The corner of Wisconsin I somehow missed

The corner of Wisconsin I somehow missed

“Wisconsin, fond of passing laws, should pass another law compelling every farmer to paint his barn red. Another will compel him to pasture his cows by the highway…” —Architect, designer, writer and educator Frank Lloyd Wright, Sr. (1867-1959)

I’ll admit something that may cause the Wisconsin Department of Tourism to revoke my birth certificate.

At 61 years old, I finally drove through southwestern Wisconsin for the very first time.

Think about that for a minute.

I grew up on Milwaukee’s northwest side and wandered the streets of Milwaukee until they felt like an extension of my own neighborhood. I’ve spent summers — and later lived — “Up North.” I’ve crossed Wisconsin more times than I could count, yet somehow one entire corner of my home state remained little more than a blank spot on my mental map.

As it turns out, Wisconsin still had a surprise waiting for me.

The roads began changing somewhere west of Madison.

Instead of marching ruler-straight toward the horizon the way roads often do in Illinois, they started bending.

Then climbing.

Then diving into valleys.

The landscape rolled and folded like someone had crumpled the earth while the rest of the Midwest wasn’t looking.

“This can’t be Wisconsin,” I caught myself thinking more than once.

Whoever designed southwestern Wisconsin apparently forgot the Midwest was supposed to be flat.

The farmsteads sat tucked into limestone valleys instead of stretching across endless prairie. Every few miles another church steeple peeked above the trees. Tiny towns like Cuba City and Dickeyville appeared around curves rather than announcing themselves five miles in advance with a water tower.

I kept asking myself the same question.

Where has this been all my life?

Of course, the answer was simple.

It had always been there.

I just never took the time to come looking.

Eventually those winding roads carried me to tiny Potosi, population 651, where another Wisconsin treasure was waiting inside the beautifully restored old Potosi Brewery, home of the National Brewery Museum along the historic 10-state, 2,069-mile Great River Road.

Now, if you’ve read this column for any length of time, you already know breweries are something of a weakness for me.

Blatz.

Pabst.

Schlitz.

Gettelman.

Miller.

Get me talking about Cream City brick, copper brew kettles or the Milwaukee Road’s old Beer Line and you’ve probably lost me for the afternoon.

Stepping into the museum felt a little like arriving at my own happy place.

There were bottles and labels. Advertising trays. Wooden beer crates. Tin signs. Even “beer comb” foam scrapers — wonderfully odd little breweriana gadgets of another era. Salvaged relics from the 1890 Schlitz brewhouse. The sort of memorabilia that reminds you breweries once belonged to neighborhoods and communities instead of multinational global corporations.

And then I turned the corner.

Neon.

Rows and rows of vintage brewery signs glowing against old stone walls.

For a moment I forgot I was standing inside a museum.

The room glowed amber, ruby and cobalt while old transformers filled the air with that soft electrical buzz anyone of a certain age instantly recognizes. It felt like stepping into a Wisconsin tavern or supper club on a rainy Saturday night sometime around 1958.

There was Pioneer from Theresa.

Rahr’s.

Jung.

West Bend Lithia.

Marshfield.

Dahlke’s Better Beer.

Chief Oshkosh.

Gettelman.

Weber and Fox Head from Waukesha.

Independent Milwaukee Brewery’s Braumeister.

Beaver Dam’s Ziegler.

Breweries that disappeared decades ago were still glowing proudly in glorious neon.

But what struck me most wasn’t simply the names.

It was the craftsmanship.

Every sign had been bent by hand. Every curve in the glass shaped by a skilled craftsman. Painted steel. Porcelain enamel. Heavy transformers that gave each sign its own gentle electrical hum.

These weren’t disposable advertisements.

They were works of industrial art.

I’ve never understood why modern LED signs leave me cold.

Perhaps it’s because they strive for perfection.

Neon never did.

Neon buzzed.

It hummed.

Sometimes it flickered ever so slightly.

The bends in the glass caught the light differently than the straight sections. Every sign had its own personality.

LEDs illuminate.

Neon performs.

Standing there, I realized those signs had once meant something far beyond selling beer.

They were beacons.

To a weary traveler, that colorful neon glow meant there was a tavern ahead.

Maybe supper.

Maybe conversation.

Maybe friends already inside arguing about the Packers or the Brewers — or, years ago, the Braves.

Maybe someone celebrating a wedding.

Maybe someone quietly mourning a funeral.

Life happened beneath those signs.

The breweries may be gone, but the memories they illuminated remain.

That’s one reason I continue chasing old highways instead of simply jumping on the Interstate.

The old roads still remember.

They remember family-owned cafes and roadside motels.

They remember supper clubs and corner taverns.

They remember when a business owner’s signature was written in glowing glass instead of printed on a backlit plastic box.

Modern America is wonderfully efficient.

Old America had more personality.

As I wandered through the museum’s multiple floors, I probably spent as much time photographing the neon as I did reading the exhibits.

No surprise there.

To me, those signs aren’t just advertising.

They’re history.

They’re craftsmanship.

They’re little electric time machines.

Driving home through those winding hills, I found myself smiling.

Not because I’d checked another destination off a list.

But because Wisconsin had reminded me that no matter how long you’ve lived somewhere, there’s always another road you’ve never taken.

Always another small town you’ve never visited.

Always another museum.

Always another surprise waiting around the next bend.

Maybe that’s the real lesson.

We spend so much of life chasing the places everyone says we ought to visit that we overlook the roads quietly waiting in our own backyard.

Sometimes the greatest discovery isn’t someplace new.

It’s discovering there are still new places to discover.

After 61 years, Wisconsin still had another story waiting for me.

I'm awfully glad I finally slowed down long enough to hear it.

Vilas County News-Review freelance columnist Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.