Dave Wood

Twenty-five years ago my wife and I relocated to River Falls, a town I knew little about, so I visited the fount of all knowledge, the South Fork Café. I sat alone on a stool at the counter, after which a gentleman seated at a large table arose, came over, introduced himself and invited me to join his group. Thus, I joined a menagerie which I referred to as The South Fork Sages in the old River Falls Journal. 

From these sages I learned a great deal about the town which my wife Ruth and I have grown to love. We learned first of all that River Falls wasn’t averse to diversity. Our little coffee klatch was a model of inclusion. There was George Field, the Chancellor Emeritus of the University; Bernie Modl, a cement mason; Professor Charles Lonie, a Renaissance raconteur who did not suffer fools gladly. There was Dick Larson, a watchmaker and former university postal clerk; Mayor Cecil Bjork, bicycle collector extraordinaire who could recite scripture and verse of the city’s by-laws and often did. And there was printer Harris Kittleson who shared my love of Norwegian gastronomy—and slyly witty Ken Kraus, a retired warehouse manager, with whom I shared one of Ken’s last suppers, six squirrels roasted in sage and heavy cream.

We talked every morning, always bitching about Dawn’s coffee and arguing which was better: asphalt or concrete driveways, Chevys or Fords, stewed prunes or Metamucil gummies. We seldom reached an agreement, but we kept on anyway for years, enjoying every minute of it.

Oh, one more. There was Tom Caflisch, a burly handsome fellow always smiling, always enthusiastic and bursting with energy, always engaged in this project or that. He was a fellow who invariably looked on the bright side of life in spite of the gloomy gripers among us. 

So we were sad to learn that Tom had passed on, after multiple medical problems. He was one of the last of the South Fork Sages. Over the years our group had fallen apart due to illness, death, relocations. Once in a while I’d run into Tom and his wife Judie at the Family Fresh coffee hour. We were both getting smaller and our handshakes less confident, but Tom was still smiling and we promised we’d get together when our health improved.  I swore to Ruth that I’d visit Tom when we got back from Missouri. But, of course, I didn’t.

But the news kicked in good memories of the events in our River Falls lives prompted by Tom, who was never shy about making fun of himself. After bragging endlessly about the oil tank he had converted to a rainwater storage container, he admitted that after last night’s storm he had forgotten to turn off the valve… Tom was a woodworker and constructed cunning little wooden frames designed to hold hot casseroles. He looked forward to displaying them at an arts and crafts show. I dropped by to see how the product was selling. “No one seems to want the wooden frames, but one woman asked how much I charged for the Pyrex casserole I brought along to demonstrate how cookware would fit in the frame.”

Tom also loved to talk about his days as a farm kid outside Baraboo, how he helped an old-fashioned milk hauler deal with those old 100-pound cream cans. “This one farmer had a dog who always nipped at my heels when I was jostling cans onto the truck bed. One day I ACCIDENTALLY dropped a can on the little pest, and he never bothered me again.”

He also liked playing the hayseed and forever talked about his awkward moves while courting Judie, a fancy Baraboo city girl. “One Sunday Judie’s family invited me to breakfast after church. We sat at the dining room table and Judie’s mother asked me how many eggs I’d like and I said ‘eight!’ She obliged and I couldn’t figure out why no one else at the table was eating eggs. I guess I cleaned her out.”

This morning, when I was trying to decide whether I should make a two or a three-egg omelet I remembered and decided maybe two was sufficient.