The Field Of Tears

Stockholm Wisconsin has been the breakfast location of choice for over a year, a tiny Swedish village on the Great River Road about an hour from Minneapolis. We are out in the deep mid west, driving alongside the river which now requires binoculars to see the opposite bank. The breakfast is predictably overwhelming, the bakery is set in an over manicured chocolate-box, I have salmon cakes and fruit amongst other things. Ashly looks nervously at a tower of Swedish pancakes – I shall bulk-buy Sennacot at the earliest opportunity.

Laura Ingalls Wilder of “Little House on the Prairie” renown lived in a wooden shack above Pepin Wisconsin, and we are standing outside it. It is on the crest of a predictably beautiful meadow full of yellow flowers, we’ve not seen another human for quite a while, and the temptation is to run, arms outstretched, down the meadow reproducing the title sequence from the television programme.

Hold on!  That’s exactly what Ashly is doing as huge tears stream down her face. I can make out a few strangled tear-affected words; “my mum”, “little house that’s a fairy”, “watch tv…”. I come out in sympathy as my mother also adored “Little House”. Didn’t everyone? I challenge anyone born of woman not to utterly lose their shit when confronted by this place. Never mind the obvious hardship of living in this place in the 19th century, it’s just too beautiful.

La Crosse Wisconsin is home to Dave’s Guitars, undoubtedly one of the finest guitar shops on earth – especially for new Gibson Custom Shop models. And guess what I want? My life savings are now lovely cash and I need a 1958 Les Paul reissue and there’s only one place to get my fix. Dave’s. 

It has such an overwhelming stock of beautiful instruments that a sign saying “please do not masturbate over the guitars” might well not be enough.

This place is porn. Nothing less.

I am duly bowled over and spend far too much without drawing breath. Ashly takes my picture in the shop and I look like a fat kid in the pie shop.

We cross the marvellously named Bad Axe River and the drive from Lancing to McGregor is a dreamy glide under huge bluffs, there are static homes on stilts around Lock and Dam #9 – reminding us trippers that this is actually a dangerous river – every other vehicle has disturbingly scary bumper stickers: ‘Have Gun Will Vote’, yet more ‘Choose Life, Your Mamma Did’ and many variations of the famous  ‘….From My Cold Dead Fingers’ slogan. My outright favourite is ‘Guns And Boobies Make Me Smile’.

A Catholic Church in Wexford IA is an odd sight; stuck under a bluff and very unlike the many white clapboard places of worship that seem to be crammed three-to-a-town in Wisconsin and Iowa. It could almost be in Ireland, say, Wexford?

McGregor is as the brochure probably says – a very small town in Iowa! Some cowboy movie bits of a deserted Main Street and a small bar where the young waitress blushes uncontrollably as I speak to her. It’s the full Hugh Grant effect. Our order is already so normalised I should just record; “Two diet cokes and a bowl of tacos please miss” on my phone and press play as we enter any bar on the road. We eat the usual Caesar salad off plastic plates on a riverside deck and watch the mile-long barges make stately progress up (and down) the now impossibly huge river. There are some very drunk “city folk” in the restaurant – the only other people – and they are being loud and very gauche. We think ‘fuck, hope they’re not in our shitmotel…’.

The beds in our McGregor motel are not the kind you’d really want to sleep in anyway. Certainly not without protective clothing. We sleep fully clothed and Ashly wears her shoes in the shower. And yep; the city folk are in the next room, the walls are made of kleenex and we’re convinced they’re having an orgy.

This is small town America. The guy in the petrol station actually says ‘You’re not from round here are ya?’ He’d not met people from another universe before.