What I Did on Summer Vacation

Things are different up north.

So my sister and brother-in-law unexpectedly agreed to come with me "up north" -- that's all we've ever called it -- this summer and visit a few childhood sites I wanted to see after 51 years. I said, "To see them one last time," but truly wanted to confirm whether I live exactly here because I was imprinted for life by the landscape and farm in Ashland County, WI, where Mom was born and our family had visited with hers maybe five times, certainly in 1958 and 1959 and a few other times, ending in 1968. Neither had my sister, three years younger than I, seen those places since.

Ashland County, WI

I remembered the place was at a crossroads and we drove 15 miles up the main highway but did not find it. The motel keeper gave directions and we drove four miles out of town on a nearly exact copy of a road not a mile from the Divine Cabin, one I nicknamed "Memory Lane" because it matches my ancient memory. "I am imprinted! I am!" I breathed. My grandfather's tavern, built of stone around 1930, still operates under the original name, "Maple Grove." Contrast this with a bar called "The Ripsaw" we passed in a godforsaken dust-bunny of a town half an hour to the south -- northern WI was once all sawmills and turpentine. Now it's all fishing lakes and taverns. In our grandfather's tavern at a crossroads I drank a beer in the same dark and thickly varnished interior, the stovepipe in the wall gone, though, and two flat TVs tuned to sports.

On this late Sunday afternoon there were three other customers. My very Christian sister and brother-in-law, who never drink, were clearly uncomfortable -- brother-in-law, age 61, ordering Pepsi for them both, confessed he did not know how to sit at a bar or when to pay. So we stayed only the length of my beer -- having driven several hours that day -- and I took a few snaps with my sister. I said to the bartender, a man slightly younger than we who looked as if he'd enjoyed a lot of good rock 'n' roll music, "Our grandfather used to own this place."

"What was his name?"

I told him and said our uncle had later owned and run the tavern, and he said, "I used to work with Dorothy (our aunt, who long survived our uncle) at La Croix," manufacturers of the world's finest fishing rods, its factory and factory store in the next town over. Outside of La Croix a machine vends bait. I said I would take its picture for my blog. My sister, who left the workforce in the 1990s to stay home and be a mother, asked "What's a blog?"

In the pouring rain I did not try to photograph the tavern's unique exterior, but we briefly slowed to look up a gravel drive at the farmhouse where we'd slept a couple of times -- I remember waking to see frost on the window's inside -- and the house, barn, and silo sat as we'd left them a half-century before. Brother-in-law was willing to drive up to the house (because it didn't serve alcohol?) but I told him strangers shouldn't do that. I didn't feel I could ask my sister and brother-in-law to return the next morning, after the rainclouds cleared, to take exterior snaps of the bar, because now I wanted the favor of seeing the local lake I'd never seen, where my mother said she had taken visitors out in a boat to fish. (She'd told my sister that, but I never heard it.) We went. There I took a picture and said to the pretty lake, "Hi, Mom. Thanks. We have not forgotten you."

Those Who Ironed Before Me

In 2008 I emailed Mom about the old wooden family ironing board I still use and printed out her answer, taping it to the underside: “bought for $2.00 in 1955 in a State Street junk store.” She and Dad were newlyweds, and it was the golden age of ironing. I first saw her cry, over a neighbor's rude remark, while she was ironing out on the porch (it was summer). I was between ages 3 and 5 and horrified. That’s my first memory of this ironing board.

In the '70s the heavy awkward thing became mine and I hauled it to the 10 or so places I lived until settling here in 2001, by then ironing at most four times a year. A week ago I saw the board’s butt end had been soaked and its cover shredded, and thought: Buy a new ironing board? Naw. I’ll simply buy a new cover. So I did. Stripped the old cover off--it had been stapled on--and saw the full-length crack in the board’s “table,” rendering it worthless but not useless.

Googling, I learned this three-legged style was first manufactured around 1914 and that metal legs replaced wooden ones in the 1940s, giving me the board's approximate age. I turned the board over looking for a manufacturer’s label or stamp. Nothing. But besides the note I’d taped to the underside was writing I’d never noticed before. Handwriting. Only some of greenish lettering was readable.

This much was clear:

 ________ d A. Dixon

______________________ Wis.

Probably the previous owner who’d junked the thing! With light and magnification I finally confirmed the name as “Fred A. Dixon.” No, not “Freda.” That “A.” is clearly an initial. Plus I cannot imagine any female so attached to her ironing board she’d write her name and hometown on it. What, is she taking the ironing board to camp, or worried it'll be confused with someone else's?

Where the ink had worn away, faint impressions in the wood allowed me to confirm the first letter of the town as “W,” resembling the fancy “W” in “Wis.” (My hometown with the junk shop begins with “R.”) Fragments of other letters were just visible. Might it be two words?

The town name’s final letter, I thought, looked like “h.” “Beach”? There is no Wisconsin town called anything “Beach.” Or did it say “Fish”? That was more likely. The top of a capital “t” was followed by the top of a capital “e.” The answer was probably “Whitefish”. . .

But there’s no Whitefish, Wisconsin. Whitefish Bay is in the next county to the north, but believe me, no native calls it Whitefish because then we can’t make the standard joke about that wealthy suburb, calling it “Whitefolks Bay.” There’s a Whitewater, Wis. But the final letter before the “Wis.” was not an “r.” The storm outside had knocked out my Internet, so I pursued this puzzle, thinking that “h” might be a “d.”

Then I saw it: Waterford!

Waterford is a village in the same county as my hometown.

Census records from 1940 list the household of Fred A. Dixon, 57, of Waterford, Wisconsin as himself and his wife Lulu, 56; their son and daughter-in-law, ages 31 and 29; and three children under age 4. They used the ironing board a lot. So did Mom, who sprinkled water on clothes and rolled them in towels before pressing them, and also darned socks over a light bulb.

Prairie Home Companion, Off the Air at Last

I'm in the minority of folk offended by Garrison Keillor's "The Prairie Home Companion" on public radio, and not only because it was feeble humor and 40 years of it, but because I'm a northerner (from Wisconsin) and the people there are not at all like those cracker-barrel types he made fun of.

I will even go so far as to say that Wisconsin's next-door-neighbors, Minnesotans, although of lesser distinction than Wisconsinites who ALWAYS return their shopping carts to the cart corral, are not the bumpkins Keillor portrayed. The more I listened, the more annoying it was. Keillor's humor was for urban people: Their idea of country life.

Some listeners, not very smart, believed the show was serious and that a Lake Wobegon and its "above average" populace were real. As Keillor's career progressed he read poems on the air and somehow became an authority on which poems were "good poems," editing poetry anthologies titled Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times.

Missouri, too, gets the "back country" treatment especially by East Coast newspapers which run photos of aged Missourians with their thumbs in the straps of their overalls. All that's missing is the stalk of hay between their teeth.

Bye, Garrison, whose real name is Gary, one of the three bad-luck first names (the bad-luck female name is Jean; the other bad-luck male name is Gene). Keillor said that in retirement he is going to "rediscover lunch" and "rediscover weekends." Have fun, man. Stay off my radio! It'll take us years to undo the Midwestern-stereotyping damage you've done. And Keillor is not Mark Twain; not by a long shot.

A Dutch Oven at Last

My brother-in-law, a garage-sale genius, happened upon boxes containing 5 brand-new 5-1/2 quart enameled cast-iron Dutch ovens manufactured in France by Le Creuset--among the world's most desirable cooking vessels, retailing today for more than $250 each. The owner asked $20 for each, my brother-in-law shelled out, and then asked on Facebook if anybody wanted one. I did! I did! I said next time I was up in Wisconsin I'd pick it up and pay.

My sister of took one of the five, blue to match her kitchen, and selected this sunny color for mine. When I saw it I was so delighted I wanted to roll on the floor, and packed it like a baby in blankets and towels for the ride back to Missouri. For three months I've done nothing but admire it,  and get up the nerve to use this item, coveted for years, almost purchased after our wedding except we chose instead a more practical stainless-steel kettle and never regretted it. But it was not an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven, the kind that outlives its happy owner, who becomes a cookin' fool for roasts, slow-baked beans, oven-cooked stews and all.

To prepare, I took a delightful class in baking artisan bread in a Dutch oven. A large mirror hung over the classroom's workspace so all in the room could see what the instructor did, and we got samples. Today--now that it's baking season--there's bread. Yes, the pot is heavy. But it's not as if I have to carry it in a backpack. I love anything that is both practical and beautiful. If it's food-related, all to the better.

Velveeta, My Love

I like an aged and sharp cheddar cheese as well as anyone, maybe more so because I'm from Wisconsin, but I would rather live in Missouri and eat Velveeta than live in Wisconsin and eat cheddar. Velveeta Cheese Product attracts me because:

1. It's good enough to eat but not good enough to snack on.
2. I can eat 55 percent more of it because it's got only 45 percent of cheddar's fat.
3. It melts wonderfully into my baked sweet potato.
4. It's cheaper, although not that cheap: one pound, about $5; two pounds for $7.
5. Dry out and whiten around the edges it will, but even when forgotten in the fridge for months it won't turn blue or totally gooey brown, and it will never smell.
6. Kids will eat it, as will many Midwestern adults.
7. Velveeta actually used this slogan: "It'll Get Eaten."And it does get eaten when there's nothing else to eat.
8. The ingredients aren't that bad: milk, whey, skim milk, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, sodium phosphate, modified food starch; and 2 percent or less of salt, calcium phosphate, corn syrup, canola oil, maltodextrin, lactic acid, sorbic acid, sodium alginate, sodium citrate, cheese culture, enzymes, apocarotenal, and annatto (for color).

Get the original. Don't bother with "reduced-fat" Velveeta; it doesn't melt well and lacks that nice synthetic flat-paint American-cheese flavor.

A Little Snow

We've had three snows so far, the deepest three inches just the other day. In eastern Missouri these are called "snowstorms," and the people in charge call out the snowplows and MoDOT and the national guard, while I sit snowed in telling my employer, "Sorry, I'm snowed in," until the plows scrape off and salt Highway F. A few inches of snow here is big scary news and folks run out and stock up and the weathermen tell them to stay home, and the schools close, and people huddle at home until it passes. I'm originally from Wisconsin and also used to live in Syracuse, New York (also known as "Siberacuse," where 18-inch snowfalls were common), so I laugh and laugh.

11 Reasons Why MO is Better than WI

I love Wisconsin, but in Missouri we have:

1. Barbecue
2. Tomatoes and okra in one can
3. Very few ice storms
4. Grits
5. Fossils
6. Hills
7. Polite teenagers, most of 'em
   
8. Banks that give out bags of fresh popcorn on Fridays, and celebrate their birthdays with public hot-dog cookouts in their parking lots
9. Legal fireworks
   
10. Armadillos
11. Postal clerks who will weigh your biggest tomato (Last one I saw: an old man brought in a tomato tipping the scale at 2 lbs. 1 oz; everybody in the waiting-line cheered.)