Tent Pitching in Wisconsin

We're in Boscobel, Wisconsin, population 3,047, right on the Wisconsin River.

It's 4:30 pm. I'm in the Hildenbrand Library. We were dropped off by Kelly, the camp host of Tower Hill state park, where we stayed last night. He's visiting his aunt Mabel in the Boscobel Nursing home. Our backpacks are still in his Cutlass Supreme.

Thank god we met Kelly last night. We arrived at the campsite, largely deserted, at sundown, after a long day of walking the backroads and train tracks heading due West out of Madison. We left at 10 am with the two goals in mind: get to Tower Hill and find John Slick. I met John seven years ago on my first walk. He let me pitch my tent in the back yard of his farmhouse, set just off of highway KP. Then he let me phone my girlfriend at the time, the girl I broke up with that morning, to come stay with me for the night in my tent out back. When John saw me trying to set up my tent with Katie, he said, "Son, I just don't think you're gonna make it." We eventually got the tent up and running, and John told us about his girlfriend. "She's got a harelip, and clubbed foot, but other than that she's alright."

John looked pretty old seven years ago, so I wasn't sure he'd even be alive, so you can imagine how elated I was to see him off in the distance, cruising down KP on a old rusted red tractor. Bob was pretty surprised too, since I'm fairly certain he doubted the existence of John Slick, even if the Sikh Indians who ran the BP gas station that sold hard liquor and porn promised us they knew John Slick and gave us his whereabouts. I ran up the road, sort of hooting, and waving my arms, and calling out, "IT'S JOHN SLICK, holy shit, JOHN SLICK," and trying to run down the shoulder of the road while carrying my pack and nursing severely chafed thighs by cupping my nether regions in my hand.

We caught up with John Slick and I asked him why he wasn't listed in the phone book. Turns out his last name is "Schlick", but I wrote it "Slick" in my shitty journal because I don't bother to doublecheck anything because I'm lazy. We talked and laughed as John sat on his idling tractor and I asked him why the Sikh's knew him, and he said "I'm seventy. Everyone knows me." and about his girlfriend with the harelip and the clubbed foot, and he told me not only was he still going out with her, she was coming over. Then he told me to go across the street to his silo and shed, he wanted to show me something. Bob and I collapsed on John's lawn and waited, and as we waited, who pulls into the driveway but she of the harelip and clubbed foot, the aforementioned girlfriend of John Schlick. Her name is Linda. Linda Perkins. I went up to her to introduce myself and upon examination I could find scant evidence of a harelip, and her gait seemed normal. Perhaps her shoes and socks concealed her tragic secret. Regardless, she seemed tickled that Bob and I were on this journey.

Eventually John drove us 20 miles to Tower Hill. He told us he's worth 2.5 million dollars, he's never been married and never had children. He gave up drinking after a three day bender over Memorial Day in 1964 which resulted in the DT's. I sympathized and wondered how long before I get the DTs. Bob filmed the entire interview. Even after we got to the State Park we talked. It was obvious John didn't talk to many people besides Linda. He told us about 7 cool stories about a bunch of stuff. I kept shaking his hand and saying, "Well, John, it was great seeing you," and then he would tell me about how pranked his friend who collected Conan the Barbarian memorabilia by sending a fake postcard from Barcelona, pretending to be a guy interested in buying the entire collection.

John talked so long, and there was precious little light left. The park was on the banks of a tributary to the Wisconsin river and heavily forested. They're were mosquitoes swarming everyone, on every surface of our bodies, going in our ears, eyes, and throats. I couldn't find my of Cutter. I blamed Bob since he derided the unnatural evil of chemicals. He grew up in Idaho. They don't believe in pesticides or something. We moved around the camp looking for a less wooded area and that's when we saw a camper with lights on and there was Kelly. I asked if he had bug spray, as I was on the point of stabbing someone. He gave us Raid. The shit you use to kill cockroaches. There's a medical warning about contact with skin. I sprayed that shit on like I it was perfume for a French whore.

By then the sun was down. We didn't have enough light to set up tents. He kept trying to take over the tent construction operation, commenting on the unique design and saying, "I've never seen a tent like this, and I've seen a lot of tents." Kelly, the camp host, came up to our site to inform us it was certain to rain. He saw us struggling and offered use of a tent he set up next to his camper. We begged off, certain the two of us could figure it out. Then Bob dropped a bombshell. He had no tent. We gave up, took up Kelly's offer. We ate brats, potatoes, and pasta salad. And chocolate pie. All homemade. And now we're here. And now it's time for the Russian Orthodox monastery run by a converted Jew....