A few hours ago I returned home from a two-day, self-contained, one-way bike ride. Last night I camped in the Pigeon River Fish and Game area, in a campground just outside of Mongo, Indiana. (Mongo was the scene of the Gage and Langdon War, so-called, which took place during the Black Hawk war. The Pigeon River is named after the Potawatomi leader, White Pigeon, who happens to have been listed as one of the scouts who went to Illinois to help the U.S. Army defeat Black Hawk. His Potawatomi name was more like Wapmimi, though.)

There were freeze warnings last night. My sleeping bag is a very lightweight one, meant for warmer temperatures, so I took along Myra’s, too, and put mine inside of hers. Underneath me I used my thin, 3/4 length thermarest pad. It’s not long enough for my feet. That can be a big problem in cool weather — one’s feet can lose a lot of warmth to the ground. But I set up my tent on a soft, leafy place, and I didn’t have any trouble with cold feet. Cool, maybe, but not too cool to cause any lack of sleep. It probably helps that the soil had warmed up considerably by this time of year. I also took along my goosedown pants to use as a sort of pajama pants, but forgot that I had them until one time when I woke up in the middle of the night. That wasn’t really a problem, though. I just slept in my pants, which were warm enough inside the double bag. What was a problem is that these summer sleeping bags of ours come unzipped easily, and are hard to keep fastened around the shoulders, mummy-bag style. So every now and then I’d wake up, pull the zippers up again, pull the bags around my shoulders to keep out the cold air, and then drop off to sleep again.

I didn’t crawl out of the bag until the sun had started to warm the tent inside.

I was glad that the temperatures seemed not to have gotten as cold as forecast. Then I looked at the GPS unit I had left attached to my rear pannier, and wished I hadn’t left it outside the tent. I hoped the condensation hadn’t gotten it wet and ruined it. I started to wipe it away with my finger and realized it was frost, not wet condensation. I rubbed my finger across my bike saddle. That, too, was frosted over, as is shown above. But it didn’t take long for it all to melt. The GPS turned out to be fine.

Saturday’s mileage: 65.5

Today’s mileage: 50 (In the cemetery at St Joe where I waited for Myra to pick me up I rode around the cemetery lanes to put on a few tenths to bring my total for the day to an even 50.)

YTD: 472

It was good to hear from Amanda Rinkel today. She left a comment on the first of my posts about her family’s mill, “The Rinkels.”

When I saw the way she spelled her family name, I realized I had spelled it wrong on everything I had written so far. I think I’ve corrected all of the misspellings where I could, but am also posting a few more photos in order to have some practice at spelling Rinkel correctly.

There are a few additional things that make the mill a good destination. Next to the millpond, just behind where I stood to take the above photo, is a picnic table in a setting that would be good for a lunch break.

I didn’t take advantage of the table when I was there, even though it was well past noon and I was a bit hungry. Before I left the store I had looked around inside to see if there was any kind of snack that might serve as lunch. I saw several types of flour, but that wouldn’t work too well. Lately I haven’t even carried my Trangia stove with me on my rides, much less a camp oven. (Some bicycle tourers do carry such things, though.) The jellies and jams on the shelf looked good, but that wouldn’t be good as a meal all by itself, even if there was nobody to see me do it.

But just now, while preparing this photo, I spied what looks like an ice cream freezer in the back of the room, next to the heater. That would have worked. Even though the day had been rather cool, an ice cream would have made an acceptable lunch. If they had the “Cashew Crunch” that’s shown on the New Rinkel web site, that would have worked, too, except that my body doesn’t react well to too much sugar at one time. I suppose I should have asked.

I didn’t buy a package of flour to take with me, not even some buckwheat for pancakes. I didn’t want to carry extra weight with me. But New Rinkel flour is sold in a lot of other stores, so there should be a chance to get some even if I don’t get in another ride to the mill soon. I now see that you can buy it on the web, too. I’ll bet it’s Amanda who runs that part of the business.

A recurring discussion topic on the phred bicycle touring list is kickstands. Some people don’t want those things on their bicycles. After I argued in favor of mine, explaining how I didn’t want to have to look around for something against which to lean my bicycle when I stop, one rider said, “I don’t ride to stop. I ride to ride.” That was a moment of enlightenment for me. I say I like to ride my bicycle, but for me it’s not just the riding. I ride to stop. And I no longer needed to apologize to myself for all the stops I make.

I had made a long stop at the Greenfield Mills — so long that I wasn’t going to have time to ride on to Nevada Mills, which I had planned as my next destination. Then, I had barely left the mill when I stopped again, to look back and take a photo from the spillway of the dam.

The old mill is almost a four story building if you count the level where water runs through underneath to turn the generator. It doesn’t look so big from a distance, though.

Shortly before, we had been up on the top floor. Dave had called our attention to what it had been like to construct the post and beam structure back in the 1840s. That’s a beam of 13″ white oak running along the top edge. It would have been heavy. He asked us to think about what it would be like to work that high off the ground, above the water, when the frame wasn’t quite complete. The workers would have to get that beam up in place, which would be quite an operation in itself. Then someone would have to bore out holes for pegs. Then some young and fearless young man would have to stand on the 13″ beam above the water four stories below, and pound those pegs in with a maul. (If you somehow got me up there, I would straddle the beam and try to pound them in from that position. I don’t guarantee it would have worked that way.)

Over to the upper right of the photo, Dave is pointing out a rare wooden pulley that’s still in operation. Usually when such things wear out, they get replaced with newer steel parts.

I don’t think there was such a thing in the Greenfield Mills as taking a photo against an uncluttered background. It was an excellent place that way.

It’s difficult to find any place to go on industrial tours these days. When I was little it was something my parents took us kids to at every opportunity. I remember a gold mine and a taconite plant on Lake Superior. In 1997 we took our youngest son on a tour of a paper mill in Ontario. But there isn’t much like that any more. I run into people who have fond memories of touring the Battle Creek plant of the W.K. Kellogg Company to see how cereal was made. But those tours were closed down years ago over concerns about industrial espionage and liability.

Now when I hear wistful comments about the Kellogg Company tours, I’m going to suggest that people go to Greenfield Mills instead, where once again they can see how their food is made. (The small fee for the tour helps to cover the insurance costs.)

One of the first stops on Dave Rinkel’s tour was the water wheel, which is pictured here. It’s more efficient than the old, wooden undershoot or overshot wheels. It generators electricity to run the mill and provides power for a handful of neighbors. The excess is fed back to the grid and sold to Northern Indiana Power. The operation is literally a Ma and Pa electrical power utliity.

I like it. There aren’t many economies of scale to take advantage of, but the neighbors can say they support their local power utility.

Dave later told me it’s a lot of work to keep the thing going. He and Mary can seldom get away for any time together. If anything goes wrong, the neighbors call him on his cell phone. (Compare that to calling Consumers Power in Michigan to report an outage, where you go through a complicated phone message system and never talk to a real person.) Last time Dave and Mary tried to go out for evening together, neighbors interrupted their meal to express concern that the water level in the dam was too high.

It takes a village to run a small electrical power utility, I suppose.

I wish them well. I hope they enjoy their locally generated power for many years to come.

YTD mileage: 322.5

(Mar 27, cont.) Even though a sign in the window said “Come In, We’re Open,” the place had the feel of a ghost town. I figured someone was probably busy or else napping somewhere inside, but it seemed that outside, I was all alone. Before going up the steps to try the door, I went around to the side. I was crouched down, trying to get a photo of this millstone, even though it was still in the shade of the morning sun, when I looked up to see a young woman in a dark jacket and long skirt coming around the corner.

No, she didn’t object to my camera. She wondered if was just out riding around. I explained that I had ridden here on purpose to see what was at Greenfield Mills, but that I hadn’t expected to find this mill building.

I asked if the Amishland and Lakes bicycle tour ever comes this way. I’ve never gone on that tour, but have known people who do it every year. The rides start in Howe, near where I had started this morning. I know of excellent ride loops one can take in LaGrange County, but this place seemed like it could be yet another worthy destination for the A&L. But no, it seems that it was not common for visitors to Greenfield Mills to arrive by bicycle.

That’s unfortunate, because the riding here is excellent, just as it is in many other parts of the county.

The young woman was soon joined by her mother. They explained that yes, this is an actual mill where flour is made, and that it had been in the same family since 1904. “There are only four of us.” All the same family? Yes. What’s the family name, I asked? They pointed out the words on the building that said, “NEW RINKEL FLOUR.”

They had recently opened a store on site. And you have a web site, I asked? Yes, they did. (Here it is: www.newrinkelflour.com .)

Before going inside, I took their photos. Amanda is on the left, standing next to her mother, Mary.

The idea of an old water-powered mill, still in operation, was sinking in. I remarked that there weren’t many like that. I knew of the one on Raccoon Creek, at Bridgeton, which I’ve already visited and written about. (”Bridgeton Mill“) The Rinkels knew of that one, too, and had also visited there. And they told me of a third in Indiana, whose name I’ve forgotten but which I’ll need to look up for another possible bike ride.

While we were talking, a family from elsewhere in Indiana came in to the store, interested in taking a tour. I asked to join it. The tour guide is Dave, Mary’s husband. The price of the tour was only $5/person, and for that we were treated to information about the history of the mill and the community of Greenfield Mills, Dave’s own recollections of how things were done when he was young, and an explanation of the various operations. We were able to see these operations right up close to the machinery on all three floors. I’ll post some of the photos I took, but can only hint at the rich store of sights, sounds, and information you’ll get if you go there yourself and have Dave show you around. Highly recommended.

By the time we were finished, it was well past noon and the old millstone on the west side of the building was no longer in the shade. I finally got my photo of it.

YTD mileage: 314

(10 April – Corrected the spelling of the Rinkel name)

On this map, the green marker is at the likely location of the “Pleasant Island” on Crooked Creek that Ethel Hand Armstrong told about. My route for last Saturday’s ride (March 27) is shown in red. The red pushpin marks the first of my destinations for the day: Greenfield Mills. It’s upstream from the Pleasant Island location — a distance of about 10 miles by crow. It turned out to be such a good destination that I never made it to the second.

I have ridden many times in LaGrange County. The town of Mongo was the scene of one of the more amusing anecdotes (though not a well documented one) from the Black Hawk war scare. There are several other places in the county that are favorites of mine, always worth revisiting. But this time I decided to do something different and explore the outer edges of the known world, where the known world is defined by a LaGrange county map. Greenfield Mills is off in the northeast corner of that world.

BTW, Greenfield Township, the northeasternmost township of the county, is probably the one where Ethel Hand’s father, John, was born. The census records from the time show some Hands living in that township, and shows them as having come from Ohio, which also matches what Ethel told about her father’s family.

I hadn’t expected to find anything more than a few houses where a village had once been. Maybe if I was lucky I could look at the stream and get an idea of where the millpond and millrace had been. Sometimes at these old mill sites there are still visible traces.

What I hadn’t expected was a big mill building that said “Greenfield Mills — New Rinkel Flower”

Even more of a surprise was the sign on the door that said, “Greenfield Mills – Old Mill Store – Indiana’s Oldest Water-Powered Mill – Built in 1846 – Family-Owned and Operated since 1904 – Hours 9:30-12:00 1:00-4:00 Mon-Fri – 260-367-2394 – Tours by Appointment.” The building looked well worn and there was nobody around. I didn’t have an appointment and this was Saturday, not Mon-Fri. But there was a sign in the window that said “Open” and there were lights on inside. As soon as I took a few photos, I planned to at least knock on the door.

YTD mileage: 305.5

I hadn’t intended to say any more than I already did about “A Family Named Hand,” written by Ethyl Hand Armstrong. But tonight I finished reading it. It’s good that I did it after everyone else has gone to bed so I didn’t have to explain that no, I don’t need to take an Alavert. This time it’s something other than pollen or whatever it is that sometimes sets me sneezing and wiping my watery eyes.

The story has an impact something like the Laura Ingalls Wilder books — at least it did on me, especially if I think about the darker part of the story told in Laura’s “The Last Four Years.” Ethyl’s story is well written — she was possibly as good a writer as Laura Ingalls Wilder when you consider how much Rose Wilder Lane did to edit her mother’s books and shape them for publication. Ethyl’s is a difficult story to read in the same way that Laura’s last book (the one not edited by Rose) was painful to read when I was in my 30s. What it told was not the way I wanted Laura’s life to turn out after having read about the happy times of her childhood. Years later I went back and read it again, and I had a completely different take on it. It wasn’t so painful then and was much easier to accept. But I had absorbed more of life’s punches myself by then. The point being, Ethyl’s book is also one that can engage the reader’s own life intensely. The exact effect may depend on where the reader is in his own life.

The Hand family had a life of poverty, cruel conflict, hardship, and happiness. In introducing her parents to us she writes:

Mother was a gentle, loving woman with a world of patience. She worshiped my father. She was not clever like Father, but she was anything but stupid. She was half Indian, short, plump, black haired and left handed. They were married a day after her sixteenth birthday. He was nine years older than she. I think that they were mostly happy and they loved each other, I know. Their life was made harder for them because the children came along so fast.

Ethyl’s father was like Pa Ingalls in that he had musical talent, was charming, resourceful, and had itchy feet that at times made the family pack up, leave most of their belongings behind, and go west to live, sometimes by a covered wagon of sorts, and once by train. (On the last such epic journey — one from which her mother and a brother didn’t return — Ethyl and her brother Harvey rode from Sturgis, Michigan to Kansas by bicycle, going on ahead of the wagon to look for places to camp. ) Unlike Laura’s Pa, Ethyl’s father had a violent temper and was not usually indulgent of his children. Ethyl gives a clear-eyed picture of both the good and the bad, but does it in a way that can leave the reader anything but clear-eyed.

Naturally I paid close attention to any mention of places that could be visited by bicycle. In the years when they lived in Sturgis, they sometimes went to Crooked Creek to fish:

In the summer, we sometimes went fishing on the weekends. We took the horse and wagon and went to Crooked Creek south of town and fished from the shore. We cooked our dinner over a camp fire. Sometimes we stayed overnight and slept on the ground under the trees. We had a farmer’s permission to camp in his grove. We cleaned our fish and fried them and that is the time they tasted the best. Sometimes we even found juneberries or maybe some raspberries or strawberries for desert. Sometimes when Mother or Father were too busy or didn’t want to go, Harvey, Goldie and I and our cousin Lulu and her younger brother Aaron went on a picnic and fishing. We walked to Crooked Creek and carried our lunch in a basket. We had our favorite spot that was ours alone. We called it Pleasant Island. It wasn’t really an island. It had water on three sides but a strip of swampy land joined it to the mainland on one side. We crossed the marsh and reached the little rounded knoll that was our island. There were tree and grass and paths made by the farmers’ cows. We really had fun there. Sometimes we fished, sometimes not. Harvey had a crush on Lulu for a while. She was fifteen, I think. They walked around the island hand in hand or lay on the dry ground in the shade. There was nothing between them because they never got rid of all three of us younger ones. Lulu and Aaron were the grandchildren of Aunt Ellie. We always got wet nearly to our knees crossing over to the place, but that did not bother us at all. The fact that there were a few ?massenguge? Michigan rattlers in the swamp bothered us even less. We enjoyed ourselves to the fullest.

It so happens that the photo above, taken on 31 May 2008 on a two-day tour, is of a bridge crossing on Crooked Creek not very far from where the Hands lived. That day I had ridden south through Sturgis on Lakeview Street, which would have taken me past the east end of the Cottage Street where the Hands had lived in Sturgis. Cottage Street is only a half mile long – so maybe I had taken the very road that Ethyl’s family used to get to the stream on their outings. But Lakeview is only one of three likely routes. It’s more likely they took one of the roads that lies a bit further to the west and which would have taken them to a place where the stream widens to form a millpond.

I’ve already blogged about the ride on which I took that photo (”Border Crossings“) explaining how the whole mood of the ride usually changes at when I cross the border into Indiana and cross the Fawn River, aka Crooked Creek.

Until recently Fawn River is the only name I’ve known for that stream. But on last Saturday’s bike ride, at a stop farther upstream, I learned that it was once called Crooked Creek. If I didn’t believe it when I was told about it on Saturday, I believe it now that Ethyl has used that old name for it. I’ll get to the story of Saturday’s ride later — maybe after I’m done absorbing the impact of “A Family Named Hand.”

YTD mileage: 297

Friday night I had time for a brief ride to Howe, Indiana. (Howe is about 60 miles from home, but we were staying nearby). The above is one of the old buildings on the town square.

My main destination this time was the town cemetery, which has been on my to-do list of destinations for a couple of years now. I went there to find the grave of a man with a Black Hawk militia connection, but I’ll wait until another time to tell about that. I got distracted from my main purpose off in the southeast corner of the cemetery, where there was this monument with little skunk statues.

The low sun in the west was so bright that I made a shadow of myself so I could take a readable photo of the marker, which reads: Christina Irene Hahn D’Sullivan 1845-1925. “Chrissy the Skunk Woman.” A true child of nature.

It didn’t take much googling to find this fascinating page about Christina from the LaGrange County Historical Society. The story is fascinating in itself, but the telling of it might be a story of its own. For example, there are several different takes on how Christina responded to the efforts by the townspeople before she died to get her a new home and improve her hygiene situation. Some say that she died from it, others that she appreciated and enjoyed the efforts. And other parts of her story, too, vary somewhat depending on who is telling them. Maybe the story tellers and researchers are telling something about themselves as well as about Christina.

At the bottom of the page is a link to an even more fascinating story about some of Christina’s relatives: “A Family Named Hand.” I haven’t figured out the exact family connection to the Skunk Woman (whose surname at birth seems to have been Hand, not the Hahn shown on the marker.) It’s a story of a very difficult family life at the beginning of the 20th century. Much of what I’ve read so far takes place in Mecosta County, Michigan (soon to be a bike ride destination because of this story) and in Kansas, but there are some connections to Howe, too. Usually I don’t care to read on a computer screen for long periods, but the only reason I quit reading this one before I even reached the halfway point is because I promised to go in to work tonight.

Friday evening’s mileage: 11.5. Saturday’s mileage: 43. That plus a couple of rides home from work gives me a YTD mileage of 280.

29 May 2008. I stopped for a few minutes at a bridge over the Prairie River, south of Findley in St. Joseph County, Michigan.

googlemap

There are no moose to be seen here, as far as I know, but I was reminded of the place by something I had just read in John Tanner’s story of his days living with the Indians. He was about 20 years old, and had been taken under the wing of an Odawa chief, Wagetotahgun, who taught him how to hunt some of the larger animals that are harder to kill. Soon after, the old woman in his little household tried to get him married to Wagetotahgun’s daughter, but Tanner wasn’t interested. He had always thought that before he grew old he’d go back to the white people and get married. But he gives hints of how difficult that’s going to be, because he already has decided that it would be too boring to go to work for some of the traders who invited him to do so. Living by the hunt, with its cycles of starvation and plenty, was too interesting and exciting for him to give up at this point.

I enjoyed his description of what he was learning about hunting moose:

The Indians consider the moose shyer and more difficult to take than any other animal. He is more vigilant, and his senses more acute, than those of the buffalo or caribou. He is fleeter than the elk, and more prudent and crafty than the antelope. In the most violent storm, when the wind, and the thunder, and the falling timber, are making the loudest and most incessant roar, if a man, either with his foot or his hand, breaks the smallest dry limb in the forest, the moose will hear it ; and though he does not always run, he ceases eating, and rouses his attention to all sounds. If in the course of an hour, or thereabouts, the man neither moves, nor makes the least noise, the animal may begin to feed again, but does not forget what he has heard, and is for many hours more vigilant than before.

It’s hard to imagine the patience it took to hunt a moose with the weapons available in first decade of the 19th century. Starvation would be a good motivator, and it was a motivation that was frequently available to Tanner.

I didn’t see a moose at the Prairie River crossing, but Tanner’s description reminded me of it. After I took the above photo, I went back to my bicycle and was just staring at the vegetation along the river when a small, weasel-like animal climbed up on a signpost in the vegetation a few feet in front of me, took a look around, and then crawled back down. I’m not sure if it saw me or not. It happened too quickly to get a photo, but after it went away I got my camera ready and waited quietly in case it came back. I didn’t have enough time and patience, though — certainly nothing like patience it takes to shoot a moose.

I had wondered what the animal was. This DNR website suggests to me that it may have been a mink, even though I thought I remembered gray rather than “chocolate brown to black.”

Back to John Tanner. In reading the book, I got to wondering if anyone had ever identified the various trading post locations that he writes about. His hunting territory was a vast country, but it would be interesting to go riding there. I googled for some of the more obscure river names he mentions, but didn’t come up with any hits other than those for the text of the book. But I did find this Manitoba Historical Society web site, which has some interesting-looking leads about Tanner’s life and family. Maybe there are some future bicycling destinations in there.