Rivers set the pace of river towns. I remember as a child waking up to the smell of bacon, the sound of the morning news on local radio, and the booming voice of Ruth Downing. Ruth remains to this day my story of Ontario, a small river town set like a chapter in a book on the banks of the Kickapoo.
After breakfast my mother and I would climb into Ruth’s ’41 Chevy and set out on a road trip into the valley. Judging by the sway of my body hunkered in the back seat, we must have been following river, which keeps company with Highway 131 on its journey south to the Wisconsin River.
Or perhaps we followed Highway 33, which winds its way up Wildcat Mountain and the park overlooking the river. We might stop to visit Ruth’s friend Hattie, who lived on a hairpin turn of the road and greeted us at the screen door with a raspy voice that foretold her spunk.
My mother and I often spent the night at Hattie’s house, without electricity, listening to thunderstorms that lit the room with a flash and threatened the valley with flood, but somehow made us feel safer burrowing under Hattie’s handmade quilts.
But whether we sat on the porch of Ruth’s hillside home in Ontario, picnicked high above its banks in Wildcat Park, or hung out on a hairpin curve leading into the valley, the river was always close by, setting the pace for lazy afternoons.
I could – and maybe will – tell you of other chapters along the river, of adventures canoeing above Wauzeka during strange reports of cattle abductions during the 1970’s or canoeing with my son below Gays Mills during the 1990’s. But the point of all this is that you can make your own Kickapoo stories, tales you will be telling 30 years from now and still be able to smell the bacon, hear your friend’s voice, and see the river coursing hesitantly southward.
There will be ample opportunity over the next month to begin your story. The Driftless Area Art Festival in Soldiers Grove on September 18 and 19, the Kickapoo BRAVE Ride and Harvest Dinner in Gays Mills on September 18, and other activities will bring you to the river. Then, as Bob Uecker said in a recent radio broadcast, “we’ll make it up as we go along.”
Because whether you’re a mother’s son picnicking in Ontario or a son’s father canoeing near Steuben, a river always leads to a good story.