What's The Deal With Wisconsin? The Life Of A Cheesehead (Full Documentary) | TRACKS

wisconsin is an average sized state with a big personality admitted into the union as the 30th state in 1848 the state animal is the badger no not that one it's the other one with a population of one deer for roughly every six humans in the state you can easily guess what the state wildlife animal is and we love to hunt them as to the state's domesticated animal nope not a cute little puppy it's the cow and rightly so nearly one-fourth of the state's economy depends on cows the state drink well the state's website would say it's milk most wisconsinites however would argue that it's beer state food well everybody knows what that is and the state mascot well there's a few of those bucky badger bernie brewer the muskie the coyote on any form and of course the cheese head not just the funny foam hat mind you a cheesehead is much more than that so what exactly is a cheesehead well that's what you're about to find out in the case of this cheesehead's journey it all began with tailgating the badges at the rose bowl wisconsin fans showed up in droves the sea of red expanded as far as i could see kind of like pack animals with beer tailgating professionals who could travel well [Music] go bucky that experience it was like a drug man did i need more so how do you top that tailgating the packers at the super bowl in texas where cheesehead nation was showing its pride and they graciously brought the tundra with them invigorating yeah this is some texas for you right that's right you'd think we were back in green bay with this kind of ice on the road i bleed green and gold i wear it every day i wear my heart on my sleeve it's a real camaraderie you know really root for your team enjoy the fans you know but rude against other teams enjoy the whole ambiance of tailgating the fellowship of it it's almost like a fraternity or a sorority if you would it's just okay i don't want to use the word cult we drove all the way from green bay to dallas texas with my texas cadillac i'm a cheese head i i was born this way i love the package are you a cheesehead oh i'm absolutely a cheesehead i was born and raised in wisconsin and uh proud aware of a cheese wedge it's awesome and then to be here at my first super bowl and watch the green bay packers win their 13th championship i can't tell you how moving that is it was time for cheesehead nation to celebrate the lombardy trophy was going back rip along in green bay after all it's called title town usa for a reason [Applause] [Music] so where does the cheesehead passion come from the packers the badgers the brewers sure why not but after these two amazing encounters i knew it had to be much more than just sports love after all i was born in wisconsin i proudly called myself a cheesehead but i also knew the hat was just a symbol of something much more interesting so i set out on a journey to find the deeper meaning of being a cheesehead and to see if wisconsin was as special as i remembered it to be not only that i was in desperate need of some fresh cheese curds of course every cheesehead story has a beginning and sometimes you just have to take a moment to stare up at the beauty of it all and wonder there are moments when you catch a glimpse of something so profoundly beyond yourself that you become transfixed not for its beauty or the understanding that such a moment has to offer but for the moment itself in which your very existence becomes eternal [Music] and then you remember to breathe my first awareness of such a moment when i was in the church basement during preschool i never could sleep at nap time so i'd pretend to and then stare up at the sunlight streaming in through a window all the while wondering how could something be so beautiful without even trying [Music] as to the place where those kind of thoughts came to life well that was in your everyday small town in the great north woods of wisconsin it had your typical main street it's pretty much the same today an awesome water tower behind our house that sadly is no longer there and plenty of woods to hide in when you wanted to be alone that is of course until mom or dad yelled for you to come inside even then the house i grew up in had lots of nooks and crannies to sneak off and read a book in it was the kind of youthful experience that every good parent would want for their children the kind of experience i was glad to have had and of course there's that training ground for your future self you know that shared exploration and seeming futility we've all loved it first crush and the inevitable heartbreak to follow fumbling through friendships wanting to fit in learning to lose it's about the excitement of discovery acceptance and perhaps rejection desperately reaching for an identity so you can feel comfortable in your own skin and ultimately hopefully finding yourself of course my most pronounced childhood memories seem to involve the green bay packers an awful lot watching them on tv with my family listening to the radio with my brother as the polish prince ran in a blocked field goal for a touchdown to defeat the bears the time i finally got to meet the legendary bart star man was that inspiring like every teenage boy in wisconsin i wanted to be a green bay packer but i was puny and terrible at football [Music] even so it reinforced an important mindset that stayed with me effort teamwork and passion as to the term she said yeah it was there but it certainly didn't mean the same thing then that it does today whatever that is according to the oxford dictionary a cheesehead is one a resident of wisconsin especially a fan of the green bay packers football team so called because wisconsin is noted for the production of cheese duh two a blockhead an idiot yeah that's what the fibs think and three in the british vernacular a type of screw head with vertical sides and a slightly domed top [Music] yeah you didn't see that last one coming did you wait why are we still typing on screen hey stop that so how do you get to the profound nature of a term that on its face seems like nothing more than a pejorative towards wisconsin sports fans simple find a bunch of word nerds and see what they had to say one of the stories is i'm not sure that's true but uh is that that illinois people at white sox games started calling us cheese heads and it was it was derogatory oh come on darrell what cheese head would wear a ton of toxic poisons on his skin for six hours you have to trace this back to just head yeah you know so this dad has acid heads you know head as a term for like a subcultural unit was at least in the late 50s probably the cheesehead tradition dates back to the french voyagers who talked about the tectafromage in their in their bateau i never heard that the term cheesehead until you know until the early 1980s the first use of the cheese head was in 1888 uh the second one was in 1907 and so that would account for the first beginning of that rise and use of cheesehead but then the first spikes would be due to probably due to wisconsin between the 60s and 80s around the 70s there's a big spike and then there's a second spike which is more recently in 2000 that second spike would be due to uh some of the success of packers and it's an advertisement to you that just fits right in with all of these other words it's just one of many it's one of many meanings what she says actually so the term had to perceive the object because basically the object was crafted out of the concept of cheeseheads what we've found cheesehead means is one of several things it can be the foam triangle that you can wear a packers fan or it can simply be a wisconsinite it's not a stretch to associate cheese with wisconsin and then you know someone who's really into wisconsin yeah he's a cheesehead and always a stinkin cheesehead because they don't like those people from wisconsin it's not only used by people in wisconsin but it's used by people outside wisconsin where they want to cast aspersions on people from from wisconsin almost all the great you know icons start out as insults we may call people from illinois fibs which i won't explain on camera but the bad side of this is that i think this is the general source of like a lot of what prejudice is is you know just allowing your brain to spout forth these negative judgments without taking a step back and asking like where did this come from museum of tolerance oh man that made you think you know one group calling another group in a disparaging term i guess it's common for the for the one group to reclaim it all right let's manufacture cheeses and put them on our heads let's embrace cheesehead let's be proud of the cheesehead and i think that takes a certain kind of sophistication the first people to make cheese heads in their homes and wear them in defiance of the derogatory comments by those flatlanders down there those people took the image the icon the symbol and they turned it on its head i will embrace that and i will show so many more dimensions to being the thing you think that i am the folklore's jim leary has talked about wisconsin before wherever you are is the center of the universe i think there is something to this this sense of place and i think being a cheesehead represents the sense of place yeah i think we'll have the word cheesehead for a long time because people have really bought into it it makes you feel at home it makes you feel like you belong which is hugely important people are aware that there is a cultural entity of the midwest and there is a wisconsin cultural identity it's being proud of where you're from as to those aforementioned cheese curds well every time i came back to wisconsin over the years one of the first things i always did was find my favorite bag of fresh cheese curds and enjoy they are a wonderful treat that can only be found mostly in wisconsin why because we like to keep the good stuff to ourselves musical kurds because they squeak cheese curd nirvana believe me it's worth a trip to wisconsin we had some of your family or friends come up and i was like i asked them i was like yes just want some cheese curds and they're like what's a cheesecake and i was i don't know i think i was almost heartbroken cheese curds seem to be a unique thing just in wisconsin cheese curds are a perfect example of regional preference cheese curds are fun because they squeak and it actually squeaks when you chew it these cheese curds were so fresh so warm so squeaky we put in so many mice per batch just to get that right amount of squeaks so you'll have to figure that one out we always say that if they don't squeak they're not real kurds they gotta squeak that is the one thing that everybody loves about curds nothing to do with mice though no no nothing at all once you open that bottle of fine wine you've only got so many days to actually drink that bottle before it it just loses its taste and loses its flavor so to to ship it or to consume it somewhere else after two three weeks it's not the same we do can maybe get carried away with our cheese curd but we love them so we deep fry them deep fried cheese curds yes when we opened two restaurants in tucson arizona every single order had cheese curds on them i don't know if these people knew what they were or not but it was so fun see i couldn't believe it keep the cheese curds coming are there people who don't love cheese skirts you like shows tonight oh yeah okay you people are crazy making a movie about cheese skirts and the vast majority of the people in the world don't know the pleasure of a fresh wisconsin cheese curtain and they need to have that we are the cheese curd capital of wisconsin we were proclaimed that by governor earl this match just got full of melon nice this one is starting to cook once it gets solidified they start the cutting process jesus pumped over onto this belt by the time we get downstairs it's being cut and all the way you can see it's draining off right here wow that goes on forever oh yeah just that little break in between there is a different bat come on that is going to be the final product in a matter of minutes just a saltine uh procedure yet that's it machine is the machine there's three different applications vertical as uh as i said my load of cheese and goes out and fits into a semi i pulled up around 40 000 pounds that's a lot of cheese and the green and gold intentional it wasn't it was kind of funny why did the curd cross the street to get out of the way john mitchell is on quite a journey he's doing a documentary on wisconsin cheesehead culture the word cheesehead is broad isn't it has so many different definitions and the spirit of somebody who loves wisconsin is from wisconsin is of wisconsin what does it mean to you we're digging under the hat to see what the psyche is all about oh i like that near passive citizenship is not enough men must be aggressive for what is right if government is to be saved from those who are aggressive for what is wrong well the wisconsin idea uh was at the time at the turn of the 20th century a radical notion that a university uh and particularly one that's funded by taxpayers not a private university but a public one should benefit everybody in the state they often say the borders of the campus are the borders of the state a lot of people were all newcomers together here in the state and i think that helped shape that sense of you can't leave this group out when you talk about the we the people here but that's part of wisconsin let's face it i mean progressive movement marvelous followed hellraisers reformers wisconsin has a long long tradition of being a progressive state of being a place that's very open and very tolerant and embraces new ideas and new ways to do things the progressive tradition really began as a republican tradition ripon wisconsin which is the home of the gop and rippin good cookies i have to try that one you have to it was this philosophy of the enlightenment that science profits markets and education would make farmers the equal to his city cousin there's definitely a lot of diversity in this stage if you've got one of the major research universities in the world and you've got an awful lot of dairy farmers it really was a new idea in the world and wisconsin in that era really was the greatest exponent of what we now take as our progressive culture but you don't have a wisconsin state like there's a michigan state and there's like an iowa state and other schools have these little rivalries going on not wisconsin there's no wisconsin state there's just wisconsin so everybody's got one big red sweater big red sweater in hand metaphorically speaking of course i paid a visit to the capitol building in madison and as i walked up to it the thought that this was the people's building truly intrigued me i was also enthralled by the statues of heroic women and the living ones standing next to it but i had some place to be i had a meeting with the governor certainly the cheesehead itself stands out but the largest sense is who's underneath that and it's a great story to tell about who are wisconsinites who are the cheeseheads and just phenomenal people i think a lot of times folks here in the midwest get overlooked i once heard a joke that someone had about wisconsin but in a way it was a perfect way to put it so you might be from wisconsin if you're in a a hardware store and someone asks you if you need help and they don't work there in our state the packers for sure but even the wisconsin badgers and the milwaukee brewers are teams that unite people no matter where they're from no matter whether a democrat or republican whether they live in the city or on a farm those are things we share common bonds and i said throw in harley davidson and those are all the kind of common denominators that doesn't matter whether your ceo or janitor the same company everybody's cheering on the same cause i always said people wisconsin are the kind of people anywhere in the world you'd want to have as your best friend or one of your close friends is someone from wisconsin because they're always going to be loyal they're always going to look out for it they're also going to treat you decently and does everybody want someone like that around them after interviewing the sitting governor i journeyed through the building i'd heard so much about during my childhood and had never experienced firsthand back then i had free reign to shoot around the building so i did just that it was a magical experience the kind of intimacy one can only have with art architecture and history i was enthralled in love with wisconsin all over again this was castle cheesehead this was home [Music] [Music] factories are easy to obsess over i certainly do having always seen it as its own form of artistry and it's not just the products they make but those magnificent lynchy and industrial complexes that spring up to make those things as well they're like worlds under their own and those factories well they're places where people go to work hard so that afterwards you have a damn good reason to play hard so i trekked my way around some of the manufacturers in the state to see that wisconsin work ethic in action for warning plates this job will be the next one right now will recycle the sand and squeeze hydrogen [Music] we sell manhole covers all over the country we can find them in new york city to la to florida the other 80 is industrial products that go into heavy duty trucks go into large construction equipment bulldozers excavators and agricultural equipment it's still a manufacturing based economy obviously agriculturalism your culture is very important for the state we started out being a lumber center i think the close ties to anything in the wood related fields just feels like wisconsin [Applause] well the wisconsin milk marketing board buys our boxes for promotion uh they like to put them in the delis and we make barrels for the wisconsin milk marketing board we make a lot of barrels and we'll silk screen the name of the store on the barrel and also wisconsin milk marketing logo and they'll use them for promotions they'll cut cheese on them they'll display on them to push wisconsin cheese most people know that wisconsin is known for cheese obviously but wisconsin is also the number one paper making state in the united states and we make the most recycled paper once we've taken the fiber we've colored it we've got it ready to make paper out of it we're going to add a lot of water and now we're going to make a sheet of paper out of it now we're going to determine how smooth we want to make that paper by going through either one or several nips so after the paper's been cut it is stacked and it's ready to go the wisconsin workers i mean they love their brewers they love their packers they like to play hard but the work ethic here at this mill and throughout wisconsin is really second to none it's a combination of a very strong work ethic and also a very high level of craftsmanship it's a very sophisticated tool on wheels and we have guys that have been here 30 40 years it's much more than just coming to work it's a really part of your life well macarthur telensports has been in business since 1885. i'm actually the sixth generation to be a part of the family business and we sell all of the rally towels the trophy towel the beach towels that you see with all the professional sports logos on them the people we have work for the company are just the salt the earth they take pride in what they do and whatever they say they do you can depend upon it i don't care what job you have in our company they have a good work ethic they work hard they give you 70 minutes for every hour they're there the work ethic in the midwest and is typified by people here in wisconsin are superb they are among the best in the world in terms of thought process engagement one of the great things about wisconsin i think people work really hard but they do it so that they can play hard too which is fun the weekends we live for our sports and we have a great time here in wisconsin and we work hard during the week and it all evens out nicely work is play for us in a lot of ways as to the play hard side of things we jesus have repeatedly proven that we can do that better than anyone the fact that we have a badger as our state animal that's a pretty badass animal i always put a big badger fan cross country curling volleyball men's hockey is very big here hockey badger women hockey have done very well won the national title they're like fifth in a row or something ridiculous like that anything bad a team that wins it just becomes you know a nexus for like you know awesome energy i don't know if the same is true at the university of texas or oklahoma or nebraska but it's sure a phenomena here this uh tribalism of wisconsin it's amazing how many people come up to me and and say this is the greatest thing ever you know they really enjoy being able to see bucky and the band performing here in chicago [Applause] named after wisconsin legend and nfl hall of famer elroy crazy legs hirsch the crazy legs classic race to support uw athletics ends inside camp randall stadium and perches at usual there's beer waiting for you to pass the finish line special thank you to all of today's sponsors yeah we have an exceptional band mike lacrone's just done a wonderful job started that fifth quarter just a party just another way to go and listen to the band and and it's what's amazing is how many people stay and hang out oh for that isn't our only mascot we got a badger named bucky to love as well and doing the polka dance everybody loves to do the polka dance here [Applause] it sure is fun to love bucky [Applause] [Music] no i wasn't stalking bucky throughout my youth i was obsessed with the idea of radio likely brought about by my dad having his own weekly sermon broadcast on a local station yet i think it also grew out of something even bigger you know how radio reaches the masses in a way no other technology had prior to them you could be anywhere and the radio was available to you more importantly it was about people communicating with people in my case i was especially fond of wisconsin public radio i still am i even have the app on my phone 9xm talking department of physics university of wisconsin please stand by that was his original that's the original id they used nine for the midwestern part of the us x for experimental and m for madison it became wha am which is the flagship station of wisconsin public radio it wasn't the first radio signal but the public radio station in wisconsin is the oldest one still in operation there's a historical marker from the state historical society that's bolted to the side of the building that says it's the oldest station in the nation my research in the book seems to say their second oldest the earliest claim that wha has to broadcasting to the public was 11 a.m on december 4th 1916. now broadcasting as a word existed before radio it's an agricultural term if you look at a dictionary from 1880 the word broadcasting is in there it means to scatter seeds and at the university of wisconsin they immediately thought well with this wisconsin idea going what can we do with this radio technology to benefit everyone and the first thing they settled on was the weather forecast they figured everybody could use that so there was a real sense of connectedness that you got from the radio and this started at the university of wisconsin in madison to show you how unimportant nfl football was in 1933 there were only three radio stations in wisconsin that carried the packers wtmj in milwaukee uh there was a station in la crosse and this non-commercial station in stevens point and most people hadn't seen a game soon you did it on the radio they people have no visual sense in their head of what the game looks like and i think that's another kind of wisconsiny thing you'll get you know you get these broadcasters they'll get associated with the packers or the brewers uh as another example euchre has been with the brewers forever there is a loyalty i think there's that wisconsin sense of being you don't really want to go anywhere else you just kind of like what you have and i think that's part of the the aesthetic here too with my youthful love of radio came a whole new understanding of the world of music itunes didn't exist back then even cds were barely a thing yet my love of music was a borderline obsession so looking into les paul was a no-brainer after all the world of sound and music that we know today would never have existed without the many les paul inventions that i found at discovery world in milwaukee need i say more well actually no we'll let this guy do that he's an expert les was the kind of guy who when the light went on he didn't just care that the light went on he wasn't satisfied or happy when that light went on he wanted to know what happens there the only major technological change when it comes to guitars in the last 75 years was really the movement from hollow body to solid bow to take a regular hollow body guitar here and do very different very magical things by simply opening it up tinkering it using that same spirit of creativity and innovation that he received as a youth in waukesha wisconsin les paul number one this is the first gibson les paul that was ever created and what les did is he added a second recording head on to the the tape recorder here and he really introduced and ushered in the era of overdubbing this was a quantum leap going from recording on vinyl to recording on tape to over dubbing to les's soundboard to what les called the octopus and the 8-track recorder all of those were huge leaps in sound technology and les was at the forefront of every one of them everything about him was out in the open people like bing crosby the andrews sisters the carpenters the fab four all of whom could take some of their inspiration and some of the innovation that they worked with and trace it back to work that les had done throughout the years a pretty amazing thing for a boy who grew up in suburban milwaukee in waukesha wisconsin to change the musical world forever [Music] for non-aviaphobics well that would mean most of us there's a splendor that comes with defying gravity like man had always dreamt of doing for the millennials before we actually could do it how's that a cheesehead thing oshkosh aka eaa the experimental aircraft association welcome to oshkosh wisconsin the home of eaa we look at airports and go boy it's kind of a love-hate relationship sometimes but between the wars it was something that was glorious it was first class all the way it was an adventure it was something that not everybody did there was something almost romantic about air travel on a commercial side and that same sense of romanticism continues today with the members of ea who build and restore their aircraft who may fly great military aircraft like the ones we're looking at here or just continue to be passionate about aircraft and that's what eaa is all about and they all get together here each year for our annual convention which becomes the world's largest fly-in there are so many things that have come here to oshkosh in fact if you go to any airport in the world and talk to a pilot next to his or her aircraft and saying i'm going to talk to you about oshkosh they know exactly what you're going to talk about because it is the mecca of aviation it's part air show it's part trade show it's part educational seminar but the biggest part is family reunion it's aviation's family reunion and every year people get together some ten thousand airplanes come to the region everything from the smallest ultralight all the way up to things such as the airbus a380 or the concorde has been to oshkosh or the latest boeing 747 787s they all come here because people here we celebrate that fact the joy the fulfillment the accomplishment and the innovation that comes with that [Music] [Music] who's america's greatest architect you know again it's hard to come up with anyone who would rival frank lloyd wright when we talk about famous architects usually i think we often put them in cities frank lloyd wright rural wisconsin that's where he wanted to be people call frank lloyd wright you know wisconsin's son when you first encounter frank lloyd wright you think that they just tacked that label on to him because oh he lived here for so long but when you really start to study his house and his whole estate you start to realize now his blood his self you know was tied to this landscape to this area to the people who lived here i think it's important to say that since you know you're talking about place tally essen his home was also his incubator so he started building it in 1911 but he never stopped i think that interacting with the building here helps you to understand the man he talked about when he went to the spring green area to start to build taliesin how there was sort of a magnet pulling him there he said later that nowhere else in the world did the hill so softly and enfold you is here in southwestern wisconsin and wright also said that the landscape around here was human scale and his architecture is human scale and i've come to believe that wright's architecture would have been different had he not had such a close experience with this landscape he was definitely in love with the taliesin valley because it's his welsh heritage there the word taliesin is a welsh word it means the shining brow he built taliesin into the side of a hill so it was part of the landscape not on top of it not trying to dominate it it's one of the world's greatest architecture treasures and it's right here in wisconsin and i just can't picture in any other place in the whole world and he'll say later that wisconsin soil put the sap in his veins he calls himself a wisconsin radical there was no bigger fan of wisconsin than frank lloyd wright i mean he wrote an essay called why i love wisconsin as an adult that sounds like something a cute fourth grader would write i think he had a good sense of humor that most people don't pick up on it was a very dry sense of humor he had some funny thing to say about how he thought there should be a law passed that compelled every farmer to paint his barn red he wasn't a control freak though no he wasn't i think he understood the contradictions he would talk about how he loved guernsey cows against the hillsides because they're this coffee colored cow that looks it's the right color for the green hills you know always the designer always thinking about oh the colors are nice there his blood his self you know was tied to this landscape to this area to the people who lived here and helped to make him who he was and he kept coming back when i talked to visitors on the tour and i am trying to convey how important wisconsin was to frank lloyd wright i do use the word cheesehead it's just so funny to use that new in conversation in frankfort wright's living with jesus after visiting taliesin how can you possibly top frank wright well you can't but going from the world's greatest architect to quite possibly the world's strangest architect alex jordan house on the rock was definitely a place i had to go after all it's loaded with a myriad of priceless collections seriously it's like the ultimate man cave this is actually the rock that the house was built on and around yeah it was like a pinnacle of rock that had come up and he had climbed up the rock to start building everywhere you turned there's something new the local people could see him building it from the highway and they wanted to stop and see it well he didn't really want it to be open to tourists so he decided to charge him 50 cents a piece to scare him away hannibal crossing the alps i studied hannibal's life for a long time uh we're actually in the world's our only infinity room it's 218 feet long unsupported and it has 3264 windows at service walls it's almost as though he's pointing it at something now that stone over there is that also on your property called percussion rock percussion rock i'll bet you that pelts like crazy during rain no i i kind of joked when we first came in that this was sort of like the ultimate man cave is that a proper comparison but on a much grander more elaborate scale yeah alex jordan loved to collect he started out with the architecture in the original house as he grew and as the attraction grew he decided to add a lot of collections it's now a complex of 17 buildings that you tour through if you see the whole tour and you know there's really no rhyme or reason a lot of things he collected he just enjoyed to collect unique things [Music] the house in rock is full of unique things from the infinity room that we're currently into the world's largest carousel it has over 20 000 lights [Music] if i fall over catch me we have a 200 foot long sea creature that's actually longer the statue of liberty is tall we have one of the world's largest collection of antique dial houses we have a car collection and a modeled ship collection and a lot of antique music machines [Music] ultimately do you think he would have had a gset collection he probably would i wouldn't be surprised if we would have had a display of that curling it's america's sport okay no more like an olympic sport that people love to make fun of but i curled in high school and i always thought it was complicatedly cool yet someone who was in battle on ice so i took the opportunity at the u.s nationals curling championships in portage to explain this little understood sport though i'm not so sure i succeeded wisconsin has more curling clubs than any other state there are i believe around 32 to 33 curling clubs in wisconsin and you know what it looks really easy and it's not it's frustrating and i know why they give you that little broom-like thing because you want to hit somebody by the time you're done you see your curler and people ask what it is and oh you know that olympic thing that you slide in the ice with those rocks and you know but people really don't know about it it's different around here because we're spoiled in wisconsin there's a fairly large contingence of scottish heritage and they're the people that brought the game over but anybody can curl so there's open houses usually every fall in all the curling clubs a bonspiel is the curling term for tournaments the scoring you have to look at the middle of the scoreboard is the score the top and bottom are the colors and in this case there are two colors red and yellow so i'm a lead i throw the first rocks and you alternate back and forth with the other team now the numbers you see hanging above and below are the end numbers your skip who calls the game he's kind of like the captain um will tell you where he wants the rock and after everything is all the way down to the other end you hang a score so the skip will yell at you if he wants you to get that rock to go past another rock it's a accumulation effect so if they score three after the first end and they score two after the second end they add on and so it might be in front of the house it might be in the house they go on to the red bar line with the number one and hang it right below number three a lot of times rocks will line up just the right way that you can bounce off one into another and take them both out so and that's how the scoring is and it's really confusing but after you look it for a while it gets better it's the curling zamboni and the winters are you know cold and long in wisconsin so curling just seems to kind of fit all right that really didn't clear anything up but there really isn't a good explanation it's just a lot of fun drawing a line from one world to another is for any journey consequential you see the here you see there but you don't know what will happen in between i took the lake express ferry across lake michigan to test that theory i was craving the solitude it might offer this journey reminded me that the water is the life water is the truth it's sometimes tumultuous most times rather steady i love to journey across water lucky for me the captain even invited me on the bridge to see things from his vantage point it's a place where you can see the curve of the earth what is it about water in wisconsin well for one thing we have a lot of it water purifies renews becomes we transmit through water inside of us the force of nature get calming all the same water is nature's magic [Music] and a sunset on the waters of lake michigan well that's just divine [Music] the history of wisconsin is intimately tied to water so you've got two great lakes to pretend our inland seas and i think what a lot of people don't recognize they think about the east coast they think about the west coast or maybe even the gulf coast they don't think that we're sitting on america's fresh coast we've got about 300 miles of shoreline here in door county uh not bad for a place in the midwest there are the biggest mass of water companies here than anywhere else be they water heaters water meters pipes flowing of water all of those types of things grew up here because we've got 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water right at our fingertips right outside our front door we're the only state in the union that's surrounded by two great lakes the greatest river in the us say we're filled with 15 000 lakes that's 5 000 more than the land of 10 000 lakes of minnesota and all of ours are filled with fish because of that unspoiled driftless region we have spring creeks and we have river valleys and fly fishing and stuff that you think you have to go off to new england to get and you got it here in wisconsin over the years every summer we have the monaco bat water ski show it's the amateur show that's been going on longer than any other water ski show in the united states and it's put on it's put on by kids and if you really like having surf come in well you know go up to bayfield or uh you know some parts of the raw shore up there on a stormy day and you know everything you'd find at big sur you've got there there's so much history here the lighthouses the shipwrecks and in some places in the state the connection is almost spiritual with the native american tribes there is a spiritual connection to the water and i think all of us have some inherent appreciation connection to the water whether we grew up fishing or boating all of those things are made so much easier by the fact that we live on this huge body of water and all the inland lakes and streams so all of those things give us opportunities to make a connection with that water and that's how we identify ourselves through this water and it really brings a lot to the entire community and it's a real freshness having the fresh coast here a tundra is frozen a frozen tundra well that's just redundant but that is what wisconsin is like for as long as winter wants to be around we cheeseheads however well we've learned to make the best of it and with good humor too we have this thing in the midwest called winter and that's winter is spelled with a capital w in wisconsin okay because winter is serious there is no bad weather john there's only bad clothing one thing about midwest two your hair is screwed up pretty much from like september to you it these are called choppers if your choppers are not dirty or suspect at the bar but it's hard to play them i can see from my eyes [Music] during my youth winter meant staying indoors reading lots of books and wondering when spring would break and sometimes that took until summer wisconsin was not the waterpark capital of the world when i was a kid let me make that clear but it is now and as an adult i felt obligated to check out the water parks and see what i missed out on as a kid tough job i got right back in the early 1990s when the first indoor water park was built in wisconsin dells the whole purpose of it was really to solidify june because wisconsin delves was a three month of the year vacation destination and if it rained in june you're lost your whole summer it's because of the seasons and we have short summer and fall seasons a long winter season and then the next thing you know people were selling out over christmas break they're selling out over spring break and really a phenomenon was born and indoor water parks took off from there we have the largest indoor wave pool in the united states we have duck rides that take you you know across land and through the river and across the lakes we also have the tommy bartlett ski show where you know it's been around for over 50 years i mean those family traditions that existed 50 years ago are now complemented by state-of-the-art water parks like this they've done a good job in leveraging their convention business to invite the families along as well you know wisconsin is a very close-knit community we help each other out we take care of each other and i think that's why people come to wisconsin and to wisconsin dells because of that hospitality only in wisconsin would someone come up with the idea of putting an indoor water park in a place where 200 days of the year it's 30 degrees or less so i mean i think it really embodies the creative spirit of wisconsin as to that creative spirit in action the g said well that's peculiar enough but we also have a passion for art in wisconsin and the stranger the better like concrete park i was able to make friends with a couple of talented wisconsin artists on my journey they invited me in to see their work and yes sometimes it did include a cheesehead but art much like a cheesehead is hard to define so why bother let's just show it to you no i think mostly what i paint you know has to do with history and the love for america and um people wanting to be successful maybe that's part of wisconsin too because that's where my heritage comes from hard-working people that that came to this state that wanted to make a name for themselves and a lot of these people came with nothing and started off as farmers and worked very hard to to build up their businesses and and their lives can you tell we're at the big guy hat factory this is all part of it man you got to love it you're out in nature and you're carving foam what what what better is there you know no this is the shop man this is where it all happens right here don't get scared you'll only get attacked by lots of foam of course what's bigger in wisconsin than the green bay packers and deer hunting that's about the two biggest things you can get what do we call it the frozen tundra of lambo field if we take a look at this picture right here that's basically what i look like when i go to these crazy games and whatever so i'm the frozen tundra man the cheese heads obviously i do things for celebrities which is kind of something that's fun for me i end up doing something for harrison ford up at eaa i carved this in the ford uh motor company uh invited me into the vip tent and they let me give this hat to harrison ford tiger woods another one where it was just the tiger hat here's one for the prezi united states right there george w bush what fits better in wisconsin than the good old beer the 208 million dollar sargento lottery winner mon paz which is famous for the miracle mile here in fond du lac they had me make that thing up that got worldwide attention just that hat alone that's what makes it happen you don't want to get your fingers in front of that or boy you're going to be hurt sketch it by hand and this bad boy right here this will cut through it like butter and i can just add a little finishing angle touches on them it's actually believe it or not it's a stress reliever for me because as long as i'm creating something and making someone happy i'm happy i've done my job this stuff is is wacky stuff but it brings enjoyment and the stuff that we've experienced my kids have experienced through the different news teams the interviews that they've had and all that stuff i just hope that this is something special to them you know obviously we're all going to be ashes and we're going to hope that our stuff is remembered that's all we can do but it's what you leave behind for your children when you're gone is what's the most important [Music] you're ready for game day is that a good look or what huh i like it it does it brings out the color in your eyes too i like that in the other hand oh well yeah i can make that happen hold on when you think of great showmen from wisconsin the most likely names that come to mind would be well liberace for sure and then there's spencer tracy and his nine oscar nominations the ringling brothers and one of the more inventive filmmakers of all time orson welles but there was one man who grew up in appleton and he became the most famous man of his day in fact he's become so famous over time his name is now an adjective ladies and gentlemen introducing my original invention the water torch itself houdini had four brief but very fulfilling years here in appleton and it's easy to imagine in hindsight why he called appleton his birthplace he he loved it here and he had four idyllic years but we know now that he was born in budapest hungary in 1874 but he claimed to the very end that appleton was his birthplace we are a pioneer in hydroelectricity so houdini was seeing all of these sorts of changes in the community and i think in some ways it probably inspired him some of the ideas that that got him the coverage was he was embarrassing the police chief and challenging the police chief there's this idea that he's challenging authority and that he's pushing the boundaries of what was considered to be a fairly constrained victorian culture and he's appearing with no clothes something that was was unheard of here we have one of houdini's original straight jackets he often performed this suspended above a street over a crowd of thousands of people and it was not an accident that it tended to be in the street in front of the city's most widely read newspaper i think here's where his brilliance is is bronze is in self-promotion he may not have been the best magician or the best escape artist but he's a brilliant uh self-promoter it's the key to his success it takes him from an obscure uh vaudeville or circus performer to one of the most highly paid performers in the world 1914 taking a bridge from a famous cheesehead of the past to one in the present took me from handcuffs to a crown and it got me to thinking the best way over is through when it comes to showing the world what you're made of the best way is to be yourself and if you can do it while being a cheese head well that's even better of course winning miss america it's kind of like winning the super bowl of pageants and miss america 2012 laura kepler well she's a proud she's head and i got to meet her and brag about it miss america 2012 is miss wisconsin i was crying of course before my name was even called and um just pure joy and happiness and excitement because i never dreamed this was possible for me your new miss america miss wisconsin i was miss wisconsin many many years ago so our miss wisconsin who of course went on to win miss america laura kepler uh she's kind of tough to look at it's good to have good-looking girls you know in such a good-looking state on a map i guess she was one of these women who were like stephanie you were miss wisconsin the year i was born thank you laura thank you yeah i love you laura just something more to add to all the accomplishments that the state of wisconsin has been receiving lately it's pretty it's pretty cool should i have a cheese head made out of a crown careful it's so wonderful to be home it's so wonderful to see so many of your familiar faces and this entire journey i have felt so much love and support from kenosha so thank you a local committee trying to get aaron rodgers but [Applause] they can only get three politicians so i would get asked almost in every single interview if he has called and i would just have to say he hasn't called the joke is on me from the home of the reigning super bowl champ if you're watching aaron rodgers call me i'm laura kepler miss wisconsin so i looked at his twitter account and he said you don't want to miss the girl who's singing the national anthem either so i thought oh my gosh i'm going there knowing he is going to be there rogers attended a milwaukee bucks game at which the lovely laura kepler was singing the national anthem so at halftime he made his way up there and he said hello i said thanks for being a good sport he said no problem and that was that every contestant goes there and everyone takes away something from the experience because there can only be one winner but to feel like i worked so hard for almost an entire year and then was the last one standing you can't compare remember ole miss wisconsins never die we just slowly gain weight oh barron county the county i grew up in has what could best be described as the oddest road numbering system on the planet street names like seven and a half avenue 21st and a quarter street and the most wonderful of them all 13 and 5 8. as to the rest of the state well basically wisconsin was the very first governmental unit in the world to ever use numbers and system of numbers to identify roads so that's a very unique thing because everybody all over the world does that now wisconsin did it first in 1917 michigan being the copycats there followed in 1918 and then of course it spread from there us highway system came along in 1926 and then the interstates came along about three decades later so to celebrate wisconsin's highways that's why i started mystatetrunktour.com basically it's taking every wisconsin state highway and making it like it's its own route 66. and of course the best way to travel all of those freeways highways and back roads is on a harley-davidson [Music] [Applause] [Music] people like to ride them because it gives them a feeling of freedom and enjoyment of the open road we'll go on a bike run with 20 guys by the end of the day we got 40 with us you know so it's i've seen those trails it's pretty neat it's pretty neat you know and chain of them coming past me on the car absolutely and you know everyone's in it for the same thing they love the ride they they love meeting new people they love the open road they love the freedom and you're around people that have the same interests and likes that you do it's pretty much wisconsin harley are together in one it's just the best the best you can go anywhere in the country anywhere in the world and there's harley's harley's been around since 1903. there's a lot of history here these harleys came from wisconsin i bought my husband a harley shortly after we got married yeah there's a lot of people that buy a new harley ride it and they're basically harley riders of course we own an old shovel head the cool thing about those things is that you get to fix them up i enjoy building things and creating things so that's why it's in the house harley does basically have a patent on the sound and the muffler system is made to sound unique and it does sound the best it is unique there's nothing else like it yamaha doesn't sound like that a suzuki doesn't sound like that no other bike sounds like that but a hard one the guys who own harley's and especially the old ones they are so proud of those bikes so do you have an intimate relationship with your harley i rebuilt this harley it's custom made for my body i love this thing don't you i love it this is my baby harley's basically the worldwide symbol of someone of the badass guys they're just badass you look at them you talk to people that own them everybody knows it you know there's got a lot of cheeseheads out here but uh harley guys we're badass that's all there is to it it's easy to be a part of nature when you're driving around the great north woods of wisconsin time moves slower there you're no longer stressed you can think clearly you can breathe the air and best of all you'll be lucky if your smartphone can even get a signal but there's still a lot going on north of the tension line just make sure you watch out for deer when driving and maybe a hote egg too some say it's a mythical creature i do believe i've had a couple cocktails and i've seen the hodag and actually had to fend for my life the settlers in northern wisconsin and rhinelander were looking for a drawing cart for people to come to the area and they ultimately came to this local timber cruiser and humorist and very well-known person named eugene shepherd what he came up with was to capture this hodeg and he theoretically captured it brought it to the fairgrounds and charged people a nickel to see it in his tent take a look at that hold egg up on top that's taking care of the city of rhinelander in its own fashion and paul bunyan you'll see him all over the northwoods i spent about a year and a half going into the archives of collectors who had edited the tales for publication in the 19 teens and 20s and was able to trace the very first paul bunyan story to wisconsin today all over the country people know the name paul bunyan but it all started right here in wisconsin in the 1880s every summer lumberjacks and lumberjills from around the world come to hayward wisconsin for the world lumberjack championships and that oh that's lumberjack nirvana and now we're here into the finals well we just finished the uh the lumberjack world championships it started in 1960. holy smokes is gonna be hot in there you know there's no other place in the world that has this kind of attention this is the best show in north america okay the 20-inch white pine lobsters wood is fantastic these guys are going for it who's it gonna be one two three or four [Music] you asked the lumberjacks that and they love the wisconsin hospitality and the fact that we're cheese heads and that that we're going to bend over backwards and when they come here they're going to have fun they're going to party and they're going to compete hard and they're going to give us everything we got just like anything else we do here in [Music] [Applause] wisconsin the hayward community has spawned many uh world champions so we've got uh tree climbers we've got log rollers and boom runners [Applause] [Music] is the beautiful muskie queen to present the trophy to cassidy share our 60-foot traditional climb world champion [Applause] i mean it's just like loggers and lumberjacks go right back to like packers i mean we're we're we're ancient uh symbols and i mean that's just that's just who we are this is the state of wisconsin and she's had some loggers and lumberjacks they all go together as to the aforementioned deer well there's plenty of hunting and fishing to be had in the great north woods of wisconsin a few years ago we harvested 600 000 deer and that was a record for all states in all years as far as recorded history is concerned when i say harvest i i think of it in the term just like a farmer would harvest his crops and it's good conservationists we want to take care of the land we want to be respectful we want to make sure animals aren't maimed to harm but yes we do shoot them to be able to eat them and harvest them and control the populations the downside of so many deer is that occasionally you hit them with your vehicles when they have their mind made up that they want to cross the road they're going to cross the road whether you blow the horn or whether you're there or not because the signs are a promise they're not a warning their promise there will be deer there um and you'll see deer everywhere i've seen deer in town here so many places but if it's me taking the ditch or taking the deer i'm gonna take the deer unfortunately because if i take the ditch i may run into a tree and might not live to tell about it they're a strange set of animals that's a turdy pointer did you see the turkey pointer that is the exact look that the deer gets just before you throw a slug into them you know what's the old action when's the best time to fish whenever you get the opportunity wisconsin is a fabulous state for fishing the muskie capital of the world as we're often touted obviously directly behind me is the largest muskie on display in the world we have fifteen thousand lakes maybe thirty 000 miles of stream for fishing when the snow recedes when the ice goes away everyone's ready to go out and have a good time because the one thing we know that's coming is winter again indian tribes are a part of the wisconsin landscape they give us a deep connection to mother earth through honoring nature they come from the land and so you return to it and there's no better source than the source those who were there before anyone else to give you an intimate understanding of the land we call wisconsin so i went to my tribal chairman at the lacuta ray reservation near hayward to do just that were we really cheeseheads before we were cheeseheads i would say that we are a proud part of what is now known as wisconsin stephanie clatt is the right now the secretary of tourism and we have a partnership and she's out there selling the state to people to come here and take a vacation fishing hunting the natural resources and cultural tourism come and see the tribes well what's really important is family and that's what we're here today for homecoming celebration [Music] a lot of the towns are named with tribal names the rivers the creeks the streams you wouldn't have a state of wisconsin if it wasn't for the tribes [Applause] we are a proud part of the landscape here whether they're packer fan or not a packer fan whether they're a hunter or a non-hunter whether a businessman or an environmentalist or both the term cheesehead i think of someone from wisconsin and affectionately even in the romantic picture of america that you see in books that's where we live it's the greatest place to be on earth and that's why i say i would not want to live any place else just off the shores of bayfield out on lake superior are the apostle islands national lakeshore amongst them is madeline island one of the oldest contiguous settlements in the united states sacred ground for the ojibwa tribes and about as peaceful a place as one could imagine if you like that sort of thing after all this running around i was in need of a few moments of tranquility and this was the perfect place for it but even here in the middle of the greatest lake in the world the cheesehead sense of humor thrives be it a bit more subtle than the rest of wisconsin tom's burned down cafe yeah it burned down but they never got around to rebuilding it in the usual fashion it's all outdoors with quotes nailed to the walls and the floors and everywhere else you can think of except the ceiling of course before leaving i visited the lapoint indian cemetery and it sent me pondering even more than usual these were the original cheese heads before the idea ever existed they got along with the settlers not just because they had to but because they wanted to i had set out to discover what it meant to be a cheesehead but more and more i was discovering who i was in ways i had never seen myself before as i watched the sun go down over lake superior that night i realized that the true value of an experience like this is about the desire to share those experiences with others in order to be a part of something bigger better and more worthy than oneself and who in the right mind wouldn't want that [Applause] speaking of another tribe the one you likely expected from the start of course well for that i had to go to the city at the end of the bay and while it is the home of the packers it's also a town with a quite unique personality if you've never been there you might wonder how such a small town can have such a massively successful nfl franchise if you have been to green bay well you know exactly why steeped in tradition the world's best tailgating and 13 nfl world championships it's the mecca football and the packers are the religion and right across the street from the nfl's vatican lambeau field is the green bay blizzard an arena league football team that is more than proud to play in the shadow of the almighty it's a football town but we still have to the blizzard we are relatively new and every day we gotta prove ourselves we try to keep the energy level as size we can this is the only city in the nfl or any sports city whereby the whole city revolves around the number one sports team in the city this is the most amazing town to be and i'll tell you it's fun we are the number one professional team in the city of green bay the green bay packers that's a religion and we don't count that god you know around here really is a religion now having been a lifelong packer fan it wasn't until i re moved to wisconsin that i realized just how ingrained the love for the packers are and how deep that goes and so i have vince is saying god family packers right order kind of burns out the hair though i'm sorry i'm not wearing my cheesehead cap now i have one at home one i wear for church on sundays i'd be willing to bet that we're the only place where you can go to church on sunday and a majority of the congregation is wearing packer jerseys and print farm jerseys instead of your normal church clothes the one of the first things i was told is on the game days when kickoff is at noon you've got to keep your sermon short well it got to a certain point when i got old enough that it was sunday's was let's get through church as fast as we can and get home because the game is on a great friend of mine took me to a packer game and i'm telling you it was almost like going to a cathedral it was just an amazing experience so i got converted i took the pledge and i'm a born-again packer fan and and you know we talk about cheese heads and we talk about being packer fans and being fans of the packer is one of those things that forms community and i think it's important you know because it's a part of forming identity we eat cheese curds together we we drink great beer together we have the best bratwurst in the world sunday is the holy day but it's a holy day for football amen what that has helped me do is to find just how much i'm a part of something much bigger than myself that sums it up religion and passion you've been to tailgates you've been which to me stands out i mean nobody else can nobody else in the world tailgates the way wisconsin slash packer fans do it i don't know too many casual packer fans i know a lot of super packer fans they remind me of people that were in line during the when the star wars movies came out again after 20 years they were lined up in sleeping bags in the parking lot you know any time that you can show your love for something and just have fun i mean anytime i see saint fence or the uh fence painter or something like that you just feel good inside you want to talk about what it's like to be at gsa right here people that put themselves on the line and take risks in life like the crazy packer fans i admire them they don't care what other people think you see cars uh painted a certain style of vans painted a certain style that are in that parking lot year after year after year the tailgate parties are getting more elaborate more elaborate the menus are better uh you know really kind of just brings home the atmosphere and the fun that the packer fans have happy game day everybody i ask you know how often do you have a photograph taken of you in the course of a day st vince has told me upwards of 500 photographs when you have people standing in line smiling waiting to have a photo taken with you that's almost a drug it's not just a game this is a lifestyle this is a tradition this is my trip to mecca oh no not at all no money is no object when you come to tailgating and uh the fun thing for me is just the interaction with the with the fans and with the kids and i love the fans i met i consider these people family it's kind of like church or it's kind of like the dog park where people are all kind of coming together for a common purpose this purpose just happens to be stuffing face you know because there's beer there's brats there's burgers there's steaks there's pork chops wild game it'll be cooked on the grill and things like that and the amount of seasonings and everything that you smell it's unbelievable it's not just about eating but it's about what's going on in their lives and again like i say the camaraderie friendship and fellowship may the force be with you [Music] once i finished tailgating lambo film for the umpteenth time it gave me an even greater appreciation for where all that great food comes from and the people we have to thank for all that are the hard-working no-nonsense donda dusk farmers who make wisconsin food some of the best in the world especially when it comes to cheese no matter where you go it's pretty safe to say that no one does cheese better than the dairy state there's probably not another state that is as closely identified with a product as wisconsin is with cheese we are kind of the shining star right now in the cheese world we are the number one producer of cheese in the united states cheese is good if we just counted the cheese that we produce in wisconsin by itself we would be the fourth largest cheese producer in the world it's a 43.4 billion dollar industry it's a 43 billion dollar industry 43.4 that 0.4 is a lot that's a lot of cheese yeah we make a lot of cheese but we also win more awards for our cheese than any other state and most other countries out there we've won a large percentage of contests whether it's american cheese society whether it's the world contest you know the seat cooks and the car from car valley and the satori's and the wind mirrors i mean they just rack up the ribbons we're truly a player in the cheese industry worldwide we make about 80 different varieties many of the cheeses that we do are american originals meaning that we just made them up over the last uh 11 or 12 years we're up to 538 national and international awards one of the things right now wisconsin offers that no other state does is a wisconsin's master cheese maker program they take great pride in it and and the discussions that we have and the passion that that comes out during those discussions it's really different and i think it really sets us apart as i've had the opportunity to develop new cheeses i almost feel like they're my children so cradle to grave developing something new if a person wants to become a cheese maker if that's their aspiration there is no finer place than wisconsin we've got a great infrastructure here there's a support network needed for cheese making to be successful it's such a part of who we are in wisconsin i mean we truly are america's dairyland and have been for well over a century now and the thing that's very unique about our cheese manufacturers are they're innovative we were the first to have a shredded cheese we also introduced the concept of peg bar merchandising to the dairy section we were the first to have a resealable package of cheese and in fact we were the first to have a resealable package of any perishable food product wisconsin is known for for brick and colby and limburger the stinky cheese but we also have an array of what we call european and style cheeses that our cheese makers have made their own and our artisan cheese makers are playing a very very important role in the success of our industry it makes people understand how thoughtful our people are because these are very thoughtful cheeses oh they're becoming a much larger portion of the overall state dairy business yeah specialty cheese from the early 90s up to the present day from i think it was four to five percent as far as specialty cheese production to now where it's it's close to 20 percent this is our wonderful pack roll it's a temperature control room that we process the cheese and we cut it into a bunch of different variety of sizes so as you can see we put it in the package after cuts goes into the machine wave scales and labels you probably see this product all over the place too as well it's called waxing and we'll let it dry for a little while and then we'll do it again and that seals it real solid so it can age really well uh this specialty packaging is uh it's very labor-intensive operation but at the same time it's a necessity because without it you're not going to get it into the individual's hands they're probably not going to want to buy 40 pound blocks and take it home it might take them a couple years to eat that much unless you're from wisconsin because those cheese heads probably go through that in about a month it appears often that we don't take ourselves all that seriously and of course the question of why we don't take ourselves seriously is an important question but we don't you know it's a place where there's probably more cows and there are people the people at packer games and brewer games and badger games and all kinds of other games who wear those cheese heads and all the other garments that are now available have done our state i think a great service that's the aspect i really like putting on these stupid foam heads and pretending i don't know what i think that's wonderful you know people maybe kind of poke fun i think they're poking fun because they're jealous that they're not a cheesehead so a cheesehead may come across as a as a joke but it does have a rich tradition with it that really shows our our pride for what we are all about in our state if we were starting from scratch to build a brand like we have in wisconsin with our dairy industry and our cheese recognition there isn't enough money in the world to build from scratch what we have today and as if that food porn wasn't enough we couldn't leave out the bratz bacon and beef we may not make the most but we do make the best besides we cheeseheads even invented the hamburger according to this historian in 1885 hamburger charlie and green made the first hamburger charlie was an enterprising young man and he came to the fair to make some money she was going to sell these meatballs to people but well they couldn't eat their meatballs walking so charlie an idea and he flattened that meatball down into patty put it in between two pieces of bread and sure enough the burger was born wisconsin birthplace of the hamburger frozen custard capital of the world and home to culvers of course we started with one restaurant here in sauk city wisconsin and today uh we are spread across 19 states primarily the midwest and jacqueline's nobody believes me when i say that's from wisconsin yeah it's american dream company we started out with six people and we built it into an international company it's a proof that you can do it here in america and we're real proud of where we came from rc newskey actually filled up the back of his automobile with hams and bacon and things from his family's farm and he drove around northern wisconsin so you know in the last 20 or 30 years you can find us in almost any state in the union we're talking about wisconsin how proud we are of it but we're also talking about small town america when i think of small town america i think of hard-working people i think of honest people i think of loyal people we know what we do and we do it really well we applewood smoke things we don't deviate from from our original recipe we don't jump on a lot of trends you know we're about sausages here in wisconsin as well the bratwurst i mean what better tailgating food than the bratwurst now we have i believe over 100 different types of brats but the most popular ones seem to be the ones that are the sports ones so we have a badger brad and a packer broad you know it is kind of appropriate too that it's the packers and they were named after a meat packing company and of course here in seymour we have a hamburger charlie and pearl burger festival is supported by american food groups and whenever the packers in the super bowl our business increased quite a bit we developed this sasquatch character it's been quite successful we tuned him in to feed your wild side which we think is what people do when they buy beef jerky is there's something in you that feels that you want to feed your wild side and our company is about fun and he certainly has added to it well yeah we did get to be the number one producer of beef jerky coming out of this little town of 500 people as far as i'm concerned wisconsin is second to none we have great food here in wisconsin whether it's some gourmet type of food or you know burgers at that first burger fest we wanted to do something special so we made the world's largest hamburger 5 462 pounds then in 2001 we decided to do an 8 266 pound burger our business isn't necessarily about the butter burger or frozen custard it's about the people and the experience they create with each other and with the guests in our restaurants that's what makes a butter burger taste better that's what makes frozen custard taste better that's what makes living in wisconsin better as well my impressions are that the beer is phenomenal on most of my previous visits to the u.s i have been left with a very negative impression of fear on this trip i'm delighted to say my opinions have been reversed we are proud of that beer despite our reputation as being just beer and cheese we actually do have taste it's all about cheese up here and beer and cheese and beer and beer yeah i think more people eat cheese than drink beer that's a toss-up in this state you sure about that no brought to the cheese yeah i mean you see that tailgating that's just part of the food that goes with the beer beer and cheese isn't too bad a thing to be noted for many ways people don't realize when both beer and cheese that good dates all the way back 150 years ago back in 1861 started the civil war a lot of those soldiers didn't like to drink creek water and so many of them being german immigrants their families something beer and the number of breweries blossomed particularly in milwaukee well milwaukee has a long history of brewing and a lot of it ties into the german heritage that we have here the fact that as soon as you hit milwaukee city limits it smells like beer makes me laugh every time you can be like sleep and wake up and be like oh we're in milwaukee the fact that our baseball team is named the milwaukee brewers and they play in miller park it shows you just how strong the beer heritage is here i happen to be a miller adherent wisconsin's had that tradition forever and a while back some local smaller breweries decided hey let's start it back up and it's really taken off the resurgence of the micro breweries is one of the best things that's happened to the state people like when they come to wisconsin they want to try the local the local beers it's not only produce great beer which in itself creates a good economy but it also gives the major international stale breweries a run for their money it's quality it's uh people trading up we put a lot of smiles on people's faces don't we bears proof god loves us right all all beer that's what you get if you go to the towering a lot what's the difference between saying tavern belly and burial nothing you got to hand to wisconsin for beer no question we like good beer i mean usually in these little towns there's more taverns than there are churches or they're about equal in number you know you get into a beer drinking contest with somebody from down south and they find out you're from wisconsin they don't want to play anymore napa is the wine country we're the beer country if you're a beer connoisseur this is mecca if you haven't been to wisconsin and you haven't seen a packer game and you haven't drank beer then you haven't lived in fact i think we should just stop shooting go to bar right now but instead of a bar i decided to one-up that and go straight to the breweries and talk to the brewmasters themselves oh man was that fun well we're probably surrounded by about 10 million cans of beer filled beer no man could finish that in his life yeah and now it's minhass brewery second oldest brewery in the united states uh 1845 grown quite a bit since then from probably less than a thousand barrels a year to well over three hundred thousand barrels of beer every conceivable beer style in the world is made in wisconsin the economic impact is uh over three and a half billion dollars direct impact indirect it's almost it's more than twice that it's over eight billion dollars wisconsin's unique in the amount of liquor licenses we have more licenses per capita than any state in the country that's why so often you come to a town i've got chetek here 2 000 people you'll see eight ten bars it's very very typical in wisconsin because that's where people get their dinner too that's true yes we have quite a few of them that serve food and beer the quality of good brew in the state that we may not make the most but we make some of the best would that be a fair statement that is a very fair statement yeah it's trying to get something out of you just trying to get something off your chest and out of yourself to somewhere else that's the great thing about craft breweries a personality shows back on their beer we don't have a taste panel saying that let's make it this way or that way to make it palatable for more people we kind of do what we want but we feel our mission is we make beer that beer is an adjunct to the enjoyment of life wisconsin brewers are very creative and not afraid to push the envelope and like you said if we're we're not offending somebody we're not not doing our job you know it's not a two-dimensional um freak show or show-off um that oh sorry i can't talk to you this beard needs me to pay attention no it's just part of the process and you're enjoying life and this is just part of it this was actually an alleyway at one point we have five watering tanks and it's got to settle in here a couple weeks depending on the beer about 100 years ago the hops were grown in wisconsin and new york and uh what happened was they had a blight what happens is you're gonna get a fungus that's gonna crawl up the vine and it's gonna destroy the crop i've got one little piece of good dirt in the corner with some wood chips around it and some peat moss this is a gravel parking lot and i'm growing hops just about everybody somewhere is growing some hops born and raised here in wisconsin regardless of how much we branched out with our beers is attractive to those people that grew up here once they start calling it linings you know that you've got something going because it's personal to them and when you work next to others you have an appreciation for what they contribute you know the beard does not make itself you know we value the people who work here because you know without them there is no beer there's no brewery there's the uh native american aspect i'm assuming that's a tribute to yeah it very much is uh there's really two placeholders for having the indian maiden on our labeling and the early one certainly is the tribute to the ojibwe chippewa indians which inhabited this area first before any of us did and secondly to the area for tourism and vacationing in the indian head country i have always felt like i really wanted our brewery to be part of the fabric of wisconsin i want to be something that at the end of the day you know we add to our community i have a passion for this part of the world i just think it's the best place on the planet and i've traveled all over i've lived in different states and they're all interesting and nice but there's nothing that can touch wisconsin everybody wants to go to lambeau at some point whether they're from la or new york it doesn't matter every one of our lining distributors saying hey can i get tickets to a packer game when the giants are playing or when oakland's playing and i'm saying that's going to be a tough ticket yeah we got one johnny blood irish red and johnny blood was um they called him the vagabond halfback we hope he'd be proud of our our beer because a lot of his cool stories of johnny blood kind of happen at this depot because he was known for his partying ways and a few times he missed the train to go play a game and he would miss it from here and have to drive a car and block a train track farther down the the line to stop the packer train from going out the stories of him leaping across the courtyards at hotels so he could get a bottle of whiskey out of curly lambo's uh room etc i mean they're just amazing they got a wall where you guys are painted in it palm gardeners yeah brewery on the hill it's the famous war of beer versus wine our brewery's up on the hill and steins of beer having their way with the wine bottles the wine industry has exploded in wisconsin we all know a beer has been really big in the past recently wine has really started to take off especially our cheese cheesehead white and every bottle of cheesehead white comes with his own cheese wedge i am a cheesehead and damn proud of it and i will wear the crazy cheeseblock on my my wife has the cheeseblock for the behind okay and you've seen a lot of other accessories out of cheese so it's it's gone beyond cheese head now to the rest of the cheese body as good fortune would have it i met nfl hall of famer dave robinson and his writing partner rice boyles and a book signing at festival foods in eau claire dave's a packers legend and a real lovable guy even let my brother and i try on his super bowl one ring so i had to ask what did they think of chi said nation you can't appreciate how great the fans are in green bay as a player until you leave and go somewhere else and then you long for those fans in green bay wisconsin there are so few things that families do together but part of it is to follow a team there's a love affair between the team and the fans we give to each other we both grow with each other we both nourished by the love and respect from each other and that was the difference in green bay and other places i've been it's part of the fabric of a lot of people in wisconsin these little things with the hats the cheese heads and everything else they're taking it to a higher level the whole cheese head concept i think is it's a badge of honor i do not wear a cheese head i'm old school but i respect the people to do and i understand what they're doing they're making a statement you can't insult green bay packer fans they went and made the cheese as you wear cheese heads and what that is and when she's here they're gonna kick your butt and that's it and that's it they just said this is great people and i love the fans of green bay i'll tell you i said it was the greatest fans ever well i i'm working real hard to try to make something out of dave robinson you know i wish we could bring him out of his shell and let him talk or something like that i did play in the first two super bowls and i am not a lifelong packer fan i am a lifelong packer so there i was tailgating at lambeau field yet again and who did i happen to meet this time the kicker responsible for one of my childhoods most lasting memories the polish prince chester mark hole how big was chester markle back in the day our day like in high school now oh he was wasn't he he was he might have been the biggest celebrity kicker in the history of the nfl at least in one city 1980s opening day game with the packers and the bears chester marco kicking that field goal now this picture behind you this classic shot pretty awesome pretty awesome and now you i want to ask about that but first i want to say that's kind of what you really got that sort of fame for with the packer fans but yeah you have a big big career prior to that i had a big career but uh larry mccarron and i were doing something thursday night and he says you know that was my fault that that field goal was blocked uh i said well thanks for making me famous you know we could try to recapture this situation thousands of times and it would not work out this way you know it's one of those things that just happens a little boy's dream coming full circle and doesn't get much better than that or maybe it does after all i did get to meet bart starr again more than three decades after that first inspired encounter still a gentleman still very inspiring still the greatest green bay packer to ever play after all of these amazing experiences i felt as though my deeper understanding of the meaning of being a cheesehead was becoming even clearer but i still had to look into whether cheeseheads could survive in the wild or at least on an island in the middle of lake michigan after all you can't say you've covered all of wisconsin if you haven't been to washington island washington island is a really really cool part of door county for the simple fact that you've got to cross death's door to get there years ago a number of indians riding in canoes drowned because of a storm that came up really quick and then it was named their store washington island is an opportunity to live life as life is meant to be lived i mean people talk about being on island time we're 15 miles from sister bay and 15 years behind them and we like it that way i love the history of the area the natural history as well as the human history i think we represent what wisconsin was fundamentally all about pioneers with a little pirate spirit i love that walter cronkite loves that we offer them a great opportunity to add a little pirate to that cheesehead designation washington island is a very wonderful part of wisconsin and a special part of wisconsin but definitely chief head country but people are fanatics here about the packers i would say bart starr was the speaker and uh at the end of his speech he threw the football across the table so he caught from bart stars there's some amazing signatures out there here's bart stars right here nelson's hall never closed during prohibition when prohibition started tom nelson got a pharmaceutical license to dispense bidders bitters back in the day was known as a stomach tonic so he went to court and got permission to leave his establishment open by selling angustora bitters we're the longest legally continuous tavern in the state of wisconsin possibly the whole united states got the town wave thing going on yeah if you're on washington island it is not okay if you don't wave at absolutely everyone people waving all the time to me and i thought it was really cool because i'd heard about it before and you're sure you didn't own money that's a way to to recognize people and to let them know that we love each other it's a uniqueness they're not used to having somebody wave tool that they probably never have met or they could end up meeting them by the end of the day it's really important when you're a community that's isolated particularly in winter that you get along with each other that you find common ground because you're going to need one another someday somehow if you don't wave you're you're kind of a stiff so join the club and wave be friendly words do evolve meanings do change they oftentimes take on a life all their own yet in the end it's the culture itself that chooses to accept or reject the label placed upon it by others having interviewed 200 plus people by this point i had to know what they thought the deeper meaning of being a cheesehead was is there a deep meaning that is a big question i don't have the words to explain a true cheesehead wisconsin's population is many things it's got the word cheese so it's got to be a good thing it's a love of cheese good attitude drink the beer eat the sausage blue collar type stuff kind of means family to me go home to the family after a hard day and sit around the table and have supper and get up and do it again the next day absolute lamb and she said i chose to live in wisconsin an interesting term for for wisconsinite but wisconsinites wear pretty much any hat you wear a cheese that you're belonging to a to a culture if there's one word i could use to describe the cheesehead is loyalty loyalty runs pretty deep generational deep and people take a lot of pride in in their community there's a lot of pride in being a cheesehead and being from wisconsin someone who represents wisconsin and i feel like if you're a cheesehead you gotta represent it well we have a dog named lambo she did you think it's fluid oh dance wisconsin people are very intrepid and industrious and that embodies a cheese head just never give up you're always there always in it so that you don't consider yourself and she said sure i'm stubborn and dancing i've worn this for other things and people always say packers and stuff like that but it's more about just the spirit of the state of wisconsin it represents that we are from wisconsin it's a birthright being home this is home and you want to make your home the best place to be you know we're proud of the things that produces you know all the wonderful dairy the cheese you know the chocolate the beer it's about where home is you know where you put your feet on the ground and you feel comfortable there and the cheese head you know is pretty much fun okay that's a cheesehead he dyed a cheesehead for sure i'm just cloning around not that big of a deal there are some really good qualities about our state what's so great about wisconsin is the people i love the people i mean they're just good solid folks and they generally come bearing cheese i've heard that we have cold weather but warm people the winters can be long it can be unbearable it sure makes this summer sweet that spirit of independence that spirit of being tough those guys that will actually cut a whole nice so they can fish i think the people of wisconsin are as genuine as anywhere in the world and they're as welcoming as anybody in the world if you're a chief set from wisconsin everybody recognizes that it's a great place to learn to be a human being group cheese head group cheese head we're all cheesy yes if you give a hundred percent effort those people will support you what they don't have a tolerance for though is when you don't give 100 effort generally a great place to exist and this is where your heart will always be because this is where you're from we are drunk naked people in the winter i mean it's one thing to be drunk and naked in texas or or even cincinnati but to be drunk and naked in wisconsin that's a statement we do it very easily [Music] there were many things i wasn't able to include for my journeys that beloved g for example after all even an average sized state is quite large especially one that extends to the entirety of cheesehead nation but sometimes that's just the way things go then let's face it we cheeseheads have proven ourselves quite good at not taking things all too seriously as to that deeper meaning of being a cheesehead being a cheesehead isn't just about wisconsin a sports team or a silly hat it's about being proud of where you're from about community and acceptance the cheesehead is the family that loves you no matter what the friends you carry with you on life's journey and the new friends you make along the way about striving to become the best person you can possibly be about knowing every person matters it's a state of mind and a way of life that started in one place but has now traveled around the world to become its own glorious nation i returned to the place of my youth to see if it could possibly be as amazing as i had remembered [Music] turns out it was even better no matter where i go wisconsin will always be my home because that will forever be where my heart is [Music] the kind you see around summertime deep blues and greens [Music] mountains i had the time i'd paint skies

Channel: TRACKS - Travel Documentaries

Views: 14,887

Keywords: TRACKS, tracks travel channel, tracks travel, Documentary movies - topic, full documentary, travel documentary, culture documentary, cheeseheads documentary, wisconsin documentary, cheeseheads green bay packers, cheese heads tv, cheeseheads team, usa documentary, america documentary, usa travel video, us travel destinations, usa travel guide

Id: cWjdMHUv9lE

Length: 102min 27sec (6147 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021