Still, Abe did have a few touching moments toward the end of the last season, especially at dinner in the company of other old men, with mortality as the unnamed character at the table. My favorite minor character was Lenny Bruce, and his appearance in the last episode was a heart breaker, with addiction the unnamed character joining him. The drug that killed the real Mr. Bruce in 1966 was reportedly morphine, which strikes me as a little old-fashioned for the 1960s, but the comedian always did things differently.

Last Sunday I stopped at the Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park again for a quick look at the adjacent cornfield.

Much higher than a month ago. It’s a little hard to tell from the Drought Monitor, but I think that part of Wisconsin is on the border of moderate and severe drought. The corn looks healthy enough to this non-farmer, however. Northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin’s gotten some rain lately, including a storm that blew through yesterday around noon.

The last place we went in Janesville early this month was the Rotary Botanical Gardens. Saw it on an electronic map, looked it up, decided to go. That’s the way to find places in our time.

We were well rewarded for the effort. How often do you see golden Hakone grass (Hakonechloa macra) pushing through a pile of small boulders?

That flow of grass was part of one of the Rotary Botanical Gardens’ centerpieces, its Japanese garden. Good to find those in the heart of North America.

Complete with the styles of bridges that tend to be in Japanese gardens, across a large pond.

I don’t believe for a minute that evil spirits are too cowardly or disoriented to cross a crooked bridge; or rather, I don’t believe that belief is the origin of the design. I believe it is aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics.

The Rotary is a large place. Besides the Japanese Garden, it includes (among other sections) an English Cottage Garden; an Italian Garden; French Formal Rose Garden; Scottish Garden; Alpine Garden; a Shade Garden; a Sunken Garden; Fern & Moss Garden; and seasonal displays.

Bursting blossoms rise from the grounds. Or so it seems.

Along with arrays of other glorious summer blooms.

Curious name, Rotary. Do Rotarians have anything to do with the Rotary Botanic Gardens? Yes, they do.

The garden opened in 1991, occupying “the site of an abandoned sand and gravel quarry on Palmer Drive,” the garden’s web site says. “In 1988, the original site between Lions Beach and Kiwanis Pond was covered with debris and used as storage for the Parks Department and a BMX bicycle racetrack.

“The Gardens’ founder and original visionary, retired orthodontist Dr. Robert Yahr [d. 2021], approached the two Rotary Clubs in Janesville and inquired about their interest in developing a botanical garden for the community to enjoy.”

That they did. Nice work, Dr. Yahr.

Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville

Posted on July 26, 2023 by admin

Oak Hill seems to be a common cemetery name. Sometimes I think there are only about a dozen cemetery names all together, at least for large cemeteries.

A quick Google search reveals boneyards called Oak Hill in Washington, D.C.; Cincinnati; San Jose; Clear Lake, Illinois; Bramwell, West Virginia; Griffin, Georgia; Evansville, Indiana; Lawrence, Kansas; and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, one Ernest Gary Gygax, reposes.

And more. One of which is the municipal Oak Hill Cemetery in Janesville, Wisconsin.

It’s a sizable cemetery, about 85 acres, with 24,000 or so permanent residents. I took a look fairly early on Sunday, July 2. The grounds aren’t quite hilly, but they do slope a good bit, with old trees — and some oaks — and a good variety of standing stones.

Some older stones, as befitting a place founded in 1851. Many of them have that headstone tilt that comes with time.

A well-placed veterans’ section.

And a handsome chapel.

Recently restored, I’ve read, the chapel dates from 1899. The cemetery was already well established by then as a more obscure, but nevertheless good example of a 19th-century rural cemetery.

Old World Wisconsin

Posted on July 25, 2023 by admin

On Canada Day this year, we were in Wisconsin. If we’d been in Canada, our Jasper Johns moment probably wouldn’t have happened.

Back up for a little context.

I looked him up, and remarkably, Jasper Johns is still alive at 93, and doing art as of only a few years ago.

We saw the patched 48-star flag on a clothesline of a re-created farm yard at Old World Wisconsin, our main destination during our early July southern Wisconsin dash (a one-day out, one-day back trip, according to my idiosyncratic definition).

Old World is a large open-air museum near Eagle, Wisconsin and Kettle Moraine State Forest. I’ve known about the place for years, probably since camping at Kettle Moraine in the late ’80s, but had never gotten around to a visit, not even with small children in tow. My Wisconsin completist impulses kicked in during the dash, so Yuriko and I went to Old World.

A unit of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the place is large: about 480 acres, with about 60 antique buildings from across the state, and a new brewpub, which I suppose counts as a welcome revenue stream for the nonprofit. Some are town buildings, others farm structures. Many immigrant styles are represented: Danish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, and Polish, and well as in-nation New England and African-American settlers in Wisconsin.

Among the town buildings is St. Peter’s (1839), the first Catholic church building in Milwaukee.

That wouldn’t be the last prominently placed stove we’d see. These were pre-HVAC buildings, after all. Makes me glad for the luxury of central heating, as much as I complain about winter.

More town structures.

The red one is an 1880s wagon shop from Whitewater, Wisconsin.

An 1880s blacksmith shop, with a smithy re-enactor.

And the band played on.

Among the farm structures, you can find this Norwegian schoolhouse.

With a spelling bee ongoing when we dropped in.

Antidisestablishmentarianism wasn’t a word in the bee, though it really isn’t that hard, come to think of it. Scherenschnitte: now there’s a tough one. Unless you’re German.

More farm structures.

More all-important stoves for those long winters. And cooking.

There were a few farm inhabitants, such as chickens and cows. We were able to sample some wonderful ice cream made from fresh milk. Also, we encountered an animal I called Future Bacon.

Yuriko chided me for that, but I’ve seen her eat bacon.

Along the Rock River, Janesville

Posted on July 24, 2023 by admin

On the first two days of July, we spent some time in southern Wisconsin, staying the night at a hotel near the Rock River in Janesville, a burg of about 65,000 and seat of Rock County.

Late on the afternoon of the 1st, I took a stroll along the river in downtown Janesville. As urban riversides go, it’s drab, an echo of a time when cities generally ignored their rivers, except for purposes of commerce.

Even Rockford, Illinois, downriver from Janesville on the Rock, has a more pleasant downtown riverside, so small industrial-decline Midwestern cities can refurbish their riverwalks. So can the likes of Waco, Texas. The Rock, incidentally, is a direct tributary of the Mississippi, meeting that river at Rock Island, Illinois.

Still, the riverside isn’t completely without its interests. A fairly new pedestrian-bicycle bridge crosses near an equally newish riverside plaza, or at least an open space.

The bridge sports a boulder, too. It’s hard to see, but there’s an inscription on it: The Mick & Jane Blain Gilbertson Family Heritage Bridge.

Jane Blain Gilbertson is CEO of Blain’s Farm & Fleet, a big box chain with 44 stores in the upper Midwest and headquartered in Janesville. The stores carry, among many other things, agricultural supplies and equipment. I remember visiting the one in Montgomery, Illinois, years ago to see what there was to see inside.

Downtown Janesville was eerily empty that late Saturday afternoon. There were a few kids – and I mean junior high or high school kids – hanging out near the bridge, making giggly noises. A small party of adults was having a cookout in the yard of one of the apartment buildings near the river. A few cars passed through the area, but not many. Then there was me.

Every town has one of these. Oddly, it was tucked away in a cul-de-sac.

Why visit Janesville? Why stay there? I’d passed by many times, but not spent any time in the town. I guess when it comes to Wisconsin, I’m something of a completist.

Janesville has some handsome older buildings within a few blocks of the river, most still occupied, but some not, such as a one-time First National Bank.

The McVicar Bros. and Helms buildings. Part of a larger block.

Other buildings.

Evidence of a more robust downtown life in the past: an old Kresge building. Kresge, of course, was the ancestor of Kmart, and a mighty retail chain. Once upon a time.

I had to check: As of more than a year ago, there were only three U.S. Kmarts still open.

That means that this 1987 reference in Calvin & Hobbes will be lost to time. Is already lost to time. I’m sure if I mentioned “blue light special” to either of my daughters, it wouldn’t register.

Calvin: Dad, how do people make babies?

Calvin’s Dad: Most people just go to Sears, buy the kit, and follow the assembly instructions.

Calvin: I came from Sears??

Calvin’s Dad: No, you were a blue light special at Kmart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper.

I never went to Kmart much, but I did go occasionally, and I remember being in one once, probably in Nashville in the mid-80s, during a blue light special. I heard “Attention, Kmart shoppers!” They did say that. I didn’t buy whatever it was.

That’s the kind of thing that came to mind wandering the empty streets of Janesville.

Delavan, Wisconsin

Posted on July 23, 2023 by admin

On Friday, a week after the Bastille Day Lightning Strike — certain things in one’s life just need their own names, such as that or the long-ago Mirabella Incident, when I was the focus of an Italian town’s attention for a few minutes — I opened the deck umbrella to shield myself from the noonday sun, which is pretty much the only thing the umbrella is good for.

I have a conversation piece for anyone who visits my deck in the summer.

Early in July, we passed through Delevan, Wisconsin, pop. 8,500.

“During the second half of the 1800s, as many as two dozen circuses flocked to the Walworth County town of Delavan to winter their horses, elephants and other big tent critters,” said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a 2011 article.

“The famed P.T. Barnum Circus was organized in Delavan in 1871… The Mabie brothers, who ran the U.S. Olympic Circus — during its time the largest traveling show in the country — quartered their animals during the off-season at the site of the Lake Lawn Resort on Delavan Lake because of its abundant pastures and water.

“Alas, the last circus closed its winter digs in 1894, and within 25 years, the huge ring barns and other landmarks were gone.”

So Baraboo isn’t Wisconsin’s only circus town, though it is the one with the Circus World circus museum. Baraboo claims the Ringling Bros. circus. Delevan, which is in southeastern Wisconsin only a few miles northwest of Lake Geneva, claims P.T. Barnum’s circus, as this Walldogs mural attests.

Barnum’s circus – mainly, he lent his name and financial backing – later merged with Bailey’s circus, and that entity was eventually bought by Ringling Bros. So I suppose Baraboo prevailed in that sense, though the combined circus skedaddled to Florida in the early 20th century anyway.

We stopped for a look around and possibly lunch, which we ended up eating in Elkhorn, a few miles away. Delevan has a pleasant main street, Walworth Ave., marked by century-old (at least) buildings.

Note the street bricks. They are apparently distinctive enough to be on the National Register of Historic Places as Delavan’s Vitrified Brick Street. So we trod on historic ground, very literally.

The mural isn’t the only reminder of the town’s circus past.

Those figures are in the aptly named Tower Park. A water tower emblazoned with the town name dwarfs them.

Unlike many water towers, you can stand right under the one in Delevan.

Maybe I should take more pictures of water towers, though of course I’ve taken a few other images over the years.

Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park

Posted on July 20, 2023 by admin

A run of sunny days lately. The early cicadas are bleating and the early crickets are singing, and while the firefly population has been slender this year, they’ve made their high-summer presence known at dusk recently. Much of the nation is hot, we are warm by day, cool at night.

Kansasville, Wisconsin is an unincorporated community in the Town of Dover, in the southeast part of the state, not to be confused with the Village of Dover, which is not too far away, but still in a different county.

Along the highway Wisconsin 11 a few miles east of Burlington is the Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park. A nearby VFW post, Gifford-Larsen Post No. 7924, maintains the park.

“Post 7924 is named in honor of Master Sergeant Elmer (Bill) Gifford who was killed in action on 19 February 1944 and Sergeant Einar Larson Jr. who was killed in action on 15 January 1945 at Halten, France,” says the post’s minimal Facebook page.

A tank astride the corn.

“Initially produced in 1960, over 15,000 M60s were built by Chrysler and first saw service in 1961,” says the Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network. “Production ended in 1983, but 5,400 older models were converted to the M60A3 variant ending in 1990.”

Looks like this particular tank’s last stop before resting on wayside park concrete was the Wisconsin National Guard, once upon a time.

Chrysler, incidentally, sold sold Chrysler Defense to General Dynamics over 40 years ago, and as General Dynamics Land Systems, the entity makes tanks even now in Ohio.

40 mm anti-aircraft guns.

I’m not as keen to look up its details, but I will say that it is pointing the wrong direction if there’s an attack from Illinois, whose border is only a few miles to the south.

A bit of rust, a hint of impermanence.

A handsome piece of mobile artillery.

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” — President George Washington, First Address to a Joint Session of Congress (State of the Union), 1790.

Burlington Cemetery

Posted on July 19, 2023 by admin

About a two-minute drive from downtown Burlington, Wisconsin is the Burlington Cemetery.

Showing brown patches a few weeks ago, signs of the dry spell still persistent in late June.

Still, it was pleasant that warm but not hot Sunday afternoon, with an assortment of stones standing mute — standing being an important aspect for an aesthetic cemetery.

Including a Woodman of the World memorial. Unless he was a freemason. Quite possibly both.

Something to know: “Effective June 1, 2015, Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society adopted the service mark WoodmenLife in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” a Woodmen of the World press release reported about eight years ago.

“The process began with the release of a 2011 nationwide survey by the American Fraternal Alliance and Frederick Polls, which showed that many people are unfamiliar with fraternal organizations and what they accomplish. Additional research found that a large portion of the United States was unfamiliar with Woodmen of the World.”

The only reason I know about them are the gravestones, which you see periodically if you visit enough cemeteries. The org clearly needs a catchy theme song. “The Lumberjack Song”?

At Burlington there are few large memorials, as is usual in small towns. The Civil War memorial is sizable and elegant, though. And ready for the Fourth of July.

As were more modest memorials.

There are GAR stars.

Something less often seen: a Woman’s Relief Corps star.

Unlike the GAR, the WRC is still around, even though it was originally formed as a woman’s auxiliary to the GAR. Its next national convention is on Saturday. I’m not going, but that’s good to know somehow.

Wehmhoff Jucker Park

Posted on July 18, 2023 by admin

An easy stroll from downtown Burlington, Wisconsin, is Wehmhoff Jucker Park.

Interesting name. Wehmhoff appears elsewhere in or near town: Wehmhoff Square Park, Wehmhoff Woodland Preserve and Wehmhoff Mound. The Burlington Historical Society posted a 1919 article that mentions both names in passing, but provides little other detail, except that a Mr. Wehmhoff was a jeweler 50 years earlier, and that in the late 1860s or early ’70s, “Miss Emma Jucker, about to marry E. Wehmhoff, sold her millinery business to Mrs. Williams.”

Perhaps the park land was once theirs. Anyway, the people are long gone. A few of the names linger.

The park is on either side of the Fox River, connected by a bridge.

That’s the same Fox River that generally runs along the western edge of metro Chicago, meeting the Illinois River near Ottawa. (Not the one in Canada.) A path runs next to the river for a ways in Burlington, which I followed for a ways.

That’s not the Fox River that flows into Green Bay, and gives a nickname to the Fox Cities of Wisconsin. You’d think at least one of them could be called something else, maybe some version of a Native name, but it didn’t work out that way.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Wisconsin