Great Lakes Ice Coverage Way Above Normal

Whether you read it in English or French the Great Lakes ice coverage has been way above average again this year. Five weeks prior to the normal seasonal peak coverage is already above the typical annual top. Must be global warming at work.

The temperature data are easy to phony up and fabricate, and indeed are. The ice data, not so much.

Sign Boys Everywhere Are Paid -- Except on the PGA Tour

Caddies do not work for the PGA Tour. Their expenses are not covered by the Tour. They are not members of the PGA tour. But every day at every tour sponsored tournament, caddies wear bibs that advertise tour sponsors. And caddies don't get a dime for it. Negotiations with the Tour to rectify this inequity got nowhere, so the caddies filed a law suit.

More than 80 professional golf caddies have filed a $50 million lawsuit against the PGA tour alleging that the organization compelled them to wear corporate sponsored logos on bibs without compensation. 

The filing claims that the PGA Tour officials threatened to prohibit caddies from participating in events if they did not wear the bibs featuring sponsor logos. 

Additionally, it is alleged that these officials contacted tour players to determine if they would terminate contracts with caddies who did not wear the bibs.

"[Caddies] are made to serve as billboards to advertise, at the direction of the PGA Tour, for some of the most profitable companies in the world without compensation," the lawsuit states. 

The value of the bib is estimated at $50 million annually. The caddies, headed by Mike Hicks who caddied for Payne Stewart and Steve Stricker, among others, seek the money they would have earned based on the market value of the bib endorsements.

Free riders include Traveler's Insurance.

Coca Cola,

MasterCard,

Waste Management,

BMW,

Wells Fargo,

Bridgestone,

John Deere,

Humana Healthcare,

Sony Electronics,

Hyundai Motors,

AT & T,

Honda Motors,

Quicken Loans,

Shell Oil,

FedEx, and

Deutsche Bank.

We support the caddies.

Hillary Clinton On Science

We vaccinate our kids. We would do it regardless of what any politician says or what state law requires. We accept personal responsibility. But our state law requires it anyway.

I live in red state Montana where my kids can be exempted from measles vaccinations only for religious reasons (notarized each year and annually renewed) or by verified medical excuse. The recent measles outbreak originated in blue state California, that additionally allows kids to be exempt from measles vaccinations because of personal beliefs, whatever and however any parent or parents define that. Yet the left wing ignorant and reflexive response is to leverage for political advantage this public health crisis -- pointing to the right of course.

Responding to the personal responsibility emphasis by people such as myself, Joyce Behar, big mouth liberal says, “This is the neanderthal thinking on the right that is really scary and dangerous.”

Democratic Congresswoman Diane Degette from Colorado, wants the House Energy and Commerce committee to hold hearings on the measles outbreak, knowing full well that the Republican majority response will be no to this non-jurisdictional request. Set them up. Criticize them as uncaring. Check.

Hillary Clinton greeting big fan and Goldman Sachs
CEO Lloyd Blankfein at the Clinton Global Initiative.

Keying off the Behar theme, Hillary Clinton used her smart ass gene in conjunction with her acid pen. She tweeted, "The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let's protect all our kids." even though previous she, like Obama, had said the science was unsettled or inconclusive.

The supreme irony is the people most responsible for this crisis are avid Clinton and Obama supporters. People who believe in personal responsibility are much more likely to vaccinate their kids than the big state liberals.

Seth Mnookin, who has researched the vaccination topic, was interviewed by Science Magazine. Asked about a "perception that vaccine refusal is especially common among affluent, well-educated, politically liberal parents—is there any truth to that?" Mnookin said:

I think there's a fair amount of entitlement. Not vaccinating your child is basically saying I deserve to rely on the herd immunity that exists in a population. At the most basic level it's saying I believe vaccines are potentially harmful, and I want other people to vaccinate so I don't have to. And for people to hide under this and say, "Oh, it's just a personal decision," it's being dishonest. It's a personal decision in the way drunk driving is a personal decision. It has the potential to affect everyone around you.

Mnookin continued,

I think it taps into the organic natural movement in a lot of ways.

I talked to a public health official and asked him what's the best way to anticipate where there might be higher than normal rates of vaccine noncompliance, and he said take a map and put a pin wherever there's a Whole Foods. I sort of laughed, and he said, "No, really, I'm not joking." It's those communities with the Prius driving, composting, organic food-eating people.

Lest there be doubt about the validity of what Mnookin says, let us delve into data. 

The two states with obviously crisis proportions of non-vaccinations are Oregon and Vermont (ranked number 2 and number 6 by number of citizens calling themselves liberals),  The states with the tightest vaccination exemption regimes are West Virginia and Mississippi (well down the liberal list at numbers 37 and 47 respectively).

Mother Jones, that bastion of conservatism reports,

In [a] Pediatrics study, Atwell and her fellow researchers identified 39 geographic "clusters" across California—ranging in size from a few blocks to entire counties—where belief-driven opt-out rates are higher than the norm. The team found higher rates of whooping cough associated with these clusters. For example: Marin County, which had a personal-belief exemption rate of 7.8 percent in 2012—nearly four times the national average—has the second-highest rate of whooping cough in the whole state. These results support the findings of a 2006 study led by Emory's Omer, which found higher rates of pertussis in states that allowed personal-belief exemptions and had easy policies for doing so.

Resident herbalist Kathy Abascal
promoting her Vashon Island Diet.

California is not the only state with high-exemption hotspots. On Vashon Island, Washington, 17 percent of kindergartners failed to receive their shots in 2013 due to a "personal/philosophical" exemption. That's nine times the current national average. The year before, Vashon Islanders accounted for 16 percent of all whooping cough cases in Washington's King County, despite housing just one percent of its population.

Marin County voted 74.3 percent for Obama in 2012. Vashon Island went 77.6 percent for Obama. So let us blame Neanderthal, reactionary people on the right for being public health risks! Eh, how about it?

Have a wonderful day.

2008 Prius, winner of the Most Marin County Award, at the 2014, 24 Hours of Lemons road rally.

Day after I wrote this post Jon Stewart ran a segment -- he agrees. Imagine that!

Benjamin Netanyahu Appearing Without Barack Obama's Approval!

MSNBC, October 3, 2014

CNN, July 20, 2014

HBO, March 13, 2013

Fox News, August 7, 2014

CBS, November 16, 2014

ABC, November 23, 2014

January Top Ten

Seahawks or Patriots? As we post this morning nobody knows the outcome. But early on Super Bowl Sunday we already know the outcome of our January top ten page views.

1. A mid-January post leaped to the head of the pack. We grew up in Morton Grove, Illinois, a Chicago Suburb, population of about 25,000 at the time. In Morton Grove Before the Baby Boom: Life and Times at the Lincoln Tavern, we recount an earlier time when it was not a sleepy suburb but a hotbed for dancing, drinking, gambling and mischievous mirth.

Lincoln Tavern Ad, The Sentinel, August 12, 1921

Location, location and location were behind it. The roadhouse district along Dempster Street in Morton Grove was near enough to the Chicago Loop and the ritzy residences on the Gold Coast and up to the north shore suburbs to be accessible, but sufficiently distant and isolated to have an air of mystery and country cachet. Tavern offerings were illicit. Local and county police were complicit.

We learned that Lincoln Tavern hosted Duke Ellington, the wine-bath girl, Morton Grove's florist magnate, August Poehlmann, and many, many more.

2. When I sit down to research and write a blog post, sometimes I uncover material that takes the post in a totally unexpected direction. So it was with On the Road to Bathgate Act 1: "Fargo" the Movie, the first post in our ever popular "On the Road to Bathgate" series. My immigrant grandfather and great grandfather were the Bathgate, North Dakota town founders. We started to write a post on them when we learned that Bathgate was known for something more renown than family connection. As Bathgate bar proprietor Reinhold Henschel said, "What the hell?"

Corner of Austin & Dempster in Morton Grove, circa 1960.

3. Our seminal Morton Grove post climbed to third place in the January top ten. In Growing Up in Morton Grove, we reminisced:

Half a block up [from our home] and across the street was a field on the edge of the Cook County Forest Preserve, which with its bridle paths, heavily wooded areas, and riparian landscape presented all manner of opportunity for adventure and mischief. We captured butterflies, grasshoppers and lightening bugs, hung out in a "cave" along the river, climbed trees and explored the dump once located within.

Thomas Wolfe famously said "You can't go home again," but you can't blame us for trying. 

4. Golfers' thoughts are already turning to the towering pines, emerald green fairways, blooming magnolias and flowering azaleas at August National golf course where the Masters is held each spring. Our special connection with the Masters is that in our youth we caddied for Jock Hutchison, (British) Open champion golfer of the year and winner of the PGA championship. Jock was an original honorary starter for the Masters, a role fulfilled by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player today. Read about it here in The Masters (Repost).

Morton Grove, aerial view, 1938.

5. Publication of our Lincoln Tavern post teased out an invitation to join the Morton Grove Historical Society Facebook group, where we found a 1938 aerial photograph of Morton Grove. In Addendum to the Lincoln Tavern Post, we pinpoint the tavern grounds from above and point out some other gets from that era. It is fascinating to see how things change and yet remain the same.

6.  My better half's guest post and all-time most popular on Along the Gradyent, continued its uninterrupted run of consecutive top tens. It's an advice and self help piece -- The Golf Channel: Spouse's Guide To Sanity -- packed with pop culture references, a sure way to goose up page views on any blog.

7. The Lincoln Tavern saga got readers checking out our story about the most notorious Morton Grove roadhouse of them all -- Morton Grove Before the Baby Boom: The Complete Story of The Dells. Food, dancing and entertainment were the advertised attractions but,

The Dells' prosperous run was concurrent, not the least bit coincidentally, with the Volstead Act and prohibition. Additional attractions included beer, liquor and gambling and gangland wars over the profits of the same. The Dells was said to be owned or controlled by Al Capone and his gang. It is commonly referred to as the most notorious of the Morton Grove roadhouses.

Everyone who was anyone showed up at The Dells.

8. Martin Luther King Jr. day each year brings the spotlight back to The Caddies Thank You Dr. King! When we went on strike we borrowed a page from the civil rights leader's protest book.

To make it clear we were united, we caddies massed and organized. We marched out to the center of the driving range. We sat down on the target practice greens, preventing golfers from using the range, at least not without risking serious injury to the young men sitting thereon. And being good 1960’s protestors, we chanted slogans and then sang at the top of our lungs “We Shall Overcome.” The refrains of the civil rights anthem echoed across the greens, over the sandtraps, and through the forests.

As I recollect, the three hour strike wrought a process that produced fifty percent raise. For old Glen View Club caddies following us, please be advised we have a post on John Swearingen coming up in February -- Bonnie too.

9. The odometer on our Jeep Liberty rolled over on January 9. For those of under 40, odometers once were actually series of rolling wheels, each with digits 0 through 9. When a vehicle reached 100,000 miles the odometer literally rolled over back to zero for there was no hundreds of thousands place. When we hit the 100K mark on Kagy Avenue, we pulled into the parking lot at the Museum of the Rockies to get a picture of A Number You Gotta Like. 

10. We are the sum total of our life experiences. One of mine was manufacturing culvert pipe. 

It was a pretty typical blue collar environment where most of the employees teased and hazed the college kid unmercifully in the beginning. In time, if you proved yourself, you became one of the guys; they trusted you to partner with them and assume increasing responsibility. In addition to being dirty and tiring, parts of the process were dangerous work, one of the dangers highlighted some years earlier when a trespassing adolescent boy was tragically crushed playing with a friend rolling completed six foot radius pipes.

Wisconsin Culvert Co. produced bomb shelters too.

Sooner or later most of my co-workers took me privately aside, and encouraged me to continue my education, lest I not end up just like them, in a dirty, dangerous, and tiring dead end job. A couple of them had dropped out of the university in favor of a regular pay check. I appreciated their advice and friendship and resolved to visit a time or two during the school year to let the guys know I was thinking of them. When I stuck my head in they'd chirp before I could say a word, saying uh oh, here he comes, dropped out, looking for mercy and begging for work. They got in enough digs that they were happy to see me even though my visit kind of reminded them they were stuck in a rut.

For us, Caring About Culverts began in Madison, Wisconsin in 1973.

Romney Is A No Go

Drats! I won't get an opportunity to not vote for him a fourth and fifth time. 

Post by Washington Post.

Now if a few more, washed up, useless, double talking and posturing politicians withdraw, maybe there can be a real race. Jeb and Hillary, are you listening?

Anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion

It didn't take long before everyone knew what an O ring was. The understatement of the decade, "Obviously, a major malfunction."

The next day I flew down to Florida on business, where I had a window seat on the left hand side of our US Air flight. I looked down on a checkerboard pattern in the Atlantic formed by the wakes of dozens of recovery ships, each circling within their segment of the search grid. It was a sad and sobering sight.

RIP Teacher-in-Space payload specialist Sharon Christa McAuliffe; payload specialist Gregory Jarvis; and astronauts Judith A. Resnik, mission specialist; Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, mission commander; Ronald E. McNair, mission specialist; Mike J. Smith, pilot; and Ellison S. Onizuka, mission specialist.

Carly Fiorina

Back in the day when she was a rising star at Hewlett Packard I knew people who were buddies of Carly (they had attended an advanced management program together at Harvard or Sloan, I forget which) who I did not think a whole lot of. So I kind of -- no, I totally disregarded her. But I watched this speech the other day. I know now that I was completely wrong. 

At 18:00: 

"Like Hillary Clinton, I too have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe. But unlike her I have actually accomplished something. You see Mrs. Clinton, flying is not an accomplishment. It is an activity."

Check it out beginning to end.

Some People Should Be Immortal

Normally when someone in their eighties on up dies I get a warm feeling inside, and make a statement to the effect that the departed led a long and wonderful life. Today when I got that news, it drew more than a tear or two to my eye, for Ernie Banks is dead. That's hard to imagine. I hope at his funeral they play this song so we can all have a smile or two as well. 

Here is the full tune.

Good-bye and god bless Number 14.

Tag, You're It

On Thursday, the European Central Bank joined the United States Federal Reserve and the United Kingdom and Japanese central banks in jumping on the Quantitative Easing (QE) bandwagon.

FRANKFURT—The European Central Bank ushered in a new era by launching an aggressive bond-buying program Thursday, shifting pressure to Europe’s political leaders to restore prosperity in one of the global economy’s biggest trouble spots. 

Investors cheered the ECB’s commitment to flood the eurozone with more than €1 trillion ($1.16 trillion) in newly created money, sparking a rally in stock and bond markets and sending the euro plunging.

The elites love it. Cheers were roused among the über rich and politically powerful in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, a resort town where they lolled this week while beneficently charting our futures.

The reactions to the central bank’s move rippled widely through the world’s trading floors, corporate boardrooms and European capitals. “It’s one piece of getting Europe back to growth, and we should see an impact,” Joe Jimenez, chief executive of drug giant Novartis said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, where the political and economic elite are gathered for meetings of the World Economic Forum.

Also in Switzerland, Larry Summers, former White House economist under Obama and Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, spoke up, issuing the always at the ready progressive endorsement.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers described the ECB’s move as a “broadly responsible central bank action,” but said governments still need to make policy reforms. 

Policy reforms in Summers/Obama speak means higher taxes, more government spending and larger, more intrusive government. Sweet.

Producing money and incurring debt to stimulate the economy is like sowing dandelion seeds and laying manure to stimulate your lawn. For sure you will get a spurt of growth, but at the end of the day, you cheapen the result, develop deeply rooted problems, foul the runoff, and choke out the good in the favor of the bad. 

QE is a debt and inflation enabling mechanism. QE increases the money supply by creating money out of thin air to effect purchases of government bonds. Since the amount of money in circulation is increased without actually producing anything, QE, aside from enabling deficit spending, inflates prices. 

Donald Trump, "People like me will benefit from this."

For those who own and live off of financial assets (i.e., the rich), general price inflation is a good thing since throwing more money at their assets increases the monetary (as opposed to real economic) value of their wealth. But for ordinary working stiffs, inflation is bad because it creates artificial price floors and/or drives up the prices on things workers buy and consume in order to support themselves and their families. Also, QE squashes interest earnings on payroll savings. Ultimately as well, taxes will have to go up to pay for the enabled debt. 

The ECB president is Mario Draghi. You and I have a different world view. We like paying less as opposed to more to heat our homes, drive our cars, to eat, and to transport goods and services. But the bankers, and the big government progressives (including all Democrats in the US), want to reflate prices. They don't like it when we live less expensively, such as currently with declining gasoline prices.

Consumers and businesses are welcoming the fall in oil prices and lower inflation but today low inflation is seen as a trigger by central bankers including Draghi, the ex Goldman Sachs banker, to print money to buy government bonds.

We are not the only ones who are on to this game.  

Economist Anthony Randazzo of the Reason Foundation wrote that QE “is fundamentally a regressive redistribution program that has been boosting wealth for those already engaged in the financial sector or those who already own homes, but passing little along to the rest of the economy. It is a primary driver of income inequality.”

Donald Trump – not usually one for distributional analyses of monetary policy – said on CNBC yesterday that “People like me will benefit from this.”

We may be right, but we are in the minority in openly scoffing the absurd money printing policies. 

Read, reason and learn.

Have a great day!

Dear President Saves Me Again

So Barack Obama is gonna play the Robin Hood thing again, this time announcing his plan at the State of the Union, to save me from poverty and penury, relieve me of tax obligations and pass the burden along to the rich. How sweet it is! 

And deserved? You be the judge.

When I get around to filing our federal tax return our tax bill will run about three percent of our adjusted gross income. By my standards we live pretty high on the hog. No debt. No mortgage (or mortgage interest deduction). We don't have to work. And we live in a 4,200 square foot home with gorgeous mountain views on an acre lot. By my standards, we live pretty high on the hog.

One of the reasons our federal taxes are absurdly low is something called the child tax credit, which we fully qualify for. Obama says he is going to triple the child tax credit which would negate our tax liability altogether, and assuming it remains refundable, could result in the federal government cutting us a check. The income tax system would pay us -- not vice versa.

I looked into the history of the child tax credit, courtesy of the "nonpartisan" Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. 

The Center has been broadly praised by the left and right -- wings of the Democratic party that is.

What Others Say About the Center

• “[The Center’s] statistical work is absolutely impeccable. If you care about [fiscal issues], check CBPP’s site regularly for updates.” 
  — Nobel Laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
   
• “[I]n a political environment rife with ideological warfare and poisoned by partisanship, the Center’s knack for getting things done sets it apart from  . . . well, from just about everybody else in Washington.”
  — Steven Pearlstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist 
   
• “The invaluable Center on Budget and Policy Priorities … [has] been the go-to resource for consistently reliable analysis on matters of budgets and fiscal policy at every level of government.”
  — Vice President Joseph Biden
    
• “[CBPP’s] staff includes not only some of the most reputable federal budget analysts in Washington, but the analysts that other analysts go to for information, advice and reality checks. They’re highly experienced, credentialed and credible. Even those who disagree with the CBPP’s politics seldom, if ever, argue with its understanding of the budget process.”
  — Stan Collender, leading budget expert and Roll Call columnist
   
• “In a year that was all about budget issues, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities lived up to its name. Whether you were looking for the latest numbers on state budget cuts, a quick analysis of Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposals, or simply an introduction to where your tax dollars go, CBPP lived up to its reputation as the fastest, fairest, and smartest policy think tank in Washington.” 
  — Ezra Klein, Washington Post, in naming CBPP as Think Tank of the Year (2011)

The Center says the child tax credit is about "helping low income working families." Sweet. They laud the program for allowing working families to "owe little or no income tax in a given year" and claim the credit is "a powerful weapon against poverty." That would implicate us child tax credit recipients as poverty stricken and in need of charity, I guess. We love progressives, even if they don't have a brain.

Also, research suggests that boosting working families’ incomes can expand opportunities for children, such as by improving school performance. Lifting low-income families’ income when a child is young not only tends to improve a child’s immediate well-being, but is associated with better health, more schooling, more hours worked, and higher earnings in adulthood, research has found.

Just give me money and my kids will do better in school. Of course! How brilliant is that? Give me yet more money and my kids will be Einsteins. This tax policy is better than a miracle drug.

Fact is that my three percent tax rate is the norm for the bottom fifty percent.

High income tax payers are already paying seven times my rate (the ratio will be larger for 2014). 

And the top half of taxpayers are paying 97.2 percent of all income taxes.

Everybody should have some skin in the game. I guesstimate that, including other changes, Obama's plan will relieve up to half of the lower fifty percent from paying any income taxes whatsoever.

Obama apologists, thanks but no thanks. I don't want or need your support. It's not good for our society. It's not good for our economy. It's not good for our future. Period.

Addendum to the Lincoln Tavern Post

Earlier this week, when we linked to our Lincoln Tavern post on the We Grovers From Morton Grove group on Facebook, we were invited to join the Morton Grove Historical Society group as well, and did so promptly, where we came across a post that linked to an aerial shot of Morton Grove, said to have been shot in 1938-39. Here is the aerial shot.

One of the reasons I like this overview is it shows that Chick Evans (nee Northwestern) golf course actually had some sand traps back in the day. Further, it showed the golf course layout and bunkering at Glen View Club were exactly then as during the 1960s and 1970s when I caddied there. At the time, much of Morton Grove was an abandoned development (roads cut through and sidewalks installed), much like many of the recession ghost towns sprinkled throughout the United States following the 2008 financial meltdown. There are lot of other interesting gets, like seeing that much of the area that is now St. Paul/Miami Woods was farm land at the time. But this post is about Lincoln Tavern.

To make some sense of the aerial photo in terms of seeing what the Lincoln Tavern looked like, I enlarged and cut out the local portion, wrote in street names and edited in a pointer to the tavern. Here it is.

Note how large the Lincoln Tavern was. The building, plus the ample frontage off of Dempster, took up half the block. On the northeast corner of the same block is the building that was the Dempster Inn and then the Stumble Inn during the Depression, which later became Val's Tavern. Although Poehlmann Bros. bankrupt florist business had been long shuttered, greenhouses remained at that time in the area north of Dempster and west of the Lincoln Tavern, where Park View School and Harrer Park are located today.

Note that on the northwest corner of Austin and Dempster, you can still see the footprint of The Dells back in the woods, though it is hard to say how much of the building remained. Note also, across the street, on the northeast corner of Austin and Dempster, is Murphy's steakhouse, which was in the frame white building there, very much the same through the 1950s and 1960s, when I grew up in Morton Grove. One of the buildings across from Murphy's on the block southeast of the Austin and Dempster intersection housed Club Rendezvous, location of the deadly fire on March 24, 1935.

Slow Down!

If you doubt the need to slow down and be careful in snowy and icy conditions, just check out the carnage in this social media video of the 193 vehicle accident aftermath in Michigan last week.

Post by Kamal Singh.

Great Lakes Ice Coverage Above Normal

We are not going to challenge records this year like we did last year, but season-to-date Great Lakes ice coverage is well above normal. Here is the latest graphic progress chart from the Canadian Ice Service.

The US Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting System has some great graphics too. Here is Lake Erie, as of today, depicting 79.9 percent ice coverage.

Click this link to watch the ice coverage grow.

Really cool, and not something you will find reported in the media because it does not support the doomsday global warming theories that are favored by the smart people and all the scientists on the take.

Hope you all are having a great winter. Cheers!

On the Road to Bathgate: Uncle William Adams Foster

This is a rewrite and republish for along the way, some how, some way I noticed when doing research a few weeks back that I had accidentally deleted the post I wrote last year. It is all just as well because I have uncovered a couple of new sources. Here is the new post.

Though he lived up in North Dakota and never came to visit, I met my uncle Adams several times in my youth. Adams was born November 17, 1893 in Bathgate, North Dakota, the third child (of eleven) and oldest son of Isaac Jarvis and Laura Elizabeth Armstrong Foster. His full name was William Adams Foster -- William in honor of his paternal grandfather, William K. Foster, and Adams in honor of his maternal grandfather, John Adams Armstrong.

My aunt Charlotte related in her family history that Adams was a sick baby for a spell.



The Houston farm would later be stage for a pivotal event in Adams' life.

Aunt Charlotte counted Adams among the Foster children with brown hair.


Here is a picture of part of the brood.

Adams, Herb, Jim, Charlotte, George, and Bryant Foster.

All the boys, Adams included, worked hard on the farm come threshing time.



A sheaf is a cut bundle of wheat. Sheafs were shocked (stacked upright against one another) to give the wheat an opportunity to dry before the grain was threshed out.

In a comical vein, Adams and his brothers nursed an orphan colt, to the chagrin of Mrs. Stelzer.

William Adams Foster draft registration, World War I.

According to his 1917 draft registration card, Adams was of medium height and medium build. He self described as having brown hair and gray eyes. He claimed no disability.

The story about uncle Adams was that he had fallen from a horse and hit his head. I never knew quite whether to believe it. In my youth I wondered whether that was cover for some congenital condition. Adams lived with his parents, or was a hired hand at a neighboring farm, right up to the time of their deaths in 1934, which would have made him 40 years old. The uncle Adams I knew had no real comprehension of money or ability to support himself. 

The story about the horse it turns out is absolutely true. Here is the January, 1913 published report.

Pembina Pioneer Express, January 31, 1913

Almost a Fatality. 

Adams Foster, oldest son of Sheriff Foster, met with an accident on Thursday evening which nearly proved fatal. The sheep had strayed away from the ranch in the storm in the evening and Mr. Foster and Adams started in different directions to round them up. Mr. Foster returned about 8 o'clock and found the horse Adams had been riding standing loose by the barn. He took his hounds and collie dogs and started out to look him up and finally located him in a straw stack on the John Houston farm. The horse had turned sharply and thown Adams near the stack, rendering him unconscious for a time and when he came too he crawled to the straw stack and covered himself as well as he could. When found he was in a torpor which would probably have been his last sleep had he not been found withing a short time. He suffered no serious results although he was frost bitten on the hands, feet and face. -- Pink Paper.

Grandfather Ike had well trained bloodhounds courtesy of the state penitentiary who favored him with the same because he was county sheriff.

The incident was reported across state lines in Bemidji.

Bemidji Daily Pioneer, January 27, 1913

Down in the state capital, the Tribune made note of the incident as well.

Bismarck Tribune, January 25, 1913

Grand Forks picked up the report too.

The Evening Times (Grand Forks. N. D.), January 24, 1913

The newspaper claim of no serious results proved inaccurate. After his parents passed during the Great Depression, Adams became resident at the Grafton State School (previously the Institution for the Feeble Minded) 35 miles south of Bathgate. On visits we would check him out and take him to the county fair, to visit Bathgate or just down to a local brook for a nice little picnic. Beyond a point in time, Adams would say he was getting tired (he was in his 70s at the time) and he wanted to go home. 

Adams later moved to a nursing home in Grand Forks where he died on March 21, 1977.

Cavalier Chronicle, March 25, 1977

ADAMS FOSTER

Adams Foster, 83, Grand Forks (formerly of Bathgate, died Monday, March 21 at a Grand Forks Hospital.

Funeral services were held Wednesday, March 23 at the Jensen Funeral Home in Cavalier, Rev. Anthony Adams officiated at the service. Burial was in the Bathgate Cemertery. Arrangements were with Jensen Funeral Home in Cavalier.

Mr. Foster was born Nov. 27, 1893 to Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Foster at Bathgate. He spent his early life in the Bathgate area. For the past four years he had been a resident at St. Anne's Guest Home in Grand Forks.

Survivors include four brothers: Herbert and George Foster of Chicago; Bryant Foster, Fresno, Calif., and James Foster, Salem, Ore.; two sisters: Mrs. Margaret Cameron, Evanston, Ill., and Mrs. Roy (Charlotte) Von Alman, Little Fork, Minn. Several newphews and nieces also survive. 

He was preceded in death by his parents, three sisters and one brother.

Adams' tombstone in Bathgate Protestant Cemetery.

God bless William Adams Foster. may he eternally rest in peace.

Morton Grove Before the Baby Boom: Life and Times at the Lincoln Tavern

The Lincoln Tavern is the third establishment we feature in this Morton Grove roadhouse series.

I grew up in Morton Grove in the 1950s and 1960s in a house on the corner Austin Avenue and Davis Street. From kindergarten through eighth grade, I attended Park View school. 

Most school days in seventh and eighth grade, I participated in after school intramural sports, and then detoured on the way home. I cut across Harrer Park or walked up Moody Street to Dempster Street, turning east on Dempster down to Austin. Along the way I sometimes stopped for a treat at Yadron's Deli (candy or a chocolate milk), Jean's Bakery (a chocolate eclair) or at the counter of a small diner style restaurant (a chocolate milkshake) whose name I have lost in the fog of time. That was my self indulgence. All the rest of the money I made caddying went into the bank for eventually funding college and starting a lifelong habit of saving and investing.

I did not understand it at the time, but my homeward route looped along Morton Grove's prohibition era roadhouse row. 

Previously we recounted the drama and contretemps surrounding fights for control of  the Lincoln Tavern's near neighbor, The Dells. We re-published contemporary reports on the deadly fire that consumed Club Rendezvous, one block further up Dempster Street. Now we feature the Lincoln Tavern. The Lincoln Tavern was notable among Morton Grove roadhouses for its huge capacity, sultry entertainment and the prominent performers who were featured therein. 

Introducing The Lincoln Tavern.  

Location, location and location were behind it. The roadhouse district along Dempster Street in Morton Grove was near enough to the Chicago Loop and the ritzy residences on the Gold Coast and up to the north shore suburbs to be accessible, but sufficiently distant and isolated to have an air of mystery and country cachet. Tavern offerings were illicit. Local and county police were complicit.

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