last may i attended WisCon in madison, mainly as an excuse to visit my family. and while i was skipping out on the last day of panels, my family and i went out into the rolling hills of southern wisconsin and we just happened to pass through sauk city, the home of august derleth.
for those of you not familiar with derleth, he’s the guy who transformed h.p.lovecraft from a little-known pulp writer into (in the words of rick klaw) "the most over-rated writer of all time."
sauk city has three things going for it: it’s the home of culver’s frozen custard and butterburgers, it has a dam, and it has august derleth. leystra’s restaurant is a block from the bridge over the river. one side of the restaurant is kinda diner-ish (i had a very dense and delicious butterscotch pie, and the sundaes look very good as well), and in a shadowy nook, decorated in the wisconsin "supper-club" style is augie’s room.
once i got the waitress to turn on the lights, i could browse the numerous derleth factoids and photos on the walls.
augie went way out of his way to research his horror stories.
remember when writers had poise?
here, the august derleth society celebrates the hwy12 bridge re-dedicated as the "august derleth" bridge. it’s pretty much the only way to get between madison and baraboo, unless you count the merrimac ferry.