Across Wisconsin by Car

You may be wondering why there are so many French names in Wisconsin. While the western parts of the United States were explored mainly by Spanish conquistadores or Spanish priests, the eastern parts and the Midwest were explored by the French. Wisconsin was the domain of “Marquette et Joliet” which are names that were repeated over and over in my grade school years. One of them was a trapper and the other was a priest, but I am no longer certain which was which. For the most part, the early names were either Indian (spelled in French phonetics) or French in origin. Later on, when the region was becoming properly settled, names were English.

The first little town we came to after turning west at Oshkosh and going through Lake Butte Des Morts was Omro. After a while there was Redgranite. Then came Wautoma, which we never called by its proper name. We called it “Blue Stools Town” because of the little café where we often stopped for a piece of pie (and a potty break). Most cafes and diners of the time were decorated in black and white with red trim. So the benches in the booths, the chairs at the tables and the stools at the lunch counters were upholstered in either black or red vinyl. But this little diner was different. I do not remember its real name—something like Dan’s Diner or Flo’s Café, probably—because we just called it Blue Stools because its vinyl was sky blue. We never knew why that was so, but we girls found it enchanting. Our parents always preferred to sit in a booth, but we girls always wanted to sit up at the counter on the tall stools. We usually won. (There were three of us and only two parents.) Thus fortified with pie and milk, we proceeded through Coloma, Necedah, and Wyeville.

Wyeville was the smallest place of the whole journey. There was literally nothing there but a train depot in the middle of a large clearing in the forest. (The middle of the state was pretty much all forest, with the farms on the east and west sides of the state.) I have anxious memories of that train depot. One summer day when I was about ten, Sue maybe eight and Merry only four, we girls were put on a train to go to Minnesota by ourselves. We had to change trains at Wyeville. There was about a half hour between trains and I was extremely stressed out trying to keep my sisters close by and safe until we got on the next train. There was no one around but us. We did all survive, though I was very glad to hand over responsibility to adults when we arrived in Albert Lea!

When driving, we next came to Tomah and then Camp McCoy. Camp McCoy—now Fort McCoy—was something like Camp Williams, only much larger. (It is larger still today.) It was in the middle of the forest part with this one highway running through the middle of it. Every so often there were gravel crossroads and sometimes you could see barracks or other buildings a little way up the road, always to the north, but mostly it was just trees with fences and signs against trespassing, etc. It was boring and sort of scary, if you know what I mean. Once in a while we would happen upon a CONVOY. This would make my father extremely frustrated. You have to understand how my father drove. It was as though he were in a race. He would speed up and up until there was something in front of him that he could not pass and he would have to slow down. After a while it would be clear to pass and away we would go full tilt again! Well, convoys were required to maintain a very slow speed, for no reason we could see, and they were so long and the vehicles so close together that it was impossible to pass. So my poor father would have to drive SLOWLY for miles and miles until the convoy got to the crossroad where they left the highway. He did not usually keep his temper. We would then drive very fast indeed!

Soon after that we would pass Roche a Cri State Park. (Roche a Cri is French for Crying Rock.) One summer we camped there with some friends of my parents. My family arrived first and drove around looking for a good spot to pitch our tents. There was a lovely place with a big tree or two and ferns and things all around. We did not understand why no one else had taken this choice spot, but figured it was our good luck. A couple days later, when our friends came, we found out why. Some of the brush around the campsite was poison ivy! No one in our family had any problem with it, but our friends insisted that we move to another campsite. Apparently, it is an allergy and my family did not have it.

Another landmark in this area was Ship Rock. This was a huge rock left standing after the glaciers scoured off most of it in the area. It was about the size of the RCA Building, but all jagged and ragged, of course. Someone must have thought it looked like a ship, though I could never see it. But it was great fun to climb and clamber all over it and it was a wonderful break from riding in the car all day long. There is a part of southwestern Wisconsin that is sort of like Monument Valley, with huge rock outcroppings that the glaciers missed, but you can’t see them as well as in Monument Valley because of all the trees.

The next town was one of the biggest of the journey. Sparta must have been a county seat, I think, because that is where the orphanage was, right along the highway. (Or maybe it was even the state orphanage. I don’t know.) The orphanage looked sort of like my hundred-year-old elementary school multiplied several times over. Inside a very tall chain-link fence there were six or eight buildings around a gravel square with playground equipment in the center. There were other big buildings back behind the square, too. There were “houses” that looked like ordinary homes except that they were way too big. There would have been plenty of room for thirty children in each house. Sometimes there were children playing on the swings and slides and sometimes the place looked deserted. Either way, it looked sad.

After that we came to LaCrosse (French for The Crossing) where we crossed the Mississippi River. LaCrosse was the biggest city of our trip and had many interesting features. There was a small factory where they made giant fiberglass figures for advertising purposes. In the grassy back lot, which the highway bordered, they kept the mistakes and broken items. There were life-sized horses and cows, and way more than life-sized lumberjacks, jumping trout, chickens, etc. Many of these figures were twelve to twenty feet tall. LaCrosse also had a large cemetery. You might wonder why that was of interest to a little girl. Well, for reasons which escape me now, Sue and I had to hold our breath whenever we passed a cemetery. This was no problem with most of the ones we passed because they were only as big as a house lot or maybe a city block. But the one in LaCrosse was huge! It stretched for several city blocks. Usually, we could manage to hold our breath for that long, unless the traffic light right in the middle was red. Sue never could last when we had to wait at the light. Often I could, but not always. She generally accused me of cheating when I could hold my breath longer than she could, but I didn’t, really! She just hated me to best her in anything, but I was older and sometimes could do stuff she couldn’t. Another place of interest in LaCrosse was the Big Boy Restaurant where we usually ate lunch. Sometimes we ate after crossing the river at an A & W Root Beer stand where they kept the thick glass mugs in the freezer and the root beer stayed so cold! If the weather was hot, we went there. The Mississippi River itself was one of the most impressive landmarks of the trip. Already that far north the river was huge. It was over a mile across, but it wasn’t just water. There were lots of “needle-shaped” islands in the channels. We would go across a bridge to one and cross it in a few seconds and get on another bridge to reach the next island. There was a wide part on the west side without islands where the bridge was maybe a quarter mile long. Then we would be across into Minnesota. More on that next time!