Gewehr98, my family moved here in 1958. I was 8 years old at the time.
I don't know why my folks got margarine instead of butter. But I remember having to mix that Playdough-looking goo with the yellow dye. Really spoiled my appetite.
Wisconsin is, to put it simply, weird. The margarine example is one of many.
We elected a moderately conservative governor four times in a row, but also elected an uber-liberal US senator named Russ Feingold, both during the same time period.
Folks will vote for incumbents who are on trial for felonies.
Everything here is "da Packers." I can't tell you how many of my neighbors paint their front doors green and gold during football season. Ask them who their congressman is, though, and they don't know.
I must contradict a previous poster by saying that we do not have mountains in Wisconsin. We have some large hills. And one of those particularly rocky, hilly areas--The Dells--has been bastardized into a traffic-clogged, junkshop-ridden amusement park. It's so built up that you can't even see the rocks. It's a pimple on Utah or Colorado's **s.
We're in the top five in terms of states with the highest combination of income/property/sales taxes. But people still vote for more spending through school budget referendums, or by just returning the same spenders to office.
Wisconsinites are notoriously cheap. At one of the gun shows I worked for the WCCA, a dealer was toying with folks. He put a 4' length of clothesline at his table, and pinned a row of crisp new $1 bills on it. He put a price tag of 90 cents on each. People said, "what's wrong with them?" He told them that there was nothing wrong, they were brand new $1 bills. People would then offer him 80 cents.
These same people will, when they get their first good job, go out and spend $20,000+ on a new motorcycle simply because it says "Harley Davidson" on the tank.
There are two seasons in Wisconsin: winter, and construction season. At one of his last appearances here, Red Skelton joked that Milwaukee will be a nice city when we're through building it.
The Park East leg of the interstate was built in the 1970's. It cost millions back then, and required the demolition of scores of homes in a prime real estate area on the lower east side.
A few years ago, the powers that be decided that it would be a good idea to spend millions of dollars to demolish the Park East leg of the freeway so that new construction could start there.
Thirty or so years ago, people began to flee the high property taxes in Milwaukee county by moving to other counties and buying homes for well under $100,000. Now they're moving back to the city of Milwaukee and buying $400,000+ condominiums downtown--and paying $$$$ in taxes.
A few weeks ago I was talking with a state senator, one who's been part of the Republican leadership in Madison for several years. I told him that my wife and I are trying to position ourselves to leave WI and move down south.
He expressed feint surprise, and then said that he and his wife were also looking at leaving the state. He said he was sick of the high taxes, the weather, and the politics.
When the people who run the state want to leave, what does that tell you?
