MERRILL Wisconsin
In April (16-25, 2025), I booked a trip ‘home’ to Gleason, Wisconsin, because my older sister, Arlene, a resident of Pine Crest, was seriously ill. It is better to visit the near and dear before rather than after they pass away.The issue was a pain-reliever proportion balance issue — she had a deep forearm wound — and by the time Karen and I arrived, she was fine. It became seven days of storytelling in two-hour sessions, touring the homeland, and examining a plastic storage box of old black and white and faded color photos (more on this a bit further on).
This caught my attention:
I flew from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Minneapolis, the Delta flight filled with Minnesotans of Norwegian descent returning home. They were gruff, big and kindly Norwegian men settling their families and helping tiny Indian and Pakistani women get their stuff in the overheads. And so many of these gruff men and kindly women were (morbidly) obese. I am uncertain whether this was true when I lived in Wisconsin, if I didn’t notice it, if it’s a Minnesota Norwegian phenomenon, or if Midwesterners have suddenly become overweight. I am at the moment sitting in a cafe overlooking the main square in Semur-en-Auxios, teeming with tourists and natives. I see very few overweight, much less obese people.
[ I won’t do an EU-USA comparative obesity study, but obesity rates in America have been increasing, with nearly 43% of adults classified as obese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity ]
The second thing I noticed was how wealthy and orderly Merrill and Gleason appeared to be. Wealthy? Well, it was the massive pickup trucks towing motorcycles and/or camping trailers. These are $50,000-$70,000 rigs, and with trailers, the total cost could top $100,000. I did not check whether these rigs were owned or bank-owned, but there were plenty of expensive rigs. The large implement dealer sold lawn tractors; the farm implement dealer was closed. The old home town was looking good.
Poverty, memory and a box of old photos
But when I looked through that box of old photos, Gawd, were we poor, but I just didn’t remember it that way. We kids ran the farm while our father worked in Chicago (returning north once every two weeks). My sisters remember the loneliness, isolation, and hard work. I remember glorious sunsets, towering thunderheads and quiet woods.
Memory is imperfect; old black & white photos are memory restored. I never felt poor as a child. I mentioned to my sisters (we talk every Saturday on Zoom) that we were redneck-neck born, and they (in the kindest sisterly manner possible) excoriated me. in their view, once you are educated, you are no longer a ‘redneck.’
[Thus did Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games) chide J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy) for embracing his ‘redneck’ past. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/jennifer-lawrence-jd-vance-vogue]
In 1951, around 11:30 PM a fire broke out in the chicken house when everyone was asleep. Earl Kressel, leaving the tavern at midnight, noticed the northeastern sky aglow.) He investigated, woke us, and called the fire department. We survived, and the rest is history.
I am revising/republishing my five-novel Long War series, the first volume set in a landscape similar to Lincoln, Oneida and Vilas counties. Spirit Falls, bloody and dramatic though it may be, is, upon rereading, optimistic. Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace explored family dynamics; how, he wonders, is it that one family, despite all its advantages, becomes dissolute, the children wastrels, whereas another, raised in poverty, dissolution, and disadvantage, thrives?
Patrice and I live in a 16th century farmhouse in eastern France. Somewhere I read that your ‘hometown’ is where you want to be buried. I will be buried in the Gleason Cemetery.
