“Boscobel? The drugs were bad there, that’s why we got out.” -a new friend along the Mississippi River after i told him where i spent my summer.
“So why the hell did you choose Boscobel of all places?” -a passenger in one of the cars while i was hitchhiking to get there. He told me of the perceived social politics between the local towns: the natives of the town to the south of Boscobel see it as the river rat town down by the Wisconsin River.
A town of around 3k as the green sign reads. The two parallel main roads, Elm and Wisconsin, nestled between a pair of creeks: Crooked to the west and Sanders to the east. Wisconsin’s Outdoor Recreation Capital as the billboard reads. A metal Blue Roof upon the house i orbited for the season.
Small town America, such a common stomping ground of mine… The park with pavilion and picnic, b-ball and baseball. Armed forces memorial [sans space force]. Modest town hall. Modest library with modest hours if you’re lucky. Aplenty with natives, born and raised of generations. Main streets cancerous with space for lease. The edge of town with the homogenized american boxes: one of the common breed dollar stores, a fast food, a gas station with a name you’ve seen before. Of these traits Boscobel was no exception, except for the space for lease. The town was alive with storefront…except for the hardware store. After years of service they went full liquidation, to close soon. I joined most of the town in that store the morning the big sell off sale started and overheard the owner, “i wanna ride my motorcycle, you know?” The True Value on the homogenized side of town will continue serving the town.
Small town America. I have passed through, i have loitered for a few days, but i hadn’t spent months in one before summer 2024. From May until September i sat under the Blue Roof, working when conditions would have me. Turns out most of the words i have about those months are in regard to the footpaths of this town.
November 20th, 1992, 10:45 PM, two gunshots ring out near Memorial Park. Two days later, as the Schultzs return from church, they find two new holes in their house on their front porch. Thirty two years later, i find this front porch.
Our neigbor Kim had tended many buildings in Boscobel, the Blue Roof included back in the day. He says it’s one of the oldest homes in town, and i sure felt that in the musty basement and the cozy second floor. Nowadays he plays a wacky wild Euchre variant with five of his lads at his bar. I love the breeds of Euchre around the midwest, they have such big “you’re not from ’round these parts” energy. It’s true, i’m not, we use two fives to keep score in civilization, not like those four and six barbarians-i digress. He replaced the bullet punched siding in ’92. Turns out i spent the whole summer sitting beneath their entrypoints.
O the porch, blue porch. Ever sit on a porch and say “mmhm”? Ever sit on a porch and wave at everyone and everything? Ever look? at that? Boy howdy i sure have and let me tell you….mmmmhm. I swear, this used to be an unwelcoming part of town. Now we can’t make it past this corner without getting greeted by my fellow man. There comes the neighborhood. Look, it’s Hoppy the squirrel! I was getting worried, i hadn’t seen him for a week. He’s missing a front paw and a tail, but he’s doing alright. Tail-napped by little Blitz, Kim’s tree climbing spitfire of a dog, but he’s still living large.
“The destination for outdoor recreation.” Let us turn our eyes to the trails around town. Our first stop: the Boscobel Bluffs to the east of the suburban sprawl. A sandy trailhead before a 1.5 mile out-and-back trail up through the woods, completely overgrown by waist high weeds on my first walk. I was delighted to see that it was pruned to a useable level on a follow up visit. Cute, cozy, and functional, albeit a bit short. Unpopulated by others in my experiences. i didn’t take any pictures either lol not sorry
Our next stop i frequented very often [and have a lot more to say about], the B-side to compliment the blue porch A-side: The Sanders Creek Trail, the logically named two mile gem alongside Sanders Creek. Well, one mile, but it’s out and back. Well, i heard locals call it not a gem but something more like “smoker’s ditch.”
Well, let’s check with another source from another time: the Wisconsin Explorer, Kenneth Casper. Usually more of a hardcore trail enthusiast, in 2020 he finally found his way to the Recreation Destination of the whole state to see what they had. “I spotted the Sanders Creek Trail across Highway 61 behind Walnut Street and I could see it was flooded over. So, I walked up Green Street and down Nevada Street and found a dog park I could walk through to get onto the trail.” picture below looking in from 61 and Walnut, the northern end of the trail
I often relaxed underneath the bridge at the trail’s southern terminus sourcing my water, sad songs on my guitar flowing like the cold clear creek from my bridge covered hobo haunt. Heading north along the trail we find a field i would lounge in. The nearby church’s bells would sing at 9am on Sundays. Continuing we often find the sidewalk subsumed, first by sand [ghosts of a floody summer] and later by water as it passes by the downtown stretch, benches to one side and swimming holes for the local youth on the other. The stretch of trail between the dog park and the northern end -our flooded end witnessed by Kenneth- was fully reclaimed by the creek for my whole summer, some sections nearly a foot deep, sidewalk sagging, reclaimed by the marsh.
Sidewalk sagging? Floody conditions? Another source: swnews4u.com, with words from the locally relevant Boscobel Dial. This article from 2022 is concerned with our flooded terminus and gently points fingers at possible causes: blockage in the floodlands the creek flows towards, a clogged small culvert beneath the highway, or a sinking sidewalk in wetlands.
So recent, the year 2022, the issues of this walkway annual and habitualized. Let’s return farther, to the birth, to the purity of creation, goals lofty and problems absent. October 1998, initial work is underway for what was called the Sanders Creek Walkway. Here our words come from Alderman Jamie Goldsmith. The DNR had recently required canary grass to be planted alongside the creek, an effort Goldsmith took issue with, “It’s a barrier. It’s a barren, ugly, drainage ditch.” Grass by a creek does belong, there i disagree, but of the drainage ditch we are in agreement. He continues, “I think once we get that pathway in there, it will be easier to get in there for maintenance.” Get in there for maintenance, goals lofty indeed.
October 2003, the walkway grows, our hotbed wetbed arrives.
May 2004 and the springtime graces our walkway with wetness.
June 2007 and our memorial to forgotten friends arrives.
We only get a hint of what lies behind the monument in that photo unfortunately. Here it is in September 2024. Notice my fingerswipes upon the monument, brushing away the detritus of a floody summer.
Across from the wet Sanders Creek Trail we join the first phase of the Great Wisconsin River Trail: about a half mile of sidewalk. This modest sproutling from the Sanders seed has lofty goals of becoming a long beautiful looping concrete vine along the floody wetlands of the river. Boasting sponsorships from the local hospital, energy company, two different packaging companies, grant money over $1.5mil, and who knows how many donations i certainly hope a brighter future is to come from this project because it’s awfully cloudy from what i’ve seen.
Expansion joints, (or control joints) are the intentional lines cut into a concrete pour to prevent wild cracking and buckling as it grows and shrinks with temperature changes. I believe i spotted two of these on my last brisk walk down this path [an embarrasing failure, i was preoccupied mentally with planning my day of organizing gear for a river float.] I lost count of the number of wild cracks along what used to be a handsome, smooth stretch of paved trail. Functional still i guess, but kind of a difficult start to what will ideally be a cool thing. A bridge connecting Woodman and Wauzeka would be rad even if it’s not for motor traffic, but it’s also two sub-phases away from completion. I hear that the next sub-phase of construction won’t take place for maybe three years, and that the heads of this project want to pass it off to the state parks and let them do the deed. the best layed plans…
So anyway Trapper for mayor. Pray for the kids in Boscobel. Pray for the families stuck under financial stress there. Pray for the users and abusers of substances lost there. Tremendous shoutouts to Timber Line Coffee and their bombastic Sumatra coffee beans. More bashful shoutouts to my bougey coffee ass for being the reason why they now have a button for cortados in their cash register. Try their chocolate cake it’s actually the best.
conclusion? what conclusion? i’m sick with empathy everywhere i go and boscobel is a part of me now because of it. my list of american locations i have to visit on my cross-country migrations grows.
small town america not to be confused with very small town america: a post office and a gas station if you’re lucky. towns like those i rarely have lingered in, usually just a pit stop.
i also learned that expansion lines are lethal to the spines of fathers, as opposed to the cracks for the backs of mothers
man i dunno 