11 February, 2023

The Corona Diaries Vol. 75: Slowing Down for the Towns That Time Forgot

(late October 2022)

(Check out this entry's rant. Er, prelude.)

Heading west out of Osseo on Highway 10, it’s about 10 miles to the town of Strum which greets you with this Potemkin village-like facade.

Although you are welcomed in Norwegian, I don't think there's much Norwegian heritage on display in town. There's the Viking Golf Course but that's about it. To the best of my knowledge, there's no restaurant offering lefse wraps like the Norske Nook down the road in Osseo, no bakeries with lefse and sandbakkels. I didn't notice any Norwegian flags.

That was one of the things that struck me when I moved to this area - the lack of ethnic character. OK, there were the Ole & Lena jokes which supplanted the Polock jokes that I knew from Chicago but that's all I can recall. My hometown is full of ethnic enclaves but I found nothing like that in Trempealeau County. I don't doubt that Norwegian culture could be found in pockets here and there and that I, a mere teenager, simply missed them, but there was nothing of any scale. No Syttende Mai parades, for example.

It doesn’t take long before you’re out of town and on your way to Eleva. Originally called New Chicago, the legend I always heard was that its name came about when someone was painting the word "Elevator" on the side of a grain elevator but couldn't finish owing to the weather and/or onset of winter. A few months go by with a giant "Eleva" in the middle of town and the name stuck. More likely it's a corruption of a French name.

Eleva is a rather nondescript town like Strum. Its claim to fame is an apocryphal tale that Jesse James and his James Gang buried some loot or gold in the area after their raid on the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota. Legend has it that they buried their booty either by Chimney Rock to the south of Eleva or near Hamlin, a town that was to the east. However, the raid on the bank was a failure and the robbers came away with a paltry $26.70.

Hamlin was a stop on the Tomah-Hudson Stage Coach Line and something of a town on the make by the 1880s. Prosperity came to a crashing halt when that railroad line I mentioned in my last entry bypassed Hamlin. However, it proved a shot in the arm for Eleva which got a rail stop. I think the Hamlin Cemetery is all that remains of the town.

I caught 93 north in Eleva. As I mentioned in my entry about this drive last year, the views from the ridge just north of town are spectacular.

Back in the autumn I found this photo (and a couple others) that were taken atop the ridge back in 1914.


I sent the site to my friend Jason who promptly went out on a hunt for the spot where the photos were taken. He is fairly confident that he has found it.

My next destination was the Hadleyville Cemetery. Halloween was approaching, after all.

Hadleyville was a small town that used to lie about 2 miles north as the crow flies from where I lived which was 10 miles or so north of Eleva. Since the cemetery is dated to 1859, I assume the town was also founded that year. It dissolved sometime during the Great Depression. Wikipedia cites a source claiming that the general store was across the street from the cemetery.

A friend and I were discussing this extinct community one time and wondered if the little grocery store that we used to stop at on our bike rides was part of the town. It was called Hazen’s, I believe, and was a bit west of the cemetery.

Here is what it looks like today.


An aerial map from 1939 shows the structure although it has been added onto over the years.

Was it part of Hadleyville? A definite maybe.

Here’s a satellite view of the cemetery and its surroundings today.

1939:


It appears that, within 10 years, all traces of the town had vanished except for the cemetery.

When I was in Milwaukee in October, my friend who is from this area told us a tale of how her father brought her and her brothers out here one Halloween for a little spooky fun. Things did not go as planned.

I presume Joseph D. Hadley was a founding father of the town. He was surely related to one, at least. The cemetery has plenty of space for new residents and the latest marker I found was for a poor child who died at 17 days old and was buried there in 2021.

Several tombstones had a picture at the top like Mr. Hadley’s. I must admit that when I saw this one:

I felt that it looked like something from a Monty Python animation scene. As if it was going to push an animated man in a bowler hat into the Argument Clinic or some such thing.


One thing that struck me as I walked around the cemetery was that there were no people with Scandinavian surnames interred there. The area is infested with Norwegian-Americans. Recall the Norske Nook in Osseo; the Strum welcome sign is in Norwegian; the golf course in Strum is the Viking Golf Course. Almost everyone in the area is an Olson, Nelson, Johnson, Skogstad, and so on.

Although I wished the sun had peeked out from behind the clouds more frequently, it was a fairly nice day. Not too chilly. A few cars passed by as the road the cemetery is on intersects with a couple state highways and some backroads which take you into Eau Claire about 10 miles to the north.

It was quiet and peaceful but, at one point, I noticed the cawing of crows. No surprise as they seem to need little cause to give their piercing call. But the cawing seemed to continue for longer than normal. So, as I returned to my car, I decided to see what the hubbub was all about.

I saw this scene in a tree which, perhaps, stood behind the site of the Hadleyville general store.


Those two crows were reading that eagle the riot act. How many minutes had it just sat there perched on the branch ignoring the insults? However long, the eagle just didn’t care and sat there calmly as the crows hopped from branch to branch in search of an even better spot from which to let loose their corvidian invective.

Eventually the eagle took off towards the cemetery and I made my way north in search of a little something to break my fast. My destination was about 35 miles up the road: Bohemian Ovens in Bloomer.


Bohemian Ovens Bakery and Restaurant is known for its kolache. Now, growing up, my Polish grandma made kołaczki, which were diamond shaped cookies filled with jam or jelly. And the dough was made with cream cheese. My Frau and I encountered the Czech kolache last year in Cedar Rapids, you may recall. Those were larger and round with a flakier, more bread-like dough.

I found that Bohemian Ovens made sweet as well as savory kolache. Furthermore, theirs were pasty-like with the filling enclosed in a bready dough. I bought samples of both kinds. Here was my breakfast, ham & cheese kolache:


It was very tasty. The enclosure was a very light, fluffy dough and really hit the spot. I also brought home a package of peanut butter Nutella kolache. These were smaller with a dollop of frosting on top.

Heavenly stuff!

From Bloomer it was maybe 12 miles to my next stop – the Chippewa Moraine State Recreation Area. I was there last year in mid-November and was hoping to find a few trees that still had leaves this time around. And, unlike last year, there was no rain in the forecast. Even a little sun here and there was to be expected.

On my way there I passed by some ruins and I just had to pull over and check them out.


A collapsed outbuilding, I guess.

A set of stairs that lead to nowhere…I presume there was a shed there at some point.

When I arrived at the recreation area, I found a school bus parked in the lot with a bored looking driver behind the wheel just like last year. A group of kids was running around by the interpretive center with some trying their hand at a demonstration featuring a two-man crosscut saw. We were up in the pinery, after all.

I put on my new boots which I had bought in Osseo and hit the trail. Last year I went left at the intersection so this year I went right.

Just like last year, the scenery was spectacular.

It was a lovely day – perfect for a hike. And there were indeed trees that still had leaves. This place must look simply incredible when the trees are at peak colors. Still, the trails were gorgeous.


I suppose there’s a trade off to be made. If the trees have full canopies, then views of the many kettle lakes would be obscured from the trail. Later in the autumn, you get views of the lakes but little colorful foliage.

At one spot I found evidence of a beaver that had been hard at work.

When I walk the trails, I alternate between looking up – the sky, potential bird sightings in the trees - looking around at the lovely scenery, perhaps to spot a deer (or a bear), and down at the ground so I don’t step awkwardly onto a rock or tree root and take a tumble. It’s easy to get lost in one’s thoughts.

On one stretch of the trail, I was looking up, down, and all around, my thoughts in the clouds. Then I looked down and saw this:

I took evasive action so that I didn’t step on it. Like that eagle, it just didn’t care and didn’t move an inch. I knew it wasn’t a timber rattlesnake and figured it was non-poisonous. Even when I stooped down to get photographs, it remained still. I think it’s a garter snake of some variety.

Not 10 steps up the trail from my serpent friend I spied something long and thin on the ground and the primitive fight or flight part of my brain yelled, “Snake!!” No doubt my pupils dilated as much as they could to take in the potential threat as a small dose of adrenaline shot through my veins. Closer examination revealed it to be a moss-covered stick. That’s evolution for ya.


The sun did indeed peek out occasionally and made for some nice photo opportunities.

I don’t know what it is, but I have a thing for moss covered rocks and trees.


Towards the end of my hike – about 4.5 miles – I came upon a sign.

I realized that I had gone the “correct” way around this time. Plus, I think it offered some important wisdom: Slow down. It asks the walker to “take a few minutes to relax before finishing your hike.”

This.

This is exactly why I went up north. To slow down, relax, and spend some time when I am not slave to a clock. To get out of bed when the sun rises instead of at the insistence of an alarm app on my phone (or a hungry cat, for that matter). To go about my day at a leisurely and deliberate pace instead of being pulled here and there by the demands of work and everything else that would have my time.

The recreation area is rather large and encompasses much more than the area I hiked. My walk took me along a short segment of the Ice Age Trail but it continued to the southeast. I drove around the area, including down a designated scenic road for a spell. The land is just gorgeous. One road is a narrow two-lane affair with no shoulder and no stretch that goes straight for more than 100 feet, it seemed. I took it at 35MPH the whole way and took in the scenery.

Evening approached and my stomach was insistent that I put food in it. It was back to Bloomer where I could get a beer and dinner at the Bloomer Brewing Company.


I arrived just after opening and was the only person there for a little while.


The bartender was a young woman who didn’t look old enough to legally consume the beer she was serving but that may just be a sign of me getting older. I asked what was happening in Bloomer these days and she unenthusiastically replied with something about a high school volleyball tournament. She may have been distracted by a slate of opening duties yet to be performed or was simply a young person who was eager to leave the confines of a small town and seek her fortune elsewhere. Or maybe she just wanted to be out with friends instead of being at work.

My first beer was a Hog Breath. The brewery didn’t give a style for it but it was a stout or some kind of dark ale.


It had a faint smokiness along with a maple syrup sweetness. The latter ingredient was a nice Northwoods touch. Being served cold and an abundance of fizz kept it from being cloying. It was a nice, hearty drink to relax with after a hike.

I was pleased to see people trickle in. First was an older couple and then a younger one. A trio of women who looked like they had just gotten off from work shuffled in to start the weekend. The place was not full when I left but it was slowly getting more crowded. Hopefully it’ll be around when I am up that way again.

My next destination was a hotel room in Chetek. The plan was to relax and then get to the Chetek Bakery in the hope that they’d have some Swedish limpa bread on offer.

********

Bonus photo. It’s Grabby again. She’s been sleeping on my backpack on the dining room table a lot lately. Sometimes, though, she must be moved to accommodate eaters. Here she is shortly after being awakened from her slumbers.


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