Price of gas: $3.69
Amherst Junction & Steven’s Pt., Wisconsin
I’ve slept in a lot of different beds on this trip, and in nearly every one of them I have woken up stiff and sore. Janie wins: the bed I’m in here, I wake up fine. And after going to bed at midnight, after getting up at 8 a.m. Both of these are unusual for me. I get a shower and breakfast and read while Janie is puttering around her home. We go to visit one of her neighbors. The place is one of those gems you love finding. Thirty+ years ago, four families went in on a piece of property that includes the deepest lake in Portage County (at 60 ft.) They’ve built a smaller cabin that could probably sleep six, and then a main house that has a gathering room on one side, three individual rooms on the other side, and in the middle between them, an open area for cooking. By “open area”, I mean there is a roof covering joining the two sides, so it’s dry, but it’s outdoors. Within this space, there’s a wood tabletop resting on a brick foundation. If you pull out the middle planks, you’ve got a built-in grill. It’s one of those moments when you say, “Ah, that’s perfect.”
We wander down to the lake, and then back up via the small chapel. It’s a pretty amazing place, one with fantastic energy and clearly a great gathering place. I’m glad Janie brought me.
We take yet more backroads home – there aren’t really any front roads here – past a barn where the owners got creative:
Excellent.
After lunch, Janie & I head out to do errands. Janie doesn’t have her license, so my car and I are very valuable. We drop off soup & salad at Jim & Bernie’s, then double back into town to my Great-Auntie Bernie. Auntie Bernie is 95 years old, and while she knows that, she doesn’t know a whole lot else. This is sad to me, both because I didn’t know she was in this bad shape and because she’s been so sharp for so long. Auntie Bernie’s husband was Uncle Carl, who is my grandmother’s brother. Auntie Bernie & Uncle Carl had 7 children, and she still lives in the house where they raised the family. Uncle Carl died in 1991. I think she recognized Janie, but she really had no idea who I was. She knew my mother’s name, at least, and I would say I’m Madeline’s daughter, but that was about as far as we could get. Still, Auntie Bernie was alert and looked physically good, and had her glass of wine next to her. And why not?
Janie took me over to a place called Sugar Cubed (or Sugar3) that’s a chocolate & other foods store. Lo and behold – I found a box of Lady Walton cookies. I had told Aunt Bernie about these cookies, as they are my favorites. So I bought a box to drop by, and then some truffles. They have a mayan truffle wrapped in cinnamon & sugar… oooh… I think I have to double back tomorrow to get some for gifts for back home. The chocolates are from a company called Moonstruck. Definitely!
Steven's Point has a beer called Point Beer, with the slogan, "Finding the right taste was hard. Choosing the name was easy."
Janie and I have a little fun with the mural:
This is what being alone too long does to you:
We run a bunch more errands in-between getting a historical tour of the area. Janie takes me past the “old house on Union Street”, the convent where grandpa stayed when he came in to school for the week, their old high school… we finally make it home about 7 p.m.
Janie fixes dinner: chicken breast, new potatoes (from Wisconsin) and green beans. Simple but good. I’ve eaten really well this past week. I mention to Janie I feel vaguely guilty about all of this, and she tells me to enjoy it and let my family take care of me. Yeah, yeah… I’ve never been very good about that.
After dinner we lay in the recliners. One of her cats, Bimo (pronounced Bee-moe) moves between laps while we chat. We play a lot of music – Willie Mason, Bruce Springsteen’s Pete Seeger Sessions, other artists she knows; I put on the Low Stars and other music from the stack I sent her earlier this year. We’ve got fairly similar tastes in music, so we trade a lot of information. Family talk too, of course… how relatives can drive you crazy, and how to get through it all. I must admit, as much fun as I’ve been having, I’m about ready to be out on my own again – and I will be, soon! Tomorrow I may manage to see all three sons of Aunt Bernie’s & Uncle Jim’s. I’m slated to see at least 2 of them. If I pull it off, I will have seen all of the family that is within this area (11 different people). No wonder I’m exhausted! Janie calls it the Peacemaker tour. I don’t know that I’m doing any peacemaking, but generally we live far enough away that I guess no one in the family is pissed off at me. The benefits of having less interaction… less ability to make someone mad enough not to talk to you.
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