Along The Ad Routes

by Mike Reilly

It’s always great hearing from readers. The other day we got a long distance phone call with a credit card renewal. It came from Merva Greenman of Cape Coral, FL. She said  that she moved to Florida in 1995 and she loves getting the paper to keep up with old friends We have a good number of subscribers from long distance who enjoy keeping up with the local news!

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It’s just two weeks away for “Small Business Saturday” with a lot of events going on in Dodgeville on November 29. The Memorial Tree Lighting will be at 5:45 with the “lighted” parade at 6:00 The chamber is in need of more entries for the parade. They need to be  signed up in advance so they can be positioned for the route. You can sign up on the chamber website, call or stop in. There will be a “Free” movie “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” at 11:00 a.m. at the Dodge Theatre - non-perishable food item suggested for entry. There will be carriage rides from 2-5 p.m. Also there is a cookie walk at the Methodist Church and a vendor fair at the high school, with Santa showing up and one at the Dodger Bowl too - and more! Check out the chamber facebook page and website for more information.

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Saturday morning breakfast is always an adventure, but this past one was more so. We decided that almost everyone was able to go, so we made the nearly-hour-long trip to Bloomington to Ma’s Bakery. It’s an experience just driving there with all the scenery and farms to look at. Then there’s “The Mt. Hope Tree”, one that has been photographed  every day for a year and put into book form. It’s not a big tree either, but one of Wisconsin’s iconic trees! I did see a post on it that someone had observed it nearly everyday for 50 years! We made it to Ma’s and there was our usual table waiting for us. No we don’t tell them that we’re coming - it just happened! The place is pretty big and nearly every table (except ours) was filled. Ages of their eaters were from 1 to (maybe) 90 years old. We no more than sat down and we were served coffee, orange juice and Dr. Pepper (Potsie) to get us started.  That came from one of three sisters who take care of Ma’s - Mary (owner), Terry (the waitress who’s a real HOOT) and Gwen (the beverage server and busser). Terry has to take Bob’s order first because he’s family! Three of us - Bob, Tom and myself - had what Terry named the “Bob  Omelette”. Terry had a ham & cheese omelette Potsie and Royce filled themselves up on farmer’s breakfasts. Dave couldn’t make the trip this time, but wished he could’ve. I bought two sweet rolls to take with me and I couldn’t believe how low of a price my bill came to!

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We made a short tour of Bloomington north to check out a couple of houses and then headed back to Dodgeville as we needed to stop at a wake in Mineral Point.

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It’s holiday vendor fair time and St. Joseph had one of the first ones at the school last Saturday. I had promised to buy a pie from the Dodgeville Woman’s Club, so I made an appearance there in the afternoon. It was fun catching up with a few people I hadn’t seen in awhile!

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Factiously I say that I’m sure glad someone invented “Black Friday”. It was supposed to be the day after Thanksgiving, but now it probably started in September!! I’m kidding about being happy about it all! Things should go back to the original version!

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Today, Thursday, November 20 is a day  I could get used to. It’s National Peanut Butter Fudge Day! I like peanut butter and I like fudge. Mixing the two together may be even better! It’s a day when we try our hands at making a delicious batch of fudge. There is a wide range of viable peanut butter fudge recipes to be found on the internet and elsewhere, but what they all have in common is a quick prep time (a matter of minutes, in some cases), and a short list of simple ingredients that most of us probably already have in our kitchens. As a bonus, peanut butter fudge is much easier to make than chocolate fudge, because it doesn’t involve melting the chocolate to a specific temperature measured by a special thermometer.