(late October 2022)
(Listen to the prelude.)
Just as I did last year, I spent a relaxing evening in a hotel room in Chetek. Feeling a bit pensive, I began doing a little bit of writing – just noting some thoughts that had come to mind on the trip. I then listened to a little bit of music including “Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers...” by Genesis. With its waves of acoustic guitar and the drone of bass pedals, it has a dreamy, almost solemn feel to it. It is now my evensong on my treks up north.
With the music being done, I did a spot of reading.
I’d been meaning to read Philip José Farmer’s novella, Riverworld, for a while now and figured this trip would give me a little time to dig into it.
I thought that this tale was expanded into Farmer’s Riverworld novels, that he liked it so much that he would take the concept and mold it into a series. Well, it turns out that this story was written around the time he was writing the material which ended up being the second Riverworld book. So it’s a supplement and not a foundational text.
My introduction to the Riverworld books came back in the mid-80s when I bought Gods of Riverworld on a whim based mainly on the cover at a Waldenbooks(?) at Six Corners. After bringing it home, I discovered that this was the fifth book in the series. Oops. So I went and acquired the first, To Your Scattered Bodies Go. It didn’t take long before I was completely entranced by the story.
In a nutshell: Explorer Richard Francis Burton wakes up on the shore of a river completely naked. Around him are countless others, including beings not from Earth, in the same predicament. They died and wake to find themselves in Riverworld. And so the books detail the exploits of Burton, as well as others, as his band of afterlifers trek down the river to find out just where they hell they are as well as how and why.
Such a scenario offers countless opportunities for human dramas to play out – love, conflict, the value of religion, contemplation on the meaning of life, and so on. And all the while the mystery of the river and its environs looms large.
The novella features Tom Mix, actor and star of many a Western in the 1920s. He and a couple of companions flee a group led by the evil Kramer, who is a dictator figure that commands armies and looses them on other groups along the river. Mix and company join up with a rival faction and they go to war with Kramer.
I didn’t get too far in but it was fun.
The next morning, I was up just before dawn and found that there was a hard freeze the previous night. I had to put a little effort into scraping my windshield. On my way out of town, I stopped at the Northwoods Bakery in search of Swedish limpa bread. I found none. The bakery was under new ownership and limpa bread had been taken off of the menu. However, this still left many a tasty treat.
It all looked so good that I had a hard time choosing. As I was gazing into the display cases and nosing around the shelves, a woman behind the counter informed me that the day’s lunch special was to be a Long John grilled cheese with tomato soup. I told her that, sadly, I would miss out on the doughnut sandwich as I was on my way north.
I ended up buying some onion rolls which were excellent; a loaf of sweet cream bread which is cylindrical and about 4 inches in diameter. This is the stuff you normally see as cinnamon raisin bread. And a chocolate croissant which I decided to save for later.
Ooh! I almost forgot. I also bought a couple sheets of lefse, a Norwegian potato flatbread.
The Norske Nook’s menu is full of wraps made with the stuff instead of tortillas including a smelt wrap, an Upper Midwestern dish if there ever was one.
With the back of my car getting ever more full with every stop, I was off to Loon Lake Wildlife Area for another hike hoping that it was not home to any bears with a fondness for pastries. This was a 30-something mile drive and, after I got what I figured was fairly close, I found myself lost in an area where the roads had these odd numerical names – with fractions, no less. 16th Avenue was normal enough but then I found myself on ¾ Street. I missed a turn and was suddenly going down 17 ¼ Avenue. Silly me! I forgot to turn onto ¾ 1st Avenue.
Whoever named all these roads was either a mathematician or had a wicked sense of humor. Or both.
I eventually found the entrance to the wildlife area despite the best attempt by the DNR to hide it. There were no signs on the way leading you to it. In fact, I almost drove right by it as there was nothing but a small sign saying “Parking” visible from the road. Had I been coming from the north, I wouldn’t have even had that.
Based on the size of the letters on the sign at the trailhead, I guessed that this area is primarily used for hunting and trapping as those words were written in nice, big letters while the small print nearly hid the fact that hiking was also allowed. Thankfully gun season was still a few weeks away so I felt safe entering even though I wasn’t wearing blaze orange.
The trail, or at least the easily traversable part, wasn’t very long as it took me only about half an hour to reach the end. Along the way there were small lakes such as this one.
There were various and sundry prints to be found in the muddier parts of the trail though most were like this.
Deer!
In fact, I scared one that was on the shore of one of the small lakes. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a deer butt and white tail bounding off into the woods.
The trail ended at a small clearing and I discovered that it used to continue down a hill but that it hadn’t been groomed, i.e. – driven on, in a while. The former tire tracks were overgrown and the path was cut with deep ruts but I followed them for a while anyway.
I looked down just in time to avoid stepping in some further evidence of deer.
I had now seen both kinds of deer poo: the real stuff and the edible kind which I found at a gift shop in Osseo along with the rabbit variety.
I continued up a hill and onwards for a little while before turning around and heading back. Despite a lack of sun, it was fairly warm out and very quiet. Another wonderful walk.
********
When my hike was done, I figured I’d go grab a snack in Hayward. I hadn’t been there since c.2005 and wasn’t able to do much beyond work and dinner at that time. After visiting Stone Lake last year, it only seemed right to go there next as I had spent some time there as a boy. This means I’ll be visiting Spooner next year, I suppose.
I took what I highly suspect was the route my family drove every summer up to the cabins. First I went to Rice Lake where I caught Highway 48 over to Birchwood. From there I turned north onto County F which took me along the western shores of Lake Chetac. Finally, after this very scenic stretch, I could turn onto Highway 27 which would take me into Hayward.
As I was heading north, I spied a family of deer out for a stroll.
I was curious to see if the gentleman’s club that was at the intersection of 27 and 70 was still there. My memories are of a not particularly fancy place whose entrance was flanked by wagon wheels.
Now, why, you may ask, did I retain memories of a gentleman’s club from when I was 10 or 12 years old? To this I have no answer beyond the memory is a funny thing.
As it turned out, the club had moved a little west into what I later found out was formerly a German restaurant.
Why yes, I did have to look up “whip shitties”. Its former location is now a gas station.
I rolled into Hayward and sought out sustenance first thing and I found it at the Angry Minnow Brew Pub.
I had slaked my thirst there back in 2005 and proceeded to do so once again. The Angry Minnow is in a wonderful old building that dates back to 1889 when it was built to house the offices of the Northern Wisconsin Lumber Company. Credit must be given to the brew pub owners for maintaining a late-19th century look to the place.
Cozying up to the bar, I was greeted by the barkeep who, I think, was happy to have a customer at last. An Oaky's Oatmeal Stout looked to fit the bill and I ordered a pint of that to restore my strength along with a bowl of chili to warm my bones. The stout was on tap and given a healthy dose of nitrogen. I utterly failed to get a decent photograph of the pint replete with swirls of those tiny nitrogen bubbles cascading around the glass.
The beer was tasty as was the chili. For her part, the barkeep was friendly and happy to engage in conversation. She had much more to say than the gal behind the bar in Bloomer and told me a bit about events in Hayward, what brought her and her husband there, et al.
I left feeling sated but not full. One 4-pack of beer was purchased before I was on my way downtown. While I mainly have vague recollections of Hayward’s Main Street, my memories of this place, Tremblay's Sweet Shop, are rather clear.
It would seem that candy and the prospect of naked ladies were of high importance to my pre-teen self. And just as that boy did, this middle-aged man stood in the front window and watched the candymakers ply their trade. In this case, it was brittle.
Upon entering, my nose was sent into fits of rapture by never-ending clouds of butter-sugar vapor that wafted throughout the store. This wonderful aroma brought back childhood memories aplenty and my excitement grew exponentially after crossing the threshold. It was like being a kid in a candy store once again.
Fudge, brittle, truffles, hard candy, jaw breakers, chocolate covered everything – this place had it all.
I felt my resistance being whittled away so I bought some dark chocolate covered pretzels and beat a hasty retreat before I developed a cavity vicariously.
I didn’t get very far as there was a bakery a storefront or two away. There I purchased the last loaf of what is surely a leading contender for the quintessential bread of northern Wisconsin, if not the state as a whole: cranberry wild rice.
Wisconsin leads the nation in cranberry production but I don’t think there’s much wild rice harvesting any longer. (Our neighbors in Minnesota seem to have a prosperous wild rice industry, though.) Recall that I had made my way up to Hayward via Rice Lake. I presume that wild rice was grown there in the days of yore.
Wild rice is a distant cousin of the stuff that provides a bed for sushi or soaks up all that sweet & sour sauce when we order Chinese takeout. It is very much an Upper Midwestern grain.
The bread was a bit on the heavy side and quite tasty.
The cranberries were sweet-tart and the wild rice added a nice nutty flavor.
On my way out of town, I spied the Hayward Masonic Temple and just had to take a snap because this trip, as it turned out, was all about stopping to photograph the quotidian and sometimes banal.
On my way back to Rice Lake, where a hotel room awaited me, I saw a flock of turkeys off to the side of the road in a field.
********
Bonus photo. This time it’s an ad from an issue of the Milwaukee Journal from 1918.
