Some things haven’t changed in the southern Wisconsin town of Cambridge.
Peter Jackson, Jim Rowe’s former partner, has spread the bug to nearby Edgerton with his Rockdale Union Stoneware, 1858 Artisan (608-884-9483 or 800-222-0699), and there’s also Woodfire Pottery, just east of Cambridge, and Hands End, 137 W. Main (608-423-4151).
Surrounding towns such as Edgerton, Jefferson, Lake Mills, Fort Atkinson, Milton, and the adjacent Rockdale may be dead as far as offering sushi or Daniel Barenboim at the CSO, but for what they are they seem far from dying. New tobacco-drying barns–roughly, corrugated roofing over scores of rooted metal frames that resemble the turnstiles in front of the rides at Great America–and an abundant crop of satellite dishes indicate that the people here are doing all right, even if farmers aren’t thriving as in the early 1900s, when Edgerton was known as the tobacco capital of the world. (The Tobacco City Museum, 8 E. Fulton, Edgerton [608-884-4319], documents this time: “The most unique portion of our heritage,” a newspaper clipping at the museum says.)
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Enterprising residents are enhancing their incomes by breeding and selling exotic animals or by opening bed-and-breakfasts–or both, in the case of Cambridge’s Bison Trail Bed and Breakfast, W9443 E. Kroghville (414-648-5433), owned by teachers Dale and Mary Jenkins. Room rates run between $45 and $65 and you can order buffalo meat for breakfast. The seven-year-old log manse overlooks the 231-acre Out West Farm, with its bicycle trail and 65 head of bison.
Whereas most of the area’s restaurants offer Wisconsin staples–fish, fried shrimp, steaks–in typically rustic settings, the Clay Market Cafe, 157 Main (608-423-9616), is tailor-made for the pampered Chicago tourist. Though it had the best food of the several restaurants we sampled, we were turned off when the waitress handed us a pager during the lunch rush, the better to buy something from the adjacent store during the wait for a table.
North Shore Inn, N1835 North Shore Road, Fort Atkinson (414-563-2083), overlooking Wisconsin’s second-largest lake, Lake Koshkonong, is such a place. It’s a true Wisconsin supper club: outdoor beer garden with patio lanterns and picnic tables; a poster heralding the annual Gemutlichkeit (German Heritage Days) with the Polka Brothers and a rolling-pin toss; paper place mats on plastic tablecloths; three Old Styles and a Pepsi for $5.40; electronic trap-shoot game; fried cheddar nuggets; walleyed pike (OK at $7.50) and steak and shrimp ($10.75); and “the best old-fashioneds in the area.” But as Yogi Berra said about an old New York joint–“No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded”–a local couple at a nearby table said they no longer frequent the North Shore’s Friday-night cod fry (priced at $3.50, $4.50, and $6 for different portion sizes) because it’s filled with tourists on referral.
The pea green Duck Blind, a 61-year-old tavern at 222 Water in Rockdale (608-423-3323), had the best burger–a bulbous, two-third-pound monster grilled by owner Leani Schoor. She said that former owners “used to say this is the best bar by a dam site,” due to its location on Koshkonong Creek next to the Rockdale Mill Dam, which supplied Wisconsin’s largest unincorporated town with power from 1846 to 1956. It just so happened that the dam’s owner, Rockdale mayor Bob Smithback, stopped in for a lunch-hour Pabst Blue Ribbon and a game of dice. Smithback was joined by his peers this midday, but Schoor said that at night they draw a younger crowd. An acquaintance from Kurt’s Place, C.L. Rucks (“I don’t go by Cary, I don’t go by Larry, I go by C.L.”), said the Duck Blind is “more of a farmers’ bar. You can get anything to happen at any time if you talk good enough.”
