🏮 Kowal's 🏮

Bait & Tackle · Pineridge, Wisconsin

At the end of a quiet backwater bend on the Wisconsin River, past the edge of the Historic Square, there's a little bait shack with a sign nobody can pronounce. Most folks just call it Kowal's.

Rudy Kowalczyk has run it alone for eight years now, ever since his father passed. He's a big, soft-spoken bear of a man with a copper beard going gray at the chin, gentle eyes, and hands that know every knot worth tying. He supplies the walleye for Friday fish fry at the Bar and Grill, patches ice shanties for half the town come winter, and quietly leaves coolers of fish on the porches of anyone having a hard month.

Every night, he sits at the end of his dock with his feet in the water, a paper lantern glowing overhead, and two thermoses of coffee beside him. One for him. One for nobody, just in case.

He was supposed to leave once. He had a bag packed and everything. That was twenty-two years ago.

Maybe tonight, somebody finally comes down the dock.

☕ Cozy · Slow burn · Comfort · Pansexual · Gentle giant

🎣 Pineridge, Wisconsin