Grouse Hollow Journal for May 30, 2013 by Greg Koelker

Grouse Hollow Journal for May 30, 2013 by Greg Koelker

It is a good thing I can type as I have all but lost the power of speech this morning. I went to Rock the Bluff yesterday at Cassville to help celebrate my life long friend Greg Lenz's birthday. I played and sang with the bands and I talked and talked until I couldn't hardly whisper. Greg and I go way back. We first started playing together when were little. I have this vivid picture of him in my mind of him is of him walking up the hill from his grandma's place up to my grandma's place before we were in school. He was one of the few kids I knew when we started first grade together at the Methodist building with Miss Okey, a former missionary to China, as our teacher. We got on to riding bikes together, sledding, exploring, and just hanging out. Greg blames me for our life long passion for rock and roll; when we saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, I proposed we start a band. I was able to pester my parents into letting me buy an electric guitar from Eddie Phillips. It took eons, or so it seemed, to show up. My living room was full of friends who wanted to strum it and just touch it. It had an electric short in it, so I had to send it back, and I had to wait for the refund before I could get another one. Dad took me to Fabre's Music in Dubuque and after much looking and haggling we settled on an old, single pickup Gibson with a small beat up Gibson amplifier. (I wish I still had that guitar.) Greg got a Silvertone guitar with the amp built in the case. Anyway, the stage was set. Don Schnering got a bass, and Roy Mosely got a set of drums. We pounded out enough songs to start playing out. After watching the “hit” movie, “Rock Around The Clock” about Bill Haley and the Comets at Greg's one summer afternoon, we named our band “The Livin” End” from the last words on the credits. I can vividly see us jumping about and yelling, “that's it!” In high school John Schmidt became our drummer. Greg and I and the boys played a great deal, we partied a great deal, and we somehow got through girls and muscle cars and summer jobs and campouts on the sandbar together. We played our horns in a dixieland band called the Band with Good Old Time Flavor, and I strummed a bit with Arnie Junk and Dairyland Ramblers, but mostly we played rock and roll. The summer of 1970 has become known as the Mud Band summer in the annals of me and my friends. Greg and I and Don, Steve Bernhardt, Kirb Toberman, Rob Ploessl, Mike Schier, and Kim Klauer became the Mississippi Mud Band, complete with three guitars, bass, brass – two trumpets and two trombones, two sets of drums and keyboards. We played music from Chicago and Mountain and Blood Sweat and Tears. We played a lot, but we didn't make much money because there were too many cuts, but man, we had fun. I remember Ellen bringing her cousins to watch a practice in Walt Okey's old cement block slaughterhouse. You should have seen the bats fly when the first chord was struck to “25 or 6 to 4”! That fall, Greg and I moved in together up in Madison to attend school. I often joke that I majored in rock and roll and girls in college – the first time anyway. I did not get a degree, but Greg did. A couple years later, he was the one to call me and tell me that Channel 8 in La Crosse needed a commercial artist – something I had gone to school for but didn't finish. I got the job and moved to La Crosse and for a short time Greg and I worked at the same place. He was an engineer and I was in production, fancy titles but pretty much he fixed stuff and I broke it. He moved on to a career in communications with Dairyland Power, and I stayed on for 13 years in television and we both started raising a family and we drifted apart. (I finally finished a degree in Education and nearly 25 years in teaching; without him to fix stuff what else could I do?) By 1972, the Mud Band gradually came apart as all great bands do – except maybe the Rolling Stones. I went on to play with the GMC, The Mark IV, The Buffalo County Band, and Just Friends, while Greg played drums for a number of bands before becoming the main percussionist for the very popular and successful classic rock band, Shake, Rattle, and Roll. In the 90's I played bass for Shake, Rattle, and Roll, so for a time we were back together. In fact, we broke up at Stoddard after playing for Linda and Wayne Jacobson's 25^th anniversary party after a quarrel in the band at the end of the night. My friends Linda and Wayne are still together! Anyway, Greg and I have sat down and strummed our six strings over some Captain's and Coke a few times, and I played with Greg and Shake, Rattle, and Roll down at the Miss Marquette last year one night, but last night was the first time since. I got to play bass while Greg and his granddaughter McKenzie sang together, and then Greg sang some Rolling Stones and Beach Boys. People kept telling us it was so good to see us together again. It was. (The way I feel this morning, it must have been a great.) Thank you for driving home, Ellen.

Greg is retiring next month as I am. I hope we can get together to play a lot in this summer. Steve mentioned a Mud Band reunion of some sort last night. I'm in! Greg has been battling pancreatic cancer for awhile, and we are all asking the powers that be to help him. Playing rock and roll may just be that spark he needs to beat it.

If you have a chance to donate or help in the fight against Cancer – no matter what kind, please consider it. There is no greater influence or scourge on who we are today than this quiet menace; if it has affected you, you know; if it is affecting you, you know; and if you don't think it has affected you – it will, in some way. Unfortunately, I know I am sure about this.

Until next time, get out – Ellen found the mother lode of morels on Friday last. She filled her mesh bag with 5 pounds of the fabulous fungi. The season may be wrapping up as the weeds and grasses are getting so tall, the mushrooms are really hard to spot. She also found deer ticks, so make sure you cover and spray your boots with some sort of Deet if you go. Enjoy.

Grouse Hollow Journal for May 16, 2013

Grouse Hollow Journal for May 16, 2013 by Greg Koelker

Getting out of bed at zero-dark thirty is most likely the hardest part of turkey hunting – at least for me. I mean what reasonable person does that? Uh, that didn't exactly come out right I guess. Anyway, last week on Wednesday I managed to get up at 4:30 AM and stumble into some clothes. I fixed a pot of coffee and filled a thermos to take along, downing a piece of peanut butter toast in the process. I took along the last chocolate chip cookie and a banana. As I turned onto the ridge road, I could see stars set in a black sky that was turning to a cold blue above a hint of gray along the horizon. The Canucks on the BBC were jabbering about the Boston bombers and how those poor people by the fertilizer plant down in Texas were getting short shrift by the press; I switched it off – enough for awhile.

I turned off the headlights as I pulled off the road onto my friend's field road and headed across rough country to the back gate of Grouse Hollow Farm. I used the kid gloves technique to close the truck door and to lower the tailgate so as to not make much noise. I sipped hot coffee and listened. I hate to use the word perfect too often, but it was just that, perfect. Cool with not even a breeze. Song birds were coming alive, tweeting politely at first and then more urgently as they began their day. As always, there were crows, first one and then a raucous chorus. I heard the bawling of cattle and then a milking machine start somewhere far off followed by the “beep beep beep” of someone backing up a big truck or something.

The first gobble was far off. Probably across Proksch Coulee. It was quarter after 5. I wished I were closer to that one, as the tom must have been desperate for companionship. It gobbled and gobbled. A few minutes later one joined in, closer to me, but still clear across the ridge I think. I poured more coffee and ate the cookie.

I was thinking about driving back the way I came and trying to get above one of those love crazed birds, when one announced that he was awake down on a point near where I was. I set down the coffee and grabbed Wilma and my turkey gigbag and cushion and headed that way.

When I had a better idea of where the bird was calling from, I decided to walk down through a deep hollow – as a short cut – to a spot along a field where I could put out my decoys and get set up for an ambush. I worked up a sweat getting back up out of that hole, but the tom was still talking.

I posted a couple of Carry Lite hen decoys on the edge of an old corn field and made my way back through the brush to a big stump I noticed. I got covered up. I checked and loaded my .10 gauge turkey special. I tried a lonesome hen call. I waited a few minutes and tried it again, louder and waited some more. The woods around me were just starting to turn green. Some plants were like iridescent lights as the sun started to filter through the trees from the ridge across from us. I took a couple pictures with my phone. I tried calling again. There are mosquitoes. One bit through my glove. I recently read where if man were to go extinct that in 50 years all life on Earth would flourish, but if insects disappeared, all life would be extinct in 50 years. Maybe so, but I have a theory that if we just get rid of mosquitoes, we could probably put up with going extinct over a few eons. Those remaining years would probably be more pleasant without all that whining. Anyway, my play with the dastardly winged Twilight wannabees was interrupted by another animal I think we have too many of – coyotes. I heard a howl from probably a quarter of a mile or more away behind me. It was almost instantly answered by what sounded like half a dozen howls down in the hollow I had just crossed. I waited holding Wilma a little tighter. After a bit, I tried calling again. I wanted a turkey, but I would have considered a coyote a suitable second place trophy for this hunt.

Anyway, nothing, no one, nobody, nada, nuttin' honey showed up – except more mosquitoes. I checked the clock and realized I would have to hustle to walk back the half mile to the pickup and get down the ridge and off to work. See why I don't use perfect much? The birds didn't cooperate, there were coyotes messing things up, and of course those buzzing vampires were less than pleasant to deal with. Still it was pretty near perfect and the memories and story will improve with age.

Until next time, get out – the neighbors have found a few small gray morels. We have rhubarb and asparagus coming up. Things have to be getting closer to full, head on, spring time – except for maybe the sleet that fell later Saturday and the frost on Mother's Day. Our Colorado mountain kids were here this last weekend. Ben and his friend Drew drove in on Thursday – my birthday (don't ask) – and Mark and Whitney came on Sunday along with their friends the Timmermans. It was great to see them all if only for a couple of days. Enjoy.

Grouse Hollow Journal for May 2, 2013 by Greg Koelker

Grouse Hollow Journal for May 2, 2013 by Greg Koelker

When spring planting time comes to the farm, it sometimes comes with a rush. With memories of snow and ice fresh in our minds, it is hard to believe, but farmers are in the fields. I saw a farmer running an oats drill up on the ridge near Retreat Saturday evening. If a farmer has bottom land, it may not be dry and/or it might be strewn with debris from recent flooding as is the case at Brother Bill's Grant River bottom lands near Burton, so on Thursday Ellen drove south to help with clearing brush and rocks from the fields. Who would have thought that she would drive into a traffic jamb at tiny (one bar, a couple small churches, a few houses, and Bill's farm) Burton! She said she was amazed that people had parked diagonally along Bill's driveway. There were even three coach busses in the middle of the melee. It turned out that Bill was hosting the individual judging heat of the 53rd National Collegiate Soils Contest along with the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Our nephew Brian Fure, is a senior at Platteville and on their Soils Judging team. He was insturmental in bringing the contest to Burton. One his professors said that Bill's river bottom land was, “. . . like the Smithsonian of soils.” Twenty-three practice sites were scheduled over four days prior to the individual contest on Thursday at Burton. These sites were selected specifically to show the diversity of soils in the region. Those busses were filled with students from 23 colleges around the US. In the afternoon, the students and teachers toured up to Vernon County to view the Coon Creek Watershed. The Coon Creek Watershed, is described as, “One of the world's most remarkable series of conservation events . . . : The Coon Creek Watershed is in southwestern Wisconsin. The watershed was first transformed because of large-scale erosion. Originally a pristine woodland a century and a half ago, the area suffered ruinous agricultural degradation through early farming practices. Farm income failed not only because of the depression, but because productivity of the land was washed down the Mississippi,” according to the Land and Conservation Department.

Anyway, while the college types were playing in the dirt, other people were helping Bill get ready to do something with it. Ellen said they had a quite a crew with family and friends and some River Falls turkey hunters. The ground was too soft to use big machinery – they got one tractor stuck – so they were using four wheelers with trailers to haul away and pile the mess. El's dad used to say that “many hands make light work.” This day they illustrated that adage, finishing in time for Ellen to make it home by supper.

I was able to wear shorts this last weekend. (I apologize to all of God's creatures that were temporarily blinded by the light reflecting off my legs.) I walked up on our hill and fournd that there are wild flowers out in force in our woods. There were small bees getting busy at what bees do with flowers. Ellen told me that she even saw small purple/dark blue butterflies in the driveway on Saturday. Can the morels be far behind? El and I cleared downed trees off one of the logging roads on Saturday afternoon. Things are dry out there. The fire danger sign in Stoddard read High on Friday.

(Okay, it is 31 degrees out this morning on May 3!!! Who pissed off Mother Nature?)

Until next time, get out – my buddy Bob Bonine and I took in the film, 42 on Friday night. I was familiar with the Branch Rickey/Jackie Robinson story, but this brought it home again. Good movie. I have mower blades to sharpen and a dog that needs a walk, so . . . Enjoy.