I went sucker fishing this weekend. The moon was bright as we gathered on the bridge in a sleepy country hamlet east of my hometown. A pickup truck pulled up with dip nets, and flashlights soon scanned the waters of the creek. A crew of old classmates caught up. In time, the rough fish, their age-old trek upstream interrupted, thrashed clumsily in buckets at our sides. It was not exactly a night at the Orpheum.
Rural and small-town life, often distilled to its stereotypes, takes a beating here in Madison. In four years, the gap between the boondocks and the isthmus — in mindset and more — has become increasingly clear with every passing day. As Wisconsin's population takes another collective step "off the farm" and into the future, however, it would do well to reflect on what it is leaving behind. Even as Sconnies embrace Instant Messenger and ensconce themselves in high rises on University Avenue, we should remember where we came from.
Everyone could use a dash of provincialism now and then.
Non-urban life does have its drawbacks. Cell phone reception is touch-and-go. Snowplows are far more critical to survival. Families keep skeletons in closets. And gossip is generally rampant.
The benefits of small-town life, though, are numerous. People matter. The pace of life is digestible. Nature is not a memory; it's a few hundred yards away. The wholesomeness of a John Steuart Curry painting suddenly seems tangible.
Wisconsin's rural areas mark the last patches of Frederick Jackson Turner's mythic frontier; a place where animals, open space, firearms, home-cooked meals and a certain horse sense about what's right work in concert to keep irony and cynicism from smothering the soul. And, if nothing else, you can be sure that someone will attend your funeral.
Even politics mirror the distinction in cultures, values and geography. This year's gubernatorial election has highlighted the connections between geographic mindsets and political candidacies. Gov. Doyle is a man of the big cities. Scott Walker was a man of the Milwaukee suburbs. And Mark Green is a man of all the rest.
Our Legislature, too, reflects the distinctions between the metropolitan and hinterland regions of the state. The geographic split in Republican ranks on issues like ethanol and Senate leadership serves as particularly good example. The divide between Democrats and Republicans, though, generally demarcates the rural versus urban divide even more acutely. In 2004, a famous county-level map of electoral results showed a sea of red punctuated by blue urban islands, Indian reservations and a sapphire patch in Mississippi Delta country where folks must not have realized the party switch yet.
While it's not a complete determinant by any means, I like a little Red State in my politics. Maybe it's the time I spent in haymows and milkhouses as a child or perhaps the alfalfa field in my backyard, but life seems a little more worthwhile when back forties and main streets are more than mere idyllic settings in movies. Give me a place with asparagus in the ditches over Allied Drive any day. Emerson once wrote of "the advantage which the country life possesses, for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of cities," a sentiment brought to life every time "cattle low upon the mountains."
It's not only the commonalities at the root of rural life that Emerson notes, though, which make a non-urban upbringing valuable. It's also the variety. Last week during the state forensics competition, I caught a glimpse of rare and elusive letter jackets from far-flung Badger towns like Chetek and Potosi. While the klaxons on some Coastie's hick alert were probably blaring, I took comfort in the apparel.
Even as employers refuse to recruit on campus due to a "lack of diversity" and the chancellor says our institution is "too small town" and "too white," Wisconsin's rural stretches provide the state its last genuine aspects of identity, its only authentic sense of identity in a "multicultural" world that focuses on differentiation.
Many see only white country bumpkins when they look out from the ivory tower. I see a mesmerizing and subtle patchwork of ethnic heritage: Scandinavians in the northwest, Belgians in the northeast, Irish in the southwest, African-Americans in the southeast, Poles in the north and Germans everywhere in between. I see a rich regional identity distorted by the movie Fargo; the fish fry and the brat fry don't seem to matter much in the "multicultural" world. As we move forward into a global era, we should remember to throw a few branches of our past into the chipper when we're cranking out a new identity.
Change, in the small town, is rarely done for the sake of change. The notion seems to have been lost, however, on a society soaring in an Icarus arc toward embryonic stem cells, nanotechnology and bioengineering. The Internet, too, holds the potential to alter non-urban lifestyle as fundamentally as the aforementioned technologies will alter life. Progress is a double-edged sword — just ask any former Wisconsin dairy farmer.
Yet progress will continue its inevitable march, and we will conserve what we can. I, for one, am proud to hail from some podunk town in Wisconsin. In 1993, the average number of annual medical prescriptions per person in the United States was seven; by 2004 it was 12. I can't help but wonder if there's isn't some correlation with the percentage increase in urban population across America. To paraphrase Thoreau, we need the tonic of tree lines and silos. Or, to paraphrase Christopher Walken, we've got a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell — the kind that actually dangles around the neck of a grazing Holstein.
The next time I get the blue state blues, whenever Madison makes me feel about as out of place as the glacial erratic on Observatory Hill, I think I'll buck up and buy some Sconnie apparel from Troy Vosseller and Ben Feichtner. I'll find a place that serves bottles of Blatz like they do back home. And I'll think about the moonlight glinting off a suckerfish's eye, the quick pull of the net ropes and the sparks of a cigarette flicked into the dark waters below.
The fish will be there years from now. I will be too — in spirit at the very least.
Brad Vogel ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and journalism.
