The Baileys Harbor Bird and Booyah Club

by Dave Crehore

Overview

Open this book and you are in Door County, Wisconsin, strolling down Coot Lake Road—a one-lane, dead-end gravel track just a few miles from Baileys Harbor and the Lake Michigan shore. Along the way you meet George and Helen O’Malley, who are growing old gracefully. Russell, their brave and empathetic golden retriever, wags hello and offers you a paw to shake.
    The Olsons and the Berges live just down the road. Bump Olson is the local septic tank pumper and birdwatcher extraordinaire, and Hans Berge, MD, PhD, was at one time the only Norwegian psychiatrist in Chicago—or so he says. In a cottage out by the highway, you may spot Lloyd Barnes, ex–Tennessee state trooper, hound fancier, and local man of mystery. Uncle Petter Sorenson, visiting from Grand Forks, takes the polar bear plunge at Jacksonport. Around the neighborhood you’ll meet Deputy Doug, the flirtatious cellist Debbie Dombrowski, and Italian import Rosa Zamboni.
    Dave Crehore’s sketches of life on the Door peninsula also expound on:
•    the delights of codfish pizza
•    how to insult Canadians
•    what to expect at your fiftieth high school reunion
•    how to lose a school board election
•    the prevention of creeping old-fogyism
•    Marilyn, a buxom eight-pound smallmouth bass
•    and what goes on in the winter, when no one is there.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299286736
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	06/11/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Dave Crehore is a longtime resident of northeast Wisconsin and a retired writer and photographer for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. His first book, Sweet and Sour Pie, was also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Table of Contents

Back Home Again in Baileys Harbor

Don't Get Old Before I Do

Bear Trouble

About As Good As It Gets

The Hound of the Basketballs

The Outcasts of Caribou Camp

Pennies from Heaven

The Four Musketeers

Let George Do It

Reefer Madness

Just a Gigolo

Miracle on Coot Lake Road

Petter Takes the Plunge

Hidden Depths

The Last Summer

The Return of Tuddy

Editorial Reviews

Like Garrison Keillor's quaint tales of the town of Lake Wobegon, Crehore's fiction debut (after the memoir Sweet and Sour Pie: A Wisconsin Boyhood) is a delightful meditation on small-town life in Northern Door, Wisconsin, an odd community peopled by a unique cast of characters. The titular booyah—which is both the name of a hearty stew made in massive quantities, as well as the communal event surrounding its cooking and eating—is an apt metaphor for this maundering tale: the narrative revolves around George and Helen O'Malley, a couple "growing old as gracefully as possible," and the many adventures of them and their friends. After a Herculean effort, George lands a stubborn bass named Marilyn with a fly made out of "polar bear hair and marabou plumes;" local septic tank pumper Bump Olson saves George from a black bear by charging it with his truck; and George finally tries marijuana at his 50th high school reunion, only to discover the next morning that it was just a bunch of oregano. Though the book lacks any narrative arc, as George points out, "there's a lot to be said for the dull moments." Indeed, the charmingly peculiar folks of Northern Door and Crehore's facility with language (which he chalks up to a familial penchant for storytelling) more than make up for the absence of rising action, a climax, and denouement. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Underneath the hilarity in The Baileys Harbor Bird and Booyah Club are themes of caring, sharing, honesty, and a love for rural living.”—Jerry Apps, author of Blue Shadows Farm

“For an inexpensive trip to one of Wisconsin’s premier tourist sites, read The Baileys Harbor Bird and Booyah Club by Dave Crehore.”—Hudson Star-Observer

From the Publisher