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.

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.

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.

Burlington, Wisconsin: Liar Liar

Posted on July 17, 2023 by admin

If, in downtown Burlington, Wisconsin – not a very large place, since the entire town’s population is about 11,000 – you pay attention to your surroundings, you’ll start noticing plaques.

They honor winners of a contest put on at the end of every year by the Burlington Liar’s Club. I’ve read that the contest is for tellers of tall tales, submitted by entrants nationwide, but looking at this list of winners, I’d say only some of them count as “tall tales,” along the lines of a watermelon vine dragging a boy in its wake.

The rest are jokes. In the 1978 example, pretty much like one Johnny Carson would have told.

Newspapermen of nearly 100 years ago made up the Burlington Liar’s Club, but the thing achieved a life of its own, quickly evolving into the overseer of a not-very-serious contest with entrants from around the nation. No doubt the contest is unique in the nation, like the Nenana Ice Classic or the Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin’ Festival.

“The club started in 1929 as a joke,” the club website says. “A Burlington newspaper reporter wrote a story to the effect that these ‘old timers’ got together each New Year’s day at the police station, and lied for the championship of the city…

“… city editors, with an eye for interesting features, ‘put it on the wire,’ and the following December the Associated Press and other news agencies began phoning Burlington to find out if the city’s annual contest would be repeated…

“Letters began to trickle in from the four corners of the country commenting on the ‘contest.’ They furnished the inspiration for a real contest instead of a phony one, national in scope, and the Burlington Liar’s Club was formed to carry it on.”

Just the kind of thing to notice during a small-town walkabout. I was delighted. Who isn’t fond of the oddities in Wisconsin? The fiberglass fields and pyramids and Forevertrons.

One Sunday late in June, I took Ann to the southern Wisconsin camp she where is working as a counselor for the summer, and after I dropped her off, spent a little time looking around Burlington and environs.

The small downtown of Burlington, which at this point in history counts as exurban Milwaukee, is a handsome place, with most of its storefronts occupied.

That is, some handsome old buildings with modern tenants.

Nothing like a sturdy pre-FDIC bank building. Completed in 1909; that makes it pre-Fed as well.

I couldn’t not look it up. The Bank of Burlington in Wisconsin existed in various forms since the mid-19th century; it was prospering in 1916, according to this article from that year, posted by AccessGeneaolgy. A bank in some form or other was in the building until 2021, which Chase closed its office there. That hints that Chase was the last of a string of banks swallowing other banks in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Also: C.B. McCanna. That would be Charles B. McCanna (d. 1913), who organized the McCanna Cheese and Butter Manufacturing Co., and operated about 20 factories in the area. He was also president of the Bank of Burlington in his later years.

“In 1893, the company was reorganized as McCanna and Fraser, with McCanna serving as president until his death,” says the Wisconsin Historical Society. “In 1898 he founded the Wisconsin Condensed Milk Co., which soon became one of the largest producers of condensed milk in Wisconsin and operated branch factories in Pecatonica and Grayslake, Ill.”

You’ve heard of Wisconsin beer barons. Here we have a cheese baron.

I enjoy the old-fashioned approach of a 1916 article about McCanna, another article accessible via Access Genealogy. Of course, it wasn’t old-fashioned at the time, just standard practice in lauding business men:

“Dairying and the industries which are allied thereto have ever constituted an important source of the wealth and prosperity of Racine County, and among the most enterprising and progressive business men of the district are those who have turned to that line of labor as a source of their business development. One of the well known, successful and highly respected representatives of the business in Racine County was Charles B. McCanna, who became an influential citizen of Burlington and one whose activities constituted not only a source of individual success but also constituted one of the strong elements in the advancement of public prosperity.”

(Former) Dead Man’s Curve

Posted on May 11, 2023 by admin

Time for a genuine spring break, now that genuine spring has arrived. Back to posted content around May 24.

Returning from Normal on Sunday, I took another short detour fairly close by, in the wonderfully named town of Towanda, pop. 430 or so, originally a central Illinois project of the busy 19th-century businessman Jesse Fell. I’d seen signs for Towanda on the Interstate for years, but never stopped.

Towanda is the home of a massive grain elevator, owned by Evergreen FS of Bloomington.

For a more ordinary tourist, a stretch of the former U.S. 66 passes through town, and has a walking path next to the road. I took a stroll.

Also part of the former highway: Dead Man’s Curve.

The nickname isn’t too hard to figure out, but a sign offers details.

It doesn’t offer a death toll, which may not be known, but does say that from 1927 until a bypass was built in 1954, the curve was the site of “many disastrous accidents,” especially involving drivers from Chicago, “unfamiliar with the road and accustomed to higher speeds.” Oops. Once a hazard, now a minor tourist attraction.

Note the Burma Shave signs. They look fairly new, so I take them to be modern homages, in this case noting the dangers of Dead Man’s Curve.

There’s a rhyme for each direction of travel on the road.

Northbound: Car In Ditch/Driver In Tree/The Moon Was Full/And So Was He/Burma Shave.

Southbound: Around The Curve/Lickety-Split/Beautiful Car/Wasn’t It?/Burma Shave.

South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

Posted on May 10, 2023 by admin

Across the Vermilion River from Chautauqua Park in Pontiac, Illinois, is South Side Cemetery, which predates the town’s Chautauqua activity by some decades, since its first burials were in 1856. At 24 acres, it’s still an active municipal burial ground. I saw at least two memorials with death dates in 2023.

Overall, a nice place for a stroll on a warm day in May, if you don’t mind being in a cemetery. I can’t say I ever have been.

Some older stones, including a scattering of Civil War veterans.

As usual with small towns, not many mausoleums or large monuments, but there are a few.

Lemuel G. Cairns fought for the Union, too, but has no ordinary soldier’s stone. According to Find a Grave, he achieved the rank of sergeant and after the war dealt in cattle in Texas, before moving to Illinois. I suspect he did well in that business in Texas, but maybe got tired of the heat.

The only sizable mausoleum I spotted.

A number of Gaylords reside there, including this fellow, it seems, a doctor and Union veteran.

This is a surname you don’t see much: Hercules. Also, an unusual design for a stone.

Rare, but not unknown.

“Early examples of the surname recording taken from surviving church registers include those of William Hercules (also recorded as Herculus) at the church of St Margaret’s Westminster, on January 16th 1603, and in the Shetlands, William Herculason who married Christian Harryson at Delting, on January 24th 1752,” says the Internet Surname Database.

A prominent Pontiac family, no doubt. With a name like that, they’d better be. One of them – J.W. Hercules – is mentioned as the designer of the Pontiac Chautauqua pavilion.

Chautauqua Park, Pontiac

Posted on May 9, 2023 by admin

A total of four hours behind the wheel there and back from the northwest suburbs of Chicago to Normal, Illinois, could be considered a chore, but not if you have time to stop a handful of places along the way. That isn’t always possible – weather or scheduling might prevent it – but when it is, you might happen across things to see. Maybe even things you won’t see anywhere else.

Such as in Pontiac, Illinois, pop. 11,150. It’s been a surprisingly good source of stopover sights since I started driving to Normal on a regular basis, and so it was on Sunday, when I headed down to Normal to load up the car with some of Ann’s possessions. She’ll be done with school for the semester later this week, so the goal was to not be overloaded when she finally returns.

Plunge into the small streets of Pontiac – that might not be the right verb, since its grid is pretty small – and soon you’ll be at Chautauqua Park.

Spring green and on Sunday at least, warm enough to inspire a little sweat.

A good place to walk around, but also to read, with a good many signs like this.

I read at least a half-dozen. Most of them told me about the history of the park as the setting for the Pontiac Chautauqua, as the park name suggests.

A few quotes from the various signs:

A.C. Folsom

“Under the leadership of A.C. Folsom, a group of civic-minded citizens organized to bring a Chautauqua to Pontiac. Between the years 1898 and 1929, the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembles developed into one of the Midwest’s most popular and successful summer festivals.”

“As the Pontiac Chautauqua grew, dramatic presentations became particular favorites of the crowd. Shakespeare, melodramas, domestic comedies, mysteries, and tragedies graced the stage of the pavilion. Troupes of actors from New York, Chicago and elsewhere traveled the Chautauqua circuit, playing a repertory of four or five plays.”

The Chautauqua pavilion as it appears now.

Theatrical presentations still occur there. According to a non-historic sign, the next one will be the Broadway musical version of Beauty and the Beast, June 14-18, 2023, by the Vermillion Players.

More Chautauqua Park history-sign verbiage:

“Specialty acts from all over the world brought exotic sounds which floated over the park on warm summer evenings. Here are just a few of the individuals and groups which graced the Pontiac Chautauqua: Mme. Schumann-Heink, opera star; The Weber Male Quartette; Colangelos Band; The Honolulu Students; Mr. & Mrs. Tony Godetz, Alpine Singers & Yodelers.”

“Each year of the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembly, noted lecturers, politicians and educators came to edify the event’s patrons… some of the most notable speakers include: Booker T. Washington; William Jennings Bryan; Samuel Gompers; Rev. Dr. Thomas DeWitt Talmage; Carrie Nation.”

Yep, there’s Carrie Nation at the Pontiac Chautauqua.

No visible hatchet. It’s clear she didn’t wear a corset. She considered them harmful.

As fascinating as the park’s Chautauqua history is – and there’s the basis of another limited costume series on prestige streaming, namely the story of a plucky, slightly anachronistic woman entertainer on the Chautauqua circuit, ca. 1900 – that isn’t all the park has to offer.

Namely, it sports two of the town’s three swinging bridges. Dating roughly from the time of the Chautauqua. Original iron work, with wooden planks that have been replaced many times.

Naturally, I had to cross them. One of them:

And the other.

They don’t swing, exactly, at least when you walk normally, but they do wobble, and it takes a moment to get used to the motion. Nice views of the Vermilion River along with way.

Bigger than I would have thought. At this point, the waters are on their way to the Illinois River, then of course Old Man River.

One more item in the park: a plaque-on-rock memorial.

Not just any memorial, but a fairly unusual one.

But not unknown. Naturally, I had to look up Fred Bennitt. I’m cursed that way.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Small Town USA