Kickass and Badger Ordinance

Photo by Bill Stokes

By Bill Stokes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and his retired military officer brother Orv, both their lives having been altered in major ways by wars—Korea, Vietnam, visited with Verlyn Mueller, curator at the “Museum of Badger Ammunition” on the grounds of the former Badger Ordinance Works where Verlyn leads the seemingly fruitless but ever hopeful effort of remembering the “war to end all wars.”

In a plain, drab building that appears more machine shed than museum, Verlyn oversees a big room full of countless displays telling how 74 farm families were forced off some of the richest farmland in the state in 1941 to construct a sprawling 7,400-acre plant to manufacture people-killing bullets and chemicals.

The history of the plant’s successful operation as part of the military-industrial complex went on for many years but is over now as the unique acreage at the foot of the Baraboo bluffs has been handed back to the public to become a variety of play and preserve areas as well as the USDA’s study area for developing cow food.

The keeper and Orv highly recommend a visit with Verlyn in his machine shed museum. Listen to his enthusiastic plans for remembering “the war to end all wars” and then avoid watching the TV news coming out of any of the world’s TWENTY active war zones. 

Photo by Bill Stokes

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