John Hildebrand - The Heart of Things: A Midwestern Almanac

The
HEART
of THINGS

Wife, children, house, everything the full catastrophe.
from Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis

A Midwestern Almanac

JOHN HILDEBRAND

Wisconsin Historical Society Press

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Publishers since 1855

2014 by John Hildebrand
E-book edition 2014

For permission to reuse material from The Heart of Things (ISBN 978-0-87020- 672-6; ebook ISBN 978-0-87020-673-3), please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users.

wisconsinhistory.org

Photographs identified with WHi or WHS are from the Societys collections; address requests to reproduce these photos to the Visual Materials Archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street, Madison, WI 53706.

Author photo by Sharon Hildebrand

Interior design and layout by AuthorSupport.com

Cover design by Percolator Graphic Design

18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Hildebrand, John.

The heart of things : a Midwestern almanac / John Hildebrand.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-87020-672-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-87020-673-3 (ebook) 1. WisconsinSocial life and customsAnecdotes. 2. WisconsinSocial life and customsCalendars. 3. Middle WestSocial life and customs Anecdotes. 4. Middle WestSocial life and customsCalendars. 5. Country lifeCalendars. I. Title.
F581.6.H55 2014
977dc23

2014018398

This book is for
Rosemary and Cecelia

IN THE MOVIES, the Midwest is the place were forever leavingfor big cities on the coast or more open spaces farther westto begin our real lives. Its a line or two of the backstory, an exterior shot: cornfields, a water tower against a blue sky receding rapidly in a rearview mirror on the highway to skyscrapers and romance. Theres a reason why screenwriters gave both Annie Hall and the Jack Dawson character in Titanic a Chippewa Falls address: to signal their innocence in contrast to slicker, more worldly types. I lived in Chippewa Falls for a time and know movie references to be a mixed blessing. Visiting other parts of the country, Id feel obliged to meet expectations, to act simpler and more earnest than I normally act, to play Jack Dawson to anyones Rose. Irony? Id say, looking around with a big grin. Whats that?

Time and place might be the coordinates, the latitude and longitude, by which we chart our position in the world, but things are what we remember. Where was I then? is just another way of asking Who was I then? And the answer is inevitably tied to some ordinary objectnot the big ticket items but a solid, physical detail around which the intangible clings: the summer of fireflies, the winter the cow shed collapsed, that early autumn the garden froze. At least thats how I rememberone thing leading to another, and somewhere an idea tangled in the middle.

This isnt a journal of any particular year, not a report of events as they occurred, but a record of things that grew in reflection over time. Most of these short essays were written over a seven-year period when I wrote a regular column for Wisconsin Trails magazine. Having never written a column before, I looked for models, and the best I could find were the essays E.B. White wrote for Harpers in the 1930s and 40s. It was White who described the essayist as a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. That made perfect sense to me.

The job came with three restrictions: my column had to be seasonal, it couldnt run much over seven hundred words, and it had to be centered in the Midwest. On the whole, I tried to be celebratory without falling into the trap of local color where picturesque natives inhabit the Land Time Forgot. Ive never believed that living in one place means being one thing all the time, condemned like Minnie Pearl to wear the same hat for every performance. Life is more complicated than that.

My grandmothers view of the world resembled the Saul Steinberg cartoon of New York City in which civilization ends at the Hudson River and the landscape beyond trails off into a featureless steppe. Only in the case of my grandmother, a life-long Chicagoan, the known world began at The Loop and ended a little north of OHare Airport. Beyond those venues, she didnt much care. Parochial in every sense of the word, she took her news from the Chicago Tribune, an archdiocesan weekly, and the neighbor woman in the apartment above hers whose daily phone conversations only confirmed my grandmothers insular sense of the world. On the rare occasions she ventured from home, it was inevitably to a place that served a good prime rib and a decent Irish whiskey. The old woman knew what she liked.

Its a tricky notion, this idea of homeand easily mistaken for a pigeonhole. More useful, I think, is the concept of home range, which isnt a single spot on the map but several spots and all the space in between. If a wildlife biologist clamped a radio collar around my neck and tracked my movements over time, hed eventually draw a convex polygon not so different in shape from my grandmothers world, a territory defined by the familiar outposts of home, work, and play. Most of lifes dramas play out not at the ends of the earth, but in all the usual places. So thats the geography Ive staked out in these essaysplaces where I discovered not only what I like, but also what matters. And if I bounce from one spot to the next, its always with the sweet belief that wherever I am at the moment lies deep in the very heart of things.

I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR when the cold settles in and a long-shadowed light falls through the woods. The county roads are deserted and the quiet goes on forever. The country has emptied of summer peoplewith the exception of myself. A winter person by temperament, I dont book a flight south when the snow flies but head north to my cabin.

The first order of business is shoveling a path to the cabin door. Once inside, I can still see my breath. Coming to the cabin in winter always reminds me of the scene in Doctor Zhivago when the good doctor breaks into the familys ice-encrusted dacha to wait out the revolution writing poetry while an unseen balalaika plucks out the opening notes of Somewhere My Love. When I hit the breaker switch, the radio, which is tuned to WOJB broadcasting from the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, fills the room with the deep, accusing baritone of Johnny Cash. I stuff the woodstove with birch logs and kindling, strike a match, and go someplace warm.

At the supper club down the road, the owner remembers not only my name but the brand of beer I drink. Ill slip onto a stool, unzip my parka, and watch whatever everyone else is watching on the overhead TV. I like to imagine that I fit in hereand I do, if fitting in means being privy to township gossip or allowed to voice an opinion on the DNR. In truth, its hard to pick out summer people from residents in the winter when everybody wears puffy coats and roots for the same NFL franchise. Still, in the battle of roots, wintering over trumps the weekend visit no matter how many years youve been coming north. Its a difference in equity. The cottager invests disposable income and even sweat into his lodgey retreat, but not his life. Thats why the supper club owner, who took out a mortgage on this place only a few years ago, is already home for the night while Im just killing timeone more flighty snowbird.