Going Home 822023

The author, Dan Flannery, apologizes for the delay in his column submission and talks about his recent experiences going back to his hometown and playing music. He visited the homestead where he spent his teen years, which brought up memories of his mother. He also performed in Goodman and Crandon, reconnecting with old friends and making new connections. He talks about upcoming performances and his love for playing music. He wants to continue making memories and exploring new towns and venues. Overall, he is grateful for the support and hopes to see his readers at future gigs. Hello, I'm Dan Flannery and welcome to the Sunday column for Wednesday, August 2, 2023. It's been over a month since my last Sunday column submission. I apologize for the delay, been a little bit busy with playing and doing some stuff around the house, but I hope that you understand and I hope you enjoy this one. I've been doing a little bit of playing over the last month, as I mentioned, and this reflects a little bit of that and where it goes going forward. And it is called The Going Home Tour Continues in Northwoods and Beyond. I've been doing a lot of going home lately. There's a fine line between the benefits of acknowledging the past and envisioning the future, and I'm not sure where one ends and the other begins sometimes. Much of my writing over the years has been about my roots, my family, and my experiences, some of which is interesting and poignant and funny. It's all small town and rural life, and maybe it would make an interesting book someday if I thought it would sell more than a few dozen copies to families and friends. I really don't want to give away a life's work, but I'm not sure I could get money for it either. Still, there are connections worth exploring. On July 19th, I visited and toured the homestead where I spent my teen years, on the corner of Forest County Roads G and O in the town of Caswell. The current owners, Joe and Laura Wojcik, greeted me and sat for a quick interview for a State of Life column I'll be doing for the October and November 2023 issue of Our Wisconsin Magazine. Joe showed me around the place, explained the changes they've made, talked about my mother's visits there after she moved to Crandon. Thelma Flannery, my mom, had a tough time with any changes there, and that was pretty clear. A picket fence that she and I painted yellow in the summer of 1970 was taken down in 2021, a year after she passed. Joe had promised her it would stay up until she died. These are what kept Thelma coming back, and that goes for me as well. I've stopped by a few times over the almost two decades since Joe and Laura bought the property from the previous owner, who purchased it from Mom in September 1996. I don't want to give away the Our Wisconsin piece, but suffice to say that Thelma's memories were powerful. It was her first and only new house, and the quiet and solitude of the setting informed who she was and how she will be remembered by her family. A few hours after that visit, and after a quick trip through Kvore population, not many, I headed to Goodman to play guitar and sing for 90 minutes at the Music in the Square performance series. The shows there are as low-key, mellow, and relaxed as possible, and the series is coordinated by my sister-in-law, Joan Flannery. The site of the performance, Goodman's Veterans Memorial Square, also has much to do with Joan and Terry Flannery, her late husband and my oldest brother. They did much of the heavy lifting and research to find the name of Goodman natives who died in service to our country. Terry was an Air Force veteran, too, and served in the early 60s during the early Cold War. Terry died in October 2018. He was a force of nature, a remarkable father and husband who got a lot of stuff done, he would use a different word, despite a leg amputation in 1986, and obviously we all miss him dearly. So, it's always easy to say yes to Joan's invitation to play. Around 50 or 60 folks showed up that night for the music, and we had a superb time, as we've had over the past couple summers in Memorial Square. It was a grand day, and it might have been enough to satisfy me, but no, there's more. Last Saturday, I played a three-hour gig at Crandon's Kentucky Festival in the Courthouse Square. Again, the crowd, family and friends were there, as well as a lot of strangers, was fun and friendly, and seemed to enjoy my material. It had been more than 20 years since I played in Crandon, the town where I first played in public as a young kid, when Dad took me to bars to play every so often. This was a different dynamic, obviously, but it was every bit as memorable. I saw friends I haven't seen in decades. Rick Shampo was there. We were close buddies when our family lived just outside of town on County W, but I don't remember seeing him much since the early 1970s. I did not recognize him, but I noticed him playing close attention during my first set. He reintroduced himself during my break, by saying, you don't know who I am, do you? I didn't. I had no clue, but I had a lot of memories, and a lot of questions, and it was great to catch up. Bill Mullins was there. He's a fellow guitar picker, and I knew him a little bit when I lived in the area, pre-1975, but again, I had no idea who he was when he chatted me up after the gig. Fifteen minutes later, we had discussed jobs, guitars, amplifiers, and more. Bill and his brothers had a successful band for a long time in that part of northern Wisconsin. Eddie Howard was there. He's a picker and a singer, too, but I didn't know him well when I lived there. I knew him only as brother to Gary and Jimmy Howard, classmates of mine at Mole Lake Elementary School in the early to mid-1960s. The Howard family, with parents Ivan and Lillian, were one of the few families, along with Tom and Gene Mahaco's family, we ever visited as a family in those days. Over five to ten minutes, Eddie and I caught up, too. Another connection made. Sandy Howerton was there. I'd never met her, as I remember, but she introduced herself during my break. I used to do your mom's hair, she said, and I still do Gene's hair. Gene, my oldest sister, was at the gig with her husband of 63 years, Bill Montgomery. Your mom was so proud of you, Sandy told me. She used to bring in all the stories you wrote about her and Crandon and Leona in the Post-Crescent and in her Wisconsin. I'd usually already read the magazine stories, but I got a kick out of reading them again. She was so, so proud of you. I was proud of her, too, Sandy. She was the best mom I could have wanted, and she made this connection happen, too. Paul Spencer, my cousin, was there. I don't see Paul often, but he and my brother Luke have been thicker than thieves since they were born. He might have heard me and Luke play a few times for Thelma's birthday parties at the Acorn Apartments in Crandon, but I doubt he'd ever heard me play a gig like Kentucky. That was inspirational, Paul told me later. I said, what are you inspired to do? Listen to more, he said. Fair enough, and I'm inspired to play more. The Going Home Tour continues this Friday with a two-hour set at Leona's Centennial Park for the Super Reunion Weekend Celebration. A little bit of background. The super name, S-O-U-P-E-R, comes from the decades-long Community Soup event, which is always the first weekend of August. The Community Soup gets its name from one of Leona's most unusual distinctions. It has the world's largest soup kettle. You can see it downtown as you pass through on Highway 8. A parenthetical remark here, one of my high school classmates allegedly spent a night in the soup kettle in 1975 or 76. It's a good story, but I don't know the details well enough to say how it actually happened, but you can surmise what might have been involved. Anyhow, I'll be the first opening act on Friday from 4 to 6 p.m. The evening concludes with headliner Jordan Blanchard and his band playing his original material, and I'm guessing some covers from today's country genre. I graduated from Leona High School in 1975, but I haven't played in the town since the mid-90s when I was in a country band called Straight Shooter. After that, after this Friday, the going-home tour continues with a Sunday afternoon August 13 performance at Ruby's Bar in the Goodman Clubhouse, an August 23 show at Wabino's Bandsheld, and a September 23 gig at Crandon's Art in the Square. I love getting back on a stage to see how much more gas is in my tank, and I love playing for folks who enjoy my material, and I genuinely enjoy playing in an area where it started for me. I picked up a guitar at age five and never looked back. It's been a companion for 61 years. These gigs are important to me for that reason, true, but it has to be more than that if I'm going to keep doing this. It has to be part of my calendar and my map, and those need to extend to new towns and new venues every month. It's time to make more memories while I can. That's the Sunday column for August 2, 2023. I'm Dan Flannery again. Thanks for reading and listening. Hope to see you at a Flannery gig in the near and distant future. Have a great day. Bye.