You pass the Shifalo Baptist Church, the BP filling station and Kiln Auto Body and Paint. You pass under the flashing caution light at Old Kiln Road, the only electronic traffic signal in the city, and you are on your way out of Kiln. The guts of this onetime logging boom town, which got its name from the kilns that once produced charcoal, are along the Highway 43 strip. The Broke Spoke is a bit off the beaten path, about 100 yards west of Dolly's on Old Kiln, which is probably just as well. We are rednecks and we're proud of it.
Rednecks do tend to get rowdy.
The tin-roofed building, constructed originally as a general store in 1945, hasn't seen a coat of paint in the interim. The only thing new about it is the 18-inch satellite dish on the roof, which is there solely to pull in Packers games. The bar itself is a stretch of lacquered wood, decorated by years of graffiti scribblings. And, of course, there are the Packers paraphernalia everywhere you turn. Packers pennants, posters, banners, decals.