According to Wikipedia the bubbler fountain was invented by Kohler Water Works in 1889 which was located in Kohler Wisconsin, right in the middle of the big green spot. The wiki mentions that the term bubbler is used in Massachusetts and Rhode Island but doesn't mention any reason why
My dad used to brew his own beer. He first started out using a 10-gallon porcelain crock. He used water, sugar, yeast and canned malt extract. (I have long since forgotten the exact recipe.) The crock was covered with a lid that just sat on top of the crock (not airtight) and was kept in the basement where it was cool (about 60 degrees). He would check the brew every day, and just when it would stop making bubbles, which took about ten days, he would bottle it, adding a bit of sugar to the bottom of the bottle to give the yeast enough to generate more CO2 to give the brew a nice head when it was opened and poured out to drink. I tried brewing my own using this same recipe once about 25 years ago, and it worked well, except when our air conditioner went out several days after bottling and the house got up to 90-plus degrees and several bottles exploded in the pantry! After that my wife made me promise to not brew my own again!
Is there a brew shop in your city? I'd spend a little more on a 5 gallon carboy. If you try with the 1 gallon batch and you like it you will run out right away, and you will want your next batch to be big enough to last so you'll end up buying a bigger carboy anyway. If you try it and don't like it you can easily sell the used carboy on craigslist. Plus it will be hard to buy ingredients in a small size for a 1 gallon batch.
One of my favorite books by Bill Bryson is 'In A Sunburned Country'. This little passage stuck out in my memory:
"Australia is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistable currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbler
"Australia is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistable currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place."