Marquette had one 4-way stop and two taverns, including “Bud’s Never Inn.” There were four public boat landings, a supper club, and a trailer-park/resort, a post office, and a two-room antique store. The village ran up the hill from the lake for four or five streets, and was about two blocks wide. The population was only 162. Although the establishments were modest, there was more commercial life than in Endeavor, most of it centered on fishing, hunting, and recreational use of the lake, along with the food and alcohol to fuel those activities.
I had reservations at Hotel Puckaway* for the night. The “hotel” was the second floor of the Van Epern home. It was a large, rambling farm house, covered in white clapboard. The sign out front said that the hotel was established in 1890, and it looked its age. A hallway ran the length of the second story, off of which there were eight tiny rooms plus a men’s and a women’s baths. I was paying only $20 for the night, and was not expecting any luxuries. But the small TV in my room did not work. The top drawer of the dresser was missing, the gaping space filled with National Geographic and NRA magazines. There were no lamps in the room, only a 70-watt overhead light. The room lacked an air conditioner, and I felt cheated when I noticed operational instructions for one posted next to the window.
However, it was just $20, and the view out the window was pleasant. It looked out on a tall blue-spruce and a broad yard beyond. Three chickadees were playing in the spruce branches and chattering loudly. In the morning they would do duty as my alarm clock, since that was another item missing from the room.
Tom Van Epern helped me park the baidarka in the garage, and we talked as I unloaded the gear needed for the night. Tom’s father owned a bakery in Kaukauna, just up the road from Appleton. One of eight children, Tom grew up watching how hard his dad worked – six days a week, ten to eleven hours a day, with Saturday-night bowling as his only free-time activity. As soon as Tom could, he escaped the bakery by enlisting in the Navy. Now retired, Tom said that Kaukauna had changed so much since his childhood that he would not even go back to visit. And the bakery was gone too, having been sold several times, and then, in its final incarnation as the Hilltop Bakery, having gone bankrupt.
I showered and relaxed for a while, listening to the chickadees and skimming through one of the NRA magazine, and then went out. I strolled the village, looking for the old Caw Caw Club. While the duck-hunting clubs of the 1900s were long gone, I had read that one group’s former clubhouse remained; the Caw Caw Club had occupied a fine, three-story home overlooking the lake. Built by a retired sea captain, it had a spiral ship’s staircase and rooms laid out like a ship’s staterooms.1 The outside was covered with cobbles laid up like bricks, and pillars, rising from ground level to the eaves three stories above, fronted first and second floor porches.
I soon found it, but no one was around to show me the ship-like interior. As it was already 6:30 in the evening, I walked down to the four-way stop. As I neared the intersection, I discovered the antique shop was still open. I stopped in, surprised it was operating so late on a Friday. The owner, a nice white-haired woman in her 60s, said that she kept Friday evening hours to hook people on their way to the fish fry in the supper club.
With big picture windows in the front, the shop was well lit and airy. It was clean, tidy, and the most organized antique store I had ever been in. Everything had its place. The tools were all in one area, organized by type and size. Cast iron banks were in their own display case. Toy cars sat on their designated shelf. Among the sporting goods, I found and bought a pair of used binoculars for $15. At that price I could use them on the kayak without losing too much if they fell overboard.
There was no breakfast café in Marqutte, so from the antique shop, I headed past the stop signs to the trailer-park/resort. It had a little store, where I bought the best breakfast food they had to offer - a Sara Lee plastic-packaged Danish pastry and a bottle of orange juice. The clerk showed me a map of the lake and we discussed the route that I should take through the marshy islands and spoil banks from Marquette to the lake’s outlet to the Fox River.
Retracing my steps to the four-way stop, I went to the supper club for dinner. My waitress, named Charity, lived in the nearby town of Coleman. Charity bragged up the supper club’s desserts. She also bragged up her new boy friend, who, she claimed, cooked, did laundry, and was good to her child. At the next table, a heavy-smoking, cocktail-drinking, old woman cackled that he was a keeper.
Back in the hotel, I read old National Geographics until it was time to sleep. But I was awakened at 1 a.m. by a male voice in the next room. He was just coming in. So, the hotel had other inmates. What surprised me more was that apparently there was already a woman in that room. I had not heard any sounds from her before. There was soon noise a plenty coming through the paper-thin walls. Fortunately the guy was a quick finisher, and I was soon asleep again.
*Again, I have changed some names of people and places to respect the privacy of individuals.
1. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, at page 12. Trails Books, 1998.
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