With the crew gathered together on Doug and Rita’s lawn, it’s the same as it’s been for the past 20 years. Streamers flutter in the breeze outside the run-down but bustling lodge, with Oscar, Thor and Ryan tuning their instruments for yet another bluegrass show. The Yoder sisters throw back their Miller Lites as a gaggle of kids weaves between their legs. Meanwhile, Stephanie and Fabian Levandoski are toasting to another year up here, another year with their children and another year together. The only thing that’s different than any other northern summer Sunday? They’re doing it at their wedding.
—
If you are native to Wisconsin, you know all about “going up north.” It’s a simple phrase that evokes different images depending on who’s doing the talking. To some, it means fishing, hunting or boating. To others, it means campfires, s’mores and chasing the kids around the lake. To many, it means drinking. If you ask almost anyone, you’re going to hear a consistent answer – family. If you’re the Millies-Levandoski family, going up north means Idle Hour Resort.
Idle Hour Resort is the kind of place you see on television and can’t believe actually exists in real life. If you’re a city girl like I am, you’re especially overwhelmed when you pass what you think is the end-all of civilization — Minocqua, the last tourist trap for a hundred miles — and then keep driving north to Park Falls. The arrows off Highway 70 lead you down a half-mile wooded driveway that spits you out in another world. With a sprawling lawn, 14 cabins and a stretch of waterfront for everyone’s boats, “compound” is a more appropriate word for this place than “resort.”
Idle Hour is owned and operated by Doug and Rita Noetzel, a couple who’s been running it for the past 23 years. Doug’s family has run the place for more than six decades, and not much has changed since 1950. Indeed, their home is literally attached to the bar. The business model is simple: book cabins weekly in the summer, plan activities, serve cold beer all day and keep the customers coming back. It has held true, thriving while many of the other area resorts have closed.
I’ve only visited twice before, but when I open the lodge’s creaky door, I’m greeted with a chorus of “hellos” from the patrons. A few locals mix in with the musky fishers who have taken over for the weekend. Doug is posted up at the end of the counter, a position he won’t move from until Sunday when his guests leave. Rita steps out from the kitchen to wave to me before turning around and getting back to payroll.
I throw down my duffel and pull out a wad of twenties to pay Doug — they don’t accept credit — and his 17-year-old son, Oscar, makes me a drink. It’s been months since I’ve been here, but he puts down a Maker’s and sour without asking.
I slam down the empty cup, gather my stuff and reach for a five from my purse. Doug waves me off. “The first one’s always free. Welcome home.”
—
Stephanie and Fabian have had a non-traditional courtship, to say the least. They’ve been together since 1991, raising Stephanie’s two children together. Life had gotten in the way of them getting married. It had simply never been the right time, until this past July. They decided to get married in the one place in the world where their family is always together – Idle Hour – and they were going to plan the entire thing in three weeks.
As I sit in their living room, I can’t help but marvel at how they embody “opposites attract.” Fabian is tall and silent, with glasses and a bushy mustache hiding his facial expressions. Stephanie is short, with big, smiling eyes and a sassy streak. They laugh a lot as they tell me about their wedding. They laugh even more when they talk about their early days at Idle Hour.
“We rented the cabin closest to the lake … and I think it was a two-bedroom cabin, and a room with a toilet, and a sink in the kitchen that only had cold water,” Stephanie remembers, laughing. “[Fabian] never told me there was no hot water … ‘cause he knew I wouldn’t go.” It evolved from there, with the family moving up to bigger and better cabins. The one thing that never changed? The company.
The couple drives up the second week of August every year like clockwork. The cabins are always full of their friends — people they didn’t know 20 years ago but have now become fixtures in their lives.
“It feels like a family reunion. They’re not people you see all the time, they’re maybe not people you see any other time of the year, but you can count on them being there,” says Kimberly Millies, Stephanie’s daughter. “If they’re not there, you know that there’s a reason for it.”
Kimberly, 26, grew up at Idle Hour. She’s lived in Florida and Georgia since she left home at 18, but that’s never kept her from being back up here every summer. She currently lives in Milwaukee, which means she had to plan her parents’ entire last-minute wedding, but she waves off any praise.
“I don’t think the wedding made Idle Hour special. I think the wedding was special because of Idle Hour,” she says.
Stephanie agrees.
“Well, we had talked about places like Vegas or Jamaica, but it was really important to have the kids there … and after being together 22 years, it’s kind of ridiculous to spend a crap ton of money on a wedding that, you know, is more or less a piece of paper that states that we’re married, as opposed to devoting our undying love for each other.” Fabian snorts. “Right, husband?” cackles Stephanie.
“Sure, wife,” he replies. They laugh even harder.
Eventually, the answer was pretty clear to Stephanie.
“The only time it was really conceivable for all of us to be together is really at the cabin.”
Their vows, however, are what said it all.
“Fabian and Stephanie, do you promise to love each other through sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, through the good times and the bad, and to continue to make Idle Hour your yearly family vacation,’til death do you part?”
They do.
—
Taking care of people like Stephanie and Fabian, week in and week out, has been Doug Noetzel’s reality for the past 23 summers. The history of Idle Hour, however, stretches back even further. Before his father bought it in 1950 from a couple running a similar business, the property was used in many different ways. A history compiled by the local lake association says that it’s been a dance hall, a constable’s property and a logging camp. Since the Noetzels have been in charge, things are slightly more consistent.
“Every week’s a little different,” Doug tells me over pizza. He’s a big man, at least 6-feet-2-inches tall. He’s got a friendly face, beard and stature reminiscent of Santa Claus — right down to the ruddy red nose. His booming laugh is something heard frequently around here.
“The main event is that Tuesday horseshoe deal,” he says, downing a Dewar’s with a splash of water. It might seem silly to an outsider, but up here horseshoes matters more than the Olympics. The Noetzels pass out beers and sodas. Losers collect the empties. Winners get a plastic but highly coveted trophy. Other activities include Monday softball, and everyone brings a dish to pass at Wednesday’s potluck.
The people change each week in the summer, but the attitude is the same. Some groups have been coming up for six generations, before the Noetzels even owned the place. There’s one week each summer that’s entirely occupied by an extended family. But new traditions have been made here, too. People have fallen in love and babies have been conceived here.
I ask Doug what it means to be a part of so many people’s most important family tradition. His bashful smile does little to hide his gratitude, and he tells me the customers have come to treat the property as their own. One storm in 2000 knocked over all the property’s trees, destroying their gazebo and killing their electricity.
“We had no power for like three days, and the guests, instead of going home, stayed. They would be out there with their rakes, raking up all the debris,” he remembers. He’s a bit surprised by the fact that these stories are foreign to me. To Doug, kindness is all he knows. It’s the way neighbors are supposed to treat each other.
“I know that Idle Hour is special to some people … you go to funerals, or, you know, the 25th wedding anniversaries … sometimes they have picture boards…and half the pictures …” he drifts off and there’s a faint glisten in his eye.
“They’re up here?” I chime in, worried that I’ve pinched a nerve.
He nods, clearing his throat. “The good thing is, you end up knowing so many people. I literally know thousands and thousands of people. Where they live, what they do, what they drink … the bad part of that, especially, as you get older, people start dying. I could go to a funeral darn near every weekend.”
“I mean, it’s nice to be a part of people’s day, they’re fun. And everyone’s happy when they come. The same happy faces on Saturday when they show up, year after year,” he says.
Rita is more soft-spoken than Doug, but she brightens when I ask her what makes Idle Hour so unique. “I think it means family to most everybody that comes here. Coming here gives them a chance to get away from everything else that interferes with them spending time together,” she says.
Stephanie, too, shared a similar sentiment.
“Even though you only see each other one week a year, you still remember … it’s like lives slow down up there, and that’s why people keep coming back.”
A Drive With Oscar Noetzel
