City sprawl and sprawling posts

I noticed a map at the surveyor's office recently that had the current boundaries of Rensselaer. I think I posted a picture of those boundaries a couple years ago, but I could not find the post.

What a strange shape our city has. I suspect most of us still do not think of that shape when we think of Rensselaer. I still think of myself as living on the west side of Rensselaer, but the map says I am in central Rensselaer or maybe even a bit to the east of the center.

I do not think St Joseph's College is within city limits. I think that the area of SJC is in yellow because it is the community of Collegeville. The whole map has all the little settlements that were made in Jasper County, even though some of them today only have one or two houses. North Marion has the radio station (the old North Marion School) and nothing else.

Google recently updated its satelite view of Rensselaer on google maps. The photo was taken last summer because I can find my garden in the community garden. I can even identify where I grew sweet potatoes.

Fair Oaks Farms keeps posting updates on Facebook showing the construction of their restaurant. The shell is being constructed. Their most recent picture is here.

If you get up early in the morning on a clear day, you cannot miss Venus in the east.

I am tired of writing about the weather but spring finally seems to be almost here. We will be getting above freezing for many of the days in the next week--maybe even into the fifties on a few days. Ice coverage on the Great Lakes was at 92.2% on March 6, and perhaps it will be a bit more today, but then it will probably start dropping rapidly. It seems unlikely we will beat the 94.7% coverage of February, 1979. Lake Ontario is still mostly open. Lafayette still has a chance to beat their all-time snow record. This winter is the second snowiest since 1880 and only five inches away from the all time record.

We have a late Easter this year, which seems appropriate given the length of winter. "The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days' fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season."

Maybe the warmer temperatures will encourage me to get out more and see what is happening around town so I will stop writing rambling posts like this one.

Winter pictures and park news

March has come in like a lion. Will it go out like a lamb?

The river has fallen and left rings of ice along the banks and around the trees that were in the water.

 The ice along the north bank has mostly crumbled because it gets heated by the sun, but the ice on the south bank is shaded so it does not change much from day to day.

 Rensselaer does not have an official skating rink but kids will make do with whatever they can find, even if they do not have skates.

The City has been removing snow from city property and the downtown and trucking it out to its lot on Bunkum Road. I hear the trucks because the brakes squeak when they stop at a stop sign near my house. I finally found one of the trucks being loaded next to the gas department.

 We had another four inches of snow over the weekend and the new snow formed some interesting patterns on sewer grates.

 By the way, the sewer grate in a recent post was next to the Field House/Recreation Center at SJC.

 On Monday the Park Board met at its monthly meeting. The main item on the agenda was further discussion of Staddon Field. The School Corporation bought the field in 1955 but the city park department has used it for many years, putting in the ball field and the rest rooms as well as parking on the west side of Frances Street. For many years the City has leased the field from the School Corporation for a nominal fee while the school used the city property that sat beneath the Monnett School. When the Monnett School was closed, that property reverted back to the City, and the City asked the School Corporation to tear down the building, which it did. At that point the issue of Staddon Field emerged and I am not sure exactly how that unfolded.

From the discussion that took place, it was clear that the Park Board is unhappy with its situation, caught in the middle of things that it cannot control. The Blacker Trust has money that is supposed to be used for the parks, but the Park Board has no control over how that money is spent. The School Board seems unwilling to continue the lease at a nominal fee and the Park Board does not want to lease because it has a development plan that depends on long-run control of the Staddon Field property. The City offered $40,000 for Staddon Field, which the School Board rejected. Apparently they were thinking of a price more in the $300,000 range. That asking price may have been influenced by the purchase by the Trust, acting without a recommendation from the Park Board and on the assumption that the proper use of the entire property would be to have three ball fields, of a house and property adjacent to Staddon Field for $80,000. I had a hard time hearing some of the conversation because the heating system in the park building is very loud, but I think I heard that the School Corporation had two appraisals done on the property and they came back at about $50,000 and $90,000.

At some point, and I do not know if this offer is still on the table, the School Corporation offered to lease the property to the city for $20,000 for twenty years plus a final year at $10,000, at which time the City would own the property. Two members of the City Council plus the Mayor were at the meeting and my reading was that they and the Park Board had no interest in a lease of this sort. It was clear that the School Board and the Superintendent have lost some of the good will that other branches of government have had for them. One member at the table recounted how the park system has always gone out of its way to help the school, providing the football field for many years and more recently the soccer field and softball field at no cost when the High School introduced those sports and did not have a its own fields for use.

It is not clear whether the parks will be able to use Staddon Field this summer. The Park Superintendent has a plan A, which is a ball schedule with Staddon Field, and a plan B, which is a ball schedule without Staddon Field. A motion was passed to have him decide which plan to use based on what kind of agreement, if any, can be reached with the School Corporation. We can expect to hear more about this matter in the next few months.

The Park Corporation purchased a new Kawasaki mule with a plow for snow removal and other tasks. That expenditure was discussed at the last meeting and apparently approved with a phone vote.

The meeting finished with more mundane matters. The Park intern passed out a copy of a sample questionnaire about a dog park to learn more about public sentiment. If there are no issues raised by the people who send out utility bills, you may be getting a copy of it in the next few months with your utility bill. (I did not see the sample questionnaire so I am not sure what information it is seeking.) Then there was more discussion about the possibility of organizing a flag football league. The only thing standing in the way of starting it is an examination of the finances--how much will it cost (the primary cost is for referees) and how much would a team have to pay to be included. A three page set of rules was handed out.

There was discussion of having the next Park Board meeting at the old Monnett School building that is now vacant. During the meeting there was some discussion of the building itself, with one suggestion for the city to make it available for artist studios and another suggestion that perhaps the city could sell it and use the money to purchase Staddon Field. I do not recall a motion about the matter, but it seemed that the Board was agreeable to having April's meeting there. So if you are interested in seeing what the inside of the building looks like, or if you have some suggestions about possible uses for the building, plan on attending the next Park Board meeting on April 7, probably at 6:00 pm.

Official minutes of the Board meetings can be found here. Here are the minutes of the February meeting.

I remember when...

Life has changed a lot in the six plus decades I have been alive. I remember when:

• all the television shows were in black and white. Among the shows we watched when they first aired were I Love Lucy, Dobbie Gillis, The Beverly Hillbillies, the Ed Sullivan Show, The Mousketeers with Annette, Lawrence Welk, and The Twilight Zone. When we got our first TV, Howdy Doody was popular. When a station was not on the air, it would broadcast a test pattern.
• we listened to serials on the radio before we had television. We quit that when we got television.
• electronics ran on tubes, not transistors.
• milkmen delivered milk in the morning. All the milk was in glass bottles, and we would give the milkman back the empty bottles when he delivered the new milk. We could buy milk that was not homogenized, so the cream would rise to the top.
• Men walked on the moon.
• the USSR beat us into space when they launched Sputnik.
• steam locomotives were still in regular freight service. (They were fading out even then. In the late 1950s the Northern Pacific assembled all their remaining steam locomotives in Staples, Minnesota, about thirty miles north of where we were living at the time. They then moved them all to Duluth where they were loaded onto ships and sent to the steel mills to be recycled.)
• I rode on a passenger train before Amtrak. (Travel by train was rapidly declining even before I was born.)
• there were street cars in Minneapolis and St. Paul (I recall seeing them but do not remember riding one. New Orleans still has street cars and I rode one there.)
• we had to dial a telephone. (When I was young we still had to connect through a human operator, and my parents wrote in my baby book that I would call my father at work with that system, but I do not remember it.) Telegrams were already rare when I was young and I do not recall anyone ever getting one.
• Dick, Jane, and Spot helped us learn to read. (It was an era in which phonics was downplayed and sight word reading was the fad--my parents taught me to read with phonics because the school did not.)
• I went to a school where all the classes were taught by nuns in habits.
• I went to high school in an all-boys high school.
• buying a typewriter to get ready for college was common.
• there was not a single computer on my college campus.
• interacting with a computer required computer punch cards.
• the library card catalog had cards.
• there were no self-serve gas stations. The attendant would not only fill your tank, he would also wash your windows and check your oil.
• cars did not have seat belts and there were no infant or child seats available, much less required.
• studded tires were allowed in the winter.
• car tires had inner tubes.
• Eisenhower was president.
• my mother did laundry on a wringer washing machine and patched clothes on a treadle sewing machine.
• we had a gravity hot water system to heat the house. (The system had no circulating pump.)
• we paged through the Sears and Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogues admiring all the toys that were available.
• it was fun for a kid to go downtown in a town the size of Rensselaer and browse the dime stores.
• even very small towns still had retail stores in their downtowns, and when franchises and chains were uncommon. (White Castle was an early exception. My father refused to let us eat at one because when he was a college student in the 1930s, his limited funds led him to eat many meals at White Castle. He ended with an aversion to White Castle similar to the aversion many men had toward Spam after WWII.)
• the normal way of distributing soft drinks and beer was in returnable bottles. We used to be delighted whenever we found a discarded bottle that could be redeemed for two cents. I recall that we found a stash of bottles behind a neighbor's house and thought it would be swell to redeem them. The neighbor objected.
• beer and soda cans did not have pull tabs.
• a candy bar cost a nickel and a postage stamp was three cents.
• dimes and quarters were made of silver and the half dollar coin was in common circulation.
• you had to spit when you went to the dentist.
• getting measles, mumps, and chicken pox was a normal part of childhood.
• the Catholic Mass was in Latin and Catholics could not eat meat on Fridays. (Et cum spiritu tuo.)
• cigarettes were advertised on radio and television. (Call for Phillip Morris.)
• girls wore skirts to school, never slacks. (My mother never in her life wore slacks, though she kept talking about how she should try them for the last thirty years of her life.) (A lifelong Rensselaer resident recalled in a conversation how the slacks ban was broken down at the Rensselaer high school by the example of one girl in his class.)
• shining shoes was common. Some people did this every week to get ready for church on Sunday. For me it was less frequent.
• we went barefoot in the summer and developed thickly calloused soles. And stubbed toes--I still shudder a bit at the memory of that.
• we had a neighbor who used to slaughter chickens and I would watch them run around with their heads cut off. This same neighbor cooked on an old cast-iron, wood-burning stove.
• we played records on a record player if we wanted to listen to our favorite tunes.

Things that my parents remembered but I do not:

• My grandmothers--one died in 1916, the other in 1945.
• Living on a farm with no plumbing and no electricity. Kerosene was used for lighting. Using horses instead of tractors for transportation and farm work. (The downside--my mother lost a younger brother when he was killed by a horse kick.)
• an orphanage
• watching silent movies in an early movie theater, on the second floor of a small retail store in a very small Minnesota town.
• mowing a large lawn with a push mower because there were no powered mowers.

My mother-in-law (94 years old) remembers men lighting the street lights in Chicago when she was a girl, and the street cleaners who would sweep up the manure left by the horses. She also remembers the ice man delivering ice for the ice boxes. And much later, she remembers World War II ration coupons.

(I suspect that there are some young readers who will have no clue as to what some of these items refer to.)

What else would be on your list?

Old Postcards (updated)

The Jasper County Historical Society Museum, which is open the first and third Saturdays of each month from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, currently has a display of old postcards. There are many different kinds of postcards on display, but the part of the exhibit that I find most interesting are the old images of Rensselaer. For them the images on the postcards were enlarged and hung on the wall.

I do not know the date of this iron bridge over the Iroquois on Washington Street. It looks like it was single lane, which would not have been a problem back in horse and buggy days.

Below is another scene from Washington Street, from the intersection of Washington and Front. You can see the building that is now eMbers. It looks very small next to the three-story buildings next to it. They housed the Wright furniture business. Sometime before they burned they also housed the Wright Funeral Business, which moved either before or after the building burned and is now Jackson Funeral Chapels. Also notice the early street light over the intersection. I suspect that most of the lines on the poles were for phone service.

I was a kid before dialing the phone was universal. Back then you had to talk to the operator to make a connection. My parents wrote in my baby book that I used to like to call my father at work, telling the operator the number, but I have no memory of using the phone before the automatic switching equipment even though I think I was almost in high school before the switchover took place.

Here is another photo from about the same place. There are no cars to date the picture, but it may have been taken before there were many cars available.

The roller mills building was on Front Street and it burned after we moved to Rensselear. Dr Sy's dental office is now where it was.

For several years after we moved to our present house, old timers would tell us that we lived in the Sprague house. Mr. Sprague owned or managed the feed mill for many years. I think he died in the 1960s and a few years after that the family sold the house. For the next decade several different families or people lived in the house before we bought it.

Back to Washington Street, but from the intersection with Van Rensselaer Street. The circus came to town with exotic animals at some unknown date. There are no telephone poles, but there are something that look like street lights. I think that this picture was taken after the telephone poles were removed.

This picture is from almost the same location but taken earlier. There are no cars but I think that is because it predates automobiles.

The building below is the oldest building in the downtown. It was originally a bank building, but the bank failed in 1904, so this picture probably is taken before 1904.

The same street scene but after the automobile has arrived. There is a Coca Cola sign on the right side of the street, and though you cannot read it, a Drugs sign a bit further down. The street is paved with bricks. The cars are models of the late thirties or early forties, I think. (Car buffs can probably give a pretty accurate dating to this picture.)

Do you remember when most of the stores had awnings? I remember them for the late 1950s. I occasionally had to roll the awning on my father's store out or up. I suspect air conditioning eliminated awnings.

If you want better views of these pictures, visit the Historical Society Museum.

Update: More on the Jasper County Historical Society and their excellent curator, who worked hard on this exhibit.

Desperately Seeking Springtime

We have had two months of cold and snow, so now that March is almost here, I am looking for signs of spring. I found one today, a yellow flower. I am not sure what kind it is.

 And there is a lot of green around.

 More green, the color of spring.

Spring, the season of birth and rebirth. The days are getting longer--it is not dark at 6:00 in the evening.

Spring vacation is just around the corner at SJC--only a little more than a week away. I saw park workers repairing the backstop at Roth Field this week--that must mean that soon there will be softball games. My brother in St. Paul wrote to say that my niece had appeared in the local news in a piece about potholes, and potholes are a sure sign of spring. And if it is almost spring in Minnesota, summer cannot be far away in Indiana.

We are all going a little bonkers with this brutally cold and snowy winter. Looking at the weather forecast widget on my computer, the highest temperature I see in the next five days is 28. There may be a major snow fall this weekend and I heard some predictions that the first week of March would be even colder than this week.

The river is falling, and each night it records the fall by leaving a ring of ice around the trees that are in the water.

 The formations near the bowstring arch bridge are especially nice.

The Great Lakes were almost 90% ice covered before the recent thaw, which knocked them down into the 60% range. Now they are heading back up--I will keep watching to see if they get up to 90%.

In non-weather news, SJC recently announced an agreement with Ivy Tech that will allow Ivy Tech graduates to earn a degree in business or accounting while taking classes on the Ivy Tech campus.

The group of Shakespearean actors who visited SJC and Rensselaer a few weeks ago blogged about their visit here.

If I were like the Jasper County Historical Society, I could ask if you know where the storm sewer grate in the first picture is located. Hundreds of people walk by it almost every day.

I am sorry for not having something of more importance to write about, but it has been too cold to get out and roam around comfortably and see what is happening. At least the roads are mostly clear of ice or snow--though that may change this weekend.