Old Retired Guy Blog
August 14, 2007
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What is "Taychopera?"
Let me back up a bit... When we first told friends in Portland that we were planning to move back to Wisconsin, the usual question was "Why?" Kathy would typically reply, "Well, we're not moving for the weather!" Last April, when we thought that our house in Portland was sold, we flew to Wisconsin to start looking for a house in Madison.
We last lived in Madison in 1978. Although we've visited friends and family there over the years, that's not quite like living there. Things have really changed! I often found myself driving down roads with very familiar names but feeling totally lost. Even though we didn't find a house that we wanted to buy in April, the time in Madison was well spent exploring neighborhoods and narrowing our focus both in terms of location and in the items on our "must have" list. When we started looking we were determined to find a house with an attached 2-car garage. We also wanted at least one bedroom on the main floor. A screened-in porch would be nice, too. As time went on we decided that we could probably deal with an attached 1-car garage, or maybe an unattached 2-car garage. Maybe having all of the bedrooms on the second floor wasn't really too bad and, heck, we could always add on our own screened-in porch. So, when we started our search again in late July we'd already made quite a few compromises. Kathy did an incredible job scouring internet postings and trying to narrow a huge list of homes into a short list of the ones that sounded like they had some promise. For the first outing with our realtor in July, Kathy compiled a list of 5 houses. Much to our surprise we kind of liked the first of the five.
After seeing the other four we returned to the first house. We thought about it for a couple of days while we went to quite a few open houses and then decided to make an offer. After a few offers and counter-offers we finally reached an agreement and closed the deal on August 14, my Dad's birthday. That was a fitting day to buy a new house since many years ago he loaned us the money to buy our first house in Portland. By the way, the house has an attached 2-car garage, two bedrooms on the main floor, and a screened-in porch! You just never know what you will find if you look long enough.
I almost forgot. What's that all got to do with "Taychopera?" That's the name of the street on which the house is located. No one seemed to know where the name came from; was it the name of the first mayor of Madison, or of the person who originally owned the land where the neighborhood is located? Fortunately, the answer to both of those questions is "No!" After a quick Google I discovered that Taychopera means “four lakes” in the HoChunk tongue. Taychopera is the glacial-formed chain of lakes now known as Mendota, Monona, Waubesa, and Kegonsa, which are joined by the Yahara River.* *That interesting information is from Taychopera: A Canoe Guide to Dane County’s 4 Lakes, developed in 1984 by the Dane County Environmental Council with text written by Jane Licht. |
What's the weather like in Wisconsin in mid-April you might ask? Well,
I'll tell you ... IT SNOWED!! Flights were delayed due to heavy snow in
Milwaukee and flights leaving Minneapolis had to be de-iced. It was a
relief to finally get there! The snow was wet and heavy and only lasted
for a day, but it did add somewhat of a Christmas atmosphere to the start of our
house-hunting expedition.
