Roadhouse blues...

...are long gone now.  So far gone the memories only come in flashbacks of instances.  Some more instant than others and it seems I've been having the long version lately.  Its the music.  It sometimes leaves me...but, has been a major part of my life in one way or another.  I suppose it was my two older sisters and their infatuation with Elvis.  For me it was Elvis and Marilyn...until Elvis sold out to las vegas.  A little of me died with Marilyn...I had grown up with her and only saw innocence.  But innocence died on November 22 1963...ironic.  I had seen Jack Kennedy in Madison in 1960 when my father took me to see him at the UW fieldhouse just a few blocks from my school...there was so much hope for us young kids.  It was like Buddy Holly...and the day the music died.

I can't say I am particularily musically inclined.  Other than enjoying it immensely...My guitar skills have taken 40 years and are severely held back for that many years.  I am envious of naturals like Dan Hicks or Elvis Costello...Toots Hibbard of the Maytals.  Bob Marley...I've told that story.  But, this is a different one.  About Bunkys and the Cactus Rose...the club and the roadhouse I owned with partners.  In another life...

Bunkys is a trilogy in itself so I can only say it was the first bar I went into when I was 18.  An Italian restaurant of the old school with checkered table cloths and $3.50 spaghetti and an old wooden backbar...it was classic in Madisons Bush neighborhood.  The only unusual part to my 18th birthday was I would later become an honorary Italian...playing basketball for the Italian Workmans Club and becoming president of a pizza company.  And owning part of the club upstairs of the pizza biz...Bunkys.  We were infamous on the Madison music scene.

My partners father owned the building on a busy corner and could no longer run the business...so he advised me on the pizza biz and we cleared out the restaurant upstairs for a New York style club complete with rafters and pipes showing.  All black...with a great sound system.  we needed space for more bodies with the bands we planned on bringing in so small tables and lots of chairs.  It was a slow start...we knew lots of local musicians.  The owner of the club where I saw Dan Hicks called my house one afternoon looking for a band to open for Johnny Winter...there just happened to be enough guys to form one on the spot.  They were awful...

Cheap Trick was a local band...I had seen them so many times they were one of my favorites but not who they are now.  We hired them for new years eve and 20 people showed up...it was really cold but we had a great night with staff and the band...and the 20 people.  Our reputation grew...A booking agent really scored for us though.  I almost couldn't believe it...bands that were on Saturday Night Live were playing in our club the following saturday night.  Elvis Costello, Eddy Money, Robert Palmer...I can't remember them all.  It was like work...and how I got invited to Bob Marleys Hotel suite.  That promoter was an old friend and our competition but we all moved into his old farmhouse and between our club and his promotions and restaurant on State street...we almost owned Madisons music scene.  But, the pizza biz was paying for it all...

My friend and partner was the business manager and when we found out third partner was selling us all short by taking on new partners for personal money we closed the pizza biz and went on a fishing trip to canada for 10 days.  Did I mention the pizza business paid the bills...well the third partner said he'd be broke when we got back and he was.  Other than having to duke it out with him at a Huey Lewis concert I never saw him again.  Its a tough business that music business...

Well...I moved to Austin only to find out I was supposed to get married in Madison.  I did the right thing...I guess.  That didn't work out very well and took 18 years of my life.  Another another life...I won't dwell there so anyways...I discovered this farm.  I found it two days after my fathers funeral.  The very same farm that I loved and guided sports on for a decade at the time.  After burying my father I needed an escape and it was only a few days and I was driving out of my way to show the valley I now live in to some friends.  There was a for sale sign in front and I stopped the car and said I was buying it.  I did...

Now, My business in my other life...a recycling center, was doing well but 85 miles to my farm was getting old and I needed a business in the area.  Low and behold there was another for sale sign...on a roadhouse.  The Cactus Rose...legend in this dry county.  Alcohol was limited to specific towns and the county seat was dry.  The rose was the closest bar to the largest town in the county.  And a happening place the first times I stopped in to check it out.  The fire chief owned it and had it running smooth.  All I should have to do is plug my name into it...and it did for a while.  A true roadhouse with a dj and dancing...mostly younger crowd but locals called it home.  And, dropped their underage kids off for me to babysit...a nightmare with the police.

The highlight for me was a wednesday jam night...local oldsters came in and got on stage.  Many professional musicians from bands came to have a sophisticated night out.  Sophisticated for the small town we were just outside of...I have many fine memories of friends and family.  And, some really good music.  Then the laws in the county changed and flooded the dry town I was close to...first the bowling alley and then restauarants and the final straw to us...Barry Alverez of the UW Badgers Barry Alverez opened a bar right in the center of town.  And, for some reason I had a sudden surge of police watching my customers as they drove the three miles to town.  Barry would stop in our place on the way back to Madison and we'd buy him and his friends drinks...insult to injury.  I don't think his sports bar did any better in the long run.  Its still a dry town.  In its mood and thinking and personality...I seldom go there preferring the equal distance to Viroqua.  A very hip town.  With a flyshop...

The music never died, though...its still here in the valley.  Everybody plays or sings or something. When I first moved out here by myself...for three years after the divorce, I met some local musicians and we jammed until the floor of this old farmhouse shook the cans off the pantry shelves.  Pro's too...I was really the only amateur and finally learned to play my 1968 candy apple red Gibson ES330 I had since college.  We had some great parties...wholesome.  Like I always tell my young kids from my second family...you can be a good person and still be hip.  They don't know hip so I have to repeat it as cool.  They understand that...

A shot of the Cactus Rose and that 10 day trip to Canada...

A word...

...about google plus.  J'adore...milujem...kocham...mi piace!  I love it... I have never had a facebook page and  just spent a lot of time on several flyfishing websites.  And, my local friends don't want to read or see from me what they know and live.  But, what I've always suspected...the driftless area being world class, has come to pass.  Many Americans are now recognizing that also and I hope they are seeing a driftless life from a view outside the magazines and websites.  Well, other websites.  But, all I've done is show pictures of the kickapoo valley and have been welcomed into some of the best communities.  They seem to like what I share...I am truly overwhelmed.  I now have friends from all across the planet...for the price of my backyard.  No...for free.  I've been shown so much more than I've posted.  My debt is large to many...Ivan for welcoming me, Tom for showing me around and my grandmothers homeland.  JC and Gilou...Didier Luy...mes amis francais, have shown me graciousness that I knew from my high school French teacher...she would be proud.  And, three years have finally paid off.  Et Mervete...elle m'a montre la beaute et l'elegance a nouveau .  In detail and a larger picture...with style.  Je suis amazed.  Merci mes amis!  Pardon me for only knowing one other language...well somewhat knowing.  But, thank you to all.  Thank you google plus...

For some that may not know...you can traverse quite a journey through my looking glass that is google plus.  My own pictures scare me some...a life in photos.  But, thats what this blog was supposed to be...'A driftless life'.  That looking glass of mine can become yours by simply clicking your way to the Alps or south America or Russia or Japan and Europe...and, here are some photos you missed by waiting for them on this blog.  Although I promise to keep Bosstownbob going.  Just so I can ramble on like this...

Number 46...

...no, not another psalm.  An unnamed stream but for that moniker in the old white Wisconsin Trout Maps book.  A feeder to a great creek I've posted some pics of fishing this year...another ghost town.  The first time I saw 46 I crawled up to the bank and looked over...to 100 brook trout.  We took turns catching them after exploring the meadow on our own...but, still catching them two at a time.  Doubles have been my thing ever since.  I love fishing two nymphs...

A large piece of land is public and this stream is on the gps of many an angler...the main stream gets fished hard but number 46 and its meadow still looks the same as it did 30 years ago.  I once guided five guys from Kentucky on a trout and grouse hunt here.  They flushed more grouse in one day than the all of them had flushed in their lives back home.  I think they each went through a box of shells...the highlight was peering over the edge of number 46 and seeing a five pound brown trout.  Trout and grouse...and, turkeys.  This public land received the first batch of turkeys that were from Missouri traded for Wisconsin grouse.  That law of nature that says something restored to its natural environment replenishes with over abundance until balance is reached, was true of the turkeys and the trout of the driftless area.  I only hope it works for the once abundant grouse...

A psalm...

                           


In the valley of the west fork there is a little church.

With a little cemetery with a little baby.

He is ours.  Another son lost...

This an infant only to endure one week in this plain.

I have a gift for you...

A flower from his grave...fragile.

It is as fragile as this ancient place.

Carry it gently as you leave footsteps on the banks of the kickapoo.

You will fish better for it.  I promise...

October...

...is moving right along.  One of my favorite months, its almost half over.  My daughters birthday was the first and my fathers is the thirty first.  Halloween...it was always a big day and not for all the saints.  Funny...but, I see so much of my mother in my daughter and my wife and my sons and I have  turned into my dad.  I see him in the mirror...when I'm brave enough to look.  I'm in the october of my life...a wonderful time for the knowledge gained along the way.  Knowledge of the future, too.  But, why fear the winter when its october...a lifetime of living in the now has taught me nothing if not to enjoy the Octobers...

The days are beautiful...each morning taking kids to school has clouds hanging on the hillsides and a deep fog over the kickapoo.  I have to remember to turn my lights on before I get there.  Sometimes it is as thick as soup...another good thing about October,  Soup...yesterday it was cabbage soup from our garden.  It was good to enjoy our labors over the summer especially since the racoons got most of our sweet corn.  In just two nights...and I shot five of them and one skunk.  October.  Wyley and I went up to our treestands.  I saw three and he drew his new PSE bow on a big doe but it didn't give him a good enough shot.  That made me proud.  I've taught my kids that hunting was a part of life.  We respect the deer and last year didn't take any.  We could of...after hunting big bucks all season we had fat does in our sights but for one reason or another we just didn't.  Not the least reason was they had made it that far.  We missed the venison all year...

This year new bows have us fired up...and there is a youth gun hunt this weekend.  Wyley can shoot a buck with his rifle.  It would be his first deer but he kind of wants to get his first with his bow...like his big brother two years ago.  That was a big deal...I was in the woods when HW took his nice 8 pt buck.  I saw the buck walk over to him, heard the arrow hit and the deer crash.  Five minutes later he walked over to me and tried to act like nothing but he was walking too quickly for the deer woods and when we made eye contact it only took a second for him to give me a pumped fist.  It was the best buck.  October...

Trout season went out with fireworks, too.  I always knew it would come back...even when others thought I had lost it.  Its been back for a number of years now...only I prefer to go alone.  Flyfishing for trout has been with me for fifty years and will never leave.  Its just that I've done it with different perspectives.  Losing two sons will change that perspective.  They fish with me every time I go out... as my two young sons and daughter do.  Its good again...but, a perspective without fear.  Other than the death of another child.  The same perspective that allows me to hunt deer and eat the occasional trout and feel right with the world.  Its the October thing...