Our Route to the Relatives

It has been a long time since I posted to this blog. Life got complicated for a while, but things are calmer now.

Since my mother’s reminiscences opened the subject, I intend to continue with my memories of the farm and her parents, starting with our route across Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. To me as a small child, US Highway 41 started in Green Bay to the north (In actuality, it ran clear up to the northern edge of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior.) and continued south to Florida. I do not remember how I learned that it went that far south, but it seemed almost magical to me that you could just stay on that road and eventually reach the point the farthest south and east in the whole country! (Perhaps I-15 seems similarly magical to those who grew up here, leading straight to Disneyland.) It was a freeway, but not part of the Federal Interstate Freeway System. 41 came down southwest from Green Bay and curved due west at the northeast corner of Appleton. When it reached the northwest corner of town it turned south and continued down the west side of Lake Winnebago through Oshkosh half-way down and Fond du Lac (French for bottom of the lake) at the bottom of the lake. Then 41 curved back toward the southeast and went to Milwaukee, about a hundred miles south of Appleton, and then straight south to Chicago. I never took it further south than the 200 miles to Chicago, but I fantasized about going all the way to Florida. Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh and Fond du Lac are all about thirty miles apart, following the Fox River and Lake Winnebago. Appleton had three connections to the highway: one at the northeast corner, one due west on College Avenue, the main street, and one at the southwest corner. Usually, Dad took the southwest ramp after cutting across town, since we lived in the northeast part of Appleton.

When we got to Oshkosh, we exited to the west and went through Lake Butte Des Morts (French for hill of the dead). Now you would probably not recognize this as a lake. It was more like a large area of swamp, cattails and reeds interspersed with areas of open water. There must have been a lot of wildlife in there, but the only thing I remember seeing was flocks of red-winged blackbirds. They were the first birds I was aware of with the males looking very different from the females. The males are shiny black with “epaulets” of scarlet edged in yellow. The females, on the other hand, were drab--speckled brown and tan. Sometimes there would be hundreds in the flocks and they would make a racket with their songs and calls. (Of course we usually had the windows open, unless it was cold outside.) Most of the way across Wisconsin was through flat farmland with fields of corn, wheat, oats, barley, soybeans or alfalfa and pastures full of dairy cows, mostly black and white Holsteins, with about ten per cent tan and white Guernseys or pure tan Jerseys. Barns were big and either red or white, with silos and outbuildings around them. My parents said you could tell who wore the pants in the farmer’s family by whether the house or the barn was better maintained. When the barn was in need of paint, watch out for the farmwife!

Next time I will tell about the little towns we drove through. I have researched some of them on the internet and there are even photos of some of them. They look just the same today as they did forty or fifty years ago!