pink = where we went
Wisconsin was state number four on our family road trip in an RV.
My dad grew up in Wisconsin. In my childhood imagination, Wisconsin was a mythical homeland, a state innately more special than the other 49.
In fifth grade we could choose any state to do a project on, and I chose Wisconsin. Getting ready for this trip, I remembered the research I did when I was ten and drawing Swiss cheese on poster board. My dad’s five siblings still all live in Wisconsin. On this trip we got to see four of them along with their spouses and children and grandchildren.
Maybe ironically, our entry into Wisconsin was utterly foreign to my concept of the state, and has changed my perception of it forever. The House on the Rock (in the southwestern Wisconsin) is the dream house of Alex Jordan, an inventor and artist of the 1960’s. Walking from room to room, you go from dream to dream. Holy Arts and Crafts cave with glowing windows and birch trees bursting through red carpet, then coin-operated handmade instruments, then bare-chested unicorn mannequins, then life-sized jaws of the whale, then an organ for the end of the world. I would love to go back. I could spend a week there.
Back in the real world, we went onward to Madison, where we celebrated our love of cheese and successful parallel parking of the RV with a fancy cheese platter.
We went to the UW Madison campus to meet my cousin Emily. We hadn’t seen each other since we were fourteen, but–as I later experienced with many cousins in the next few days–there was a familiarity that was a nice surprise. She took us to the top floor of the building where she works so we could see the view, and then for a walk on the waterfront of Lake Monona.
That night we met Emily and her kids, and my cousin James and his wife and daughter, at a pizza place. Asher was so excited to meet his second cousins. One of the kids brought a wind-up mouth which made its way around the table all night.
In the mornings in the RV we played a Powerpuff Girls card game and drank tea.
From Madison we drove to Waukesha, where my dad grew up. It started snowing as we reached his childhood home. He has shared many memories with me of his home and neighborhood. Standing now on someone else’s sidewalk, it was weird to know things about the place that the people living there now don’t know.
We went to the church where my dad was an altar boy. I was confused by the 1960’s architecture and so I called my dad; it turns out the church was rebuilt on the same site. Some of his siblings still go to mass there.
In Milwaukee, we met many cousins and aunts and uncles at a pizza place for dinner. It was such lovely chaos having everyone in one place for such a short time, I forgot to take pictures. Politically, this is a diverse group spanning the full spectrum. They were curious about my project and were comfortable bringing up politics. My uncle John (my Aunt Meg’s husband) said he would be happy to meet up another time if I wanted to learn more about where voters like him are coming from. We met at the Milwaukee public library the next day.
We sat at a table not in the quiet section and talked for about an hour. John was raised in a conservative family. In college, he became liberal. After college he said he drifted back to the conservative side. He said he cherishes the rule of law. He sees conservatives as upholding the law, whereas liberals want to use it creatively. He admitted that “Trump is a piece of work,” but this is an issue of “form versus substance.” He said that while he doesn’t like Trump’s style (“brash, loose cannon”), he loves that he has supported the military, and that his judicial appointments are the best ever. He’d love for him to tone it down, but most of what he’s done has been “really good.” I asked him if Trump’s ethics bothered him at all. “A bit. You kinda have to swallow hard on that. Give something to get something, I guess.”
He shared his strong conviction that the right to bear arms must not be restricted. I asked him what he thinks about the scale of gun violence in America. He said that violence is really bad in other places too, they just use different weapons; “I would rather be shot than stabbed!” He said that if he saw someone whose life was in danger and needed help, he would be the guy to step up and save them. He said knowing that many of his fellow citizens are armed makes him feel safer.
He is concerned about illegal aliens voting illegally in California, and said that just because they aren’t being caught doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. He said you can’t blame people for wanting to come here. He told me how the guy in charge of maintenance at his church is an undocumented immigrant, but he could never turn in someone he knows. “I’m all for people coming into the country, but do it legally.” I noted that he called the people he didn’t know “illegal aliens” and the man he knew personally an “undocumented immigrant.” He knows someone from Sri Lanka who employed lawyers and worked hard for years to get citizenship, “and then you get these people getting the same thing without working for it.” He admitted “a bit of hypocrisy. Yeah, I plead guilty.”
He told me how he and Meg have evolved on their opinion of gay marriage and that he’s glad they have. He told me he doesn’t see my marriage as any different from his marriage. He said there has to be a way for a non-traditional couple to have legal protections. “You have to love your neighbor. You can’t do that if you’re denying them things they need.”
I asked him what news sources he trusts. He said he doesn’t really trust any of them. He keeps up with Fox News and NBC. He respects Lester Holt, and appreciates that he tries to be fair. He reads The Week, which he says probably leans a little bit left, but it seems fair. What about the New York Times? “It’s probably the best quality newspaper, but the liberal editorial is hard for me.” He said he loves having these deep conversations. “If you want to learn something, talk to the guy that disagrees with you.”
I hope I adequately expressed my appreciation that he was willing to sit down and talk with me. I have had a lot of fear for our country and have felt vulnerable doing this project. I could see his fear, too.
Anna and Asher and I went for a walk at Klode Park with my aunt Kathy. At the big family pizza dinner, my aunt Meg had told me that Klode Park is one of her favorite places in Milwaukee. It’s hilly, with a path down to the lake. She told me about a little tree that’s crooked. She puts her back up against the crooked tree and looks out at the water. She used to collect stones from the park, perfectly smooth and polished from many years of being tossed and pummeled by the lake. She would collect the stones and put them in a jar, until she filled it up.
Our last morning in Wisconsin, at the RV park in Milwaukee, a tornado siren sounded. The weather had been changing constantly our whole time in Wisconsin–beautiful sunny, then snowing, then rain–so it seemed plausible that now a tornado was happening. As we left the RV and walked briskly to the shelter on the campground (aka the bathhouse), I marveled at the luxury of these minutes of warning. Having spent almost my entire life on the Pacific coast (and currently live in the region now woefully known as the “Cascadia Subduction Zone”), I have made some level of peace with the knowledge that the earth and everything on it might be tossed up with no prior notice. Now, here we were in a land where you have many minutes to prepare for a natural disaster. How amazing! What a mind-blowing ability to be able to locate at least one morsel of predictability in this world. It turned out that our tornado siren that morning was just a test. But the feeling of safety stayed with me all day.