Wisconsin State Journal from Madison, Wisconsin • 1

City Editor David Stoeffler, 252-6130 WISCONSIN 3B 1B MONEY 4B Monday, February 28, 1 994 Wisconsin State Journal Pleasant memories Officials: Be ready for spring flooding 1 is all that remains of a once-prosperous African State Journal photoCAROLYN PFLASTERER 'i Grant County Historical Society photos Left: Thomas Greene (1843-1937) escaped as a slave with his parents from Missouri. He was a Civil War veteran. Right Mrs. Thomas Grimes, an escaped slave, was one of the original settlers of the Pleasant Ridge area. Quick tackle helps police State Journal staff UW mechanical engineering student Douglas Landa couldn't believe it Sunday when he heard Madison police want to commend him for helping catch a suspect Thursday night During the Downtown chase the suspect ran past Landa, who was shoveling snow outside his apartment at 407 W.

Doty St According to Officer Michael Beatty's report, Landa shouted to him, "Do you want him?" Beatty replied, "Yes, get him," so Landa dropped his shovel and tackled the man. The man, who had taken hallucinogenic drugs, was arrested for disorderly conduct and admitted to St Mary's Hospital. Beatty has requested that Landa be recognized for his assistance. Heidt learns first lesson as a dad Guess who's learning to be a dad? Former 9th District alderoid and City Council rebel Andy Heidt, whose son, Max Francis, was born to him and Nancy Bradley Jan. 25.

Heidt who's taken an eight-week leave of absence from his job as a juvenile court worker, says he hopes the baby follows in his footsteps. "If I have my druthers, hell turn out to be a good agitator and a fine orator, but my mom always says they turn out the opposite." The baby has changed his life, he admits. "There's no Birkebeiner this year." Crystal ball: Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson as president? The Feb. 19 issue of The Economist carries an "indulgence in futile futurology" in which Thompson plays the early walk-on. The piece laments the print media's recent attempts to write stories based on the writer's best guess at the future.

COMMENTARY PAT SIMMS "It is January 2001," writes The Economist "The multimedia cameras are filming the arrival at the White House of the new Republican president, the former governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson. Wonder whose crystal ball The Economist was ogling? Turnabout In the future, Bill Schultz will think twice before he tells his wife, Carol, not to attend his speeches. Schultz, former director of Baraboo's Circus World Museum, was invited to speak to the West Optimist Club at the West Side Businessmen's Gub Valentine's Day, but told his wife she couldn't come. She would bother him as he spoke, he said. But Carol Schultz, who was also celebrating her birthday, was having none of it When Bill Schultz finished the talk, an elderly woman with white hair, a shawl, glasses and cane asked him where his wife was.

Schultz started to say, "My dear lady, my wife when he recognized his mate under the disguise. "It's you, Carol," he yelped. The audience was amused. Love is never having to stay at home. Defection: Over at Wisconsin Public Television, senior producer Tim Perko has defected to (gasp!) commercial television.

The popular veteran will join Ch. 15 as operations manager at the end of March. Not in your closet We just got word from Levi Strauss Co. that the oldest pair of Levi 501 blue jeans in the U.S. was found at the bottom of a Nevada mine.

Heath Rackley of Lubbock, Texas, found the jeans when he was working as a student geology technician in an abandoned mine shaft in 1991. The company says design features date the jeans to the late 1920s. The winner of the company's "Send Them Home Search," Rackley wins 1,000, a trip to San Francisco, and of course a pair of custom-made 501 jeans. Simms' Snoop column appears Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Phone: 252-6126.

3 WISCONSIN Sua; Supercash: 5-9-13-20-21-35 Ockbmilchkvctlnunentcrt250JWllrmjV Sun Pick Three: 0-4-0 ciacH a matching a ttree number far 150ft I In lfiOO Sat: Powerball: 6-9-11-19-23 and Powerball 22; 1 If iW 33; Money Game 4: 8-9-9-1 un uuwAiiHit InHwv numbers are rmreiuuii vjt 'm drawn Wednesday and Saturday nlghtj. The estimated Powerball lackpot for the next drawing Is $2 million. The estimated Megabucks lock pot is $1 million. For the last drawing's numbers, dial (900) 344-7777. (The call costs from 35 cents to $2.) ILLINOIS Sunj Pkk Three: 8-2-4; Pick Four 0-4- 0-4; Est.

Lotto jacKpcc is minion. Pick Three-midday: 3-8-4; Pick Three-evening: 5- 9-5- Pick Four-midday: 8-1-4-7; Pick Four-evening: 6- 3-4-3; Lotto: 14-15-25-28-52-54. Est. Lotto kKkpor. tj JANESVILLE (AP) Rock County's emergency government director wants residents to start stockpiling sandbags.

John Olson said his ideal spring would feature a gradual thaw and minimal precipitation, but he knows that's unlikely. "If we get a rapid thaw and significant rain, there's a great potential for flash flooding," Olson said. "People should have an idea now where they can get sand and have extra bags on hand." Given the county's high ground-water level and snow depth, a rapid spring thaw combined with rain probably will trigger flooding, said Jim Krohelski, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. The Geological Survey monitors ground water with 16 wells around the state, including one along Highway 14 in Rock County about five miles south of Evans-ville.

"The average water level at that well is about 26 feet below the surface," Krohelski said. "The water is now about 21 feet below the surface." That's the highest level in the decade the well has been used to gather data. The ground-water level affects the flow in rivers and streams, with up to 80 percent of the flow regulated by the water table, Krohelski said. Given the water table, the amount of snow and current water levels in rivers and streams, a rapid spring thaw and rain likely will bring flooding, Krohelski said. "We are already seeing some flooding along the Sugar River in the southwest part of the county," said Brian Hahn, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service.

"Last weekend's rain and snow melt showed us what can happen when we get a rapid warming and some rain." Flood stage for the Rock River at Afton is 9 feet. It was at 6 feet, 7 inches and slowly rising last Thursday, Hahn said. Last spring, the Rock River was at 11 feet, 4 inches on April 26. Flooding in Rock County this spring likely will occur along the Rock River, Turtle Creek, the Sugar River, the Yahara River and Bass Creek, Olson said. Flooding also may occur in low-lying areas such as Riverside Park in Janesville and the Happy Hollow area near the Rock County Airport, he said.

People in these areas should be ready to pile sandbags and build dikes, Olson said. The National River Forecast Center in Minneapolis predicts "a moderate snow-melt flood potential" for the Mississippi River Basin above Chester, 111., an area that includes Rock County. "The melt and rain we got last weekend helps in a way," said Dean Braatz at the River Forecast Center. "Those conditions got things flowing in the Rock River which could lessen the flooding in the spring." Moderate snowmelt flood potential occurs when rivers and streams crest from near flood stage to a few feet above flood stage. Some deputies protest arrest 4guidelines' WAUSAU (AP) Marathon County deputies accuse Sheriff Gerald Kittel of imposing an illegal arrest quota, which he says is simply an attempt to make deputies account for time spent on patrol.

James Kluss, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, said his group will protest suspensions of two deputies who challenged the rule. They say the guideline went into effect in January, threatening punishment against deputies who make fewer than a dozen arrests a month. State law prohibits police officers from being paid "upon the basis of number of arrests made, convictions obtained or fines collected." The Wausau Daily Herald said a copy it obtained quotes the order as saying an "officer who wants to meet department standards will have 12 arrests per month." "This department does not have a quota," Kittel said. "We have performance guidelines. Those guidelines do include arrests or citations." Deputies "should be doing more and I think they can do more.

Twelve is an embarrassing number." Two deputies complained to District Attorney Greg Grau about the policy, and Kittel said he is in the process of suspending them for taking documents from the sheriff's office. Grau said deputy Jeffrey Sheets contacted him to question the policy. Grau said he is concerned about whether the policy is legal and whether a law enforcement officer should be suspended for seeking guidance from the district attorney. Deputy David Rudie was also A cemetery on Slabtown Road near Lancaster Rich history buried where freed slaves started over By Rochell Denise Thomas Wisconsin State Journal LEASANT RIDGE This place doesn't exist anymore. But, in the late 1800s, it was a predominantly African-Amer ican community of small farms, scattered on the rolling hills and sparsely wooded land just five miles southwest of Lancaster in the town of Beetown in Grant County.

The former community, 75 miles west of Madison, had a church, a school and in its heyday more than 100 African-American people worked its rich farmlands. Today, however, all that remains of the Pleasant Ridge people, their homes, and their work, is a one-acre cemetery on Slabtown Road and even that is barely visible on a snowy winter day. Enclosed by a simple wire fence, the gates of the Pleasant Ridge Community Cemetery are secured with something that looks like a twisted coat hanger. A sprinkling of monuments sprout from the snow blankets that hide most of its headstones. There is no posted sign or plaque bearing the cemetery's name.

"My mother and 4 nlunl Mil iJe family is buried out there on those hills, said Mildred Greene, 85. "I wish I could go there just one more time." A regal gentlewoman with thick white hair, Greene is one of a handful of people still living who grew up in the Pleasant Ridge community that thrived between 1848 and the late 1920s. She lives now in a small apartment on Madison's South Side. According to "Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin," by Zachary Cooper, Greene's grandfather, Thomas Greene moved to the community in 1863 when, after several unsuccessful attempts, his parents took their family and fled from slavery in St. Charles County, Mo.

"It was beautiful. Just beautiful. Much better than what they have today," Greene said about her hometown. Weakened by recent illness, she could only gesture toward her apartment window and the neighborhood she saw as troubled. "I wish many more young black children could have grown up like I did because I had a beautiful life." lev American settlement of the late 1800s.

Grant County Historical Society photo Ridge School District Number 5 was corded African-American family to live the area. More freed blacks and some escaped slave families moved to the 700-acre area after the start of the Civil War in 1861. Their surnames were Gadlin, Lewis, Davis, Craig, Grimes, Richmond, and another Greene family. Many of them are buried some in unmarked graves in the cemetery that now borders one side of the entrance to the Atkinson family dairy farm, 7906 Slabtown Road. "There are graves over there but a lot Please turn to Page 3B, Col.

2 ing techniques and become more competitive. President Clinton and Defense Secretary William Perry announced the grant from the federal Defense Reinvestment and Conversion Initiative last week. The fund shifts money from defense to domestic manufacturing. The project was among 50 nationwide to receive grants. Larry Schneider, who heads the Stout Technology Transfer Institute and applied for the federal funding, said the grant would be matched through in-kind and cash funds.

fs, A Slave 73 Established in 1870, many believe the Pleasant the first integrated school in Wisconsin. I A Monday feature on people and places in the region. More Hometown stories2B. Grant County Historical Society records show that Pleasant Ridge was founded by the Shepards, a freed slave family that moved north from Warren County, with their former master, William Horner. Several years later, the family bought some land from Horner for $1.50 an acre, making them the first re ern Wisconsin's economy, in part by keeping manufacturing jobs in the area.

The center will be part of the Stout Technology Transfer Institute on the UW-Stout campus. "This is national recognition of our expertise on technology transfer and our ability to help industry boost productivity," UW-Stout Chancellor Charles Sorenson said. "The grant provides us an opportunity to further expand our services. It will have an extremely positive impact on the economy of the region and the state." The center is expected to help 2,500 small manufacturers in the northern two-thirds of the state modernize manufactur in UW-Stout gets $1.3 million grant Money will help fund manufacturing center MENOMONIE (AP) The University of Wisconsin-Stout has received a $1.3 million federal grant to create a center expected to help 2,500 small companies modernize manufacturing techniques. UW-Stout is establishing the Northwest Wisconsin Manufacturing Outreach Center with Chippewa Valley Technical College, Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College in Shell Lake and Western Wisconsin Technical College in La Crosse.

The center aims to improve northwest $12 million.