Here's another visit to days gone by. About 50 years ago, I met a fisherman named Wally Wagner. He was the brother of Millie Weseman. She was married to Al Weseman, and Al and Millie owned and ran Al's Place. They rented-out cabins and camping facilities. They lived in what was originally the lodge, and ran the bar. Incidentally, even today the bar remains pretty much the same as it was back then. However, it is now part and parcel of the large rental unit that's now part of the Condominium Association. It is no longer open for business as a bar.
Al's Place was subsequently sold to Merle Wendt who, one year later, sold it to Earl Gitzlaff who renamed it "Fort Flambeau." Subsequently, Earl's kids sold it after Earl died and they morphed it into today's Fort Flambeau Condominium Association. One of Earl's daughters, Sandy, now has her own waterfront home on some property adjacent to the original property that was Al's Place.
Wally Wagner lived in Chicago, and was a frequent visitor to Al's Place. During summer vacations from school, Wally's son, Randy, worked as a chore boy at his Uncle Al's resort There was a small chore boy's cabin in which a couple of kids shared crowded quarters all summer. (Randy is now a lead aircraft mechanic for Continental Airlines.)
There were no piers on the Al's Place shoreline. In those days all of Al's fourteen-foot Alumacraft boats were landed, nose-first, onto the beach. There were two sixteen-foot boats for the lucky fisherman who obtained them. There was always some amount of beach sand that would accumulate in the bottom of the boats during a day's use. This would tend to blow into the face of whomever was sitting in the stern of the boat as they "sped" through the Flowage waters with their 7.0 HP or 9.5 HP Johnson of Evinrude. (Only the daring would mount a 15 HP, and only a "darned fool" would think of using something as powerful as 25 HP!
A daily chore of the chore boys was to remove the engines and gear from all the boats; haul them onto the beach; turn them up on their side; and hose out all of the sand, fish scales, blood and dead night crawlers. Then they would restore everything to be ready for another day's worth of fishing for the renting fishermen.
Al had a small shack on the beach. It was about the size of a decent two-holer outhouse. That's where he stored his unused engines and six-gallon fuel tanks. Incidentally, the gasoline pump was up near the lodge. The chore boys would have to lug those tanks up and down the hill to get them filled. It was a lso their responsibility to ensure that the proper fuel/oil mixture was maintained.
One day that shed caught fire. Al sought to rescue his engines. But all he acquired for his efforts were some burns. The fire threatened a nearby pine tree, It got scorched, but it still remains on the beach today. It's somewhat larger, of course, but none the worse for wear. The original concrete pad for this shack is still on the beach. Some of Al's engines were reduced to molten puddles of metal that were found on this slab. He used to keep one of these flattened metal puddles behind the bar as a souvenir to prove how hot that fire had gotten.
Wally Wagner only had one eye. He lost the other in a childhood accident. A person loses their depth perception if they have sight in only one eye. But, Wally had no trouble driving from Chicago to the Flowage, and back, again. He never bumped into anything along the way. He managed to overcome this lack of depth perception. And, to prove the point even further, Wally could toss a musky lure accurately into any bushel-basket opening alongside a promising patch of musky cabbage, and do it time after time.
I've tried closing one eye to see if I can make accurate casts, or can drive a car. I've never had any success. Try it, yourself, and it'll become obvious that Wally had a unique talent.
One day, Wally went musky fishing with Earl Tomek. Earl guided out of The Old Log Inn where he and his wife, Elsie, tended their bar and cooked food. They were the best hamburgers and fries and the best dinners east of the Mississippi River that you could ever hope for - - bar none!
Anyway, on this particular day Wally and Earl went up to Moose Lake and rented a boat from Al Kaiser. Al and his wife and daughter were the only folks who lived on remote Moose Lake. (Nobody lives there now - - and all remnants of Al Kaiser's domain have been totally removed.) Al's daughter used to keep a "Bambi" deer as a pet. It would enter the house much the same as a cat or dog. She once even had a pet fox, which remained on a leash and remained outside tethered in sliding fashion to the clothes line so it had some freedom of movement.
I remember an occasion when I was eating a paper-bag lunch with Earl Tomek. We pulled up on shore and used Al Kaiser's picnic table. What exotic comfort for a shore lunch! Earl then demonstrated to me the survival instinct of that fox. He took a piece of meat from his sandwich. He mentioned that if it were tossed to a dog, the dog would gobble it down. But, unless he was REALLY hungry at the moment, the fox would save that morsel for a cold winter day when he needed it more.
Sure 'nuff, when Earl tossed that piece of meat to the fox, he ran with it to the other end of the clothes line and buried it.
Now, this was back in the days when a legal-sized musky had to be 30 inches. And, "catch and release" was not yet even thought of. If you caught a legal musky, you brought it in and acquired momentary bragging rights while enjoying a cold Kugel at the bar. If it was a decent size, you took it to the taxidermist on Highway 13 and had it mounted. If you cleaned and ate it, you would remove the head. Then, you'd nail that head to a nearby tree with its gills spread and its mouth open. There used to be quite a few musky heads nailed to trees all around the Flowage as indications of successful hunts back in those days. 'Ya just don't see such things anymore.
It was on this particular day that I've already mentioned that Wally tossed an accurate cast into a pocket in a weed bed on Moose Lake, and a 42" musky latched onto it. It was a beautiful musky. And, since it was his first musky, Wally had it mounted. It now resides upon the wall of a cabin on the Flowage, and still looks great.
Wally, Earl and many other old fishing buddies are no longer with us. But, those memories sure do live on. And, I still have to wonder: whatever happened to all of those old musky heads that used to be nailed to those trees?
