The New York Times International - 27.08.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019 | 15

travel

My teenage son groaned from the back
seat as we pulled over in Wabeno, about
the 10th Wisconsin town with a popula-
tion of 1,000 or so that we had stopped in
that day. My attempt to get him to leave
the car to look at the 22-foot statue of a
lumberjack across the street was as un-
successful as my appeal a half-hour ear-
lier in Laona to clap eyes on the world’s
largest soup kettle.
“What is it about these places you find
so interesting?” he sighed, his hands
limp with boredom, loosely cradling a
well-used Nintendo Switch. I looked at
Larry the Logroller, as the town calls its
fiberglass giant; then at the tiny Log-
ging Museum next to him, there since
1941; then at the upside-down Old Style
sign that hung outside the Bottoms Up
bar (get it?). It was a fair question, and
not one I could immediately answer.
I grew up in a small Wisconsin town
called Eagle (population 745 at the
time), where my family moved from Mil-
waukee. I was presented with two exist-
ential options: Be bored by the limited
options of a rural hamlet or figure out
what makes Eagle special. I chose the
latter. It began a lifelong habit of seeking
out the attractions of the obscure cor-
ners of the world. I grew up wanting to
visitnot France but Luxembourg.
I know southern Wisconsin fairly
well. The northern part of the state, how-
ever, was a mystery. I didn’t fish, hunt or
ride a snowmobile, the reasons most
Wisconsinites head north. Still, I was cu-
rious.

LAST SUMMER,an opportunity arose to ex-
plore the area. Since 1969, my father’s
family has held an annual reunion.
These get-togethers are typically held at
some resort or campground, the
woodsy, old-fashioned kind that can ac-
commodate 50 to 100 Norwegian-Amer-
icans. The 50th such gathering was
scheduled for Rice Lake, a town of 8,
about 100 miles south of Lake Superior. I
had plans to drive to my sister’s house in
Fish Creek, on the other side of the state,
afterward. My heart raced as I looked at
the map. That left me a large swath of
lakes, woods, farms and villages to ex-
plore in between.
Curriers Lakeview Lodge, the site of
the reunion, makes the most of Rice
Lake. It stands yards from the shore.
The room names tell you why people
typically stay here. I was placed in the
Angler’s Retreat. My father bunked in
the Decoy Room.

Reunions usually begin with a dinner
at a local supper club with my Uncle
Knut’s family. (Yes, I have an Uncle
Knut, pronounced ka-NOOT.) A supper
club is not a club. It’s a restaurant, but a
particular kind of restaurant found
mainly in Wisconsin. They are usually
family-owned and have long histories,
stretching back to times when they may
have been the only dining option in their
communities. The fare is surf-and-turf
traditional. Prices are high by Wiscon-
sin standards, but your table is flooded
with sides, breadbaskets and relish
trays, and it’s expected you’ll be staying
a while.
The big supper club in Rice Lake is
Lehman’s, a fixture since 1934. I’ve been
to many supper clubs and the pace is
usually leisurely. But Lehman’s takes it
to the next level. There was time for a
brandy old-fashioned or three before
our table was ready, and it took nearly a
half-hour for the soup to arrive. Howev-
er, when the food came, it was good.
“Thank you for being patient on a busy
night,” the waitress said. I looked
around the nearly empty room. “No
problem,” I said.
The next day, my girlfriend and I per-
suaded my dad to join us on a trip to
Spooner, about a half-hour north of Rice
Lake. I made my intentions clear: I had
a date with a Muffler Man.
Muffler Men are mammoth advertise-
ments in the form of towering fiberglass
figures. Some once alerted drivers to
businesses that could mend their muf-
fler (hence the name).
Others marked restaurants and gas
stations. As the businesses folded over
time, the fiberglass giants remained,

mysterious totems to nothing.

We encountered our first on the trip

north, in the Wisconsin Dells — a titanic

cowboy standing confusedly in front of

an outlet mall. I became intrigued and

vowed to track down as many as we

could. Spooner’s man, just north of town,

was also a cowpoke, his hands extended,

gripping nothing. He stands in front of a

go-kart track and mini-golf course and

what looked like a broken-down water

park. We took a selfie with the Muffler

Man. He didn’t mind.

IN THE CAR, MY FATHER,who grew up in

Sparta, Wis., recalled a company there

that dealt in fiberglass. “But they didn’t

make men,” he said. “They made big an-

imals.”

In downtown Spooner, there is an old

tavern named Big Dick’s Buckhorn Inn.

Inside, anything that had ever lived in

the surrounding woods is mounted on

the wall. The bar has always been a ha-

ven for taxidermy. A regular drew our

attention to the remains of a two-headed

calf. It was genuine, he assured us, born

in the area.

On the bathroom door, a wooden sign

read, “John F. Kennedy used these facili-

ties on March 18, 1960.” Sure enough, a

newspaper clipping showed a cam-

paigning Kennedy speaking from the

hood of a car outside the bar.

On the way back, we passed through

Shell Lake, the seat of Washburn

County. It’s a small town on a large, pic-

turesque lake, cut into frothy lines that

day by Jet Skis and sailboats. At the en-

trance of Memorial Park was a large fi-

berglass statue of a walleye. Sparta’s

work?, I wondered.

Outside Cumberland, I brought the

car to a near screeching halt at the sight

of Louie’s Finer Meats. “Welcome sau-

sage lovers,” read the sign above the

door. That’s me! Customers wandered

the aisles eyeing the dozens of

bratwurst varieties, including gyro and

bloody mary. A country singer over the

loudspeaker sang, “Only in America.”

Yes, I thought. On the wall, a poster told

me the 86th Annual Rutabaga Festival

would be held in four weeks. I experi-

enced a severe attack of FOMO.

Before returning to the lodge, we

stopped at Drag’s Roman Lounge, an

old-school pizzeria in downtown Rice

Lake, for a pie and an old-fashioned.

Christmas lights and small chandeliers

adorned the long horseshoe-shaped bar

in back. The pizza came out fast: thin

crust, tangy sauce, rich cheese and

lump sausage. Drag’s served me one of

the best pizzas I’d ever had. It was like

finding a pearl inside an oyster.

My Uncle Dean and Aunt Ruth have a

cabin in Minocqua, a town in north cen-

tral Wisconsin, near the Upper Michi-

gan border, and they invited us over af-

ter the reunion ended. We drove east,

past rolling farmland and snowmobile-

crossing signs and over rivers that, a

century or so ago, were choked with

pine logs on their way to the Chippewa

River, and then to the Mississippi.

At Phillips, we found Fred Smith’s

Wisconsin Concrete Park. Mr. Smith

was a logger and tavern owner who, in

1948, at age 55, began constructing

sculptures made of concrete and the

broken Rhinelander “Shorty Export”

beer bottles from his saloon. The rough-

hewed figures possess an unexpected

gravity. Soldiers, farmers, Native Amer-

icans, deer and horses (with beer-bottle

manes), all silent sentinels of a vanished

pioneer life, stared out of stiff stone

faces, waiting to be remembered.

Down a long, tree-lined lane, just out-

side Manitowish Waters, the isolated

Little Bohemia Lodge has been trading

on infamy since 1934, when the gangster

John Dillinger evaded an F.B.I. raid

there. Inside, the bar is decorated with

Tommy guns. The sole customer was a

man dressed in a Milwaukee Brewers

cap, Green Bay Packers sweatshirt and

pajama pants.

MINOCQUA IS CALLED“The Island City.” It

is, indeed, surrounded by lakes. Com-

merce, too. On our approach down High-

way 51, we saw the first chain outlet we

had in hours. “Walgreens!” sighed my

girlfriend, as if rediscovering a bad

penny she thought she’d lost. My uncle’s

house faced Kawaguesaga Lake. We

took his boat to town; the lake was a

more direct route than the roads. “I’ve

been in more boats than cars on this

trip,” observed my son.

The miniature downtown is a piece of

picture-perfect Americana. As a child, a

vacationing Elizabeth Taylor had

walked these streets. A wall mural ad-

vertised the wonderfully named Min-

Aqua Bats, one of the oldest amateur

water-ski acts in the country.

Minocqua began as a logging town,

but soon gave itself over to tourism. It

has the things you expect to find in a va-

cation town: popcorn, fudge, antiques.

It holds surprises, too. Bosacki’s Boat

House contains a beautifully well-pre-

served 1903 Brunswick oak bar. The

circa-1957 Island Café serves unexpect-

edly excellent biscuits covered with sau-

sage gravy, a family recipe. A button-

cute tween took our order. (Member of

the family, I guessed.) The Shade Tree, a

new book store, has an inventory befit-

ting a much bigger town. I told the

owner she had a great selection. “I

know,” she said.

Leaving Minocqua, we made a brief

stop at the Rhinelander visitor center.

Outside is a large statue of the mythical

Hodag, a sort of frog-faced dinosaur. It’s

Rhinelander’s saber-toothed version of

Babe the Blue Ox. A Muffler Man could

whip the Hodag, I thought.

SWINGING AROUND GREEN BAY,we headed

northeast up the Door County Peninsu-

la, a beauty spot surrounded by Lake

Michigan on three sides that has been a

vacation area for a century. My father

asked to stop at Renard’s Cheese out-

side Sturgeon Bay for cheese curds. As

my girlfriend tried her first curd, it

squeaked as she bit into it. “That means

they’re fresh,” explained my dad. She

winced. “It tastes like a Barbie doll’s

leg.”

Lunch was at Al Johnson’s Swedish

Restaurant, which is so famous for the

goats on its grass roof it will sue any

restaurant that pulls a similar stunt. I’d

been many times, and had the can’t-lose

combo of Swedish pancakes and

Swedish meatballs.

Dinner was a fish boil, a Door County

tradition wherein a mess of fish, onions

and potatoes are dumped in an outdoor

caldron. Pelletier’s in Fish Creek does a

dozen a night. Kerosene; fireball; boil-

over. Dinner and a hundred Instagram

posts were served.

My girlfriend, new to Wisconsin,

loved the fish boil. She liked the whole

road trip. For my father, it was all part of

his Wisconsin DNA already. As to my

son, he remained skeptical. Roof goats,

Min-Aqua Bats, Hodags, supper clubs,

island cities, concrete parks — all iso-

lated glimpses of human endeavor sur-

rounded by endless stoic nature. What

did it all add up to? The charms of mod-

est amusement; the quiet eccentricity of

small-town life; local traditions, stub-

bornly hewed to; whispers of long-ago

frontier hopes, never quite extin-

guished?

Perhaps it’s something that resonates

only as you get older. Or maybe it’s just a

matter of showing him the right Muffler

Man.

The fiberglass giants of northern Wisconsin

A father hopes his son

will learn to appreciate

Muffler Man and his ilk

BY ROBERT SIMONSON

Above, Larry the Logroller, a 22-foot-tall fiberglass sculpture in Wabeno, in northern Wisconsin. Below at left, a fish boil dinner at Pelletier’s in the Door County Peninsula.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN MIYAZAKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Taxidermy fills the walls at Big Dick’s Buckhorn Inn in Spooner, Wis.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Muffler Men are advertisements

in the form of towering figures.

As the businesses folded over

time, the giants remained,

mysterious totems to nothing.

Puzzle over

something

smarter.

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