Walking Down Memory Lane Without the Memories

PATRICK J. WOOD, PUBLISHER

Author of new book Patinas of Life available in local bookstores.

Dear Reader,

Not long ago I drove out to a supper club in St. Anna, Wisconsin, a place I had not seen in decades. The visit brought back the fact of something, if not the feeling of it, a summer I once spent going there again and again with a sweet girl I knew back then, a girl whose family kept a cottage on Elkhart Lake.

My daughter and her husband are the reason I made the trip. They have taken up an interest in the roughly 250 supper clubs scattered across this state, a phenomenon as native to Wisconsin as the Packers, though it works on you in a gentler way. The club is called Schwarz’s, and it has stood among these farmlands since 1957. It sits somewhere out in the middle of things, about an hour and a half from the Chain of Lakes in Waupaca.

When we arrived, I hardly knew the place. I did not recognize the street, or the sign, or the building, or the scene waiting for us inside. What I found was the company of my family and a room full of friendly people; that turned out to be its own kind of refreshment. I ordered brandy old fashioneds, sweet, for the whole group without any trouble. A regular let me in on the custom, which is that you stand your menu upright when you are ready, and a waitress comes to take your order.

I asked a few of the old-timers whether they remembered my girl’s family name. Nothing came back. I tried another, and then another, working my way down the bar, and each one gave me the same kind and apologetic blank look. Someone in my party finally suggested that my next question ought to be whether they knew the Muffin Man. I had to laugh. That was about the size of it. A man asking a room of strangers to reach back forty years for a name none of them had any reason to keep.

The food was everything a person hopes for in a place like this. The filet and the scallops were excellent, and the broasted potatoes were just as good. The old fashioneds were pure good-times-a-coming, and together we made a fine new memory.

When we left, I looked around once more for some residue of the old days, some tangible trace, and none of it surfaced. There was something almost romantic in that. The summer still has its place, sealed and safe somewhere back in time, a sweet capsule I can carry without having to open. Knowing it was there, I could give myself over to the present, to the ambiance, the exquisite food and drink, and the loved ones and good company at the table with me now.

Maybe that is the gift of walking down memory lane when the memories stay just out of reach. The old times keep their place, and you keep yours, here, at a different table, in a different season of life that is every bit as good.