Illustration by Josh Hagler

Monday October 29, 2001

Reporting from Wisconsin, this is Laura Winsky. It's true. As I write this column, I am traveling from Madison to Milwaukee looking out the car window at large fields of corn, which have already been harvested, I am patiently told. And then my boyfriend, a native Wisconsinian (Wisconsinite, Wisconsinorama (?)), adds in a wee-more-patronizing tone, "Out your other window, Laura, is what we call a cow."

I get a lot of crap when I come up to Wisconsin for two reasons. One, I was born a Midwestern girl and ought to have an appreciation for the heartland. My family members out here find it unfortunate that since moving at the age of 3, I have become a very loyal, desert-rat Zonie. Two, there's a lot about Midwestern life that I find hilarious. But you should be careful before sharing these kinds of things with the locals.

Let me back up a bit. I left Tucson Thursday afternoon, and although I would have preferred to take a train or walk, time allowed for nothing but air travel. Which meant that I had to fly - on a plane - across the country.

Now, I hate to fly, but after Sept. 11, I have a whole new set of fears. I spent at least a couple of weeks dragging my psyche through the minutiae of CNN news. Should I fly? Should I cancel the trip? Do I have paranoia problems? On Tuesday, I called my mother at 7:15 a.m. and woke her up.

"Mom, I just heard that the airlines won't serve sugar packets on flights anymore because of the anthrax scare." I saw this as a sure omen that I should definitely call the whole thing off.

"You're flying on Thursday. You need to stop watching CNN and get a grip," she replied. My mom's the best. And I am definitely glad that I sucked it up and arrived here in Smallville, USA, because I would have missed out on a lot of good old, home-cooked American life.

Even though I am still in Wisconsin, I've been told it was a gorgeous, record-setting 96 degrees in Tucson Thursday. Not here in the Arctic, where my boyfriend and his family reside. It was 33 degrees when I got off the plane with a wind chill of 16 degrees. My thin desert blood turned to ice chunks in my veins.

It's homecoming weekend here in the cheese capital of the universe, and last night's parade featured the Cripple Creek Cloggers - a float of senior citizens clogging to polka music. It was a refreshing change of pace from UA fraternity floats with drunkards chucking Bud Light cans at your head. The football game today did not go well for the Big Red Badger fans, but radio commercials made it all worthwhile.

"Running into your old dodgeball buddy from elementary school sure is a coincidence, but increased milk production and fewer parasites from your cows isn't a coincidence, when you feed them Prolexlar - the latest anti-bacteria drug."

Or: "In football, one wrong defensive move can cost you the game. Consistency is key. The same is true in the sausage business·" After guffawing at that commercial, I was told curtly that that particular brand of sausage is quite good and could be found at the PDQ.

"PDQ?" I said, "What's that?" I already knew the answer but wanted to hear a local with a Wisconsin accent say out loud that it stood for "pretty darn quick."

The highlight of these unique activities came at dinner the last night of my trip when we arrived, by accident, at Libby Montana's Bar and Grill in the middle of nowhere outside Milwaukee. I was able to get the owner's autograph. His claim to fame was a recurring role on "Seinfeld." He signed, "Thanks for calling me Maestro!" Stranger things have happened in Wisconsin.

I leave you now with a phrase I heard repeated 52 times in three days. "When you say Wisconsin, you've said it all." It can be freely interchanged with, "When you say Budweiser, you've said it all." Perhaps that's not as sentimental as "Bear Down," but it does bring a tear to the Wisconsin eye.