Friday, April 23, 2004

Becoming a local In some rural communities, you're a local only if you were born there.  When I lived up in Bayfield County, locals who didn't know you were more likely to ask where you lived than who you were.  They knew I wasn't a local and never would be one.  I could either give them directions (out Washington Ave., over Polack Hill, then two roads past Ray's junkyard and left at Howard Guski's; look for the red barn, only place on the left), or I could say "the old Smolen place," and they would know in an instant.  Albert Smolen died in 1948, but he built that house, with a little help from some friends, in 1914.  Raised the barn in 1925, I think.  Anyway, the date was carved in a beam.  (That barn and Howard Guski's both collapsed two winters ago after a heavy snowfall.  A shame, because they were both still good barns.)  Albert Smolen poured the concrete root cellar in 1933.  Raised potatoes in the fields out back.  Smolen also planted red and white pines on both sides of the road all the way to the dead end.  That's what struck me most about the place when I first saw it.  There isn't another road quite like it in the township.  Bill and Ila Bromberg bought the house from Smolen's widow in the late 60s and modernized it.  You could get some good lumber by now out of the red pines they planted in the old potato fields.  We bought the place from them in 1975 and had a huge garden for ten years.  Sold the farm a few years ago, when it became too difficult to keep good tenants in it.  It's been sold a couple times since then, but it's still the old Smolen place to locals. Here in southern Wisconsin, people move a lot more frequently than they do up north.  Or maybe it's just that times are changing.  Becoming a local is more of a progression than an initiation or a matter of birthplace.  The better you know the local landmarks, regardless of when you moved in or where you moved from, the more you are considered a local.  Once in awhile a local will test you, sometimes unconsciously.  I learned a new landmark today, but flunked the test in the process. I walked into LaFever Electric in downtown Random Lake this afternoon to pay a bill and show Mark LaFever my new Spore Boy mushroom bag, and there, leaning on the counter, was Willis Lippert, a true local if there ever was one.  Willis used to help his dad cut marsh hay with a horse-drawn rig.  He had brought Mark a bag of fresh watercress.  As we chewed on a few zippy sprigs of the stuff, I asked Willis where he got it. "Picked it at the spring," he said. "What spring?" I asked. "Over in Cheeseville," he said. OK.  He had me and I gave up.  "Where's Cheeseville?" "Over on 'A,'" he said.  "South of Fillmore, near Trading Post Road." Well, now I had the general vicinity, but if that place was Cheeseville, it was news to me.  I asked Willis if he knew about the watercress growing on Jay Road just west of Camp Awana Road (I had to catch up now, and was dropping local landmarks like names at a Hollywood party.).  He did.  He said he didn't pick it, though, because a lot of cars go in the ditch there and there's oil in the water.  My sentiments, exactly, I said. I told him I used to pick watercress at the artesian well in Washburn's West End Park, a block from Lake Superior.  You could pick it year round, and it was always tender because others picked it, too, and kept it young. So then to test Willis's sharing mood a little, I asked him if he knew where there were any morels. "Too early," he said. "I know, but when it's time, where do you find them?" Then he and Mark played the landmark game too fast for me to follow.  The most I got out of them was "dead elms."  I knew that much already!  We talked in generalities for awhile about where one might find morels, now that the elms are mostly gone, but I left without too many new pins in my morel map. When I got home, I looked in my Wisconsin Atlas.  Sure enough, the intersection of Highway A and Trading Post Road is called Cheeseville.  The watercress Willis had picked was pretty mature and rather strong tasting, but still good.  I'll have to sniff out that spring and pick some myself.  Then next time he brings some to Mark it will be tender and sweet. Later... 10:41:01 PM    comment []

Wood duck update I was spading up a new bed in the garden (Shivani's got me double digging beds now.  It's a lot of work, but in theory, you do it once, then reap the benefits for years.  Once is enough, I say!) tonight before supper, when I heard the distinctive "Ooo-eeek, Ooo-eeek" of a hen wood duck.  I looked up to see a small flock of woodies, flying in a tight knot through the beeches.  They flashed across the road, then dropped toward the pond like bluebottles on fresh compost.  I later got the binoculars to sneak a look, but they were not in sight.  Maybe they went to the pond deeper in the woods, the one that dries up in the summer.  At any rate, I hope the hen in my box sits tight.  With more hens around, her clutch could attract dumpers. BTW, see Rick Stel's comment on my last post.  He shared some more info on early nesters.  Got to clean out that box in the fall this year! 9:40:15 PM    comment []