Tag Archives: wisconsin-series

Up North: the series ::Gone Fishin’:: Arbor Vitae

Memories,
Dona with fish. Aged 5
Dona with fish. Aged 5

Sometime during the summer of 1961 I went back to Wisconsin with my parents and grandparents and maybe an aunt and uncle or two. This time we went to Arbor Vitae and I guess I went fishing if the picture to the left is to be believed. I also have video footage of that trip. My grandparents must have liked Arbor Vitae, because many of their early videos are taken there.

I don’t remember this second visit to Wisconsin either, although I do remember an incident shortly after we returned. My grandmother was cutting my hair and noticed a tick had buried its head in my scalp. She used the lit end of her cigarette to make it back out, then crushed it between her fingernails, causing blood (my blood) to ooze over her fingertips. She said that the tick probably got in my hair in Wisconsin. You can imagine why I remember this incident.

It turns out that Arbor Vitae is not too far away from Hazelhurst, the town in which my parents have a lake house. Not long ago my parents took me back to a bar that they used to go to in Arbor Vitae. It looks pretty much the same as in the videos – or maybe all Wisconsin bars look the same.

Up North: the series ::The beginning:: Two Rivers

Memories,

I’ve got Wisconsin in my blood. No, really, I do. My great grandmother’s family settled there after emigrating from Germany sometime before the US Civil War. I’m not sure where the man she married, Silas Koeser, was from, perhaps Michigan since my grandmother was born there, but he eventually moved to Two Rivers, the town where his wife was born. She bore nine children and died when some of the children were very young. Silas remained in Two Rivers the rest of his life, as did most of his children.

Henry Theide
An Early Wisconsinite

As many times as I’ve been to Wisconsin, I’ve only been in Two Rivers once. When I was about three years old.  And had a bad case of the measles. I don’t remember it at all, but I’ve seen photographs of me at a beach, and perhaps a video or two. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realized it was not an ocean beach in the photograph, but Lake Michigan.

A beach in Two Rivers -- see, looks like the ocean.*
A beach in Two Rivers — see, looks like the ocean. *

Starting this summer, I want to visit some of the places in Wisconsin that have meaning for me. I might not start with Two Rivers, but someday I’ll go back and see where I’m “from”.

*Neshotah Beach photo originally uploaded by Lester Public Library