Parking is available at either end of the trail. Street parking is permitted on both sides of Lincoln Avenue which will put you close to 2-3 caches on the north end of the trail. Parking in the UMOS lot at Chase Avenue and Rosedale Avenue will put you close to 3 caches on the west end of the trail. The distance from cache 1 to cache 6 is about .6 mile. Bike, hike, or roller skate your way to each hide. The final is a short (.3 mile) ride or drive north of Lincoln Avenue.
When I was 2 or 3 years old, my uncle Chet, called me FURF. No one in my family remembers why, probably my mispronunciation of some word or another, but for whatever reason, the nickname stuck. Whenever we reminisce about days of yore, the name FURF is sure to be resurrected. It therefore seems appropriate to use that nickname for this series of caches as I reminisce about the 1950’s and the fun times I had within a stone’s throw of this new bike trail.
Memory 4 has to do with my grandparents home. Theirs was a cluster of 3 houses squashed together on the corner of Rosedale Avenue and Gladstone Place. To the south was a tool and die shop with a large wooden fence, to the north were the other two houses of this trio with ever diminishing backyards, thanks to the diagonal railroad tracks intersecting their properties.
My grandparents immigrated to the United States from Poland around 1910 and were married and living in Milwaukee by the time my father was born in 1917. I’m not exactly sure when they moved to this residence, but they were married at St Josaphat’s and lived in this general area until they both died. This house was the only one of theirs that I ever knew.
The backyard defined my grandparents. A narrow brick walkway lead from the back door to a dirt alleyway along the railroad tracks. The north half of the yard was all garden. Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, cabbage, potatoes, corn, squash, beets, dill, basil, parsley, and other produce occupied every square inch of Sophie’s side of the yard. This was not to add some vegetables to the family diet, this was to put food on the table and to can and preserve nourishment for the winter months. By the time I saw the gardens, only one of their seven children were still living at home, so the plants were more a force of habit rather than a fiscal necessity.
The south side of the backyard was Joseph’s domain. Imagine a combination small salvage yard and an eco-friendly bait shop. There were boxes and bushels and barrels and bins. Some were for iron, some for steel, some for copper, some for brass. Empty beer bottles here, tin cans over there, a stack of snow tires and cans of rusty nails. There wasn’t a piece of scrap metal that Joseph thought was worthless. He was on a first name basis with every junk dealer on the south side. When he wasn’t scrapping, he was fishing. He had a small boat on a trailer on part of his half of the yard and an assortment of fishing tackle was stacked on wooden shelves along the fence. The most fascinating aspect of the backyard to a curious 5 year old grandson was his fishing bait. My grandfather never purchased fishing bait in his life. He cultivated worm farms of his own. Big wooden half barrels filled with dark, rich soil that you could dig into until you reached the masses of nightcrawlers lurking there. Red worms had their own distinct habitat. Crickets chirped happily from a closed container next to a menagerie of weird and wonderful larva wiggling in ecosystems of their own. This was the first time I had ever heard of hellgrammites. I don’t know what Joe fed his creatures, probably some of the greenery from Sophie’s side of the yard.
Sadly, the home is no more. After my grandmother’s passing 1987, the home was sold to the tool and die shop next door and eventually demolished with the other two residences. Grandma’s house is now a parking lot.
Permission to place this cache has been granted by Michael Loughran, Public Works Coordination Manager.