A really good guy – Picture of the Day

Monday, August 17, 2026

We all went to Fennimore, WI, today to bury our Uncle Fred (or for Chrissy, her dad). In one of his last visits with Nancy, when he knew our cousin reunion was planned, he said he thought it would be nice if we all could be together to place his urn. Mark spoke a few words about how successful Fred was at his career, how he could really tell a story, how much he loved us all, and what a really good guy he was. He was so right on all counts. Fred requested to be buried with a deck of cards and granddaughter Maggie procured some from Lambeau Field. It was suggested we could wear Packer, Brewer, or Badger wear to honor Fred’s passion for Wisconsin sports. Dennis wore a great shirt. Keith played Taps to honor his service. We enjoyed lunch together before breaking into many directions towards home.

Maggie saved a small amount of ashes for Fred’s daughter, Jennie, who could not be with us today. I suggested he hang out with Thom (happy birthday, Thom!) on the hearth until Jennie can retrieve him.

Keith and I headed to Iowa to hunt more trolls. We went through Platteville (and drove past Gramma White’s house on Dewey St), then through Cuba City where the last reunion I remember (about 50 years ago) took place, up and down in Galena, then on to Clinton, Iowa.

The first troll was my favorite. He was super easy to find – just off of the main downtown in a small park. The next one was INSIDE the old train depot. We were standing across the street, looking at our phones and all around, when I lady popped her head out of the door and waved us in. “He’s inside!” We followed a path through the brush to find him relaxing.

The third brother troll was at the arboretum. There were very specific directions (excellent, hey?). Go to the main entrance of the arboretum. We found an archway with the name of the place. Take the wide, paved path. Mmmm. No paved anything. Just some trampled grass and a bit of dirt. Look to the left. Um. No. The left was the parking lot. Walk one minute. Mmmm. In one minute I was just still standing in an open spot of grass. I just took off walking. How big could the arboretum of Clinton be?

Turns out pretty big. Keith was trailing me for a change, talking to his AI friend, Sheldon, about better directions. I was hypothesizing about walking over a hill when I saw him. He was way to the right – 5 or 6 minutes of walking at least. Stupid directions.

These three troll brothers each had necklaces with symbols on them. We had to go to the troll website to enter the symbols and crack the code. It gave us directions to a special bonus “gathering of branches”.

We stopped at an overlook of the Mississippi that was a lot prettier than this picture.

We had to hike the farthest to find the branches, but at least we knew we were on the right track.

Trolls accomplished, we chose to go the Candlelight Restaurant for George Chicken. Apparently, many, many years ago, a restaurant worker named George made himself a snack while at work. A customer asked to try it and really liked it. The owner told him to ask for George Chicken if he ever wanted to have it again. Now it is a thing. George Chicken is very lightly breaded, fried chicken fingers – not so unusual now, but this was long before chicken nuggets. It turned out that Monday is all you can eat George Chicken for $12. I had Buffalo and Keith had Boom Boom. It came with Jan sauce (originated by Jan) which was something that didn’t sound great by the definition but turned out to be amazing. It had a lot of sugar (I think) that they didn’t mention in the description. We decided if this was available at home, Keith, Alexander, and I would go here often. Neither of us could come close to finishing our first portion, so that was all we could eat.

We saw the pontoon people leave and go to their boat after they ate. Great!

I am going to add troll pictures way at the end. You will have to scroll down to see them, because I have a couple of readers who are also hunting trolls and don’t want to see before they get to go in person. Denmark was far enough away that it didn’t seem like letting the troll out of the bag, but Iowa is pretty close to home. So, scroll down to see…

More…

I don’t know how this transfers to a computer or tablet or phone, so I am being overly down.

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