Kohler-Andrae State park adjacent state parks on the shore of Lake Michigan were merged. It was a cool but sunny Friday afternoon and there were very few people which made for an especially nice afternoon of walking the boardwalks through the sand dunes and strolling along the beach. This was Rachel's first trip to Lake Michigan, an event to which I afforded some significance. I grew up only a few blocks from the lake and spent a great deal of my childhood going to the lake, at all times of the year. I have spent many good days walking or biking along the lake front and often feel a nostalgia for it. Bree always likes getting down by the water herself and my mom obviously had a great time with us and her new granddaughter as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohler-Andrae_State_ParkI remember when I was very young making trips up to Terry Andrae with my parents as well as my grandparents on warm summer afternoons. It used to seem very far away to me. Now it seems that it is just an easy drive up I43. The drive itself is something that I appreciate more now than I ever did before. After years of living in Colorado, driving through the pastoral countryside of southern Wisconsin is something that I get a great deal of satisfaction from. I love looking at the old barns that dot the landscape in various states of disrepair as well as driving through the small towns whose residents can often trace their ancestors back several generations to those same small towns. Most of Colorado has been very diluted by newcomers such as myself through the past few decades which I think has taken away from the communal sense of identity shaped from a common history and geography that I seem to feel when I visit my home state.
On the drive back to Milwaukee I kept off the interstate and took the country highways past dairy farms and through the corn fields. I made a point of taking us through downtown Port
Washington where Bree and I popped into an old style butcher shop which had all sorts of delicious looking meats, cheeses and sausages in the display cases, along with a wide selection of craft beers. I commented to my wife that if we had a store like this in our neighborhood we would never have a need to shop anywhere else. www.berniesfinemeats.comAfter dropping my mom off at her house in Fox Point and a quick change of cloths, we were off to meet my dad and our friends Brian and Kirsten and their two young boys, Sam and Caleb, at the popular Lakefront Brewery for a traditional Wisconsin Fish Fry. The Lakefront Brewery hasn't been around all that long by Milwaukee standards, but it has become very popular in its trendy location down on the recently gentrified Commerce Street. They serve a tolerably good fish fry (I had the bluegill), they have outstanding beer, and they host a polka band every Friday night. Rachel got her first taste of
The Chicken Dance that night. Unfortunately I doubt she will remember it, but she did look as though she was having a good time. Brian's kids were having a ball. Neither of them seemed especially interested in their meals, but the did like around, or in some cases flopping down on the dance floor. The whole scene was very festive and enjoyable and was loud enough so that when Rachel cried Bree did not have to feel self-conscious about disturbing the people at the next table. And after a few East Side Stein Beers I felt comfortable enough to get up and dance a polka or two with my wife while grandpa kept an eye on Rachel.
After dinner we all went over to Brian and Kirsten's. After picking up some Schlitz down at corner grocer, the night took a diabolical turn. My dad sat down at the old, out of tune, upright piano sitting in the dining room and started to play. One thing led to another and the next thing we knew dad was on his way out to the car to get the sheet music for Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Leave it to my dad to be driving around with sheet music in his car. I can't help but love that about him.
Kirsten sang the vocals for Somewhere over the Rainbow, and shortly thereafter I took the lead in a rousing rendition of Desperado. Everybody was thoroughly impressed, especially Brian. From there Kirsten broke out the children's song book and had my dad play a few numbers that Sam and Caleb might appreciate and be able to sing along with such as The Itsy Bitsy Spider. For that hour, I think we all felt a little connection to an earlier, simpler and more wholesome time when friends and family would gather around the piano and sing songs rather than sit in front of the TV or even the radio.Everyone was thrilled to meet Rachel. She got passed around quite a bit because everybody wanted to hold her. Karen even changed a couple of poopies although as we learned, she may have been wanting to get a little practice. After several years of trying all sorts of different proceedures, Karen had just learned that she was pregnant. A few weeks later after the ultrasound, we learned that she is expecting twins. That seems like it will be a terrific amount of work for her, but she is thrilled, and we are all thrilled for her. Even though Karen lives a couple hours to the west in Sterling, I think that the support group that she has in her mother and sisters will be indispensable, not to mention that I believe that Karen has the perfect sort of temperament for motherhood. My fingers are crossed for her.
A good part of the opportunity I spent playing with Julie's 8 year old daughter, Jade, who had just come in from cheerleading practice. She even showed us some cheers. Later she had me help her clean the spider webs off of her playset in the backyard which was no fun for me. For how much she doesn't like spiders, I probably like them even less, and some of the specimens we
found were huge, ugly and hairy monsters. We tried playing catch with the football, also, but Jade was too afraid to catch the ball because she was afraid that it would hurt. So I wound up chasing her around the outside of the house with it and pegging her in the back. She was a good sport, though and I'm sure we're still friends.Bree's Grandmother seemed to be doing pretty well, also. She spent a lot of time holding the baby and for a woman in her late 80's she didn't seem to have much trouble getting up and walking around. I was glad that we got to see her and that she had the chance to meet Rachel. Overall the day was a great success and I decided that I liked Wauconda more than I had before. Sweet lives only a few blocks from the old downtown area which is situated on a good size lake. There was an
old mid west style supper club on the lake that looked like it would be a fun place to go sometime.We listened to Bob Uecker do the play by play for the Brewer game on the way back to Milwaukee. The Brewers were in the playoffs for the first time since 1982, when I was just a kid. They, of course lost the series to the Phillies who went on to become the World Series Champions. When we got to Milwaukee, my dad had gotten us some pickled herring, cheese and braunsweiger for dinner, all of which are personal favorites of mine. We didn't stay out too late though, and were back at my mom's place to get to bed at a reasonable time.
Sunday of course was spent out in Washington County visiting my farm and Jeff and Michelle. On Monday, we got a leisurely start to the day reading the paper up at my mom's place. The rest of the day we spent primarily at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Bree had never been there, and I liked it much more than I remember. A few years ago they put on a beautiful new addition that was almost worth going to see all by itself. The temporary exhibit that they had going was an interactive computer art exhibit. I can't say that I would have characterized any of it as great "art", but it was a lot of fun. Several hours later, just about the time we were going to view the Georgia O'Keeffe
section, Rachel did a number 2. After changing her that was basically our queue to move on.We walked from the museum up along the lake to the Alterra coffee shop that now inhabits the building where the old municipal water pumping station used to be located. It's not an especially large building. However, I think that Alterra really did a nice job converting the old cream city brick structure into coffee shop. They even cleaned up some of the old pumping equipment and left it in place to serve as a sort of museum exhibit within the seating area of the restaurant. Bree and I sat outside so we could take in the crisp autumn afternoon air. Rachel usually prefers sitting outside herself. If anything, exposure to the elements have had a calming effect on her, at least so far in her life.
After finishing our coffee, we walked up the hill and over to Brady Street, scaring up a big fat
hedgehog from the trees along the way. Brady Street comprises an old style commercial retail district in Milwaukee. Once upon a time it was the center of a very Italian neighborhood. Most of that Italian character has been disappearing with the passing of the years. A few remnants of that past remain in the form of Glorioso's Grocery Store and Sciortino's Bakery. For years, an older gentleman named Frank Pecoraro, used to walk around from bar to bar with a cooler full of wares shouting "pepperoni, cannoli" over and over again trying to drum up business from the hard drinking local crowds. To be honest, I never actually bought anything from him and I'm not even sure if he is still making the rounds anymore, but for a long time he was a neighborhood fixture. www.gmtoday.com/content/best_of_2004/W_84_01.htmThere wasn't anybody on the east side who didn't know the Pepperoni Cannoli guy. It is often the slightly off center guys like that who are out there and visible that really help to make the character of a neighborhood. Art Smart's Dart Mart and Juggling Emporium is a small shop on the corner of Brady and Humboldt is a store that has been in business since 1985 at that location,
but until this visit to Milwaukee, I'd never set foot inside. Although I'm neither a juggler or dart player, but I have always appreciated that such a quirky little place could survive for so long in this little eclectic neighborhood where so many retailers have come and gone throughout the years.We were scheduled to fly back to Denver Tuesday morning on a a 7:20 AM flight. This is pretty early for us but we made sure to have everything packed up and organized the night before. My mom assured me that her alarm clock would work properly but after checking it and rechecking it to make sure it was set properly, no alarm was heard the next morning. The big problem with this was the awkwardness of having to call in to work and try to explain to them why I wouldn't be in that day. No mid-level manager at a big company wants to call in and tell his boss that he won't be in because his mother's alarm clock didn't go off. Other than that, things worked out fine. We at least got a little extra sleep, and had a chance to have coffee and breakfast with my mom in the morning. We were able to get rescheduled on an afternoon flight at no additional charge. Before we went to the airport, we even had enough time to stop in at the Renaissance Bookstore downtown for an hour or so. The Renaissance Bookstore isn't for everyone. In fact, I doubt most people would properly appreciate it. It is a gigantic used bookstore founded in the early 1960's taking up 5 levels of an old furniture warehouse. It is reported to house well in excess of a half a million volumes. The place has a character all its own, though. The building smells musty and it is hard to believe that it has not collapsed under the weight of all the books. The stairs are worn, the plaster is falling off the walls and dust covers some of the old periodicals in the basement so thickly it is hard to read the titles. But if you enjoy picking through the stacks looking for gems you would never find in a Borders or Barns and Noble and don't mind an extreme amount of disorganization and allergens, it might be worth a stop. I can't imagine there is any other bookstore in the country quite like it.
Goodbye Milwaukee. Until next time.
