Q. Near Germantown someone is building a fort. My husband and I drove by it several weeks back. More work has been done and now there are cannons. Do you know if there is a history behind this? Or is this just someone's hobby?
-- Donna Bickerstaff
A. Just ask Bob Eversgerd the obligatory "How are you?" and you immediately sense you're about to talk to one unique character.
"Things are really going good today!" he says with an energy that makes you feel like it's the same answer he gives every day.
And, why shouldn't he? Since 1984, he has spent most of his days indulging what has turned out to be his life's passion: building a Civil War-era fort on his land on Shoal Creek Road a couple miles southeast of Germantown and southwest of Bartelso.
"There was nothing here but swamp when I started," he says proudly of his project, which now boasts 300-foot-long rock walls that he meticulously fashioned by hand, stone by heavy stone. "I hauled in dirt in a wheelbarrow."
The obvious question is why, but on this Eversgerd remains maddeningly vague.
"It's in the genes," he says initially.
Oh, so you're paying tribute to your family's Civil War heritage?
"No, not really," he says. "My family was more or less beer drinkers. You know, normal stuff."
So, how did you wind up doing something quite extraordinary?
"When I was in grade school, I knew I was going to do things a little different than the normal person," said Eversgerd, who usually spends his Januarys living with the natives in Mexico's Yucatan.
"Because normal kids, they want to be like everybody else. I'm just the opposite. When I go out to play music, I kind of wear rags. I pay my electric bill once a year and just don't follow the normal pattern. It's in the genes."
Pressed urther, he finally gives up.
"I had no intentions," he says. "It just happened one day."
Since that day, he estimates he has laboriously moved, lifted and fit thousands of tons of stone to build the fort's walls.
"I do it all by hand," he said. "I just roll it up there and do it piece by piece. I mean, people stop by, and they give me bags of mortar, and I get free concrete now and then. At the end of the day, concrete companies will come out and dump leftovers in my holes for my foundation.
"So I'm really lucky that way. People are really good to me. Like Monday, I went out to look at an old house. I get the rock out of these old basements. People call me up and say, 'Hey, I'm tearing down this old barn. If you want that rock underneath, come and get it.' I'm there in no time with an old, junky truck. I do everything manually. I got no tractors or nothing."
But the walls are just the start of Eversgerd's 19th century time tunnel. Felling trees from his woods, he has erected towers covered with his own handcrafted cedar shake shingles. He also has a half-dozen authentic log cabins from throughout Southern Illinois, which he has carefully torn down and reconstructed inside the fort. One, from Fairview Heights, dates to 1814, he says.
"Last summer I tore one down at Ashley," he said. "It's not that old because it didn't have square nails in it, probably 1880. But it's in really superb shape, although I did have to cut down a couple of my own trees to replace a couple of bad logs. I'll put that up this spring."
Armaments aficionados will appreciate his hand-built cannons, which he says can fire a bowling ball over a mile. He also has a couple of caissons to pull those cannons and an 8 1/2 -ton Dictator mortar.
That's still not all. In a small museum, he shows off a miniature collection of the buildings you would have seen in Germantown in the 1830s. He also has what he rates is the third largest collection of Indian artifacts in the region.
"For a poor man, though, I've probably got the best," he says.
On any given day, you may find him tanning hides or hanging long johns from a clothes line. Not surprisingly, he estimates a dozen or more cars stop every day just to learn more about this man and place out of time. So you're invited to stop the next time you pass. He won't aim his cannon at you. Promise.
"If I'm laying stone, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to them because that mortar's going to get hard, and they realize that," he said. "But I do a lot of schools and things. They come out here, and I put on a nice program for them."
He knows some make fun of his anachronistic lifestyle, but he doesn't pay them any heed. Can't fight your genes, he says.
"I've never had a beer, a cigarette, a cup of coffee or any kind of drugs in my life," he says. "I've never been sick, never went to a doctor. I'm 59 and happy as can be. I've only got about 22 years to go on this, and I'll have her whipped."
Q. If you don't press "stop" first, is it harmful to open a microwave door before it stops cooking?
-- Joann, of O'Fallon
A. You mean, you haven't heard? Marvel Comics always has maintained that it was gamma rays that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk, but the government made them change their story. Banner was actually microwaving popcorn in his lab's lunchroom when he decided to peek at its progress without pressing "stop." See what happened to him?
Of course, I'm pulling your leg. If the microwave is operating properly, there's absolutely no risk to you. According to the Electromagnetic Energy Association, all microwave ovens made after October 1971 are covered by the following standards as set by the Food and Drug Administration:
First, any leakage from cracks around the door, etc., is limited to 5 milliwatts of microwave radiation per square centimeter at approximately 2 inches from the oven. So even if you have your face close to the door, you'd only get a maximum of five one-thousandths of a watt of radiation, which is far below any level known to harm people.
Moreover, as you move farther away from a microwave, the radiation drops dramatically. At 20 inches, you'd receive only one one-hundredth the dose you'd experience at 2 inches.
Now, here's the standard you're interested in: All ovens must have not one, but two independent interlock systems that stop the production of microwaves the instant the door is opened.
In other words, as soon as you press the door-release button or pull it open by hand, the microwaves stop automatically. And, once microwave production has stopped, there is no residual radiation. Moreover, should the interlock mechanisms fail, a fuse will blow to shut off power.
So, no, you risk no harm by opening the door of a properly maintained microwave that's still running. It shuts down immediately.
However, if your microwave has experienced particularly rough treatment -- being dropped, for example -- you might want to be alert for excessive leakage during operation. I can't verify it, but I did read one account of a woman who tried to fix the door on her microwave.
It left a crack wide enough for her to stick a finger through -- which she was dumb enough to do to find out what would happen. She didn't suffer blisters or scarring, but her finger did heat up fast enough to scare her before she pulled it out.
No injuries resulting from radiation have ever been reported except from careless removal of the hot food or drink, the association says. Even after years of use, owners probably needn't worry about leakage unless the door or seals have been damaged.
Send your questions to Roger Schlueter, Belleville News-Democrat, 120 S. Illinois St., P.O. Box 427, Belleville, IL 62222-0427 or rschlueter@bnd.com
