Victorian Christmas in Sharon, WI

Friday night Terry and I went to Sharon, WI for their Victorian Christmas. Terry spotted an article about it in the newspaper. Sharon is a tiny town. I only knew of one restaurant, the Coffee Cup, where we went once for their Swedish pancakes. We enjoyed them, but have not been back because we never think of going out to breakfast in general and going to Sharon in particular. In any case, I wondered how such a small town could accommodate a crowd of hungry people going to their Victorian Christmas. I also wondered about parking.

The main draw (for us) was the lighted horse-drawn carriage parade at 7:30. Also reported in the paper were pictures with Santa, Victorian dancers, magic shows, music, kettle corn, and on and on. “Attendees will be able to dine in the Victorian Christmas Café and Parlor.” If it was terrible, we could always stop somewhere on the way home. Well, not on the way home, because there is nothing between here and there, but we could go into Fontana or Lake Geneva or something.

The celebration was scheduled to begin at 5:00. We arrived at 5:20 and got a great parking spot right on the Plain St, which runs through the main part of town, right outside the Victorian Café, where volunteers in period costume were setting up roasting pans full of Victorian jumbo hot dogs and barbeque beef (a.k.a. sloppy joes). The menu, posted in the window, also included baked potatoes and pie with or without ice cream.

We walked up and down the “downtown” area to see what other options there might be. Baldwin St. was barricaded, and the central point of activities was the intersection of Baldwin and Plain. A team of dogs attached to a sled with wheels got a lot of attention from passersby.

Dog sled team

There were a couple other stores being set up for food service. We mistakenly assumed that the menus were all the same. I would regret this later on. Santa had a real beard and was posing for photos in another store. There were either a lot of empty stores in Sharon or a lot of stores that could be quickly cleared out for this event.

At regular intervals, a horse-drawn wagon decorated with Christmas lights went by. At the end of the street, we discovered that the rides were free, but the line was long.

Free horse-drawn carriage rides

The town was nicely decorated. Here is the town gazebo with a carriage to welcome the tourists.

Gazebo and carriage with a sign that says "You're among friends"

Across the street was an old chuck wagon. The cowboys who were supposed to be doing re-enactments were not in evidence. It is hard to think of Victorian cowboys, Victoria being the prim and proper Queen of England and cowboys being all-American rowdies, but the dates do line up.

Chuck wagon

There was a stage coach next to the chuck wagon with a sign explaining that the stage coach was invented because imported English carriages fell apart in a hurry on the rough American roads. The stage coach was designed with metal bars and leather straps to support the passenger car instead of wood, and the weight was centered over the wheels.

The Poplar Grove/Caledonia/Argyle mail stagecoach

The kettle corn tent was set up on one corner of Plain and Baldwin. Whenever a new batch was ready, a man rang a triangle and invited us to come and get it. This was the closest thing to a cowboy re-enactment that I observed.

On another corner, chestnuts were roasting on the open charcoal briquettes. Terry and I had both had unfortunate chestnut experiences in the past and were skeptical. Still, the chestnuts were free. We shared one. It was only half roasted, but the half that was done was much better than previous chestnuts that we’d had. Not bad at all.

The Coffee Cup was packed. The pizza place, located in the corner of a stone building that had 1885 above the door and “Opera House” along the roof, was selling pizza by the slice. It seemed like their regular business was take-out. Through the windows we could see folding tables set up in the basement to accommodate diners.

We went back to the Victorian Café that we had first seen. A man sitting at a table with a cash box marked our order on a pre-printed form. One barbecue beef ($3), one jumbo hot dog ($2.50) and two pieces of pie with no ice cream ($2.00 each). Then he labored valiantly to add it up. We concluded he was maybe not the best guy for the job. I wondered why he hadn’t brought a Victorian calculator. If they were sticklers for authenticity, he could have used an abacus. Or they could have made all the prices whole dollar amounts.

The hot dog was enormous. The ketchup came out with greater velocity than I anticipated. Mustard was the only other condiment. I would have liked some onions and relish. I appreciated that they wanted to keep things simple and relatively neat. We got to pick our pieces of pie from a wide selection set out on a big round table. Terry got blueberry. I asked about something that looked like a crisp. It was pecan cranberry pie that had been hard to serve. I asked for one of the smaller pieces.

Terry took a bit of his barbecue and immediately went to get a second one. My hot dog was good too. The buns were soft and fresh on both sandwiches. My pie was standard pecan pie with cut up cranberries sprinkled on the top. I loved the tartness of the cranberries offsetting the sweetness of the rest of it. All in all, I enjoyed this meal much more than the turkey testicles at the Testicle Festival a few years back. And we got dinner for both of us for what we paid for two turkey testicles.

Supper--barbecue beef, top left; jumbo hot dog, center; pecan/cranberry pie, right

Just as we were finishing up at 5:45, the magician came in to set up. We went back to walk the town again. The crowd was picking up. Women in costume passed out flyers with the schedule and location of events, sponsors to everyone. One woman busily greeted visitors and encouraging them to go to one event or another.

“Must be the mayor’s wife,” Terry murmured.

I read the flyer carefully and discovered that there was all sorts of food available. Cider donuts, pulled pork, brats, apple dumplings…. Dang. I also saw that there was a place where we could get a beer, the Iron Horse Saloon at 124 North Street. What there wasn’t in the flyer was a map.

Where would North St. be? We thought maybe on the north side of town. After a few blocks, the streets ran at angles other than perpendicular, and it seemed that we had run out of the main part of town. No North St.  We did see a couple of very nice Victorian houses. One of them had hung lights straight down from their magnificent oak trees. It made a striking display.

Lights hanging from big oak trees around a Victorian house

We went south next. We passed the biggest ginkgo tree we had ever seen. It was spectacular. As we were admiring it, the residents of the house came home. Terry rhapsodized; the residents made some comment about too many leaves. I’m pretty sure they thought Terry was insane.

North Street was south of the main street. Go figure. It was, in fact, where the carriage rides started. I thought I’d seen the sign when we were walking before dinner. I just couldn’t remember where.

[Note: when I looked at a map, I discovered that the town is oriented parallel to the train track, which runs at about 45°. North St. is north of the tracks; South St. is on the other side.]

The Iron Horse Saloon was on a dark corner a block or so beyond Baldwin. An unshaven man in Carhartts hung around outside the door, causing me to wonder if we truly wanted to go in. The interior, however, was a typical Wisconsin bar. The bar took up almost the entire length of the room and was packed elbow to elbow with locals. The tables were mostly empty. The back wall had a mounted head of a white-tailed deer wearing a straw hat. A young boy in snow pants who could just barely see over the pool table was getting a lesson in how to hit the cue ball from his grandfather. The boy was not having a great deal of success.

We took two seats at one of the empty tables. Terry went to the bar and waited for what seemed like long time for the bartender to appear. He returned with two bottles and asked me if I had a dollar for the tip. Bad bartending to give change in big bills.

I unzipped my coat and suddenly realized I was wearing my sweatshirt with ILLINOIS in big letters under a picture of a white oak, our state tree. Shoot. I had self-identified as not only an outsider, but a FIB, where the “I” stands for Illinois, and you can use your imagination for the rest. Oh well. At least I wasn’t wearing a Bears jersey.

Before too long, there was an influx of tourists, and we were less obvious. They came with more children, some in strollers. Terry remarked on it. Yes, I explained, this is how they do things in Wisconsin. People bring their children to bars.

We sipped our beer as long as we could make it last, which took us to 20 minutes before the parade. Here is a montage of some of the carriages. I had to video them separately because they were spaced pretty far apart.

We thought it was over after Santa’s sleigh went by. I had not bothered to put on my long underpants before leaving the house, and I was chilled. When I confessed, Terry expressed disbelief that I would be so unprepared, and rightly so. We turned to go to the car. Noise from the crowd alerted us to the fact that the carriages were making a second round at a faster pace. We watched a few minutes, but I really had to get warm.

Our great parking place was not so great after all. I had to do a U-turn in the middle of all the commotion because Plain St. was blocked in the direction the car was facing. Then we had to wait for a couple of carriages to cross the next intersection on their way back to North St. For all that, it was really only a few minutes before we were out of town. It was a nice evening.