Susan Smith: Save Brett Brigade Rolls Into Madison

Originally published July 22, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

It’s not the Wells Fargo Wagon coming into town, more the Brett Favre-Go! Wagon.
And, suspiciously, it had Illinois plates.

Ignore that detail, says Tony Mars, founder of SaveBrett.Net. He and his buddy Adam Chartier grew up Packer fans in the twin cities of Marinette and Menominee. And they bleed Green and Gold.

Mars graduated from UW-Madison, but has moved his tech business to Chicago, hence the Land of Lincoln plates.

The two Packer fans started their Save Brett tour in Escanaba, Mich, on July 15, and made it as far as Madison six days later, having collected 4,500 “Save Brett” signatures.

Mars and his entourage wore number 4 jerseys as they collected signatures on the Capitol Square. Mars says Packer fans shouldn’t be deterred by Favre’s on-again, off-again desire to play.

“He’s a regular guy, he doesn’t have 10 people to comb his hair before his press conference,’’ Mars said. “What we get is his honesty. When he’s burnt out at the end of the season, and says he doesn’t want to play, we get that. We get his honesty. It’s his greatest fault.”

The “Save Brett Tour Bus” plans to finish up hitting Milwaukee, and Chicago, where Mars assures us there are plenty of Packer fans.

Letting Favre leave Green Bay could put a curse on the Packers practically forever.

“If Babe Ruth had wanted to come back to the Yankees after he retired, do you think they would have told him he had to sit on the bench?’’ Mars said, direly recalling the “Curse of the Bambino,’’ the pennant-less decades that befell Boston after the Red Sox traded Ruth to the Yankees.

Susan Smith: Princeton Flea Market -- "ho-made" treats and the kitchen sink

Originally published July 19, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith


PRINCETON – The only way to truly attack a day at the Princeton Flea Market is on a full stomach.

And what better breakfast than a “breakfast egg roll,’’ a deep fried concoction stuffed with eggs, cheese, sausage and hash browns? I’m pretty sure they don’t have them in China, but they do at the “Ho-Made Egg Roll” trailer located at the corner of Fulton and Wisconsin, on the edge of Princeton’s venerable flea market.

I hadn’t been to the market in years, but last semester, I got a jones to go again after I had Brittany Bowling as a student in my writing class at the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communications. Brittany is a Princeton native, and we got to talking about the market, a Green Lake County tradition for more than 30 years.

Brittany alerted me to the “Ho-Made” egg rolls, and since my kids and I have a running joke about all the items made by alleged “ho” s, (Ho-made pizza, ho-made bread, etc.) I just had to see them for myself. Hey, somebody’s got to keep those hos off the street.

Thus fortified, we attacked the market, located in Princeton’s vintage “City Park,’’ which has an old metal archway and a central pavilion. The teens ditched me, headed for jewelry, both old and new, and dresses from India.

I, as usual, was taken in by the used books. I had a nice half hour browsing, but only bought one: a 30-year old hospital auxiliary cookbook from the late ‘70s, when foods such as molded seafood salad and “peas orientale” with French-fried onion rings were all the rage. It was worth $3 to get the recipe for a liqueur made from Italian prune plums.

The Princeton market’s 180 vendors offer everything from kohlrabi to cone flower plants.

There’s even a kitchen sink, or two.

Frank Gwidt of Wautoma was selling old galvanized wash tubs, along with jams made by the Amish, antiques, and a rake-like device he described as a “horse do-do picker upper.”
He also had some of the market’s most unusual home made crafts: old pitchforks, their handles covered by birch bark, topped with cute bird houses. I whipped out my camera, and Frank asked whether I was planning to copy them at home.

Don’t worry, I told him. I’d have to be imprisoned in Taycheedah and struck by lightning to have the time or talent to make such a thing.

When we tired of pawing through the old stuff – “Hey, look, Bicentennial Log Cabin (fake) maple syrup bottles!” – we headed to downtown Princeton for some more upscale shopping.

If the flea market is low brow, the stores along the main drag make up for it by catering to the lake house crowd from Green Lake and other nearby resorts. At Henry’s, you can buy greeting cards featuring New Yorker cartoons and Lillet, the French aperitif.

Next door at Twister, there are fancy sandals and fancier kitchen wares. At the store’s center, if you’ve worn off the ho-made egg rolls, you can pick up Viennese pastries, Madelines, cardamom tea cookies, and other lovely bakery made by the European Renard’s Bake Shop.

Princeton’s littlest store, the shoe-box sized pottery shop called “A Hairy Potter,’’ has a funny name and little bowls for just $3 each. Perfect for keeping your new old jewelry from the flea market.

Susan Smith: Worst Puppy Ever

Originally published July 8, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

I am pretty confident I have the worst puppy ever. Sure, they can wreak all sorts of havoc . But how many dogs do you know that have totaled an extended cab F150 Ford Pickup?

I should have known better, letting the nearly grown kids talk me into a black and tan hound puppy?

I had sworn off hounds forever. Oh, sure, they’re cute, and smart. Years ago, we had beagles. They were totally entertaining, and completely bad.

They killed the neighbors’ chickens, chasing them around the pen like a doggie version of a video game. They pulled the other neighbors’ steaks right off the grill and ran with them. Didn’t we tie them up? Sure, we tied them to a picnic table. They dragged it across the yard, bursting the blood vessels in their eyes in their determination to escape.

They ate an entire tub of Crisco, and threw it up all over the house. They would run for days, and either come home or wind up in dog jail. And they met bad ends: one dead on the highway, the other one shot.

And for years after that, we had a series of good dogs. Shepard and lab mixes, mostly, who were content to hang around the farm, being happy just to be with you.

And then, my beloved senior dog died, and the kids convinced me to “just go look” at puppies. We found Buster at a family-run animal rescue near Richland Center, a place like Dr. Doolittle, with hens and geese, and horses and mules. He had big brown eyes, and giant paws.

“Congratulations,’’ said Doc Williams, our veterinarian. “You’ve got six pounds of puppy and one pound of worms.”

As soon as the worms were cured, the sweet sleepy puppy turned into a holy terror. He shredded shoes, he paraded through the hours with the toilet brush, he personally beheaded the entire spring’s crop of tulips. And he won’t stay home on the porch with the senior dogs.

When he was 8 weeks old, we returned to find him in a cage on the front porch, with a note that read “Is this your puppy?”

So, when my husband leaves, he takes Buster along for a ride in the truck. The other day, they were delivering strawberries to the local grocery store. Buster apparently didn’t like being left in the truck cab anymore than he likes being stuck at home. When Matt came outside with the cart to load the flats of berries, he saw the truck beginning to roll. Buster apparently thrashed around enough to knock the shifter out of gear. Matt ran to the truck to open the door, and Buster jumped up on the window, smashing down the door lock.

The truck began to accelerate down the hill behind the store. My husband ran faster, but lost his balance. Thankfully, he was not run over as the truck careened down the hill, across the street and smashed into a big box elder tree.

The truck is totaled. Buster seems fine after his wild ride.

If you can top that bad puppy story, I’ll give you a bag of puppy chow. (And Buster, too.)

Susan Smith: Black Rooster Must Die

Originally published July 8, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith


The black rooster is the devil. He waits until your back is turned, bending over to scoop up the feed from the barrels, then he attacks. Today he drew blood, jabbing me in the foot because I was stupidly wearing flip flops in the chicken yard.

The creepy thing is that once he engages, he won’t quit. I threw the lid of the feed bin at him, then the compost bucket (chickens love their vegetables) but he just kept coming. I ran out of the yard without the eggs, slamming the fence door with Black Rooster just inches away. He glared malevolently through the fence..

Not all roosters are mean. For years, the king of our chicken yard was a Buff Orphington rooster named Big Red. He was helped on his patrols by Dewey, the second in command. The butterscotch-colored Buffs are probably the nicest chickens in the world. The hens make sweet cooing and clucking sounds when you lift then up for their eggs. And they make great mother hens.

Big Red lived to be about seven, dying of old age. And Dewey lasted only a few weeks after that (proving he really was a number two), pulled through the fence by a coon.

After that, we had Elvis, a noisy, pretty red Leghorn. He had a moment of fame in 2007, starring in a wedding at L’Etoile, Madison’s premier restaurant. The chef, Tory Miller, is Korean American, and there’s a Korean tradition about having a rooster and hen present at the wedding. (Sorry, the hens look alike and thus don’t have names.) Elvis and his anonymous hen spent the wedding night at the Mansion Hill Inn. Wonder how the other guests felt about his 4 a.m. aria?

Sadly, Elvis died in the great possum attack of February 2008.

We got Black Rooster that spring in a mixed batch from the neighbors. He’s small, and not at all pretty. Judging by the photos in the Murray McMurray catalog, he might be a an Ancona, an old Italian breed. Says the catalog, their “active temperament make them a good bird to raise where hawks, owls, and animal predators are a problem . . .they are very quick and alert.”

So he’d probably last longer than the better tempered birds against the possums. But pecking the ankles attached to the hand that feeds you is not an adaptive trait.

Black Rooster will get to test his mettle against another Italian American, Rosella. She’s a grandmotherly farm lady who works for us, and she’s not afraid of Black Rooster. “I’ll fix his wagon,’’ she promised.

Postscript: She did. Black Rooster is now in Rosella’s freezer, awaiting his next appearance on the platter.

Susan Smith: Madison’s Maurie’s makes best caramel apples this side of heaven

Originally published Nov. 2, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

One pre-Badger game tradition has nothing to do with the three Bs: bratwurst, beer and the band.

This one is all about the apples. And, for those in the know, there’s nothing better.

Each autumn, Maurie’s Fine Chocolates on Monroe Street, about two blocks from Camp Randall Stadium, puts away the chocolate-making equipment for a day or two to conjure up the best caramel apples this side of heaven. Store owner Cher Diamond only makes them a few times a year, so those who love them call ahead to reserve their apples or get there early.

The day of the Penn State game, Mike and Deb Bilzing, of Madison, got to the shop about six hours before kickoff to claim four apples. “We covet these apples,’’ Deb Bilzing says. “My husband is obsessed with them. We have friends who drive all the way from Green Bay to get them.”

What makes them so good? The apples are really good, as big as grapefruit and with a winey flavor that cuts the sweetness of the caramel. Owner Cher Diamond only uses Washington State Golden Delicious apples.

“They have the perfect flavor profile, texture and palette to match with the caramel,’’ she says.

The nuts are freshly roasted, lightly salted pecans. But mostly, it’s the caramel, which Diamond cooks in a big copper kettle according to a recipe given to her by her father, the store’s namesake. The recipe goes back to 1935, when he made them in his shop in central Illinois. But forget about the details.

“It’s a secret,’’ she says of the recipe. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore. A secret is something known to one person.”

OK, but it’s no secret that making them is a lot of work. Plus, the bubbling caramel creates humidity in the kitchen, which is bad for chocolate making. Diamond made the apples for two home games in October. She might make them again for the Minnesota game on Nov. 15, but only if she can get the right apples. There’s no way she’d substitute a Granny Smith apple, which she says is too hard and tart.

These caramel apples ain’t cheap. They’re $8 for plain caramel and $10 for the ones dipped in nuts and chocolate. But Diamond says you pay for quality.

“There’s over a half a pound of caramel, nuts and chocolate on an apple,’’ she says.

They’re so big, you could share one apple between two people. Maybe.

“Sure, you could share,’’ advises Mike Bilzing. “But you won’t want to.”


IF YOU GO

Maurie’s Fine Chocolates is at 1637 Monroe St. in Madison. Phone: (608) 255-9092

PHOTO INFORMATION: Just ask Rachelle: Maurie’s game-day caramel apples are just the right combination of a Golden Delicious apple coated in rich caramel and fresh-roasted pecans./PHOTO by Brent Nicastro

Susan Smith: Historic Wonewoc camp provides inspiration for new novel

Originally published Oct. 19, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Who knew Wisconsin was so in tune with the spirits of the dead?

Spring Green author Sara Rath dug into Wisconsin’s long history with spiritualists for her latest novel, “Night Sisters.’’

The book opens and closes at fictional Wocanaga Spiritualist Camp, which Rath says is modeled on a real Western Wisconsin camp. The camp, known to locals as “Spook Hill,’’ is on a steep bluff high above Wonewoc in Juneau County and has been a gathering place for mediums and those who hope to communicate with the dead for more than a century.

Its aging cabins and dance hall evoke the 19th century, when spiritualists ran the Morris Pratt Institute in Whitewater and the Ceresco utopian community at Ripon. Rath also did research for the book by taking a class in mediumship at the Lily Dale Assembly, a New York spiritualist camp that traces its history to 1879.

“There’s an aura about these places,’’ Rath says, “maybe because they’re a relic of that era, and so unpretentious.”

“Night Sisters,’’ is Rath’s second novel, after many years as a poet and a writer of non-fiction books. It weaves a story beginning in a central Wisconsin town in the 1960s, to events that occur in a fictional Madison of today.

The book has touches of Wisconsin only a native would notice: the neighbor’s bowling ball rosary, the Packers ticket raffle and the old boyfriend who turns into a Harley rider as part of his mid-life passage.

The book’s protagonist, Nell, sounds a lot like Rath: She’s a Wisconsin writer assigned to do a story about spiritualism, and got hooked. Rath says that was her first thought when she visited Lily Dale, but the spiritualists encouraged her to participate, rather than sit back and watch.

In fact, much of the book has a basis in Rath’s real life. She grew up in Manawa, which sounds a lot like the fictional Little Wolf, lived for a time in Madison’s University Heights neighborhood, and even has a ring engraved with The Lord’s Prayer, an object important to the plot.

Rath says fiction writing evolves weaving the true with the false, a skill she teaches in her writing seminars.

“I teach them how to lie effectively, how to make up beautiful lies,’’ she says.

But although Rath didn’t reach the point of channeling dead spirits while at Lily Dale, she isn’t as skeptical about spiritualism as she was when she started out.

“I have great respect,’’ she says. “I do think there are mediums who have great skills.”

As she’s been traveling around the state promoting her book, Rath says she’s surprised at the number of people who confide they’ve been to Spook Hill, to hear their futures, and messages from spirits of the past.

“Wisconsin is a very practical place; we don’t get emotional about much besides the Packers,” Rath says. “Maybe places like Wonewoc tap into the dreamer in all of us.’’

IF YOU GO

The Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp, just off Hwy. 33 in Juneau County, will celebrate its 108th season in 2009, officially running from June 1 to Aug. 29. For details, see the web site – http://www.campwonewoc.com/.

PHOTO INFORMATION: The Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp traces its history to 1874 and annually attracts people seeking answers, serenity and peace. This photo shows a church gathering in 1963./PHOTO courtesy of Western Wisconsin Camp Association

Susan Smith: Paging Dr. Toga, Toga, Toga for UW Homecoming reunion

Originally published Oct. 12, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Chicago area radiologist Dr. Barry Lessin dresses in scrubs, not bed sheets, when he sees patients at Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare.

But to his UW-Madison classmates, he’ll always be “Dr. Toga.”

He’s coming back to campus the last week of October for Homecoming, which also coincides with the 25th reunion of his medical school class and is 30 years after the inaugural campus toga party.

Inspired by the summer hit movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House,’’ students held dozens of toga parties on campuses in the fall of 1978. But none was larger than the one in Lot 60 along the southern shore of Lake Mendota.

And Lessin had a lot to do with that.

Lessin, a Milwaukee native, was an undergraduate at UW-Madison in the fall of 1978, and helped the prank-pulling Pail and Shovel party win election. The year marked a generational divide on the campus, which was scarred after years of anti-Vietnam War protests. Pail and Shovel launched an era when students were more party animals than political animals.

Pail and Shovel pledged to turn student fees into pennies, and give every student a pail and a shovel to help themselves.

Once elected, they spent money as fast as they could, on such things as a giant Statue of Liberty head embedded in the ice of Lake Mendota (an homage to the final scene of “Planet of the Apes”), a Little Feat concert and hundreds and hundreds of pink plastic flamingos, which greeted students on the first day of classes in 1979.

But one of the first stunts was the Toga Party. Lessin said he and his Sigma Alpha Mu brothers approached the zany student leaders, who gleefully approved it. Dean of Students Paul Ginsberg wasn’t so sure.

“I went to the Dean of Students, and asked, ‘Why not?’ ’’ Lessin recalled. “They were so fearful and distrusting of students then.”

But the dean eventually agreed, and even came to the party. And so did an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 students, all dressed in their bed sheets.

“It was huge,’’ Lessin said. “No one expected a crowd like that.”


In the coming months, Lessin would emcee the Pail and Shovel stages at the big Halloween party, at the Mifflinland on the Mall party (a year the Mifflin Street Block Party moved temporarily to campus) and at subsequent toga parties. At the last toga party, in 1983, he had returned from his radiology residency in Hawaii with yards of tropical fabric for togas.

“I was billed as ‘Dr. Toga from Hawaii,’ “ said Lessin, who still uses “Dr.Toga” in his email address.

For Homecoming, Lessin has hired Count Bop and the Headliners to entertain his medical school class of 1983; the band is a revival of a popular 1970s band, Dr. Bop and the Headliners.

He says his class has always been “smart, fun and full of life.” But with the 25th reunion and the 30th birthday of the toga party, he has to admit they aren’t wild and crazy youngsters anymore.

“We used to laugh at the old alumni coming back to campus,’’ he says. “Now, we are them. Or, they are us!”

PHOTO INFORMATION: More than 10,000 students and others gathered in Lot 60 at UW-Madison for a Toga Party in 1978./PHOTO courtesy UW-Madison Archives