Dr. Jack

Our First Meat Raffle

As I previously mentioned, Kathleen and I were disappointed to learn that Bo’s ‘N Mine, the bar/restaurant on Main Street that had been an institution in River Falls, had closed. We had been looking forward to the meat raffle that we had witnessed in the past and that had been held on Sunday nights. We assumed that the meat raffle had died along with the old name. Still, we liked the feel of the place in its new manifestation as the Nutty Squirrel and went there on a recent Saturday morning to watch Florida’s football team play against the Tennessee Vols. A word or two of explanation is required here.

While waiting to close on our new home and move in, we were spending several weeks with our son and daughter-in-law at their home in River Falls. Ben does not subscribe to a regular cable package and therefore does not get ESPN, which was broadcasting the game. Also, this game is a big deal for us. The Florida-Tennessee game is held in mid-September every year, right around the time of Kathleen’s birthday. Thus, it had become a family tradition for daughter Kristin and her husband, Kevin to join us in Nashville to watch the game and celebrate her birthday. Kristin, Kevin, and I all have one degree or another from the University of Florida and are fans of the team. Since Kathleen and I were momentarily homeless and too far away to view the game with Kristin, we felt it was important to continue the tradition on our own. So there we were, at 11:00 on a Saturday morning at the Nutty Squirrel.

To our dismay, all of the television sets in the bar area were tuned to the Wisconsin-Michigan game. We did, however, find the game on one TV set in the restaurant area. So there we were, sipping Bloody Marys and beers while surrounded by little kids eating pancakes and eggs. It should be mentioned that the Bloody Mary was unlike any I had enjoyed before. It came fully garnished with a large toothpick bearing an olive, a pickle, a hunk of cheese (of course), and a Slim Jim sausage about three inches long. Further, it included a beer chaser. Very elegant. We had a great time cheering the Gators to victory. More important, though, our charming and delightful waitress, Kayli, informed us that the meat raffle was alive and well and living at the Nutty Squirrel on Monday nights. We were beside ourselves with joy.

Two days later, my Chicago Bears were playing Washington on the Monday night game on ESPN. Have I mentioned that Ben does not get ESPN? Off to the Nutty Squirrel again. As soon as we sat at the bar, the waitress gave us two tickets. We simply wrote our names on the back, returned them to her, and waited in glorious expectation for the bounty of meat we were sure would be flowing in our direction.

In a bar surrounded by Packers and Vikings fans, I had to keep a low profile while cheering for their divisional-rivals, the Bears. But no harm befell me, and we had another great time. Every fifteen minutes or so, the bartender called out a name from a ticket. The winner would be led back to the walk-in freezer and allowed to select a package of meat. The woman next to us won early in the evening and chose a package containing six thick pork chops—almost five pounds worth. Winners would shriek with joy and high-five their way back to the freezer. One table of six college students won three times in the course of the evening. Name after name was called, but we remained meatless. As the game entered the fourth quarter, many of the patrons had left and there were only a dozen or so people remaining in the establishment. The bartenders changed shifts, more names were called, and we were beginning to lose hope. By that point in the evening, most of the names being called were absent, and the ticket was tossed. Finally, we heard the magic word, “Kathleen!” and we had won some meat. There wasn’t much left in the freezer, but she selected a nice package of 12 pieces of poultry—a full chicken and four extra thighs. Afterward, we practically danced down the street to our car, clutching our frozen meat in our cold hands. We had such a good time, that we went back again a few weeks later, and Kathleen won again. This time it was early in the drawing, so she had her pick of many items and selected two nice strip steaks. I think we’ll have to keep attending the meat raffle while Kathleen is on a hot streak.

As a postscript, during our first meat raffle, we had the chance to talk to Greg, a man who had been bartending at the same place since the early ‘90s. He explained that the current owner had actually purchased the bar about three years ago. He planned on changing the name right away, but delayed doing so in order to maintain continuity with the customer base. Earlier this year, he shut down for several months for remodeling and updates. They moved the kitchen, opened up the ceiling, and made other changes that I had not noticed at first, given my limited exposure to the place before moving here. The owner also decided that the temporary shut-down gave him the perfect opportunity to change the name. Bo’s ‘N Mine was gone and the Nutty Squirrel rose from its ashes like a beer-serving Phoenix.

Winter is Coming

One of the first obvious differences between Nashville and River Falls is the weather. The day we left Tennessee, it was 97 degrees; when we reached River Falls, the temperature was in the low 80s, although it was fairly humid. As we drove up Golf View Drive to Ben and Amber’s house, I couldn’t help but notice the lush, green lawns surrounding every home. My lawn in Nashville followed a predictable pattern each year. I re-seeded and fertilized in late September. The grass began to look good about the time winter arrived, and it went dormant for a few months. In March and April, my lawn was the envy of the block, thick, green, and beautiful. By June, though, the temperatures rose, rainfall became more sporadic, and the grass began to thin out. By July and August, it was in the mid-90s nearly every day, rain ceased to fall at all, and my once-beautiful lawn turned yellow despite daily watering. Soon, the grass disappeared completely, and my patch of lawn became a patch of dirt littered with dried leaves that had fallen from our burned-out tree. In late September every year, I began the cycle all over again, like Charlie Brown attempting to kick a football and hoping that this time, Lucy wouldn’t pull the ball away at the last second. When we left Nashville, I drove away hiding my face in shame, afraid to meet my neighbors and admit I was leaving a dusty, dirt rectangle where a green lawn had once existed.

In River Falls, every time we tell someone that we are new to town they ask how we like it. We rave about the small-town atmosphere, the mom-and-pop businesses, and of course, about the weather, explaining about Nashville summers. They say, “Yep, summers are pretty nice up hereabouts. But . . .” About that time, a dark cloud passes over their faces. They look around conspiratorially, as if trying to determine if anyone is eavesdropping. Then, in a quiet, ominous voice, straight out of Game of Thrones, they say, “. . . winter is coming!”

Day 3: Small-Town Life

September 16, 2019

After arriving in town on the weekend, we set aside Monday to do some of the other things we had to do to prepare to move into our new home. As veterans of many moves in the past, we figured that we would be waiting in long lines most of the morning, accomplish one or two things, and limp home at lunch beaten down by mindless bureaucrats. That’s the way it had always been in the past. This was different. First of all, virtually all of the businesses in town are situated on Main Street, a thoroughfare that bisects the entire town and covers perhaps a mile or a mile and a half or two miles. For my entire life, I’ve wanted to live somewhere in which I could walk to breakfast. Now I have that. It turned out that everything we needed in River Falls was within a few blocks of each other.

We had breakfast at the South Fork Café and, at 9:00 walked a block down Main Street to The First National Bank of River Falls. We thought we might have to wait, because we had no appointment. The woman with whom we had worked in the past and who had set up our account on the phone saw us walk in, however, and came to greet us with a big smile and a hug. She spoke in the cheerful, sing-song manner of speech common up here (“How ya doin’ guys?”) and turned us over to a woman who helped us get checks and debit cards. Done by 9:20.

Our next stop was city hall, a half-block off of Main, to put the utilities in our name and find out how all of that worked. It turned out that electricity, water, garbage collection, and recycling was all on one account and one bill. We were done in five minutes, and they directed us to the gas company. I was beginning to like this town.

In our longest trip of the morning, we drove about four blocks over to 2^nd Street, one block off of Main. We explained that we weren’t even sure if our home needed gas or if it was all electric. The clerk turned to her computer and prepared to type in our address, but when we told her what it was, she said, “Yep; you have gas.” Didn’t need to look it up; she knew most of the addresses in town and whether or not they had access to gas power. My affection for small towns was growing.

At the post office, also on 2^nd Street, we explained that we were staying at our son’s house temporarily, until our closing on September 30. We were having our Nashville mail forwarded there and wanted the delivery man to know so that he would not be confused by the new names at that address. She jotted this info on a post-it note and said, “Yep, yep; I’ll let him know.” No forms to fill out, no computer entries, a post-it note!

Back on Main Street, we found the State Farm office, and walked in, stepping over a sleeping dog just inside the door. We soon discovered that most River Falls businesses seem to have a policy that says, “No appointment, no problem.” In minutes we were in an office with a young woman explaining that we needed to change our address and some other things on our policy. When we gave her our new address, she smiled and said, “I just hung up the phone after talking to John, the previous owner of that condo.” Small world, small town.

In short, we finished all of our business, had time to go shopping (the grocery store was on Main Street—where else?), and returned home by 11:00.

I think I’m going to love small town life.

Day 2: Goats For Rent

September 15, 2019

Finishing a morning walk on my second day in River Falls, I passed a sign that caught my eye. It read:

ScapeGoats, LLC

Buckthorn Grazing

Rent Our Goats Today!

A phone number at the bottom indicated that this was indeed a legitimate business. My stepson, Ben, and his family live on a nice street adjoining a golf course. These are well-kept homes that are probably considered somewhat upscale for River Falls. Each of these homes, however, has some woods and hills behind the house. An invasive plant called buckthorn can grow wildly in the region, choking off other vegetation between the trees. Apparently, if a homeowner is concerned about the overgrown nature of the foliage behind their house, they can simply rent a small herd (Is it herd of goats? Gaggle? Murder? I can never remember these things) of about fifteen goats. The business owners will then fence off the offensive area and release the voracious animals to do what they do best. The company suggests that goats are better for the environment than chemicals or machinery, they handle the steep slopes of the neighborhood better than lawnmowers, and the munched-on plants are less likely to return than weeds that are merely cut down. Further, they are more entertaining than other options. One group of people who hired the goats held a “goat party” in their yard. They gathered some friends, set up lawn chairs, and served drinks with, of course, goat cheese. They had a big time watching the goats do their thing. Across the street from Ben and Amber’s house, the neighbors rented the goats yesterday. From the driveway, we can watch them working on the hill in their fenced area. I never saw this on the South Side of Chicago.

Day 1: The Bacon Bash

September 15, 2019—First Day in River Falls

On my first full day in my new home town, I took a walk downtown (about two miles) for breakfast at the South Fork Café. Two doors down stood a bar/restaurant that had loomed large in our memories and was one of the things Kathleen and I looked forward to upon moving to River Falls. On an earlier visit, a year or two ago, we conducted an impromptu pub crawl along Main Street and stopped into the bar called Bo’s ‘N Mine. We wandered in, and the bartender immediately informed us that we could enter the “Meat Raffle” free of charge. We declined, as we were just visiting and had no place to store any meat. Periodically, during the night, however, they would call out a winning number and someone won some meat. We thought it might just be venison, or wild turkey, or some sort of game, but they actually awarded nice cuts of beef, poultry, or pork, packaged and ready to cook. Now I discovered that Bo’s ‘N Mine was gone and a new place called The Nutty Squirrel had taken its place. My disappointment was severe, and I ate my breakfast thinking we had missed out on our chance to win meat on a Sunday night.

Just when I thought that our protein intake would suffer by moving to a town that no longer had a meat raffle, my spirits soon picked up again. Upon leaving the South Fork Café after a breakfast that couldn’t be beat, I noticed signs and banners every few steps that advertised the “Bacon Bash,” a small festival that would be held that very day. I had no idea what to expect, but that afternoon I attended the Bacon Bash with Kathleen and Lucas, our six-year-old grandson.

What we found was the typical, small-scale festival with booths hawking everything from hand-made jewelry to windows capable of insulating the owner from Wisconsin’s onerous winter winds. At one end of the street fair, a Janis-Joplin-Wannabe was belting out bluesy songs, but most people gathered around tents with radios broadcasting the Minnesota Vikings versus Green Bay Packers game—a huge regional rivalry in this town near the state border. The centerpiece of the event, however, was the row of food tents, all offering various items containing greater and lesser amounts of bacon. The savory scent of cooking bacon wafted through the air, tempting even the most health-minded people to sample the strange concoctions. Everything there had some sort of bacon–even the cinnamon rolls. For those lacking in imagination, bacon-on-a-stick offered a simple solution to satisfying their pork craving. With a cup of semi-sweet white wine in hand, I chose the shrimp kabob, with each jumbo shrimp wrapped in a brown strip of fried bacon. Kathleen opted for a chicken-wrap sort of thing with bacon bits scattered throughout. Lucas proved to be the most adventurous of all, picking the cheese curds smothered in bacon bits.

For the uninitiated, cheese curds are a regional delicacy found in Canada and northern parts of the US. “Curds” are sort of the dregs of cheese remaining after the cheese-making process is completed. They are little pieces of cheese in balls or small lengths, and, in Wisconsin, they tend to be made of cheddar. While the cranberry is the official state food of Wisconsin, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a restaurant that does not serve cheese curds. In fact, cheese in general is ubiquitous. With every meal you order, you might be asked, “Do you want a wheel of cheese with that or just a wedge?” Another feature of Wisconsin-style cheese curds is that they are invariably lightly battered and deep fried. If the mere description of these little treats doesn’t have your mouth watering and your arteries hardening, picture them mixed with fresh bacon fried to a crisp brownish-red color scattered generously on the top. They were amazing.

As a post-script to the day, I later bought a local newspaper, which comes out weekly. That particular issue contained a story about the closing of a local landmark, the Bo’s ‘N Mine tavern. Apparently, the bar and restaurant had been operating at that location for more than a half-century. Then the story got a bit strange. The owner hadn’t sold the business, he still owned it but had simply renamed it to The Nutty Squirrel. I’m not sure why you would change the name of a business with fifty years of name recognition built up, but that’s exactly what he did. The story went on to explain that they had done extensive renovations on the interior of the building. So, later that week, we eagerly took the family to the new Nutty Squirrel to see what it looked like after the massive changes. Inside, however, I could detect a few cosmetic changes, but no substantial differences from what it had looked like before. Now admittedly, I had only been in there a couple of times before, so perhaps I was missing something. I’ll keep you posted.