timbers filled with brick or stovewood. And one grand specimen painted with a gay floral design against a red ground.
In
Door
County
log structures were as common as frame ones. Sometimes entire farms remained as they had been a hundred years ago, their log buildings lovingly preserved, the cabins enhanced by modern bay windows and dormers, trimmed with white door- and window-frames. Yards were surrounded by split rail fences and abundant flowers - daylilics in grand, thrusting clumps of yellow and orange; petunias in puddles of pink; and hollyhocks, tipping their showy stalks at roadside culverts.
At Egg Harbor Maggie slowed to a crawl, amazed to see how it had grown. Tourists dawdled everywhere, crossing the road licking ice cream cones; on sidewalks before antique displays; in the doorways of craft shops. She passed the
Blue
Iris
Restaurant
, and the Cupola House, standing tall and white and unchanging, feeling their familiarity seep into her spirit and excite it. Then out onto the highway towards Fish Creek, between rich, tan wheat fields and more orchards and great stands of birches that stood out like chalk marks upon green velvet.
She reached the high bluff above her hometown, a last cherry orchard on the left, then the sharp downswing of the highway around the base of a sheer limestone cliff, into the town itself. Coming upon it was forever a pleasing surprise.
One minute you were in the farmland above with no inkling the town lay below; the next you were sitting at a stop sign looking straight ahead at the sparkling waters of Fish Creek Harbor with Main Street stretching off to your left and right.
It was exactly as she remembered, tourists everywhere, and cars inching along while pedestrians jaywalked wherever they pleased; gaily decorated shops built, in old houses along a shady Main Street whose east and west ends were both visible from where she sat. How long had it been since she’d been in a town without a traffic light or a turn lane? Or one whose
Main Street
needed mowing in the summer and raking in the fall? Where else did the Standard Gas Station look like Goldilock’s cottage? And the bakery have a front verandah? And the alleys between the buildings need regular watering to keep the petunias and geraniums healthy?
Across Main an old false-fronted building drew her attention: the Fish Creek General Store where her father worked. She smiled, imagining him behind the long white butcher case where he’d been cutting meat and making sandwiches for as long as she remembered.
Hi, Daddy, she thought. I’ll be right back.
She turned west and drove at a snail’s pace beneath the boulevard maples, past flowered lawns and gabled houses that had been transformed into gift shops, past the Whistling Swan, an immense white clapboard inn with its great east porch replete with wicker chairs. Past the confectionery and Founders Square, and the cottage of Asa Thorpe, the town’s founder, and the community church where the doves and morning glories on the three stained glass windows were exactly as she remembered. Out past the White Gull Inn to the end of the road where a tall stand of cedars marked the entrance to
Sunset
Beach
Park
. There the trees opened up and gave a majestic view of Green Bay , sparkling in the late afternoon sun.
She stopped the car, got out and stood in the lee of the open door, shading her eyes, admiring the sails - dozens of sails - far out on the water.
Home again.
In the car once more, she drove back the way she’d come. The traffic crawled, and parking spots were at a premium, but she snagged one in front of a gift shop called The Dove’s Nest and walked back a block and a half, past the stone retaining walls where tourists sat and sipped cool drinks.
Raising a hand to stop traffic she sneaked between two bumpers to the other side of the street.
The concrete steps of the Fish Creek General Store were as pitted as ever, leading up to doors set in an inverted bay.
Inside,
In
Door
County
log structures were as common as frame ones. Sometimes entire farms remained as they had been a hundred years ago, their log buildings lovingly preserved, the cabins enhanced by modern bay windows and dormers, trimmed with white door- and window-frames. Yards were surrounded by split rail fences and abundant flowers - daylilics in grand, thrusting clumps of yellow and orange; petunias in puddles of pink; and hollyhocks, tipping their showy stalks at roadside culverts.
At Egg Harbor Maggie slowed to a crawl, amazed to see how it had grown. Tourists dawdled everywhere, crossing the road licking ice cream cones; on sidewalks before antique displays; in the doorways of craft shops. She passed the
Blue
Iris
Restaurant
, and the Cupola House, standing tall and white and unchanging, feeling their familiarity seep into her spirit and excite it. Then out onto the highway towards Fish Creek, between rich, tan wheat fields and more orchards and great stands of birches that stood out like chalk marks upon green velvet.
She reached the high bluff above her hometown, a last cherry orchard on the left, then the sharp downswing of the highway around the base of a sheer limestone cliff, into the town itself. Coming upon it was forever a pleasing surprise.
One minute you were in the farmland above with no inkling the town lay below; the next you were sitting at a stop sign looking straight ahead at the sparkling waters of Fish Creek Harbor with Main Street stretching off to your left and right.
It was exactly as she remembered, tourists everywhere, and cars inching along while pedestrians jaywalked wherever they pleased; gaily decorated shops built, in old houses along a shady Main Street whose east and west ends were both visible from where she sat. How long had it been since she’d been in a town without a traffic light or a turn lane? Or one whose
Main Street
needed mowing in the summer and raking in the fall? Where else did the Standard Gas Station look like Goldilock’s cottage? And the bakery have a front verandah? And the alleys between the buildings need regular watering to keep the petunias and geraniums healthy?
Across Main an old false-fronted building drew her attention: the Fish Creek General Store where her father worked. She smiled, imagining him behind the long white butcher case where he’d been cutting meat and making sandwiches for as long as she remembered.
Hi, Daddy, she thought. I’ll be right back.
She turned west and drove at a snail’s pace beneath the boulevard maples, past flowered lawns and gabled houses that had been transformed into gift shops, past the Whistling Swan, an immense white clapboard inn with its great east porch replete with wicker chairs. Past the confectionery and Founders Square, and the cottage of Asa Thorpe, the town’s founder, and the community church where the doves and morning glories on the three stained glass windows were exactly as she remembered. Out past the White Gull Inn to the end of the road where a tall stand of cedars marked the entrance to
Sunset
Beach
Park
. There the trees opened up and gave a majestic view of Green Bay , sparkling in the late afternoon sun.
She stopped the car, got out and stood in the lee of the open door, shading her eyes, admiring the sails - dozens of sails - far out on the water.
Home again.
In the car once more, she drove back the way she’d come. The traffic crawled, and parking spots were at a premium, but she snagged one in front of a gift shop called The Dove’s Nest and walked back a block and a half, past the stone retaining walls where tourists sat and sipped cool drinks.
Raising a hand to stop traffic she sneaked between two bumpers to the other side of the street.
The concrete steps of the Fish Creek General Store were as pitted as ever, leading up to doors set in an inverted bay.
Inside,
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