Author: ruralwrite

There might not be a synchronized Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” involved, but we might be found at one of the area’s Fourth of July fireworks celebrations.

The celebration calls for a trip across the town of Hale to Pleasantville, for sure.

I’ve always been amazed how those celebrations pull together people in even the smallest communities. There might be things about the Fourth of July and the signing of the Declaration of Independence about which historians might have some disagreements, but there’s little to disagree about when it comes to how people are drawn to those events.

Dee and I kicked around that phenomenon a bit over the years, especially as we’ve sat patiently waiting while dusk settled in and other activities ended so the annual fireworks could begin.

I figured many years ago that I’d eventually give up on the excitement of those Fourth of July oooohs and aaaahs. It never occurred to me that my parents might be making the 10-mile drive from our Veefkind farm and into town because they wanted to see the fireworks – me believing they were doing favors for me and my siblings.

There were some Fourth of July fireworks displays around the nation that impressed me as a young adult and, when I had children of my own, I figured their attendance was a good enough excuse for me to hear the booms and bangs and to see the sky lighted with sparkling and twinkling colors. It also seemed like a good excuse to make a massive bag full of popcorn and sit with them on blankets in parks to watch their eyes light up with amazement about the display, always making that popcorn taste a little better.

Our children all have grown, so I’m out of excuses. I have to admit that we go to them because I like to go to them, and I’m fairly sure Dee also likes to go.

We probably will again go this year, likely fighting some Wisconsin summer humidity, mosquitoes and – if we choose to watch it from the car – occasionally foggy windshield glass. We might be the folks in one of the cars, listening to old-time radio shows in the moments before the fireworks start.

And, though the pure child-at-heart enjoyment of seeing the fireworks together is a good enough reason for our continued attendance, it will be a time for community bonding in unspoken ways folks in rural communities best understand.

People who live in rural communities like their special mixes of quiet solitude while enjoying an occasional boom of excitement. Fireworks, as I think about it, represent everything about the rural countryside.

We like having neighbors while watching the fireworks, but manage to withdraw into our own small worlds of personal peace, metaphorically and physically. We know our neighbors are out there somewhere in the darkness, and we’re fine with that – but don’t mind the occasional burst of light to remind us where that they’re not far away.

We like the moments of silence, the neighbors and sky hushed in anticipation of what’s to come and then sharing smiles and those oooohs and aaaahs when the moments of noisy excitement arrive.

There’s little talk when the fireworks end and people go to their homes in small towns and countryside. Maybe that’s because of fatigue, fireworks’ grand finales generally being later than the normal bedtimes for us folks rising to the top of the age-scale. But I also like to think there’s silence because the fireworks already said all that needed to be said.

When people in the rural communities such as those in our northern Driftless Area leave a fireworks show, they’ve shared in few words, reactions, and knowing smiles and head nods that we’re all in this thing together.

The people leaving our area’s Fourth of July fireworks displays will go back to their business of slogging through rural life in each person’s unique way. But for those few minutes all that is different among us is ignored and neighbors become community.

Maybe we’ll see you, our community, somewhere at dusk on the Fourth of July; maybe in Pleasantville. I’ll only ask you to ignore my head nodding in tempo to the fireworks because, in my mind, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” will be accompanying every boom.

— Scott Schultz

A guy’s excitement about moving from Chicago to Appleton isn’t necessarily the sort of topic a fellow might expect to find in a country tavern in the northern Driftless Area, but that’s the very subject a bunch of local guys were kicking around the other night over at York.

In the story, the Chicago guy said he’d visited the Fox River Valley area a while ago, and found Wisconsin to be refreshingly quiet and peaceful. He liked it there so much that he picked up his urban stakes and moved to Appleton.

The discussion, as we in this area might suspect, was primarily about what in the Fox River Valley he found to be so quiet and peaceful.

The guys in the tavern seemed to have the same notion as me where such quiet and peacefulness is concerned. I suppose peace and quiet can be found plenty in the Fox River Valley though I never really found it there while running several of their marathons over the years.

There’s a good chance, even, that things are much more peaceful when you’re not fighting through a marathon.

No matter, I had to nod my head in agreement about what the guys were saying in comparing most of Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan corner with what we know over here toward the old Mississippi. It seems to them and to me that there’s always been quite a lot less hubbub going on out our way than what’s always been going on over that other direction. Historically, people left the areas of huge population to go there, and then came out this direction to escape things even more.

These days, maybe only the middle of the north’s forest-country is as quiet and as peaceful as the majority of days we have here in the northern Driftless. I’m not trying to stir civil unrest between the east and west, of course, but facts are facts.

Somewhere during that tavern discussion, the subject came up with the guys about what it would take to get them to sell their rural northern Driftless properties and move to another area.

What if someone offered you several million bucks to buy the land and mine it?

What if you won the lottery and could afford to live anywhere you wanted?

I’ve been around those discussions before, and they generally end up with folks saying there would be some hard decisions to make, if those sorts of things ever fell onto their laps. Maybe an island in some warm clime would be a nice place to live; maybe selling the land for a couple million would provide their young’uns with anything they’d ever need.

Such wasn’t the case with that night’s group, though.

Those fellows, whose fingernails have deeply-imbedded soil from Northfield to Pleasantville, took turns to righteously proclaim their commitment to never leave their parcels of quiet and peacefulness.

One of the guys took a long, slow drink from his bottle of Old Milwaukee, and used his free hand to wipe a drip of brew from his chin as his other hand gently returned the bottle to the bar’s surface.

“I don’t care if somebody offered me $6 million for my 120 acres,” one of the guys said. “That land means more than that, to me.”

There’s the quiet and peace that’s found out in our part of the countryside, but such an opinion runs much deeper, another of the guys offered. The ridges and coulees offer much more, he said.

“Have you ever really stopped to look around at this area?” the second gent said. “There’s no place in the world as beautiful as this.”

Some of what came from that group could have been passed off as things said by folks who’ve never really seen some of the world’s most grand sights. All of them were fully the products of northern Driftless Area soil, for certain, but all of them had been in many places around the globe. They’ve seen the greatest mountains, great valleys, jungles and icebergs.

“What he said,” a third guy piped in, his thumb pointing toward the previous speaker. “I’ve seen a lot of the world, but there’s been nothing like this, right here.”

Another of the men had quietly been looking straight ahead, barely showing that he was listening to comments made by the others. His measured words finally broke his silence.

“Why, if I won millions of dollars, the only land I’d buy would be all around mine, just to keep it like it is. I’d let people hunt there and everything, but I’d make sure nothing ever changed about that land.”

I know that group doesn’t represent everyone’s feelings about this grand countryside, but it was interesting to not find anyone of a different opinion in that place.

I had pressed them, and one of them felt compelled to return the favor and press me.

“Hey,” said the guy who’d been least vocal of the bunch. “You’re that guy who’s always writing. Why don’t you write something about us?”

“I believe I will,” I answered. “I believe I will.”

— Scott Schultz

— Scott Schultz