Ward Peck's Jersey Tawk: "Making memories to last a lifetime" (Printed July 13, 2007)
Did you know Bloomer, Wisconsin is the jump roping capital of the world?
When Kari informed me of this purported fact, I was incredulous. Surely there were some girls in Harlem who might have an issue with Bloomer’s claim, I said. Set in rolling hills alternating between corn and silos and thickets of woodland just north of the city of Eau Claire (population 61,700), downtown Bloomer, all four blocks of it, looks like the kind of place a Frank Capra character would leave to set the politicians straight. Kari, my mother-in-law Mary and my brother-in-law Bob stopped into the Main Street Café where I ordered a hot beef and a malted milkshake.
“Isn’t Bloomer the jump-roping capital?” Kari asked our young waitress.
“Yes it is,” she replied, adding that the big event happens in January.
“Don’t people come from all over the world?”
"Not really," the young woman said sheepishly, then quickly recovering “I was a jumper. I jumped 54 times in 10 seconds. The record is 73 times in 10 seconds.”
That is impressive and pretty hard to argue with, even, I imagine, if I were a girl from Harlem.
And so it is and here we are. Like me, Kari is no Mainer and also like me she would never pretend to be. She loves her Midwestern roots and the community that raised her. Kari was born in Eau Claire.
This part of the country, on the southern border of the North Woods doesn’t look much like the east coast. The sky seems bigger and the distances longer. For an Easterner like me, the hardest thing to get past is that there seems to be so much land. It stretches out toward infinity in every direction. Eau Claire itself sprawls from its traditional center almost uniformly as if someone transferred the map of a city onto a piece of putty and stretched it out. There are roads – not highways – where the right-of-way must be 300 feet across. Clairmont Avenue has eight lanes in parts.
Much has changed in Eau Claire since Kari left 15 or so years ago, but what she focuses on is what is the same and the people she never left behind. It is where her parents grew up and their parents as well. Being five or so hours by car from my homestead in New Jersey, we get there fairly often but the opportunities to visit Kari’s family are few and far between. I came out this way with her a number of years ago when we were dating, but six months after we married, I had not met many of my new relatives.
We attended a 50th wedding anniversary party for Kari’s Uncle Jerry and Aunt Betty at an old farm property the couple’s children use as a weekend retreat way outside town where the cars share the roads with Amish buggies. In a hangar-like outbuilding and safe from the blazing sun, that cooked the ground and everything on it to a crispy 96-degrees, I met uncles and aunts, cousins, and wives, second-cousins and friends from the old neighborhood. As I tried to keep everyone straight, trying to build a family tree in my head, Kari ran around hugging and laughing and I understood why it was so important we time our vacation so it included the party .
The next day, Kari, Bob, Mary and I met Bob’s old friend John on the golf course, where a slight breeze was the only thing that made the relentless sun and heat bearable. Kari acted as Mary’s chauffer as Bob crushed his tee shots and John swatted at the ball with a half swing setting the ball sailing farther than my skinny arms and legs could ever manage. Mary – a woman who lived through the second world war-– out distanced my shots, at least when I managed to actually hit the ball. While my shots sailed wildly left and right (I lost four balls, took three do-over’s and gave up before reaching the green on several holes), you could count on Mary being in the center of the fairway. And this was all under that unforgiving sun. By the time we were on the 15th hole, we were the only ones on the course.
For Kari and I there was only the few brief days to spend with the people she loves and misses dearly and we were not going to squander that opportunity sitting in air-conditioning watching TV. The distance and time that separates Kari from her family makes these opportunities all the more precious but true whether the people live next door, in the next town, or state or time zone. Sometimes we mistake proximity with permanence. Kari, whose father died a few years before we met, has no such illusion as our time here makes clear.
We already decided we’ll be back next summer. We’ll rent the same cottage north of Bloomer that Kari’s family rented 30 years ago. We’ll pack the dog and drive out with Betty and meet Mary and Bob and his wife Amy.
Clairmont Avenue might have another lane by then but that cottage by Clear Lake has changed little in all those years. The sun will still be hot and the fish will still be hungry and old memories will make room for new additions. In Wisconsin, there’s room enough for that.
–Ward Peck
When Kari informed me of this purported fact, I was incredulous. Surely there were some girls in Harlem who might have an issue with Bloomer’s claim, I said. Set in rolling hills alternating between corn and silos and thickets of woodland just north of the city of Eau Claire (population 61,700), downtown Bloomer, all four blocks of it, looks like the kind of place a Frank Capra character would leave to set the politicians straight. Kari, my mother-in-law Mary and my brother-in-law Bob stopped into the Main Street Café where I ordered a hot beef and a malted milkshake.
“Isn’t Bloomer the jump-roping capital?” Kari asked our young waitress.
“Yes it is,” she replied, adding that the big event happens in January.
“Don’t people come from all over the world?”
"Not really," the young woman said sheepishly, then quickly recovering “I was a jumper. I jumped 54 times in 10 seconds. The record is 73 times in 10 seconds.”
That is impressive and pretty hard to argue with, even, I imagine, if I were a girl from Harlem.
And so it is and here we are. Like me, Kari is no Mainer and also like me she would never pretend to be. She loves her Midwestern roots and the community that raised her. Kari was born in Eau Claire.
This part of the country, on the southern border of the North Woods doesn’t look much like the east coast. The sky seems bigger and the distances longer. For an Easterner like me, the hardest thing to get past is that there seems to be so much land. It stretches out toward infinity in every direction. Eau Claire itself sprawls from its traditional center almost uniformly as if someone transferred the map of a city onto a piece of putty and stretched it out. There are roads – not highways – where the right-of-way must be 300 feet across. Clairmont Avenue has eight lanes in parts.
Much has changed in Eau Claire since Kari left 15 or so years ago, but what she focuses on is what is the same and the people she never left behind. It is where her parents grew up and their parents as well. Being five or so hours by car from my homestead in New Jersey, we get there fairly often but the opportunities to visit Kari’s family are few and far between. I came out this way with her a number of years ago when we were dating, but six months after we married, I had not met many of my new relatives.
We attended a 50th wedding anniversary party for Kari’s Uncle Jerry and Aunt Betty at an old farm property the couple’s children use as a weekend retreat way outside town where the cars share the roads with Amish buggies. In a hangar-like outbuilding and safe from the blazing sun, that cooked the ground and everything on it to a crispy 96-degrees, I met uncles and aunts, cousins, and wives, second-cousins and friends from the old neighborhood. As I tried to keep everyone straight, trying to build a family tree in my head, Kari ran around hugging and laughing and I understood why it was so important we time our vacation so it included the party .
The next day, Kari, Bob, Mary and I met Bob’s old friend John on the golf course, where a slight breeze was the only thing that made the relentless sun and heat bearable. Kari acted as Mary’s chauffer as Bob crushed his tee shots and John swatted at the ball with a half swing setting the ball sailing farther than my skinny arms and legs could ever manage. Mary – a woman who lived through the second world war-– out distanced my shots, at least when I managed to actually hit the ball. While my shots sailed wildly left and right (I lost four balls, took three do-over’s and gave up before reaching the green on several holes), you could count on Mary being in the center of the fairway. And this was all under that unforgiving sun. By the time we were on the 15th hole, we were the only ones on the course.
For Kari and I there was only the few brief days to spend with the people she loves and misses dearly and we were not going to squander that opportunity sitting in air-conditioning watching TV. The distance and time that separates Kari from her family makes these opportunities all the more precious but true whether the people live next door, in the next town, or state or time zone. Sometimes we mistake proximity with permanence. Kari, whose father died a few years before we met, has no such illusion as our time here makes clear.
We already decided we’ll be back next summer. We’ll rent the same cottage north of Bloomer that Kari’s family rented 30 years ago. We’ll pack the dog and drive out with Betty and meet Mary and Bob and his wife Amy.
Clairmont Avenue might have another lane by then but that cottage by Clear Lake has changed little in all those years. The sun will still be hot and the fish will still be hungry and old memories will make room for new additions. In Wisconsin, there’s room enough for that.
–Ward Peck
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