Category: My life

Some things, place & people become trendy about the time they stop being used by ordinary people.  This is what has happened in some parts of Milwaukee and some old habits. I mentioned the decline or disappearance of Milwaukee industry. The old industrial park is now becoming trendy. All those old industrial buildings make wonderful, sun-filled loft condos. Old bars that used to serve beer and whiskey, now serve drinks with cute names along with an impressive array of beers … with cute names.  I thought the “pedal tavern” above was cool. The drinkers have to propel themselves. Everybody seems to be having a good time.

Milwaukee was livelier than it used to be, even if it is more of an afterglow than the commerce we used to have. People with money actually live near and in the downtown, in all those condos. We didn’t see what downtown looks like in the evening, but I understand that nightlife is improved. A lot of these places used to be scary during the day and no-go zones at night.

So I am not sure how I should react. As I wrote in my previous post, the old Milwaukee had jobs and texture that the new one does not. On the other hand, the new Milwaukee is cleaner and more pleasant.  

The industry will never return. Industry in general has changed. It takes a lot fewer workers to produce industrial products, so even if industry returned, jobs would not.  Beyond that, no intelligent large manufacturer will ever locate in a old city when they can more easily build a new operation in a new place. An old industrial center like Milwaukee has too much baggage.  Think about a place like the old Grede foundry site. You can see from the picture I took yesterday, that there is now an eight acre site all flattened out and ready to go. But what about the roads? There are narrow, urban streets. A truck would waste hours navigating those streets. And what is below that ground? Industrial processes used to be dirtier than they are today. Many old industrial sites have toxic waste issues. 

Milwaukee is a pleasant place with a beautiful lakefront and one of the best system of county parks in the world.  But it is not a crossroads place.  It is not a prime industrial location.  I grew up during Milwaukee’s industrial heyday and thought it was natural, as did many others. But it was really the end of an era, the last flash, the last hurrah, glorious but ephemeral. Those trendy places represent the future. People will live in the buildings where our fathers and grandfathers worked. Milwaukee can be a great, medium-sized city. But it never again be the industrial city it was. Those times are gone and will never return.

The new people will like the cleaner, more trendy city better and the old people are mostly gone.  Below is our old house. They are putting on a new roof. My father had the roof put on in the late 1970s. The trees are interesting. The crimson Norway maple was planted in 1972. The silver maple was planted in 1967. The horse chestnut in the front I grew from a chestnut in 1966.

My father’s (and my erstwhile) employer at Medusa Cement seems to have left Milwaukee. There is a company still using the facilities called St. Mary’s. It looks almost the same, which is not surprising since there is not much you can change. The view that you see in the picture above could have been taken when I was worked there more than thirty years ago, except back then there was a big sign saying “Medusa Cement”. They evidently no longer get any cement via rail. I used to work on the hopper cars next to the river. Today the tracks are gone or at least overgrown with grass, as you can see below. The grass is very nice. They must have done something. Strange that you would cultivate such a nice lawn next to a parking lots in back of a rusty chain link fence where nobody goes.

Milwaukee is a very different from the place where I grew up. Milwaukee was an industrial city, characterized by its job-shops & quality tool and die makers. There were also a great variety industries. Many were not particularly clean, but they did provide lots of jobs and good middle class lives.

Milwaukee’s industry was written on the wind. I used to ride my bike from my house on the South Side all the way up to Mellows lock-washer Company on Keefe Street on the North Side, where I had my first job.  This gave me a tour of industrial stinks. I started off with the steel-coal smell from Pelton and Nordburg if the wind was out of the west. East wind would bring the smell of the sewage plant, where they processed our flushes into Milorganite. Up the street on First Street, you came into the coke-coal plant.  It had an eternal flame, where it flared off gas. Then you hit the metal smell from Grede Foundry (the location of the foundry is above.) A short distance farther was some kind of tannery. It was the worst stink. Crossing the river, you got a sweet smell from the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory, but this was quickly replaced by the yeasty smell of the breweries.

I didn’t really know that these smells were strange until I went away to college in Stephens Point. When I came back for a visit, I was surprised as the stink.

All the smells are gone now. Some is attributable to better pollution control, but more of it has to do with the industries just going away. The sewage plant doesn’t really smell at all anymore. I didn’t detect any smell from the tannery. I don’t know if it is gone or not. The Foundry is now just eight acres of flattened rubble for sale. Pabst, Schlitz and the other Brewers except Miller are gone. Their former buildings are now high priced condos. You can still buy Schlitz & Pabst. I don’t know where they make it but the smell is gone. Milwaukee now has a few craft brewers (you can see a picture of one above) but the baseball team name – the Brewers – is the only tangible remnant of what was once America’s greatest beer city. The coke-coal plant closed down years ago. It couldn’t meet pollution rules and the inefficient plant couldn’t compete economically. I don’t know what happened to Ambrosia Chocolate, but there is no sign of it.

The rivers are also cleaner. The Kinnickinnic River used to come in a variety of colors, since there was some kind of paint factory up stream. The Milwaukee River just stunk. It picked up all the industrial waste of the Menominee River than lots of its own. I didn’t believe my aunt Florence, who told me that she learned to swim in the Milwaukee River. I didn’t want to even get splashed by that water. Today there are upscale condos along the river and a river walk that attracts people. The condos come with their own yacht slips. I suppose you could swim if you wanted to. I still wouldn’t, unless somebody pushed me in.

Everything is cleaner now and more pleasant. I even read that Milwaukee is “cool” and the our old blue collar Pabst Blue Ribbon has become kind of a trendy drink, but I still sometimes miss old Milwaukee. 

The Schmeeckle Reserve was not here when I went to school at UWSP, but I used to spend a lot of time up here. My friends and I would camp out in this wet woods north of campus. Of course, camp out usually just meant drink beer and sleep outside. Back in those days, the trails were not very good. We had to trudge in through the water and muck. Today there are nice trails and boardwalks over the bogs and marshes.  They also made a nice lake and restored the prairies and wetlands.

I don’t remember very much about the events leading up to the establishment of the reserve, but I recall that we (my friends and I) were against it.  We thought it was some kind of corporate land grab, since Sentry Insurance was getting a road through the woods to their headquarters.  We were stupid kids and we understood pretty much nothing.   I actually understood less than nothing, since I was working on wrong understanding.  Student leaders told me it was a corporate greed and I believed them w/o knowing what it meant.   

What the university officials and corporate sponsors did was to take 280 acres of failed and abandoned farm fields and made it into a restored wildlife area, a place that can sustainably regulate water flow and provide beauty and recreation for students and visitors alike.  In addition, they improved the road, which was really dangerous for students walking or on bikes. It was a win for all around.

We drove from Stephens Point to Madison along US 51.  It is a lot easier drive now than it used to be.  I enjoyed going to school in both Madison and UWSP.  Madison has a very beautiful campus and there was a lot to do, academically and socially.   I get mixed up now. When I think of coming to Madison for graduate school in Madison, I don’t think of myself; I think of Alex, who is now studying history as I was. It was a magical time for me and I hope he is enjoying the same thrill from finding things out.

The pictures:  I have a bunch below that I will comment on separately. As you can see in the photos, spring comes more slowly to Central Wisconsin. In Virginia, it is already summer. The pictures show the Schmeeckle Reserve.  There are lots of deer and other wildlife and lots of wetland. The bigger trees are oaks in the middle picture. The lower picture is mostly aspen.

Above is a geographic anomaly. Look closely.  The top arrow purports to point west and the bottom one east. I always thought that east and west were opposites, but maybe not in the reserve. In fairness, there used to be some kind of sign next to the arrows. Maybe that explained. Below is the Wisconsin State Capitol from Bascom Hill at UW.

Below show the lake shore in back of the UW student union. In the middle distance is the Red Gym. It used to be the armory.  When I went to UW, there was a small pool and a kind of dumpy gym. I used to go there in between studying. The library was across the street.  The workouts woke me up.

Below is the new business school at UW

Below is my old running trail. It goes out to the point of a peninsula in Lake Mendota. I used to be able to run out there and back in less than 40 minutes. I cannot do that now.  It is a wonderful running trail. It goes through a variety of landscapes; lots of students use it, but not too many; and the surface is good for running.

Below are UW dorms along the running trail mentioned above. 

Below is a plaque – you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Sometimes people downplay such things and call them corny.  But I passed this thing most days and it make an impression on me.

Below used to be a McDonald’s where I worked during my first year a Madison. Now it is a post office. At McDonald’s, I mostly did the counter staff. We used to have to remember the orders and do the math in our heads.  Now machines do the counting and the remembering. One of the techniques was to start the shake machine, grab the fries and then pick up the shake on the way back. I was quick. But I quit after 9 months because they refused to give me a 5 cent raise. The manager said that he didn’t like my carefree attitude toward the products.  When I complained that I was a fast and good worker, he told me that if I didn’t like it, I could quit. So I did. He was surprised and – incongruously – accused me of leaving him  w/o warning. I actually had another job, delivering mail at the history department. Working two jobs that added up to around 40 hours and doing full time grad work was killing me, so I was happy to have a reason to get rid of one of them. I missed the free lunch I used to get and I did not get that much more effective. When I had an extra 20 hours a week, I found that I often just wasted more time.