Did you know Bloomer, Wisconsin is the jump roping capital of the world?

When Kari informed me of this purported fact, I was incredulous. Surely
there were some girls in Harlem who might have an issue with Bloomer’s
claim, I said. Set in rolling hills alternating between corn and silos
and thickets of woodland just north of the city of Eau Claire
(population 61,700), downtown Bloomer, all four blocks of it, looks
like the kind of place a Frank Capra character would leave to set the
politicians straight. Kari, my mother-in-law Mary and my brother-in-law
Bob stopped into the Main Street Café where I ordered a hot beef and a
malted milkshake.

“Isn’t Bloomer the jump-roping capital?” Kari asked our young waitress.

“Yes it is,” she replied, adding that the big event happens in January.

“Don’t people come from all over the world?”

"Not really," the young woman said sheepishly, then quickly recovering
“I was a jumper. I jumped 54 times in 10 seconds. The record is 73
times in 10 seconds.”

That is impressive and pretty hard to argue with, even, I imagine, if I were a girl from Harlem.

And so it is and here we are. Like me, Kari is no Mainer and also like
me she would never pretend to be. She loves her Midwestern roots and
the community that raised her. Kari was born in Eau Claire.

This part of the country, on the southern border of the North Woods
doesn’t look much like the east coast. The sky seems bigger and the
distances longer. For an Easterner like me, the hardest thing to get
past is that there seems to be so much land. It stretches out toward
infinity in every direction. Eau Claire itself sprawls from its
traditional center almost uniformly as if someone transferred the map
of a city onto a piece of putty and stretched it out. There are roads –
not highways –  where the right-of-way must be 300 feet across.
Clairmont Avenue has eight lanes in parts.

Much has changed in Eau Claire since Kari left 15 or so years ago, but
what she focuses on is what is the same and the people she never left
behind. It is where her parents grew up and their parents as well.
Being five or so hours by car  from my homestead in New Jersey, we
get there fairly often but the opportunities to visit Kari’s family are
few and far between. I came out this way with her a number of years ago
when we were dating, but six months after we married, I had not met
many of my new relatives.

We attended a 50th wedding anniversary party for Kari’s Uncle Jerry and
Aunt Betty at an old farm property the couple’s children use as a
weekend retreat way outside town where the cars share the roads with
Amish buggies. In a hangar-like outbuilding and safe from the blazing
sun, that cooked the ground and  everything on it to a crispy
96-degrees, I met uncles and aunts, cousins, and wives, second-cousins
and friends from the old neighborhood. As I tried to keep everyone
straight, trying to build a family tree in my head, Kari ran around
hugging and laughing and I understood why it was so important we time
our vacation so it included the party .

The next day, Kari, Bob, Mary and I met Bob’s old friend John on the
golf course, where a slight breeze was the only thing that made the
relentless sun and heat bearable. Kari acted as Mary’s chauffer as Bob
crushed his tee shots and John swatted at the ball with a half swing
setting the ball sailing farther than my skinny arms and legs could
ever manage. Mary – a woman who lived through the second world war-–
out distanced my shots, at least when I managed to actually hit the
ball. While my shots sailed wildly left and right (I lost four balls,
took three do-over’s and gave up before reaching the green on several
holes), you could count on Mary being in the center of the fairway. And
this was all under that unforgiving sun. By the time we were on the
15th hole, we were the only ones on the course.

For Kari and I there was only the few brief days to spend with the
people she loves and misses dearly and we were  not going to
squander that opportunity sitting in air-conditioning watching 
TV. The distance and time that separates Kari from her family makes
these opportunities all the more precious but true whether the people
live next door, in the next town, or state or time zone. Sometimes we
mistake proximity with permanence. Kari, whose father died a few years
before we met, has no such illusion as our time here makes clear.

We already decided we’ll be back next summer. We’ll rent the same
cottage north of Bloomer that Kari’s family rented 30 years ago. We’ll
pack the dog and drive out with Betty and meet Mary and Bob and his
wife Amy.

Clairmont Avenue might have another lane by then but that cottage by
Clear Lake has changed little in all those years. The sun will still be
hot and the fish will still be hungry and old memories will make room
for new additions. In Wisconsin, there’s room enough for that.

–Ward Peck