The Corona Diaries Vol. 17: None in the Valley and None on the Hill

Early June 2021

Bad news on the floor front. We were supposed to have had it installed on Monday but I received a call from Home Despot the preceding Friday that I did not want to receive. The guy on the other end of the phone began by giving me some gobbledygook lesson on vinyl floor taxonomy that went completely over my head. I was then informed that there had been a mistake and that their flooring installers do not, in fact, deal with the type of vinyl planking that I had purchased.

From Home Despot.

It took them nearly 6 weeks to figure this out. Less than 1 business day before the install was set to be done. I was given the choice of keeping the materials and finding someone else to do the install or to get a refund. I opted for the latter.

So we were back at square one. I have hired another (smaller, local) company and am now awaiting them to assign an installation date that should, I have reliably been told, be a day in the week of 12 July. It's been so long since we've had something other than plywood in the kitchen that I've forgotten what it's like to have a nice, easily cleaned vinyl floor.

OK. Here's a photo of Grabby and Piper to cleanse the palate after my griping.

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I've known for a long time that Georgia O'Keeffe was born in the neighboring town of Sun Prairie. Well, it's fairly sizable these days with 30,000+ inhabitants so it's more of a city, I suppose. There's a historic marker on Main Street downtown noting that the artist and one time student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago grew up on a farm south of the city and I recently found out exactly where that was.

The farmstead is on a county road east of Madison that I used to drive fairly frequently back in 2002-2003 on my way to the town of Marshall where I had friends. I never noticed the sign previously. Or, if I did, I had completely forgotten about it.

Here is the O'Keeffe home. I am unsure when it was torn down.

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The Frau and I had originally planned to spend some time up north in the Upper Peninsula the week of her birthday. We were to stay at a hotel called The Fitz, named after the Edmund Fitzgerald, on the shores of Lake Superior. She has a friend that lives up there and we were to visit with her as well as cruise around the U.P. to enjoy the bucolic scenery and try to avoid hitting deer with our car.

These plans were thrown into jeopardy when we were told by Home Despot that the earliest date to have our floor installed was the day we were hoping to leave town. I felt badly because Covid and the Frau's surgery conspired to scrap last year's plans to spend her birthday in London and history was repeating itself, more or less. Eventually we abandoned the U.P. trip and she decided that she wanted to instead head west to Dubuque to visit the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. I convinced her to make it an overnight affair instead of a day trip.

Since our drive would take us by Dickeyville, we just had to stop there.

Dickeyville is in the far southwest corner of Wisconsin and is the subject of the Goose Island Ramblers song "No Norwegians in Dickeyville".

The Goose Island Ramblers were a Madison band that started in the early 60s and played what their biographer (and UW-Madison folklorist) James Leary calls "polkabilly" at a weekly gig at Glen 'n' Ann's Cozy Inn, a tavern on the outskirts of campus until the late 1960s. At that time it was bought by Marsh Shapiro who rechristened it the Nitty Gritty and took the music into a rock direction. After they were dismissed, the Ramblers packed up and headed east to play at The Packer Inn (now Chief's Tavern) which is a just few blocks away in my neighborhood.

Their repertoire was a mix of songs from Anglo-Scotch traditions – hillbilly – and those that come from non-English speaking traditions such as polkas, waltzes, and schottisches. "No Norwegians in Dickeyville" uses the music from a Swedish waltz called "Kväsarvalsen" but adds distinctly Wisconsin lyrics.

Aside from an old fiddle tune, Dickeyville is also known for its grotto. The Dickeyville Grotto is actually a series of grottos and shrines on the grounds of Holy Ghost Parish. Stones, dishes, seashells, glass shards, etc. are all held in place with mortar. It was built in the 1920s by one Father Mathius Wernerus who was pastor at the time.

It is quite the sight.

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No entry would be complete without something food related. Last weekend the Frau came home from the farmer's market with a loaf of Korean cream cheese garlic bread. I presume that, if it's available in Madison, it's available in all larger metro areas and has been for a while.

The best way I can think of to describe it is to imagine challah bread having a baby with a crab rangoon. You've got a cream cheese core surrounded by a mantle of garlic butter nestled inside a crust of vaguely sweet, light bread. Is this really available on the streets of Seoul? I don't know but it's tasty stuff.

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Bonus photo. I spied these in someone's yard on a recent bike ride. I guess they're really into old sci-fi b-movies.