May 20, 2005

It was back up north again. The Beth’s entertained several of us on their pontoon boat. Mickey said he just had to have me take a picture of a loon on its nest. We got pretty close but could have used my 35mm camera to get in closer. The picture I did get was okay. We headed into several bay areas to stay out of the wind. It was a nice day but the wind made it cold. We also found a wonderful place that was the breeding grounds for May flies. We got out of that cove fast. Lots of great wild life along the way and tons of good fellowship.

Saturday night was back to Chuck’s place to help him celebrate his wife Karen’s birthday. We hadn’t seen her in ages. She looked great and had done a great job on getting the place in order. She was heading back to Dallas the next day and you could tell she would rather have just stayed. We got to meet her brothers John and Tim along with their families. Karen had worked for two days on the feast and it was wonderful. Lots more photo opportunities. This digital camera really has me back at taking lots of pictures. It fits right in my pocket and now I have no reason to miss a picture that presents itself. Of course, on the way back home, there were two sand hill cranes in the field right next to the road and my camera was in my brief case in the trunk. Another great weekend up north.

Odds and Ends

One of my Conney Safety Product customers Rosanne Chase works for Milton G Waldbaum Co. Their parent company is Michael's food. She takes care of three facilities in and around Wakefield Nebraska where chicks are raised to 16 weeks. She then ships them on to other facility where they become laying chickens for the next two years. The facility she was working at today has ten chicken houses with each holding 73,000 chicks. That means this facility alone l has 730,000 chick being raised. With the three facilities she takes care of, there are 1,825,000 chicks being raised at any given time. Now that's a lot of chicks. Rosanne said the facilities are all state of the art with computers doing most of the work. I still can’t imagine that many chicks. I will bring you more about my clients in the future in the Northern Prospective.
May 13-14, 2005

If you ever have seen the movie Ground Hog Day, you know what it is like to get up to the same thing each day forever. After two days of a rummage sale at our home in Beaver Dam, I felt like it was forever. We had to head to Arianna’s birthday party on Sunday so we were going to be home anyway. We rummaged Friday and Saturday and did get rid of lots of stuff. The attic is now some place where you can actually walk. Although I vowed this was to be the last rummage sale, Lisa, my daughter, and JoAnn decided we would need one more next summer. They did take two van loads down to St Vincent store. That meant very little to take up the stairs. On Friday, with business running a little slow, Arriana and Grandpa got out their chairs and sat in front of the rummage sale by the street waving at people. We actually got a few to stop. Note the picture of Bailey helping out. She didn’t care much for waving.

Sunday was Arianna’s birthday party. She was four going on fourteen. We all went to the local mall to the Build a Bear store and she became the proud owner of a pink poodle. It was really a production to get he dog made from scratch. The stuffing was added along with a heart. We had to register the dog on their computer and finally pick up outfits. Do they have a great selling machine there. I tried to think how I could do the same with my safety products but came up blank. Of course there were lots of photo opportunities and of course there was a local place to get them printed. I also got a little carried away with pictures. But it’s the granddaughter, She is only four once. I have one of the pictures along with this story.
May 10, 2005

For many years, I watched the University of Wisconsin Marching Bands spring concert on Public Broadcasting Television. They were always wonderful. I guess I didn't really have a reason why I never choose to actually go to the concert. That ended last year when JoAnn sister and brother in law asked us to join them for the concert.

It was indeed wonderful and lots better than the television version. We were treated to a 2-hour concert and the television version was about one hour with commercial.

The concert is staged at the Kohl Center in Madison Wisconsin. Mike Leckrone is the Band Director and a truly great showman. We just went to the latest show on Saturday April 23rd and it was even better than last year. I have a picture of Mike coming in on a Harley. He was suspended from wires and actually flew in on the bike. Later he did another suspension, actually doing somersaults.

The band does lots of neat songs including many with Wisconsin University themes. The chicken dance was included as it should be at any good Wisconsin event.

The feature person was Mark Pender who was best known for his being the trumpet player on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He can really play that trumpet. BC3 is a local group of guys that sing "A Cappella" and were excellent. When you say Wisconsin, you've said it all capped the evening. That's the Wisconsin version of the Budweiser song.

Odds and Ends

Last week, I was sitting on my deck and a butterfly landed right on the front of my shirt. Of course JoAnn went running for the camera and of course it flew away. That reminds me of my promise to my readers that I will have a chickadee sitting on my hand this summer. I will also have a picture of it. If you don't see it on line, you have the right to question why I didn't answer the challenge. I taught my grandson Brendon about patience with holding our hands out with birdseed on it to get the chickadees to land. Of course they didn't but it was a good lesson. I also have a plan for getting the chickadees to sit on my hand and will see if it works in principle.

The countdown is on. We will make our first trip Up North this Friday. It is always a good feeling to get there and see that everything is all right. I have a few things to finish up on the travelogue section and that should be up shortly. I will keep you posted on the many trips we are about to start making to our mobile home in Woodruff. Best time of the year.
May 6, 2005

I got a great call from my brother down in Dallas Texas. He was headed up to his home and wanted to see if we could get together and come out to see the place. We met at Michael’s restaurant in Manitowish Waters. We normally go to eat breakfast at this place for Mothers Day. They give all the mothers a carnation to wear. The place changed hands this year but they still gave flowers to all the moms. We then drove another 25 minutes out to brother Charles place. It was almost in Upper Michigan. Lots of lake frontage and one of the nicest homes I have ever seen... He really did it up right. He and Karen will be retiring some where down the road and this will be a great place to retire to.
April 29, 2005

I took the day off and at 8:09 a. m., we started off for our trailer “Up North in Woodruff Wisconsin. It seems like more than six months since we were there. It was fun to see what is new on the way up to the trailer. I did have JoAnn jot down the various mile markers so you can find the travelogue items easier. That section of the website should be up and running as soon as I can finish up some of the stories. One of the landmarks ended up not being there anymore. The Christmas Past with the waving Santa is gone. The people that ran it were trying to sell it and finally must have accomplished the task.

When we got to the trailer, I normally head in first and get the place opened up. We then let our three dogs loose and they come right in and head to the back door and out into their dog pen. We check the place out for rodents and other animals and found that nothing has been in the place during the long winter. The people at the campground have the electricity turned on and water ready to go. We have had a few occasions where the water was still frozen in the ground and had to work around not having it. We take a five gallon bottle of water now for those occasions. Our park opens the first weekend in May. That is usually the start of fishing but this year the first was on a Sunday so opening went to the next weekend. There was hardly anyone up there on this weekend. Probably for the better as we got about an inch of snow on Sunday morning. Check out the pictures of the piers at the campground as evidence.

We got together with the Beth’s, our wood carving friends. We also saw Chuck and Carol Skurka and learned that she had retired and Chuck would be shortly. Our next door neighbor Jane came up and we all worked on the many leaves. First the roof is cleared and then the yard raked. It was so cold on Sunday that we decided to head back early. Nice snow flurries for the first half of the trip home. Got a few more pictures for the travelogue and got ready for another week of work.
April 9, 2005

Palau seems to be a very well know place these days. Go ahead and tell me you ever heard of it before Survivor went there. Take a look at the Staff section of the wiupnorth.com and you will see what I looked like in 1969 while standing on the shore in Palau. Yes that is a younger, leaner version with lots more hair than the present writer of this column. I will add a current picture of myself at a later date.

I graduated with a two year degree in photography from Layton Art School in 1967. I wanted to go on to college but the Army had better thoughts. They sent me for a physical and I was just waiting for them to send the papers to send me to Vietnam. Two years in the Army or four years in the Navy as a photographer became the question. I chose the Navy and off they sent me to Vietnam. I was on a Survey ship, the USS Tanner and we had completed surveying the East side of Vietnam and were on the West side when I joined up with them. This was the first time anyone had charted the depths of the water there since 1898 and I am sure those figure were a little off. We made maps right on board the ship. I was in charge of photographing all the landmarks so those using the maps could see what the area looked like. Lots of hanging out of the helicopter taking photos.

Four and one half months in Vietnam and gladly we returned to Pearl Harbor. I had just married JoAnn before going into the service and she was eager to see me. With little housing available she said she was coming even if she had to sleep on the beach. Some friends of my dads helped out by finding us an apartment. JoAnn got pregnant and probably was the first person to loose weight during her first trimester. We were just poor and living in paradise. My next deployment came up and I sent JoAnn back to her parents, broke, bare foot and pregnant.

On to Palau. That was what I started talking about. Our next mapping adventure took us to the Trust Territories of the Pacific. This included Palau along with Truk and Ponape . Now this was paradise. We spent the next eight months down there. We took a survey of the crew and better than 70% said they would gladly live there if they had the chance. It was a very simple existence for the natives there. Mainly catch some fish and eat some coconuts.

When we arrived on the main island of Truk, Lee Marvin had just finished up a movie “Hell in the Pacific” and came on board to give us the first viewing of the movie. He was hanging around the island to have the natives build him a boat and could be found most days hanging out with the natives. He brought along several of his friends to give us a USO type show on board our ship.

During this tour of duty, I was doing my normal hanging out of helicopters to take pictures. We would set up base stations on various islands so we could get coordinates for the exact locations our ship was at while doing our survey work. On one typical day, I was on the chopper ready to fly and they called me off so others could fly over to one of the islands. The chopper flew a few feet and dumped in the ocean. The guy that took my place on the chopper ended up being one of the three that died that day. You just don’t know when it is going to be your time.

Back to Palau. During World War 2, the Japanese used this island as their main port in the Pacific. From the air you can see tons of sunken ships at the bottom. The area is really an atoll. This means the island was created many years ago and as the years passed, the middle areas sunk some. The outer area didn’t sink as fast creating a bearer reef. The reef seems to allow for the ocean to die down some before the water hits land. Lots of very calm beaches. You could find just about any type of tropical fish. There were also lots of sea shells and those glass balls used to hold up fishing nets. Hermit Crabs were everywhere and mostly in the sea shells I wanted to take home with me. We devised a plan to release the shells from the crabs. We would tie a string to the crabs leg and hang it from a cloths line. A bucket was placed under the shell and we would let gravity work. The crab would let the shell go and we would let the crab go to find a new house.

After my time in Palau and the other island, it was back to reality. We dropped our ship off in Seattle and I finally got back home after two years. I got to meet my five month old daughter Lisa for the first time. Then it was off to Washington DC to finish off my naval career and then back to Beaver Dam to live for good. Those were the good old days in Palau.