First frost

I woke up this morning to some light frost. I wonder what plants in the garden will now die.

Oktoberfest 2010

Although the weather was a bit chilly, Rensselaer's Oktoberfest got off to a great start on Saturday. There were several food vendors. The Eagles were under the blue tent, and behind them was Clauss Bakery. You can also see the beer tent with a good crowd.

At the other end of the enclosure were tents for the City Office and Pub, Willow Switch, and the Dog House.

The early entertainment was provided by the Ocktubas, a group that seems only to play this event.

Later in the evening, the band Sucker Punch began to play.

I had a guest, Betty, who was not too interested in the sandwich and potatoes from Clauss Bakery.

A bit later she entertained herself with bubbles. The organizers tried to make the event kid-friendly. In fact the whole event seemed to be very well organized.

Everything was going well when ten minutes of rain interrupted the event. The band stopped playing and covered their electronics and most of the people sought shelter under the food tents,

The warming fires did not do much to help. It was probably little consolation that the wet bricks on the street reflected the street lights in an interesting way

I, too, took shelter under the tents. You can see the photographer from the Republican with her camera. One of the pictures she took was in the paper on Monday. You can see me--I am the one who has a camera in front of his face, taking a picture of the photographer.

We got an unexpected phone call and left the festival shortly after the rain let up, so I do not know if things got better or if the rain put a damper on the whole event.

By the way, the MainStreet web page at visitrensseler.com no longer has content on it but is parked.

End of the Line

The old Monon Railroad formed an X with the center of the X in Monon. One branch ran from Monon through Rensselaer to Chicago, and this part of the old Monon line seems to be completely intact. Another branch ran from Monon through Monticello to Indianapolis, and this branch now stops at Monticello. A third branch went south to Lafayette and continued to New Albany, and this branch now only goes a bit past Crawfordsville. A final branch ran north from Monon to Michigan City. Now it ends just north of Medaryville. In fact, if you are in Medaryville, it is only a short walk to the end of the line. which is shown below.

Looking to the south, you can see one of the reasons this bit of track is still in use.

Medaryville has a large elevator with the ability to fill grain cars.

Francesville also has a large elevator, and it stands astride the rails.

I do not know if there is anything else along these tracks that would provide the railroad with business. My guess is that the whistle of the train is a rather infrequent occurrence in both Francesville and Medaryville.

A new sign

On the way home from Oktoberfest I noticed this sign.

I had heard at Little Cousin Jasper that Dr. Bausman was retiring, but did not know if that was supposed to be public knowledge. With sign it seems to be.

I will try to get a post up on Oktoberfest this week. It would have been great if the weather had cooperated.

Fun at the rummage sale

On Friday I spent much of the day at the St. Augustine rummage sale. As always with these sales, there was a lot clothing--table after table piled high.

Below you can see just some of the womens shoes.

There were not as many toys as there have been in some past years. The kids who come to the sale love this area and they totally trash it.

Sometime during the day the Santa doing the splits and the super cool snowman sold.

One of the fun things about any rummage sale is finding the strange, odd objects that have been brought in. Can you identify the object below? (Answer at the end.)

Someone dropped off some patches that I think were from the summer swim team 38 and 33 years ago, back when the Kennys and Jennings and Verbrugges populated the team. For most of the early years of the conference, Rensselaer dominated the league. The other object is a spaghetti measure. With it you can determine how much spaghetti you need to cook.

I would not have figured out what this was if the identity had not been on it.

It is a nut cracker. You press the handle and the little pocket in the front gets smaller. Eventually you should crack the nut when the little pocket gets small enough.

I never did figure out what the object below was, and neither did the half dozen other people who I asked about it. It had the label Chef'n. When you squeezed the handles, a little tab protruded in the front.

Did you guess door knocker for the bronze golf club thing? That is what it is.

And the last picture looks like some of the pepper or salt grinders that are on the Chef'n webpage.