Hello again: I was in town earlier this morning and was down by where the old City Brewery was at on Water and Harrison. Today some storage units sit there. But it brought back another memory I thought I would share. Again this must have been the early to mid 70s. It was a nice summer day and Jack Huebner wanted to go fishing. So we go down to Clarks gas station and buy some bait. We ride our bikes down to the old Water St. bridge and go down the little slope along side of the bridge and park our bikes under the bridge. We bait our hooks and toss them in and sit and wait. After awhile of no bites Jack decided to wind his line back in. Of course it would snag on something lol. It looks to be a stick until Jack gets it closer to shore. It turns out to be a very old fishing pole made of wood with a very crude and rusted reel on it. Jack looks it over and decides its to far gone to be any good and tosses it back into the river. We walk a small trail from the bridge along the river to the trestle, climb up onto it and head out to the little platform that sits off to the side of the tracks up there and fish from the platform. We fish a good 1/2 hour or so and again catch nothing. As we are get ready to leave we can see a train coming from the north and high tail it off the trestle. Jack says maybe we should try from the old brewery. We grab our gear and bikes and walk them back up the slope to the road. We ride down to the old brewery and park our bikes back behind the brewery so nobody will see because we dont know if we are aloud here. This side of the river is very steep and we have to be extra careful not to tumble down it. We bait back up and toss our lines back in. After a bit of waiting we get to looking at the building a little closer. There is like a small opening that is only the size of a good sized box that looks like it must have had a boards over it at one time but some of the boards had long ago rotted away. We peer in and look into a big massive room with very tall ceiling. I tell Jack I want to go in and of course he is game too. We reel in our fishing lines and put everything away and head back to the opening. The opening is very narrow but we mange to squeeze in. This middle room is just massive. As we walk into the room we can see our footprints in the thick dust that has settled over the floor over the years and every step causes a small cloud of dust to kick up. Over along one side of a wall are several old bottle crates that are mostly broken to bits. There is a doorway here we talk through and a set of old wooden stairs are to the left. As we climb the stairs they creek pretty bad and make us a bit nervous but we continue to the 2nd floor. Up in this section looks to have been one time the offices. Along one of the walls sits 3 or 4 very old wooden filing cabinets. Some are missing the drawers and are laying on the floor in front of them and others just had drawers hanging open. I walk up and look into the drawers which are mostly empty other then a few yellowed papers laying in the bottom of them. I also remember a beautiful old drinking fountain near one of the main supports of the building. I walk up to it and try it to see if it works. Nope lol. The porcelain is covered in a very thick dust. So of course I write my name in it. There is also a few old desks some chairs ect. strewn about. As we are walking around I walk up to this very tall door that looks like it might be a closet. I have to really tug on it to finally open it. Instead of a closet it is another set of stairs. Now you can tell it has been even more years older then the other part of the brewery since anyone has been in here. The cobwebs are thick so I grab a stick and start knocking them down. The stairway has some bright light at the top so pretty easy to make my way to the top. I get to the top and its one single room of a decent size. There is no ceiling other then the peaked roof. But the real neat thing about this room was there was a big window to the front. I walk over to the window and have to wipe the thick dust from the window pane. The view from this high up was very cool. I could see behind town, the old water tower, the curve of the river, and best of all I could see all 4 bridges from up there. There wasnt anything in this room other then some boxes of paperwork. Then I notice a bottle laying near the boxes and pick it up and wipe it off. Its a old City Brewery bottle. I grab it up and head back down stairs. I meet up with Jack back in the main room. We walk over to the other side of the room and pass through another doorway. This area looked to be the bottling part of it. Although there wasnt much left there was a couple pieces of machinery and a conveyer system laying on the floor. We didnt explore this side much as it was boarded up pretty good and pretty dark. We again walk back into the main room and just stand there taking in the massive size of it before we crawl back out. Looking back now and thinking what a awesome place that was and what it must have been like back when it was running. Its to bad it fell into ruin. I think this could have been a awesome showpiece for Wapak to be proud of. There is no way I could explain the size of the City Brewery or some of the awesome woodwork that was in the office area. As for the bottle I kept it and still have it in my collection to this day. Jack and I never did catch any fish that day but the exploration of the City Brewery was awesome.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 01:36:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015