Gay-Mill Gardens

Miller is outside my bailiwick, but having previously encountered a 1922 ad in the Hobart newspaper for the Gay-Mill Gardens, I couldn't help but be thrilled to receive a photo of the place.


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Image courtesy of R.F.

The 1922 ad described the location as Lake and Forrest Avenues, so I suppose the photographer was standing on Forest Avenue and looking west toward Lake Street.

This photo was among a group relating to the Buchfuehrer family. William Buchfuehrer may have been driving the Henderson Ice Cream truck out front of the Gay-Mill Gardens. He was employed by the Henderson factory in Hobart off and on during the 1920s and '30s. In fact, in 1937 he (in partnership with William Ittel) purchased the factory, and went on to operate it for some 20 years. But this photo predates that purchase — by 1937 the Gay-Mill was abandoned. The cars in the photo are from the early 1920s (as the Ainsworth vintage-car expert tells me), so the photo probably was taken not long after the Gay-Mill first opened.

Things I Learned in the Farm Room (Part 3)

I have learned that you can go online and buy fake ears of corn. That has got to be the silliest thing I've ever learned, in the farm room or anywhere else.


But I'm making progress with my farm-room labels! Here's a couple of photos from a few days ago showing some of my labels, as well as my artfully placed fake corn.


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Things I Learned in the Farm Room (Part 2)

Unlike my last such post, this one could be called "Things I Just Never Thought About Before."

I never thought about how we went from windmills like this:


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Illustration by G.A. Harker, from James Baldwin, Stories of Don Quixote Written Anew for Young People (American Book Company: 1910), via Wikimedia Commons.

… to windmills like this:



Apparently the change started in 1854 with a guy named Daniel Halladay who patented a "self-governing windmill" that was not only lower-maintenance than the Don Quixote type, but also cheaper to build and easier to ship to faraway locations. Later inventors added refinements such as (in 1870) the change from wooden blades to steel (more durable, and able to be molded into more efficient shapes).

That, at least, is what my hasty research has taught me.

Your Favorite Organist

Yesterday while reading microfilm at the Hobart Historical Society museum, I came across this ad from the Hobart Gazette of June 9, 1949:


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Your favorite organist is little Jackson Hendrix, all grown up.


I have mentioned the Ridge Road Gardens before, in connection with an incident in 1921. This ad gives us a more precise location — Ridge Road at Missouri Street. So the Ridge Road Gardens' former location is under the I-65 interchange, possibly in the vicinity of where the notorious Berghoff road house once was. If I had time, I'd go check the 1950s directories at the museum, in case an actual street address was ever listed. My 1962 directory doesn't list the Ridge Road Gardens at all.