Scenes from the Ancestral Manse VI: Vinegar Man

I don't think it was just me. I think the leering eyes and psychotic grin of this guy would frequent the nightmares of any little kid who saw them.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse V: Mom's Window

Mom has turned the window over the kitchen sink into a sort of altar with knick-knacks commemorating places she's been and people she knows.

Everyone who stops by enters the house through the breezeway, so they have to pass through the kitchen, and they all seem to stop at the altar to view the knick-knacks, trying to spot the new additions, or guess if any have gone or been demoted to another part of the house.

When a new knick-knack appears, visitors point and comment, try to guess what it is, or pick it up and marvel at it if they already know.

I don't think she'll mind too much if we take a closer look:

One of my distant relatives on my mother's side was a cobbler, and the little wooden form that looks like a shoe is one of the tools he used in his shop.

Our immediate family once owned a small-town newspaper and, when we bought it, we came into posession of a staggering amount of type. Most of it was the tiny lead type used in setting newsprint, but we also ended up with a few boxes of very large type cut from wood. Mom saved a few pieces and spelled her name.

I have no idea where the chicken or the rose came from or what they're about.



Say hello to Vinegar Man. Both he and the tiny wash tub both belonged to my mother's mother at one time. I think. I'm sure Vinegar Man did because his bug eyes and psycho smile scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little and made quite an impression on me. He usually sat on grandma's countertop, or maybe on her windowsill.

If my memory's not playing tricks on me and the little wash basket was grandma's too, I think it sat on the edge of the sink and she used it to hold brillo pads or soap bars or something like that. It also gave me the willies because it's got a bunch of eye-like things that stared down at me.

Grandma used to scare me all the time with eyes, now that I think about it. For my birthday she gave me one of those clocks with eyes that flicked back and forth as it went tick-tock. The damn thing gave me nightmares after just one or two days hanging over my bed, and had to be returned.

I still don't like to look at the wash basket, but Vinegar Man's like an old friend.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse IV: Grandma Lana's Dresser

Many moons ago, my mother dragged this dresser into the front entrance of the apartment we rented in Marquette. She slapped gallons of gelatinous "Zip-Strip" on it, peeling away layer after layer of paint and varnish, until she found this: A hand-carved pattern that she hadn't even been aware of. After cleaning it up the rest of the piece, she re-varnished it and it's been in the front room of our house ever since.

I've long assumed that this chest was just something she picked up at a garage sale, but I found out during our visit that it belonged to her grandmother Lana.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse III: Grandma's Platter

The signs of the zodiac were set into the inner brass ring of this platter. It previously hung on the wall over the big red wing chair in the front room of my grandmother's house, but now it greets visitors to the O-family Ancestral Manse.

(Our family's ancestral hearth would more properly be in Door County, but as my mother now lives in central Wisconsin and it's closer and easier to get to I look there for Old Home.)

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse II: Great-Granpa Melchoir's Fiddle

I've never heard this fiddle played; I don't think it could be. Several strings appear to be missing, but at one time one of my great-granpas was known far and wide as a fiddle player who could be counted upon to deliver memorable music at a wedding dance.

In those days musicians took their pay in kind. After one performance great-granpa made his way to the house where he was supposed to be put up for the night. Finding nobody awake he let himself in and, rather than disturb the occupants he removed his shoes and tiptoed upstairs through the dark, feeling his way along the hall until he found an unoccupied room upstairs.

The floor felt odd beneath his stocking feet but he was too tired and pleasantly drunk to care. Flopping into bed he slept soundly until the next morning when he made his way down the hall toward the kitchen ... to find his footprints now firmly set in the fresh lacquer on the floor.

To add another complication to the poor man's situation, a quick look around made him realize he was in the wrong house.

He slipped out the back door and down the road undetected, and so far as I know the people in the house never found out who slept in their extra bed or left his tracks in their hallway.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse I: Dad's Accordion

For years I assumed this old Horner accordion, which previously sat on display in my grandmother's home, was nothing more than a decorative item until one day when my Dad picked it up and cranked out three or four old-time tavern polkas and waltzes. Before that, I hadn't been aware that he had a musical bone in his body. People surprise you when you least expect it, doubly so your parents.

Lucky Star

Grafitti sprayed over the memorial to Elizabeth Link.

Elizabeth Link and her husband, Karl, were both very active pacifists, if that isn't an oxymoron, during the height of the Cold War.

Karl was faculty advisor at the UW for the student group American Youth for Democracy, and Elizabeth worked for Women's International League for Peace.

The park is on State Street, about halfway between the capitol and the university.

Sticker Schlock

I went to see the movie The War Tapes in a theater with a temporary stage that suggested it was also a part-time venue for garage bands.

On the way out I noticed these two stickers slapped on the exposed concrete ceiling, much too far out of reach to be worth the trouble to remove.

All I could find on Things Fall Apart was that they say their music falls in the genres of Middle Eastern, Top 40 and Traditional Folk. I imagine the Beatles during their sitar phase.

The Selfish Gene plays "original music that combines a mixture of rock, folk & psychedelia to share stories of the individual, society and universe." Hippies. Far out.

Window of J.Taylor's on Carroll St

Taylor's window has been a jumble these past couple weeks.

Okay, it's always been a jumble, but lately more so than before.

Mr. Taylor has recently posted signs promising that the store is undergoing a re-design and will open next week.

Friday On State Street

Looking up State Street from the corner of the Overture Center.

I'm standing on the 200 block, as the sign indicates, but that's the 100 block we're looking at.

On the right, under the red awning, a store that used to sell games such as Magic but is now nothing more than a front for a pair of cash machines.

Further up this side of the street, a clothing store in the old coal company building, two or three restaurant/bars that seem to be quite popular come lunch time, and at the far end stands Teddywedger's in what is claimed to be the oldest building still standing on Capital Square.

Dem Bones

This guy's been sitting in the front window of the Children's Museum on State Street for months now. The top hat's a nice touch, don't you think?

Nottingham

Taking a walk along Langdon Street this noon I took a few snapshots of the student housing along the lake shore.

Most of it was depressingly boring, or looked as though it might once have been grand but had long since gone to seed.

This one appears to have aged rather well despite the apparent neglect of its inhabitants and/or owners.

Pah-Yook!

An example of the depressingly boring.

Their House Is A Museum

This one looks like a house straight out of a Charles Addams cartoon ... I expected to see Gomez and Morticia upending a cauldron of boiling oil from the parapet.

There's so much a guy with a truckload of money could do with a house like this. If only ...

Winner: Purplest

Quite an eye-catching paint job, no? Must've gotten a discount on a bulk purchase.

It was named "Rivendell."

Sign posted at the front of the Emma Goldman Co-Op reads, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

You should see what's inside!

A late-stage infestation of ceramic cartoon characters.

Almost like flying!

Riding the Ferris wheel at the Sun Prairie Corn Fest with B

It's the hat that makes the man

Yours truly at the Sun Prairie Corn Fest

(see more at Barb's Blog)

High Above the Midway

Barb and I went to the Corn Fest in Sun Prairie last weekend. I talked her into riding the Ferris wheel with me as dusk fell over the Midway.

Stolling along the Midway at the Sun Prairie Corn Fest as dusk settled over the scene

The things some people have to go through to get to work in the morning ...

Soviet Jesus

A frieze on the wall of the Bethel Lutheran Church along Johnson Street.

The flattened perspective of the figures and their rather stern expressions reminded me of Soviet statuary.

A detail shot of two of the Soviet children.

Lunar Window, Dane County Courthouse

I had this image of the building's architect hunched over his drafting table, trying to figure out what to do with this impossibly thin sliver of land. And then it hit him: Cheese! It's a wedge of Swiss cheese!

The New Dane County Courthouse

It's a flatiron building all over, but this end, on the corner of Hamilton and Wilson Streets, is the tallest of all the corners.

B and I went to a consignment auction last weekend.

We certainly didn't need more stuff in our house. It was more an opportunity to get out, have a look around and relax all day doing virtually nothing.

Even so, I did come back with a nice mantle clock, and B found a chair she liked.

We might have brought home one or two other bits and trinkets, too.

It's a disease.

Odds and ends abounded. I've never seen so much blue enamel and so many kerosene lanterns in one place.

There's something for everyone to collect.

Not only did they sell this ... somebody bought it!

It's a Crock and None May Abide It

One thing they had plenty of at the auction ... crock after crock. Highly collectable. If I could manage to find about a hundred of these in a derelict dairy out in the boonies, it'd be more lucrative than winning the Powerball.

Little Birdie With a Bill

When searching through the flotsam on the tables, one must remember to glance down at the floor from time to time, else you'll miss surprises like this one.

Creepiest Child's Toy Ever

Instead of reselling at auction, some things should be taken to the woodpile and recycled into a million little pieces with a very large axe.

It's the Dane County Farmer's Market on capital square! We planned to get there bright and early, but instead arrived at the usual time – about nine-thirty, maybe tennish. The sidewalk is normally packed shoulder-to-shoulder by that time with people moving in the usual counter-clockwise direction around the square.

One day, owing to a fluke in our weekend timetable, we arrived at six-thirty or quarter to seven and found we were one of about two or three dozen people who had the whole place to ourselves. We vowed to try doing that again, but it was a pretty empty promise. One of us doesn't get out of bed on the weekends before eight o'clock. Ever.



Barb loves peppers!

I think she's got some heirloom onions in her mitts there, too.

She hardly made it down one street on the square before she'd gone through nearly every dollar of the double sawbuck she set aside for the farmer's market this weekend. She just can't pass up a table covered with herbs and spices, and there were plenty of those.

Although there are quite a few vendors selling cheese, eggs and meats, the stalls along each street on the square are normally dominated by small farmers selling their fruits and vegetables at the market.

Barb is a big fan of the peppers and is easily drawn in by something new. She seems to be big into the heirloom veggies right now.





A few brightly-colored chilis on display.

Honey Bears

The bee keeper who sells these at the market also came to our house this spring to rid us of an infestation of carpenter ants.

Clearly, this is a woman who knows a thing or two about bugs.

Gladiolas!

The flower that looks and sounds like a fiesta.

Food! Glorious Food!

There's always plenty to sample at the farmer's market, and nobody gets into the samples more eagerly than the kids ... although I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see this tyke digging in to pesto pasta like there was no tomorrow.

Organic Gardening finally goes too far

None of that fake dirt for me.

Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry-sized but not necessarily cherry-colored.

A Pretty Pony

Sorry to foist another snapshot of a car on you, but I don't see these on the streets nearly as often as I used to – practically never, now that I think about it – and certainly not as finely cared for as this one. Not a spot of rust anywhere! And the interior was immaculate!

Was there ever a better-looking American car? Was any American car more iconic than the Mustang? I'm not crazy about cars, but even I have to say the Mustang has a classic style that hasn't been matched.


The Mustang has a set of lines that make it instantly recognizable up close or at a distance. Designers of modern editions of "mustangs" feel that all they have to do is slap together a car with identifiable features – the tail lights, the air scoop, the gas cap in the middle of the back – and they've produced a faithful update, when all they've done is produced a poor sketch by tracing over an original.

This Mustang has benefitted from a few modifications, as most will, the mag wheels and flash rims being evident. The guys in my neck of the woods who owned Mustangs almost always pulled the original engines and dropped something really huge in its place. But even with changes as obvious as these, this is still undeniably every inch a Mustang.



As I said, I'm not crazy about cars so I don't know why I'm gushing over this one. It was built using engineering techniques not much more advance than Detroit used to build the Model T. Its tail pipe probably emits more CO2 than a coal-fired boiler. It's not even especially comfortable to sit in for very long, but I'd love to drive this little pony around town just once (it occurs to me now that, while I've ridden in a few, I've never driven a Mustang). This was truly a one-of-a-kind. Too bad more domestic cars didn't have this kind of class.

(Not a spot of rust anywhere!)

A doctor's car?

Or a duck hunter's, perhaps?

I spotted this license plate on a Chrysler parked along Carroll Street; My Darling B provided the caption.

Setting Free the Bears

A side entrance to Ragstock on State Street, and its reflection in a conveniently placed mirror.

Madison's In The Details

If I were a betting man and I had to guess what the Hovde Building on the corner of West Washington Ave and Fairchild Street must've been in a previous life, I'd have to put all my money on the headquarters of a regional utility. All those generators and lightning bolts must mean something.

... and pull back to the long shot ...

The Hovde Building's actually quite fetching overall, in the style of buildings from the 1950's or thereabouts.