10-8-20
Rib Lake, Wisconsin has little to offer even the most determined tourist. Although the surrounding hills are picturesquely forested, the town itself is an unassuming place, with the weathered houses and pickup-lined streets of a typical North Woods burg. Rib Lake has, in fact, only a single attraction: the fact that a substantial fraction of its residents are related to my grandmother.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, my ancestors came from their various corners of Europe and settled in and near the South Side of Chicago. Most of them never left, and most of their descendants (including yours truly) remain in Chicagoland. But one set of great-great-grandparents – farmers back in Germany – never took a liking to the teeming, sooty city; and when they heard about cheap land in Northern Wisconsin, they left Chicago behind and moved north.
Near the new town of Rib Lake, then little more than a sawmill, my great-great-grandparents purchased a tract of logged-over land. They would remain there until their deaths a half-century later. It wasn’t an easy life. The growing season was short, and the soil poor. Town was miles away – too far, especially during the long winters, for any but the most urgent errands.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of my great-great grandparents’ fifteen children left Rib Lake as soon as they could. My great-grandmother headed back to Chicago, where she met her husband, settled in a South Side apartment, and brought up my grandmother and her sisters. Every summer, however, she sent her children back to the farm in Rib Lake. My grandmother – always a city girl – has vivid, and not always pleasant, memories of these visits.
When my great-great-grandparents died, the visits stopped. Although my grandmother still had quite a few relatives in the area – besides her uncle and his family, a host of local cousins (my great-great-grandmother’s sister and her husband had also moved to Rib Lake) – she wasn’t close to any of them, and hasn’t been to Rib Lake in many years.
By the time I was old enough to know anything about it, in fact, nobody in the family had been to Rib Lake in decades. Despite a fairly active interest in genealogy, I knew only that, somewhere in Wisconsin, there was a town where some of my relatives still lived. I felt no particular urge to see this town myself. My grandfather, however, had been hearing about Rib Lake for sixty years, and decided (a) that he wanted to visit and (b) that I should be his chauffer. And so it was that, sometime in August 2010, I found myself driving into Rib Lake, WI.
My grandpa and I had no idea where my grandma’s relatives had lived. All we knew was their rather unfortunate last name: Fuchs (local pronunciations range from “Fox” to “Folks”). Armed with this knowledge, we walked into the only business on Main Street that was still open: the local bank. The teller listened with interest to our quest, and gave us a local phonebook. There – lo and behold – we discovered dozens on dozens of Fuchs in the area. Unsure how to continue, we asked the teller which Fuchs we should call. After thinking for a moment, she said: “well, you could always try Willie Fuchs down at Fuchs’ Tavern in Fuchsville.” I was incredulous. “There’s a town called Fuchsville?” “No, not a town,” she replied, “just a place south of Rib Lake that everyone calls Fuchsville, ‘cause there are so many Fuchs living there.”
And so we drove to Fuchsville. Fuchs’ Tavern turned out to be a tiny building with two gas pumps out front. When my grandpa and I opened the door, every eye in the place turned to us. Nobody said a word. After a moment, I walked up to the bearded bartender and asked if he knew where I could find Willie Fuchs. As it happened, the bartender was Willie. After I explained our quest, he looked pensive. “The first thing you have to understand,” he said, “is that there’s two clans of Fuchs out here. There’s the Fuchsville Fuchs and the Rib Lake Fuchs. The Fuchs around here are all Fuchsville Fuchs. The Rib Lake Fuchs live up north.”
Absorbing this remarkable information, we asked Willie whether he had any idea where the Rib Lake Fuchs lived. After a moment’s pause, he disappeared into a back room and returned with an old plat atlas of Taylor County. Opening the book to a section west of Rib Lake, he stooped and squinted at the page, running his finger back and forth over the page. Then, suddenly, he found something. He turned the atlas toward us, pointing at the middle of one page. “I bet this is your grandma’s farm.”
The spot Willie pointed out was a few miles back toward Rib Lake. As we drove, my grandpa and I discussed what we should say to the farm’s current occupant. According to my grandmother, this man – her first cousin – was “no good.” It was hard to say what that might mean. Turning onto an arrow-straight country road, we followed it through dense second-growth forest. Here and there, abandoned houses and broken barns loomed from the jungle.
We crested a hill, and there it was. The fields around were covered with tall grass and shrubs. All but one of the barns had collapsed into a heap of a wood. But the Fuchs farmhouse was still there. As we drove closer, we could see that the house had been empty for a long time. The paint and most of the windows were gone, and trees were growing through the front porch. About twenty yards from the old house was a double-wide trailer surrounded by a mowed lawn. The mailbox out front read FUCHS.
At my grandpa’s insistence, we parked in front of the trailer and rang the doorbell. To my secret relief, nobody was home. We walked over to the old farmhouse, and I took a few pictures. A warm breeze rustled the tall grass and overgrown bushes.
I was ready to go. My grandpa, however, wanted to ask the neighbors about the Fuchs farm. So we got back into the car and headed up the long gravel drive of the house across the street. Two enormous dogs materialized and began running alongside the car, barking frantically. We pulled up to the house, where a large man with one leg was sitting on the front porch. The dogs circled the car, still barking.
I hesitated. My grandfather did not. Popping open his door and ignoring the dogs, he began to shuffle toward the front porch, calling out “I’m Pete Ryan from Chicago. Could you call off your dogs?” The one-legged man on the porch obliged. I explained why we had come. As I did, the man’s wife emerged onto the porch in a bath towel and asked what was going on. I explained again.
As it turned out, the one-legged man was a relative. He told us that his grandmother, my great-grandmother’s first cousin, had died just the previous year at the age of 99. His wife also had some sort of family connection with the Fuchs. So, it seemed, did most of the people living in the area. Half of Rib Lake, it appeared, was related to me. After chatting for almost a half-hour, we rubbed the dogs, got back in the car, and headed home.
That was ten years ago.
Last week, shortly after returning from Alaska, I spent a long weekend in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Along the way, on an impulse, I decided to see whether the old Fuchs house was still standing. After a bit of research and consulting with my grandmother, I managed to find the address.
From the interstate, I followed a series of increasingly remote roads. It was a cool, crisp day, with a blue sky framing half-harvested fields and golden woods. Suddenly, at a crossroads of two bumpy rural highways, I saw Fuchs’ Tavern (now under new management, and calling itself the Cattail Tap). A few miles north, I turned onto a familiar-looking lonely road.
I crested a hill, and there it was. The Fuchs farmhouse was still standing, and still empty. The back porch had collapsed, and a few more windows were missing; but otherwise the house looked more or less as I remembered it. The mailbox in front of the double-wide next door still read FUCHS. I toyed with the idea of introducing myself, but couldn’t think of a way that wouldn’t be ridiculous (“Hiya, third cousin. How’s it hangin’?”). So I took my pictures and left.
I drove into town, circled placid Rib Lake, and parked in the cemetery where my great-great-grandparents are buried. Having no idea where their stone was located, I walked up and down the rows until I found it. Then, satisfied, I crunched through the leaves back to my car.
On the way back to the highway, I detoured to see Timm’s Hill, the highest point in Wisconsin. Though not exactly a sky-piercing pinnacle, the eminence was crowned by a rickety lookout tower, which offered sweeping views of the fall colors below.
As I was taking the obligatory pictures, I noticed a scratching noise. Turning, I saw a kid in his early teens on the other side of the observation platform, carving his name into the railing with a penknife. We nodded to each other. Then I tramped back down the stairs, silently grateful that I hadn’t been compelled to grow up in Rib Lake.