Greetings from Wisconsin, where a man can easily cause great bodily harm through cheese and beer.

And so it was done (mainly through half a dozen cheeses) on our first night in Milwaukee. I won’t bother namedropping, since the names were scratched on a chalkboard under candlelight. Suffice to say that a pretty penny was spent at Wolf Peach and there were no regrets.

There’s some regrettable news about this city. Cabs seem to be the name of the game. Part of this stems from our hotel’s location on the western most west part of Westown, a recently emerging spot of urban renewal. But The Brewhouse Inn & Suites was too strange to pass up. It’s the gothic-adorned former home of Pabst Brewery, with a large Pabst sign bridging two of the buildings and giant gold cauldrons still in place despite the factory closing in 1996.

The hotel that now resides within has only been open a year. The joint is very nice, undeniably unique, but insists on using a description that makes my face twitch: steam punk.

The interior design of the hotel is Neo-Victorian, Industrial, Steam Punk.

Where else do you think you’ll be able to get any number of menu favorites with a side of steampunk design sensibility ands unparalleled service?

Steam punk or steampunk? And how is either sensible? I’ll dig for answers.

I have finally succumbed to the winter whipping, the sniffle shuffle, the Kleenex kabuki, the creeping crud.

— Adam Gerik (@ofadam) February 26, 2014

Perhaps I’m delirious from cold medicine. Or just feeling nostalgic, teetering on the brink of death as every ounce of moisture is extracted through two nostrils. But a certain brand has entered my head and taken hold.

See that tiny, worn canister over there? That’s what the run-of-the-mill head cold meant in the Gerik household.

We weren’t solely a Mentholatum camp – Vicks earned a spot in the medicine cabinet, too. But it was always a second-place finish for the VapoRub, somehow not as tested during those bedtime hours. Memories are sketchy, but it’s generally thought that the Mentholatum bug came from my dad, while Vicks arrived with my mom.

Our method was simple – mom or dad would rub a bit on our chest before bed, then we’d take a dab and put it under/around each nostril. Only now do I realize how dangerous this could have been.

So I set out to Walgreens this fine evening, searching for the potion. I can’t find it myself, so I ask a pharmacy employee if they carry it. “Mentholatum? Do we carry Mentholatum,” she asks a coworker. A face is made. “Is that in the green bottle? My grandma used to use it on me.” This isn’t going anywhere.

“Green bottle? My grandma used to have some,” another girl says to me. I now feel needy. Instead, I’m forced to buy something labeled “Baby Chest Rub.” The scarlet letter lives! And I’ll live.

The clincher to this trip down memory lane? The Mentholatum company was founded in Wichita, Kansas in 1889. The building still stands, but the company itself fled my hometown in 1935. My dad grew up in the neighboring state of Oklahoma, where they apparently ran the little green jars as some sort of bootlegging enterprise.