Random thoughts in the wee hours…
The loons are up early today, and that means I am, too. Sue and I have lived on Pickerel Lake here in northwest Wisconsin for a long time–32 years as of May 30th–and every summer we hear the loons. You can’t mistake them for any other kind of bird. We have geese, of course, with their incessant honking. Ducks, whose quacks are so overpowered by the geese that we rarely hear them unless we happen to be down by the shore as they swim by. Earlier this spring, we had a swan, who hung around for a few days before leaving, evidently looking for a mate. Maybe his date never showed, or maybe she’d been stood up. Swans mate for life, although there can be breakups if nesting fails, from what I’ve read. There are various types of swans, and it appears we have the trumpeter on our lakes up here.
Loons are much smaller than swans but more common up here. You can’t miss them, either visually or audibly. They don’t fly very well, so they tend to hang around a lake for a long time once they’ve found one to their liking. Unlike geese, they don’t congregate in flocks. Typically, one will show up here in early spring and spread the word just widely enough to bring in a companion. On lakes of Pickerel’s size (38 acres), one pair of loons will claim the lake and others will move on.
Picken took this picture on a lake near Minocqua, which is about a hundred miles east of here. More on Minocqua in a bit.
Loons are diving birds, which is why they’re called “divers” in Europe. We’ll watch one cruising slowly past our house and then suddenly, under he (or she) goes. Several seconds later, the loon pops to the surface some yards away. The most interesting trait of loons is their call. There are five distinctive calls of the loon. The “wail” is the one that woke me this morning.
If you have to be awakened early by something, the wail of a loon isn’t a bad choice, really. It’s kind of sad to think that in a few more weeks, we won’t be hearing it anymore. Not because the loons will be leaving our lake, though. More on that in a bit, too.
“It’s quarter to three…”
We subscribe to SiriusXM satellite radio in our cars and at home, and one of my favorite channels is Siriusly Sinatra. As you might expect from the label, it features the music of the late great Frank Sinatra, but also other singers from the era of the great crooners. One of his biggest hits was “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)”, which was written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the 1943 movie, The Sky’s the Limit. It was performed in the film by Fred Astaire; Sinatra’s version was recorded in 1947 and became one of his standards. It was even played at his funeral in 1998. The haunting lyrics have an unforgettable beginning:
It’s quarter to three
There’s no one in the place, ‘cept you and me,
So set ’em up, Joe,
I got a little story I think you should know.
The song has been covered by many singers, male and female. It’s a diverse group, ranging from Sinatra to Cab Calloway, Chuck Berry and Willie Nelson on the male side, and women from Billie Holiday to Rosemary Clooney to Bette Midler. It’s a song about a man sitting in a bar, all alone at 2:45am, and telling the bartender a story about lost love. Sinatra gave it his distinctive touch, and his version (which he recorded three times from 1947-66) is the most famous: “One for My Baby.”
Any guy hearing that song, especially the Sinatra version, says one of two things to himself: “I don’t want to be that guy,” or “I know exactly how he feels.” I can definitely relate to the first one, because one of my greatest fears at one time was that I’d be that guy.
Fortunately, Sue and I made it. Like many relationships, it was touch and go there for awhile, but since July 3, 1993, when she called me from her hotel room in St. Paul, Minn., and asked me to drive over and accompany her to The Phantom of the Opera that night, we’ve been together. Since then, it’s been nowhere but onward and upward. Less than 11 months later, we moved into this house on the lake.
So, back to Minocqua…
Earlier in this piece, I mentioned Minocqua, a town of about 5,000 in Oneida County, 107 miles to the east of where we live now. It’s a pretty town, quintessential “up nort'” in many ways. I’ve been there exactly one time: March 3, 2026, a little more than two months ago. Rice Lake High School was playing the host, Lakeland Union High, in the first round of the Wisconsin state high school boys basketball playoffs. I was covering the game for WJMC-FM Radio, my employer up here for the better part of 35 years. I rode the team bus for this one, along with my broadcast partner, Daniel Broker, a senior at RLHS who has a bright future in radio. Our Warriors prevailed in overtime over the Thunderbirds, 61-60. It was an exciting game and the broadcast went very well, and fittingly so, because it was the last boys basketball game for me on this radio station. I’d go on to call two more RLHS girls games, the second of which was their loss to Beaver Dam in the state Division 2 semifinals in Green Bay ten days after the boys game in Minocqua. (The boys lost their next game after the Lakeland victory, ending their season; another announcer called that one because Sue and I were in Arizona, visiting my brother and his family.)
Minocqua plays a significant role in one of my books, The Heights of Valor. Although I’d not yet visited the town at the time I wrote the book, I chose it for my protagonist’s hometown because I’d read that it was the quintessential northern Wisconsin place.
First place, baby!
I’d stayed up a little late the past three nights, watching baseball. Readers of my blog know that I’m a rather serious fan of the game, having followed the Milwaukee Brewers since their first season, 1970. Last night, the lads completed a three-game sweep of their biggest rivals, the Chicago Cubs, with a dominant 5-0 win that included a play that pretty much defined the series for both teams: PCA’s whiff in center. The Brewers left town in first place in the National League’s Central Division, having dropped the Cubs down to third behind the St. Louis Cardinals, who will open a huge series in Milwaukee this Monday, on Memorial Day. Before that, the Brewers have an even bigger series at home: the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, who swept the Brewers in last year’s National League Championship Series, come to town for a three-game set beginning tomorrow night.
Now, about that earlier hint…
Back at the beginning of this early-morning missive, I said that our days of hearing loon calls are numbered. Not because the loons will be leaving our lake. We’re the ones who will be leaving, instead.
It was nearly two years ago that I wrote a post about the lure of the Mississippi River. Well, that lure was strong, so strong that Sue and I will be moving down there soon. Last year, we made some scouting trips down to Crawford and Vernon counties, eventually buying a lot in northwestern Crawford, just south of the village of De Soto.
We’ve contracted with a design firm, True North Log & Timber Homes of Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada, which has plans for our dream home ready to send to our contractor, JD Powell Construction. We met our architect, James, when we visited the True North factory in Bracebridge at the end of November. Our contractor, Jon, came aboard after a meeting at a home show in Onalaska at the end of March. That was about the time we hired Six Lakes Realty of Chetek, Sue’s hometown, to sell our house on Pickerel Lake. John and Julie Flor did the job for us; we reached agreement with a buyer last weekend and will close the deal on July 13th.
This is a huge move for us. As mentioned earlier, we’ve been here on Pickerel Lake for more than three decades. This was the first home Sue and I had together. It’s where we raised our kids, Kim and Jim. We have three cats and two dogs buried here. Our canoe, which will go to the new owners, is down at the shoreline, waiting for our next little excursion out on the water.
So, why move? That’s a pretty good question. One reason is, I grew up down in the Driftless Area, and since we’ve lived up here in the lakes region, Sue’s native area, for all these years, she said it’s only fair that we spend some time down in my stomping ground. I certainly appreciate that sentiment, but there are other reasons, and to be honest, we can’t really put our finger on them. Maybe it’s because as we approach our 70s, it’s becoming more of a challenge to keep up the grounds of our lakefront home, including Sue’s nine gardens. Maybe it’s just because we felt it was time for a change, what with Sue having sold her business last fall.
Maybe it’s just the lure of the river, as I’ve written about before. What I do know is that this venture has fallen into place so neatly that I think a higher power is involved here. I started thinking that when Sue and I took some scouting trips down there last year. I remember thinking, as our first trip approached almost exactly a year ago, that I hoped the Lord would bless us with good weather down there, so Sue would see the river in all its majesty, and that’s exactly what happened. And we had great weather again the next time, and the next, and the next…
You tend to get the picture when things like that happen.
So, we’re counting the days. We have long to-do lists that seem to be barely under control as we check items off but think of other things to add. Fortunately, the big things are moving along right on schedule. We have a rental unit all set to go, a charming little cabin in the woods a few miles west of Seneca, a village in central Crawford County that, ironically, was the place where my father worked his first job in educational administration, as principal of Seneca High School back in 1964-65. I attended 2nd grade that year in Mt. Sterling, an even smaller hamlet east of Seneca.
Even though I only lived there that one year, Crawford County has always been special to me. It’s where I set my novel, The Man In the Arena. It’s just above my home county, Grant, so I’ll be able to see relatives and old school friends a lot more often. Sue is already looking forward to more frequent visits with her best friend from college, who lives upriver in Alma. We’ve scoped out the town of Viroqua, which will be our go-to place for supermarket, gym and coffee shop stops. And, I’ll be staying in radio, having secured a job with the Robinson Corp., which owns the radio stations in Viroqua and Prairie du Chien. Instead of calling Rice Lake Warriors football games this fall, I’ll be making my debut as the “voice” of the Prairie du Chien Blackhawks when they open their season in La Crosse against Aquinas on August 21st. I’m really excited about that game, as it’ll be in the UW-La Crosse stadium, where I called many a game during my time at WKTY Radio from 1982-90.
So, a lot has been happening, with a lot more to come. I glance at the clock on my computer and it says it’s now 6:18am. Time to get the day truly underway.
A Strenuous Writer's Life 