Jim Jakel leaves a legacy of laughs, local pride
Anyone who has pulled off of State Highway 29 on Abbotsford’s west side over the past few decades knows the Jakel farm. They may never have met Jim and Jenny Jakel, but both locals and visitors recognize their picturesque pasture, those grazing horses and that classic red barn.
On Sunday, July 13, the man who created that pastoral playground was killed while mowing the expansive lawn that so many people have come to appreciate over the years. This past weekend, hundreds of people came to Abbotsford, and then to Curtiss, to pay respects to the man many of them knew as “Joker” due to his love of one-liners and general tomfoolery. “Everybody’s got their quirks, and Jim certainly had his,” Jenny said. Jim Jakel, 69, was a lifelong resident of the Abbotsford area, and his sudden death in a lawnmower accident came as a shock for many who knew him and his family. An estimated 515 people came to Maurina-Schilling Funeral Home last Friday to pay their respects, and 245 attended his funeral at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Curtiss on Saturday Jenny, his wife of 46 years, said Monday that “overwhelmed” is not the word she wanted to use to describe the outpouring of community support because it might sound negative.
“I can just feel the regard and love that people had for Jim,” she said, describing how comforting it has been to have so many people, including those she’s never met, reach out and offer their condolences.
Both Jim and Jenny grew up on farms in Clark County, and they met in 1974 after her family moved into the village of Curtiss.
“We lived in Curtiss and his parents’ farm was just a mile out of Curtiss,” she said. “We were just a couple of Curtiss kids.”
In 1994, they bought the property just outside the western limits of Abbotsford, when Highway 29 still ran through the middle of the city.
“It was just a sleepy little farm at that time, a farmette actually,” she said. “Of course the highway went right in front of our house…. When I left work on a Friday night and drove here, there would be cars backed up almost to Fourth Avenue.”
Jenny said it was never their goal to make their home into the showplace that it is today.
“In fact, when we moved here, the house was so small, I used to say I could only put up half my artificial Christmas tree,” she said.
Before too long, though, Jim started rearranging the property to his liking. He moved an old barn onto a newly poured foundation, built a massive machine shed and started collecting various items to put on display, including an old-fashioned Texaco gas pump and a phone booth.
“When they first put the bypass in, we had people stop in and try to buy gas,” Jenny said. “I came around the corner once, and there was a guy in there trying to use the phone.”
As both a master plumber and a master electrician, Jim knew how to do just about anything when it came to building, remodeling or repurposing something that others may have thrown out. Over the course of many years, he assembled a collection of antiques and local memorabilia that would be the envy of many amateur historians.
“Anything that he found that was interesting, he’d pick it up and bring it home,” Jenny said. “Then he got me kind of interested in looking at stuff too.”
In many ways, walking around the Jakel property is like strolling through an endless Memory Lane for those who grew up in this part of Central Wisconsin. A small shed on the property houses the ice cream counter and soda fountain that used to sit inside Weix’s Drugstore in Dorchester. Signs and memorabilia from various bygone businesses – Duke’s Bowl, the Abbotsford Antique Mall, Holtz’s Feed Mill, Thompson Oil Co. and Bowen’s Ski-Doo, just to name a few – adorn the interior walls of the massive red barn.
Jenny said her husband wished he had paid more attention to history lessons in school, but once he started collecting local antiques, he developed the closest thing Abbotsford has to a historical museum.
“I have no plans of selling, but if I ever do, I hope that the next buyer enjoys the history or, if they don’t, they can find a home for all of this stuff,” she said.
Tucked inside the barn is a meticulously decorated lounge area, complete with fullsize bar, antique pool table and various bits of Americana. Above the bar is a lofted bedroom, and beyond that, at the end of a long wooden hallway, is a set of stairs leading up to a cupola room overlooking the entire property and Highway 29.
All of this elaborate architecture came about, piece by piece, as part of Jim’s singular vision.
“Jim was always thinking, coming up with something,” Jenny said.
The lofted bedroom has been rented out in the past and the lounge has hosted class reunions, a wedding reception and several parties, but the only permanent occupants are the half-dozen mannequins Jim added to his collection. Jenny said most of the gatherings Jim hosted were informal by design.
“He was one who liked a spur-of-the moment party, not a big planned party,” she said.
A notable sight for those passing by are the horses that inhabit the property. All but one of the nine animals belongs to Cassie Christiansen, a former rodeo queen who still participates in barrel racing and roping events. Jenny said she and Jim were not really “horse people.”
“We just think they’re really pretty. They’re like big dogs,” she said. “Ours, we feed it and we pet it and that’s about it.”
Fly-ins on the property’s grass landing strip have also been a regular attraction at the farm over the years. Jenny said Jim owned a few planes during his life but he never got around to earning his pilot’s license.
Jenny fondly recalls what turned out to be the last day of her husband’s life. After going to church like normal, they traveled up to Tomahawk to visit their two daughters and grandkids, and drove around together before coming back home.
“We didn’t normally spend Sundays together,” she said. “We’d come home from church, and he’d do his thing and I’d do mine.”
That last day is a good reminder of how to live one’s life.
“You never know when your time is up,” she said.
