You may recall that on Monday I blogged about how depressing it was thinking of all the wasted manpower in the jury management rooms at the courthouse.
At lunch on Monday I wandered the halls of the County Courthouse and stumbled (not literally) onto the Register of Deeds office. The result is that I spent the rest of my jury service downtime studying the history of my house.
Of course, with an hour-long lunch and a few, sporadic 15-minute breaks, there's only so much you can get done, but I went in and a very friendly clerk helped me get a list of the relevant deed information, which I consulted on microfiche.
From that I learned -- perhaps only interestingly to me -- that the same couple that bought the lot and built my house in 1947 on Milwaukee's West Side, lived there until they died -- a year apart -- in 1986 and '87.
That led me to re-consult the original blueprints, which we are fortunate to have inherited with our house. There, I noticed the couple's name, something that I had seen but that had no explanation and therefore wasn't very useful information to me.
On my Tuesday morning breaks, I checked the tax records and online deed information to see who lived in our house from 1987 until we bought it a few years ago.
It was interesting to see that although one couple owned the house for its first 40 years, over the next 16 years, there were four owners.
The most interesting document was a 1947 one in which all the adjoining property owners signed off on the construction of a long row of rental properties across the alley from us. How I wish I could go back and warn the signatories about the parade of discarded couches, overflowing dumpsters and trashy cars that would become constant fixtures in that alley.
OK, so my research hasn't helped advance humanity in any way, but instead of sitting, gazing at the floor for two days, I at least got some personal satisfaction.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
