Travelogue: Baraboo, WI, pop. 10,711
Posted by Marisa Wegrzyn on 7/13/2006
When John Ringling, of Ringling Brothers fame, left his hometown and Circus headquarters in Baraboo, Wisconsin, he referred to the townsfolk as “hick Barabooians.” But when I visited Baraboo last February to check out the town, I found the people there friendly and helpful, and when the town bum spotted me taking a picture of the historic Al Ringling Theatre on the town square, he was thrilled to point out Al Ringling’s redbrick house before asking me for change.
There’s not much scenery along I-90 into Wisconsin. It’s vague and vast and forgettable, the same way I describe my English major in college. The exit for Baraboo/Portage has one of the sharpest, fastest highway exits I’ve ever experienced, and after nearly flipping my car into a drainage ditch, I ended up on a country road toward the promised land, if, by promised land, I mean Baraboo. I drove past houses, decrepit and serene, I drove past farms and grain silos, I drove past Pigtail Road, and I wondered who lived up there. Pippi Longstocking? Wendy the fast food huckster? Yo mama? (if, by Yo Mama, I mean your mother, if she wore pigtails).
Nine miles later, I puttered into Downtown Baraboo. Now, I have been here before. I was ten years old, and it was part of a family trip to the Wisconsin Dells, the summer pilgrimage for many Midwestern children. Baraboo is 13 miles south of The Dells, and we had come down to Baraboo to visit the Circus World Museum. When I talk about it with my sisters, we can’t remember much about our visit. It was rainy and cold and gloomy. That’s what stuck in my memory, a blasé misery that sums of the worst day of any family vacation.
I headed to the Circus World Museum. I knew before I left Chicago that the museum was closed for the winter. Many of the Ringling Bros. buildings, most built in the late 1800s, are still standing and tagged with historical plaques, buildings for camels, elephants, and bears, oh my. Much of the museum is outdoor stuff—trains and wagons—so I peeped through the fence. The place sure is closed, yet calliope music floated over the desolate circus grounds, and frankly, circus music is unsettling. What’s neat, though, are the clown-heads that top the garbage cans, so if you want, you can throw garbage into a clown’s mouth, thus fulfilling many clown-haters’ desire to do that to a real clown.
The circus has absolutely nothing to do with my play. This was just a detour.
I got back in my car and followed the signs to Devil’s Lake. This lake is a significant element in the story of my play, and it’s exactly how I imagined it would be: beautiful, frozen over, covered with a dusting of snow. Devil’s Lake was a thriving resort lake until the late 1800s, but tourism dropped off after carefree vacationers started dropping dead from Typhoid Fever. I sometimes think I was born in the wrong century, but then I get all smug knowing I’ll never die of typhoid.
Baraboo is a nice little town, a worthwhile visit if you ever find yourself roaming central Wisconsin. But the wintry Baraboo of my imagination is a different story entirely.