Tag Archives: Northern Wisconsin

Back Then

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Back then, when it got Summer, really Summer, when everything was green and hot and you were out of school until months away, like September, the middle of September even, and you were too young for a job, you did really cool stuff.

You had buddies, not hundreds like you get on Facebook now but never see, but maybe two or three and they were your best buddies, BFF hadn’t even been invented yet but what you had was even better, you knew these guys and you’d do every thing with them. You were in the same class with them at school, you rode the bus together and you lived within a mile of each one of them. You didn’t text them about getting together, you jumped on your fat tire, repainted with a brush because you didn’t have enough money to buy spray paint, Roadmaster single speed bike and you headed over to their house to get them. A lot of times you met them on the road as they were coming over to get you.

Your bikes were your transportation. They were the magic vehicles that gave you the freedom to do anything you wanted to. Like meet up with your buds and ride the five miles into town and go to scouts. Everybody that was cool would be a Boy Scout. Going down the big hill into town when you were going like 85 miles an hour your uniform neckerchief would be streaming straight out behind you and you were Parnelli Jones or Mario Andretti and nobody could catch you. If was cold out you would pull your neckerchief up over your nose like some body from  the Hole-in-the-wall gang. Coming home at night afterwards was always an adventure. It’d be dark and if you tipped your generator down so it rested on your front wheel you’d shoot a beam of light out 30′ or so. If you pedaled fast that is. We’d normally get home a lot faster than we had going down there.

Our bikes were not just any old bikes. They were an extension of yourself. You could read a guy and size him up just by checking out his bike. If he didn’t have streamers on his handle bars and the light and generator package and a very cool paint job. He was a dork and we’d pedal away from him so nobody thought we were dweebs too. Because we lived in the country we all had BB guns. The three of us even had scabbards set right behind the seat so we could carry our guns with us on expeditions. Mine was a Daisy Model 25 Shotgun Pump Lever model where you poured almost half a tube of bb’s into the tube under the barrel and then pumped it up until you couldn’t pull the lever back once more. At that point you could have dropped a Rhino at 20′ if you’d a found one. The other guys had Daisy Red Ryder lever-action model 1938 style BB guns. In fact I had one before my pump-action but I traded it to my buddy for a bull whip which I used to promptly break my glasses because I hadn’t learned to snap it right. We all had a much greater respect for Lash LaRue after that. My mom told me I coulda lost an eye until I was way into my 20’s after that one.

But the very best of times were when we would put together a pack and tie our big old Army surplus kapok sleeping bags on the back of our bikes and head off into the wilderness, or what passed for it in Northern Wisconsin at the time. We’d take off and find a creek somewhere, we had a good one where there was a little bend in it and it got deep enough you could actually paddle around for a few yards yet stand up quick if water got up your nose, set up camp in the trees where there hadn’t been too many cows and be Mountain Men until the food ran out, or somebody got hurt, or the farmer caught us and ran us out of there. But those were good times. The best actually.

We’d build a fire pit with rocks all around it and use dry twigs and limbs for the fire, we were scouts after all, we had this stuff down. Then we’d get in our sleeping bags and talk way into the night about all the stuff we were going to do when we got big. Tim was going to be a guy that traveled all over the world exploring and finding neat stuff, except that as it turned out he joined the Army, deserted, holed up with his girlfriend and had a shoot out with the Army cops and was sent to Leavenworth. That made the National news, Don’t know where he is now. Glen wanted to be a farmer like his dad, but wound up being a teacher in a grade school somewhere, as the milk prices tanked and they had to sell off the herd, and me, I went off to find my fortune out in the world. The jury ‘s still out on how that turned out.

But back then things were different. We read comics on Saturday afternoons. Going over to one another’s houses to see the new ones that each of us had gotten since the last time we were together. We had stacks of them, huge stacks, so many our mom’s would threaten to burn them if we left them out. We’d hang out after supper until it was so dark your mom would come out and yell into the neighborhood. “You better get home if you know what’s good for you.” That usually meant you had another half hour. If your dad came out and yelled. You went home right then. Running. We hadn’t had much to do with girls yet, but we talked about them non-stop. What we thought they did when they were home. Why they were so weird. Did you think you’d ever hang out with one and if so which one. Lots of fist fights almost happened over that one as you brought up a name of someone your buddy secretly liked..

But mostly we just hung out. You had your buddies. Somebody to laugh with, tell your strange thoughts to, walk down the over-heated blacktop roads to school with, the pavement so hot it stuck to your tennis shoes and you finally had to walk in the grass along side of the road so you didn’t burn your feet up. Going to the store and getting a twin pop that you’d break in half and give half to your bud. We’d flip for who was going to pay the nickel. Sharing that you couldn’t wait to get to high school so you could get girls but you were secretly pretty scared about that. After your buddy teased you for being a wimp until you almost punched him in his dumb face he would admit that it scared him too. But you each swore you’d never tell anybody else that.

It was different, back then.

Fannie Polokowski

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Down near the Sangre de Cristo mountains in what would become Huerfano county, there was a small creek that ran out onto the plains. The creek had several names. Dead snake creek. Molly’s disaster. Coldwater. The name changed as often as new people arrived. Since much of this area hadn’t even been officially mapped you could name things any name you wanted. If you put up a wooden sign that made it even more official.

Where the creek came down from the mountainside there was a nice little valley. It was flat enough you could put tents up and nearby there were plenty of trees so you could have firewood handy and even make enough lumber from the small sawmill Lee Osgood brought with him from Northern Wisconsin. Soon a few rough sheds got stood up back off the creek aways. As time went on and the creek began to yield a little color more buildings were put up and it almost began to look like a little town.

It was about this time that a small family named Karl and Fannie Polokowski moved to the camp, which was then called Deadman’s Laughter after an incident where Ben Collins, the town drunk, stabbed a man named Jessimire Craigson to death in a fight over a bottle of Mescal. Mr. Craigson lingered for nearly three days and the sounds he made were close to what a man laughing would make, except much higher pitched almost woman-like. It was eerie and for several years after people would say they could hear Jessimire Craigson screaming in the night. Although that was almost for certain the wind coming down off the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

The Polokowski’s came to town in an old wagon weighted down with all kinds of farming implements as Karl had the idea he could farm some and provide the camp with fresh vegetables for a nice tidy profit. Unfortunately he hadn’t researched the area and didn’t know that it rarely rained here in what is the high desert, and the stream didn’t flow strong enough in the summer after the snow melt had run off to do much good for irrigation. After crop after crop failed he wound up selling most of his equipment to the local blacksmith who refashioned it into what ever the miners needed in the way of tools.

Fannie meanwhile took in washing and did some sewing and generally tried to help bring in some income to supplement the meager family income. It was 1887 that year and Karl thought he could go back to Wisconsin and convince a couple of his brothers to move out here and maybe they would build houses as there were plenty of miners but no builders around. The camp was getting bigger, what with families moving there and now there were kids and they needed a school, and a church, and all sorts of  buildings so Karl ever the optimist set out to bring his brothers back.

There were still a few remnants of the Cheyenne and Arapaho’s around. Those that didn’t get scattered or killed as the settlers moved in. They lived off the land as they always had and were never in one place twice so they didn’t get rounded up and shipped off somewhere like the others. They were mostly friendly and easy to get along with as long as you didn’t give them any whiskey which of course Karl did, and as the night progressed they finished off the three bottles that Karl had with him and they finished off Karl too.

A couple of month’s went by and Fannie didn’t hear anything from Karl. She wrote a couple of letters to Karl’s brother Albert but he wrote back saying Karl never got there. It began to look grim for Fannie as she was nearly destitute and Karl’s brothers weren’t very forthcoming with money for her to come home. It soon dawned on Fannie that she was alone and would have to fend for herself. It was during this blackest of times for her that she began entertaining gentlemen callers. Things began a dramatic change for the better financially as she had to ask her friends for a dollar when they visited, but she didn’t do as well emotionally. She didn’t like the fact that she had to make her way through this life as a woman who took money from men. She began to sink into a deep depression and it only got worse as the winter dragged on.

It was a long about the first of March when the influenza hit the camp and it was a terrible time. Some of Fannies visitors were coughing and it wasn’t long before Fannie was too. One of her frequent visitors was the camp Doctor, one H.K. Atkinson, and after seeing how ill Fannie was left her a bottle of Laudanum, however he neglected to tell her what the dosage was, or if he did she didn’t pay attention, and she quickly downed the entire bottle. She was found the next morning.

It was a sad funeral being as it was hard digging in the camp cemetery that first week in march, the ground wasn’t even thawed good yet, and some of the local towns women raised a fuss about her being buried in the cemetery at all, next to good folk as it were, but they got that all settled by burying her way in the back, right on the fence line and only put up a wooden marker instead of a stone. Most of the town turned out and stood under the gray skies, feeling the brunt of the cold easterly wind and listened to the preacher say his words over her. He didn’t mention of course that he used to visit Fannie. There’s something deep down terrible about being laid to rest in that cold ground. It’s a wonder that a bodies soul could ever find peace wandering that bleak landscape. Some of the good towns women felt it was proper seeing as how she made her living, but then there’s always women like that. Even some men.

In a fit of ironically bad luck Albert and his wife Missielou, Karl’s brother and sister-in-law, arrived mid-June to take Fannie back with them to Wisconsin. Missielou had been after Albert all year about leaving Fannie out there all on her own and how they should do what the bible said and look after kin, even if it wasn’t by blood. So they planned this trip to surprise Fannie and bring her home. Too late, long, long too late. Missielou felt like they had sinned by not acting faster and berated Albert for not sending Fannie any money. Even Albert was worried he might have done damage to his soul by not being more helpful when Fannie had asked.

Albert and Missielou closed out Fannies cabin packing up what little was left after the good towns women has come down and helped themselves to the small amount of jewelry Fannie had collected. Strangely enough no one had taken Fannies prized lace-up boots. Fannie loved those boots as they were the ones Karl had bought for her before they left home to come out here. Apparently the local women had feet that were too big for them so they left them. Supposedly it was bad luck to wear dead peoples shoes anyway. Something about always walking in bad luck. But for sure, one of those women would have chanced that bad luck if those boots had fit. So Missielou packed them up for her daughter Beegee, who was about that size and took them back home with her.

Time went on as is it wont, and soon the creek gave out completely and no one saw any color for weeks, then months. The miners left and the town dwindled until one day a roaring wildfire feeding on the sage and rabbitbrush, swept through the buildings until nothing was left but the stones they used to set the building corners on. Temple, as the camp was now known, ceased to exist. The fire consuming everything in it path, burned over the cemetery, scorching the stones of the good people, and consuming all the wooden markers of the lesser folks, the drunks, the layabouts, some of the other women who entertained men that came after Fannie died. All but one that is. For some unknown reason Fannie’s wooden marker was only burnt a little where it stuck out of the ground. You could still read the writing on it real good. Fannie Polokowski A Friend To The Community 1874-1901 and that was that. The story of a small town and the story of a young woman gone. Alive now only in memories and maybe in that small wooden marker if it’s still there.