Patti See - Here on Lake Hallie: In Praise of Barflies, Fix-It Guys, and Other Folks in Our Hometown

Here on Lake Hallie

Here on Lake Hallie

In Praise of Barflies, Fix-It Guys, and Other Folks in Our Hometown

Patti See

WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press

Publishers since 1855

The Wisconsin Historical Society helps people connect to the past by collecting, preserving, and sharing stories. Founded in 1846, the Society is one of the nations finest historical institutions.
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2022 by Patti See

E-book edition 2022

For permission to reuse material from Here on Lake Hallie: In Praise of Barflies, Fix-It Guys, and Other Folks in Our Hometown (ISBN 978-0-87020-991-8; e-book ISBN 978-0-87020-992-5), 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.

Cover design and typesetting by Sara DeHaan

26 25 24 23 22 1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: See, Patti, author.

Title: Here on Lake Hallie : in praise of barflies, fix-it guys, and other folks in our hometown / Patti See.

Other titles: In praise of barflies, fix-it guys, and other folks in our hometown

Description: [Madison] : Wisconsin Historical Society Press, [2022]

Identifiers: LCCN 2021043875 (print) | LCCN 2021043876 (e-book) | ISBN 9780870209918 (paperback) | ISBN 9780870209925 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: See, PattiFamilyAnecdotes. | See, PattiFriends and associatesAnecdotes. | Chippewa River Valley (Wis.)Social life and customs20th centuryAnecdotes. | Chippewa River Valley (Wis.)Social life and customs21st centuryAnecdotes. | Chippewa River Valley (Wis.)History, Local. | Chippewa River Valley (Wis.)BiographyAnecdotes.

Classification: LCC F587.C5 S44 2022 (print) | LCC F587.C5 (e-book) | DDC 977.5/44dc23/eng/20211109

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043875

LC e-book record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043876

For Alex and for Noah, Dan, & Laura

Credits

If She Dies, She Dies (as She Dies, She Dies) originally appeared in 5ive for Women magazine.

On Thin Ice (as Fire on Ice and The News from Lake Hallie), Never Afraid (as Lessons Learned from Best Friends and Recalling Friendship and Summer Nights on Lake Hallie), Man with Dog, Fine Music, Secret Spaces, The Birdman of Chippewa Falls (as The 100 Year-Old Bird Man of Chippewa Falls), and Family Delicacy (as Squirrel Eating) originally appeared on Wisconsin Life.

Cautionary Tales (as Ice Fishing on Lake Hallie), Living on Summer Time, Egg Laying, Forward (as Forward Has Many Meanings), Why I Revere My Septic Guy, The Eagle Man of Eau Claire, Date Cutters (as Portrait of a Date Cutter), The Bird Man of Chippewa Falls, Our Miss Victory, Lake Hallie Spirits, Fish Fry at Irvine, No Green Bananas, Everything Must Go, Cribbage Family (as Cribbage a Family Affair), Goodbye 617, Firebugs (as Call of the Firebugs), The Cruelest Month (as February: The Cruelest Month), Our Old Town (as Our Old Town Chippewa Falls), Shake-a-Day, Get Your Blue Mind On, The Heart Has Many Doors (as Good Riddance 2020), and Witness to History originally appeared in the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram and in Country Today.

Joyful Mysteries (as Joyful Mystery) originally appeared in Take Care: Tales, Tips, and Love from Women Caregivers, edited by Elayne Clift.

Tonight at Dads, Tavern Tour, and Patti Barge (as Everything Happened or Nothing Did) originally appeared in Volume OneMagazine.

Mourning Portrait originally appeared in What Remains: The Many Ways We Say Goodbye, An Anthology, edited by Sandi Gelles-Coles and Kenneth Salzmann.

Washtub originally appeared in Months to Years literary journal.

Note: Some of these essays were cut, edited, and/or combined for this book.

Contents

Wedding photo of Patti See and Bruce Taylor at their house on Lake Hallie. PHOTO BY CELIA JOACHIM

In June, my car was broadsided on the highway near my home. The impact crushed my drivers side and pummeled my head off the window. As I waited for an ambulance, a pair of friendly power walkers asked to pray over me and offered to call my husband. I couldnt speak to tell them no husband. At the hospital, the chaplain said she and my husband Bruce were praying for me.

Months earlier, when Bruce had first talked of marriage, I teased, A tattoo will last longer. I soon found myself with his signature across my hip. Our tattoo artist told us that getting a partners name on your body ruins most relationships. Winona Forever, Bruce and I saidat the same time. It was nearly magical.

A day after my accident, my neck and shoulder aching, I sat in our yard in a lawn chair while Bruce made dinner inside. This day, like all of my others, a gift. All I could think was how much I wanted to be here with this man I adore. I went into the bathroom and wrote PLEASE MARRY ME in black permanent marker across my lower back and midsection. I knew if I didnt do it immediately, Id chicken out. Not that Im afraid of commitment, or even of being with my true love, but it is difficult to take that leap of faith after a divorce.

When I was twenty-two, the question was popped for me by a surprise pregnancy. I had no fantasy of how a man would ask me to marry him; I only knew this scenario was not remotely close to what I thought it might be. We were good Catholic kidsof course we got married. I was carrying the child of the man I loved. Still, when I look back at the girl I was then, with more than two decades of hindsight, one word comes to mind: doomed.

Years later, going through a divorce was like jumping off a sinking ship, only everyone you know wonders what you did to damage the hull or to deserve a life raft. The worst day of my life was telling my nine-year-old son that his dad and I were separating. As Raymond Carver wrote about his own dismantling marriage, Id rather take poison than go through that again.

A whole day passed before Bruce noticed the proposal inked on my body. He lifted my shirt and read slowly, SE MAR? Whats that?

I hadnt considered the size of my handwritten letters on my torso. Id just picked up a marker and started writingin reverse in the bathroom mirror. The SE of PLEASE and MAR of MARRY blended together around the edge of my stomach.

I pointed out each word individually. Oh, Bruce said. I thought those were marks leftover from when you got x-rayed in the emergency room.

We laughed and laughed.

This is a proposal, I said finally.

Yes, he said solidly. Surely.

Im forty-three and Bruce is sixty-four, so becoming a bride likely means I will become a widow. A joyful marriage awaits, but perhaps so does eventual tragedy. Bruce tells me that worn-out joke about a ninety-year-old guy who marries a much younger woman. His doctor says, Somebody could get hurt, and the old guy responds: If she dies, she dies.

We decide to be secretly engaged and elope to Las Vegas in Januarysix months awaythen throw a big party in the spring when all of our four kids can be there.