In the mind of a writer places can tell a lot about
people. In the mind of someone needing fresh direction or a little escape from
it all, the place one chooses to go can say a lot as well. The place I go when
I need to get away is a town in Wisconsin named Black River Falls. I go there
when I can, which is to say not that often, maybe two times a year if I’m
lucky. Yet the older I get, the more meaningful
it is every time I do get in my car and “head on up to Black River.” When I go
to visit family living in town, I always come back feeling a little more sure
of myself and very sure of my heritage and good fortune. Might that make it a sort
of sacred place for me?
We’ll get back to that.
For the record, Black River
Falls is located in the west central part of Wisconsin. It serves as the county
seat of Jackson County and tallied an official population of 3,622 according to
the 2010 census. While there are two other rivers named Black flowing elsewhere
in the United States, there isn’t another town called Black River Falls anywhere
else in the country, or the world, for that matter. So I guess that qualifies
it as a unique place right there, right?
Originally named “La Riviere Noire” or “The Black
River” by French explorers in 1659, the river’s dark waters gave name to a
trading outpost that was eventually incorporated into a village in 1866. By
1883 Black River Falls had grown to become a town of sawmills sending fresh-cut
timber downstream for processing and the construction needs of a rapidly
growing nation. (But with prosperity came peril, and in October of 1911,
following days of uncommonly torrential rains, that same river rose up and went
on a flooding rampage that nearly wiped out the town. Black Friday they called
it.)
On a lighter note, according to the official town
website the list of notable people born in Black River Falls include major league
baseball players Ernie Rudolph and Phil Haugstad Rudolph pitched in seven games
for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1945 and Haugstad pitched sparingly for the Dodgers
and Cincinnati Reds from 1947 to 1952. There were legitimate heroes, too, like United
States Marine and Congressional Medal of Honor winner Mitchell Red Cloud Jr.,
who died in action in Korea in 1950.
Not that any of that brief
history lesson has a damn thing to do with my story, except for the fact that
my mother, Carol Stolt (Nee Thompson), was born on a small farm on the
outskirts of Black River Falls in June of 1922. As for me, I was born and
raised in Milwaukee some years later, so I never once called Black River Falls
home. Yet for as long as I can remember, the times spent up there with aunts, uncles
and cousins, the many days and nights spent swimming, fishing, playing cards, anything
that lent itself to sharing a good laugh. Some of the best times and best memories
I will ever have.
So really this is more about family
than it is about the town itself, though in my mind the two always seemed to fit
so well together. The heritage of my mother’s family, and the majority of the townsfolk,
is Norwegian - hardy people who are steady-working, slow to anger and quick to
laugh at themselves.
I like that.
When I’m in Black River Falls
I flash back now and then to some of the times we, as an extended family, have shared
over the years. Too many to count. There
were weddings, vacations, sleepovers and holidays. I think of my dad’s old home
movies showing Christmas Eves long ago when we all gathered in the cramped but
cozy quarters of my grandmother’s house on Fillmore Street. For a few years in
the mid-sixties us cousins put on our own little Nativity play for the
grown-ups, complete with homemade costumes, painfully bright lights for the
home movies, and a bale of straw fresh from the Johnson’s farm for the manger. Nobody
would ever think of doing that these days. Probably just as well.
But time moves on, and nowadays
any trip to Black River Falls requires my stopping out at the grounds of Little
Norway Lutheran Church where my mother was laid to rest in 2011. Little Norway
lies at a quiet crossroads in the midst of farmland and a stretch of woods a
few miles west of town. The whitewashed building with its grand steeple was
built in 1873, and in the church yard are cracked and weathered tombstones etched
in Norwegian to prove it. I enjoy going out there by myself and walking in the
yard, then down the patchwork-paved country road next to it. I think it’s the
stillness and the quiet out there that impresses me. In the words of Henry
David Thoreau, out there “my thoughts are my company.” It’s the perfect spot
for me to take stock of things, do a little self-inventory of past and present.
I’d like to think Thoreau would have found this an agreeable place too.
This town means a lot of things to me. It becomes a source
of pride and wonderful memories whenever I drive across the bridge over the
Black River and see Main Street. I trust it will be like that again the next
time I return.
The dictionary definition of the word “sacred”
includes the phrases “highly valued and important” and “entitled to reverence
and respect.” Well, when it comes to the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, I
guess that covers it just fine for me.
So if you get a
chance, take a minute from your busy day to think about wherever it is you go
when you really need to get away and unwind, to rethink things or recharge your
batteries. It could be a backyard, a park, a town or city where you
grew up. It could be a church or even a favorite watering hole, for that
matter. It could be from the past or in the present. Whatever does it for you is
good enough; no explanations necessary. Just appreciate the feeling you
get when you think about it and don't ever let that go.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment