Flat Matthew goes to Baraboo

This morning Flat Matthew went with me to Baraboo. Baraboo was the home of the famous Ringling Brothers who had the circus, and today it hosts the Circus World Museum on the location where the circus used to spend the winter by the Baraboo River. The sign above is on one of the buildings downtown on the square.

The Museum wasn't open yet, so Flat Matthew had to look across the river to see some of the old circus train cars and other buildings. I told him maybe he could come back and work there in the summer, because he already looks like a clown. Flat Matthew did not laugh. Actually, the circus museum does have peformances in the summer, and they have a special show that kids who are visiting can be part of. And you can even ride an elephant or a camel, if your parents think that is okay.

After that, we went downtown. Baraboo is also the county seat of Sauk County, and here is Flat Matthew on the steps outside the County Courthouse. Then we went to visit my friends at the law office where I worked when I first moved up here from Chicago.

You may think of lawyers as always being in court and dealing with murderers or other criminals because of the television shows you have seen. But lawyers help people in lots of other ways. They help them buy and sell property. (Tom was a real estate attorney in Chicago before he retired.) They help them write wills and set up businesses and all sorts of other things. Once when I was working at the law office, we helped a group of Amish families who wanted to have their own cemetery out in the country where they lived.

This is a picture of the office where I used to work. Linda, the woman sitting down, now does what I did. Evelyn, the woman standing in the back, is one of the lawyers, along with her husband Joe. They both knew all about Flat Stanley and were happy to have their picture taken with Flat Mathew. When Evelyn and Joe's grandson did a Flat Stanley, they took Flat Stanley to their farm to see all the lambs that had just been born. Flat Matthew didn't get to see any lambs, though. He was very polite because he said lawyers make him nervous.

I told him that all the real lawyers I know are nice people, and he did not have to be nervous about them. After all, Tom was a lawyer and he has been very nice to Flat Matthew. But if he wanted to be afraid ...

The building that you see on the corner behind Flat Matthew is a store that was built in the late 1800s. The people who work there today say they sometimes see or hear the ghost of the wife of the man who built it. I don't know if that is true. I have been in the store and it seems like just an old store to me. But Flat Matthew didn't want to go in and see. Just in case. So we took the picture from across the street.

Do you believe in ghosts? Do you think that is why Baraboo is called Bara -BOOOOO?

Michael