Wisconsin: Then and Now
I had forgotten many things about Northern Wisconsin.
Not because I had meant to forget them; just because that’s what happens when you haven’t been there in many years.
This past Thanksgiving I was lucky enough to take a trip back home to visit and, instead of flying, I decided to drive. That was for a couple of reasons, the main one being that I would be there for 9 days and didn’t want to mooch Mom’s car off her. I knew she wouldn’t mind, but I knew *I* would, especially because I knew I wanted to take off for a couple of days and go up to my old college town: www.uwsp.edu.
I wanted to see the school, that’s true. I hadn’t been there in over a decade (11 years to be exact!) and through certain groups I’d learned about changes and things I needed to see for myself. But I really wanted to see a friend, too, whom I hadn’t seen in ages.
You know those friends you have: the ones with whom you go through the good times and the bad, the happy and the shit, the ones you can want to murder one day but still take a bullet for the same day? Yeah, that’s Sue.
So I stopped by home, hung out (hanged?)with Mom and the fam, then drove up to Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
One of the things I had completely forgotten, living in the South for almost ten years now, was what Wisconsin has very unique features that you don’t see anywhere else:
1.) The roads are red. No, they don’t pave them in the clay dirt we’re known for here: they glaze them with the guts of animals hit by vehicles on the Interstates.
2.) By Interstates, I’m being generous. They’re mostly *intra*states, even when they’re labeled with the easily recognized blue and red federally designated road sign. I-90 and I-94 I can give y’all: I-39 that creeps from Madison to almost Wausau (old 51)? Yeah, it’s all in ONE state. Okay, so apparently that’s the grammar goddess coming out in me again…and I digress.
3.) In any case, I drove north from Milwaukee on what I knew was the path from my alma mater: 41 to 110 to 10. Only 110 doesn’t exist anymore, apparently. Oh, it exists as a road, but it’s now called something else. Why didn’t anyone tell me this? When did the world change? And why didn’t they not only alert me but ask for permission?
4) So I drive into Stevens Point only to find I didn’t recognize the outskirts. The WalMart was now closed (it opened in big fanfare when I was a Junior) because the SUPER WalMart was now just a few miles away. It also now features Starbucks and Best Buy and a Land’s End Catalog Center…shit! Where was that when I was working at the stupid Student Union making $5 an hour?
5) The other thing about Wisconsin? For as much as it’s changed, it’s still the same. Holy cow, for pete’s sake, doncha know? The people there are So.Bloody.Real. So friendly; so accepting. You can still sit at a bar you’d never been to before and shoot the shit with total strangers. They say the South is friendly (and it is!) but these folks here can give them a run for their money (or at least finish runner up). It’s the place where if a pretty girl they don’t know walks in, she’s not a threat: she’s someone you ask tips from. It’s a place where if a loner walks in, he’ll leave later feeling like he has friends. They grow real people up there, they do. I’m guessing it must be the corn. Or potatoes. Hmmm. Perhaps carbs aren’t bad afterall.
The other thing interesting about Wisconsin –but not in Wisconsin– is the reaction I get from folks I meet here. I have had people tell me they knew I wasn’t from the South (dammit!) but upon hearing I was from Wisconsin had commented that it didn’t surprise them: that not only are there a lot of Wisconsinites here, but that most of them they meet are down to earth. THAT is when I want to claim my Wisconsin roots. Normally, I think: yes, by birth? I’m a Wisconsinite. But by the grace of God, I migrated and am now a Southerner. When I head north in my car, I love driving around the chilly North with my Georgia plate, imagining fellow Interstaters are thinking: “she’s so far from home; bless her heart, the little redneck.” And I LOVE that. And I CLAIM that. But when I hear people also saying that the people they meet from my home state are some of the nicest people they know? I think: God bless you folks. You do me proud. :-)
Just try to avoid hittin’ them deers [sic] on the highways, okay? Venison is so much better when you don’t have to scrape it off the road to make stew.