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Two Rivers, Wisconsin juts into Lake Michigan where summer breezes off Lake Michigan can keep it 20 or more degrees cooler than inland or even slightly south. The lake is sometimes placid as shown on this postcard, but at other times waves come in large enough to surf as memorialized in Depo Provera's instrumental "Surf Lake Michigan" from 1985.

Pink skirted swim suits, pink beach balls, orange canvas life jackets and white pontoon boats...in downtown Green Bay across from the H.C. Prange Co. department store? Looks like a surreal montage today. We revisited the site only to find vague remnants of the peer.

Main Street Bridge view of The Fox River, November 16, 2012

The now historic LMC S. S. Badger runs part of the year across Lake Michigan from Manitowoc, Wisconsin to Ludington, Michigan. The ferry carries passengers and their autos and offering Sea Breeze cocktails to calm the stomach when the waves get choppy. Embroiled in an EPA controversy over disposing of its coal ash in the lake, the ferry is investigating switching to natural gas for fuel. Says the website: "The amount of mercury, arsenic and lead in the coal ash is not only below standards that would make it harmful, but also hundreds of times lower than what others are allowed to discharge into Lake Michigan." Nothing is as simple as it used to be.

The artificiality of the water of the municipal swimming pool glimmers like a chlorine sceneted jewel in the Wisconsin summer sun, a state renowned for its abundant fresh water lakes.

The Min-Aqua Bats still exist claiming to be one of the oldest amateur waterski show teams in the US having chartered in 1952, the same year Tommy Bartlett got his show rolling. The war was over and dare devil stunts were in the air in Wisconsin. Growing up in 1960s Wisconsin around abundant fresh water lakes and with Tommy Bartlett's Water  Ski & Jumping Boat Thrill Show going on in nearby Wisconsin Dells, water skiing seemed a cool teenaged thing to do in the summer. After decades of Thrill Show success he owned a chunk of Wisconsin Dells and would be spotted sorting around in a shiny red Porsche. We both remember our cousins water skiing on the lakes where they lived. It looked sufficiently dangerous to us to be pulled behind a motor boat going full-throttle. Our older cousins never offered to teach us and the stray tire inner tube along the shore seemed a saner option for kids in bright orange canvas life jackets. 

Old cars, vintage campers, tattooed rockabillies, and 1950s fashion have converged on the tiny up-north town of Symco for the past four summers. Music, beer, food, concessions, haircuts and the Miss Symco Pinup Contest are all part of the scene. The Symco Shakedown drew 7,500 people in August 2012 with the aim of re-creating the feel of "pre-1964" according to the event web site. In the center of Symco (pronounced simco) is a collection of old buildings such as a tavern, barber shop, bank -- a modest version of Henry Ford's Greenfield Village. The Symco Shakedown is staged in and around these buildings to celebrate vintage Americana mainly through the veneration of vintage automobiles. Bits of modernity seep in despite the organizers best efforts. Going back in time to an America before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be a little scarey if you're not a white guy with a beer.

Elvis Sighting at Charlie's Drive-In, Hortonville, Wisconsin, August 15, 2012

Carl Mann and sister Rachel present an enveloping "shabby chic" dining experience at Charlie's Drive-In having instinctively turning the family restaurant into participation-based art with a dash of performance. A great time to check Charlie's out and get a fishwich deluxe, onion rings and a black cow is during "death week" -- the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. Classic cars, rockabillies, Carl dressed as Elvis, wife Tory as Marilyn Monroe bustle all around as Charlie's unfurls a rich social experience of the sort that corporate America can only describe on their websites but can never attain. We shot our last Kodachrome movie film there in 2010 to document the history of the place and the story of Carl's metamorphosis into Elvis.

"A fun-retro future look" is how the Sonic® website describes the franchise's architecture to investors.  Our friend Amber commuted to the location to work as a manager and we'd see her occasionally as we commuted to our college professor gig. The day we made this photograph in July, the temps were hovering near 100 degrees. "The Ultimate Drink Stop®, SONIC's line-up of Fountain Favorites® drinks..." had ceased operations and hence no carhops to serve the thirsty in the parched parking lot near the Kohl's. By October, the carport had been removed and the building otherwise reconfigured painted. A sign posted at the edge of the parking lot announced that a Dunkin' Donuts® would open soon and it did.

Less than seven miles from Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin in Spring Green hovers a spectaclar manifestation of hording, imaginative architectural design backed with an astute ability to appeal to public curiosity. Wisconsin Dells is not far away nor is Cave of the Mounds. Tourist pamphlets didn't prepare us for the sensory overload that is The House on the Rock. More proof positive what isolation, time, and money can produce in Wisconsin. Built on "Deer Shelter Rock" by Alex Jordan, Jr. in the 1940s, this maze of rooms and objects wasn't originally intended as the sort of tourist attraction it has beomce with inn, spa, golf course and tour packages. Plunk down the $28.50 and try to power through it. After an intense darkly mysterious 3 hours of gawking, strolling, striding, and absorbing, we were expelled back into the bright light of Wisconsin on a summer afternoon.  Inside, the eerie pneumatic 35 piece orchestra of stringed and percussion instruments (from sitars to cellos) was topped by the surreal installation of an immense and swirling carousel with topless winged women peppered throughout. Back then, disposable cameras and rolls of 35 mm film were vended near the carousel to satisfy the overwhelming urge to document the intensity photographically. At the core of the house is a carpeted dank lounge/pit where Jordan is said to have sipped Tom Collins and read books. A stream of nosy tourists pushed him to start charging to look around the place. He applied the income to acquiring and expanding his home and collection over time. The house sprawls to display collections of eccentric and associative objects from dolls to steam locomotives to pipe organs. "Despite the globe-trotting aura of the collection, Jordan hated to travel and never left the country. He died in 1989, at age 75," wrote Roadsideamerica. Alex's world makes a great exotic location to stage your next wedding or a Halloween party...

Another 1964 New York World's Fair pavilion that landed back in Wisconsin looking like a UFO vision. Designed for SC Johnson by Lippincott and Margulies, the Golden Rondelle Theater was reworked by Taliesin Associate Architects to be the "center for Guest Relations" for SC Johnson and opened to the public in July 1967. Seemingly derivative of Frank Lloyd Wright's Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church (below) in nearby Wauwatosa completed in 1961, the Golden Rondelle brought SC Johnson into the mod space age 1960s with its products protecting consumers from dust (Pledge!), stink (Glade!), dull windows (Windex!), stale food (Ziploc!), and clogged drains (Drano!). Meanwhile up north in Neillsville, the similarly galactic Wisconsin Pavilion, by architect John Steinman of Monticello, Wisconsin, once featured a replica of "The World's Largest Cheese" leftover from the Fair but it vanished years ago. The World's Largest Talking Cow, Chatty Belle, remains bringing us back home although her coin operated talking apparatus doesn't always work and her calf Bullet has been vandalized on numerous occasions. A gift shop featuring Wisconsin products from cheese to maple syrup, and a radio station operate out of the space.

Found: "Annunciation Greek Othodox Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin" designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, erected 1961, seating capacity 800 from an Ektachrome Transparency by the L.L. Cook Company, Milwaukee, Wis.

"SO LONG, JOE," TULI SAID AS WE WALKED DOWN THE HILL

The legacy of Joe McCarthy (1908-1957), the Wisconsin farm boy turned WWII hero turned anti-communist US Senator (1947-1957), looms over Appleton, Wisconsin. McCarthy's claim to have lists of communist infiltrators made him a household name in the early 1950s as he appeared repeatedly on television and in Life (magazine) fueling American cold war paranoia. Arguably McCarthy remains among the most famous and notorious Wisconsinites. Wisconsin portrait photographers John Glander and Walter Sheffer listed the senator as an important part of their portfolio.

After reading Ed Sanders awesome Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side (Da Capo Press, 2011) recounting the Exorcism he, Tuli Kupferberg, Allen Ginsberg, and a group of 75 friends performed in February 1968 at McCarthy's grave, we hastened to the cemetery in Appleton. Sanders described the action as "dignified and respectful" occurring as it did just a few months after he and other Vietnam war protesters staged an Exorcism (and levitation) of the Pentagon. Their plan for Appleton was to "lecture the ghost (or summoned apparition) of the Red-baiting senator for his homophobia" and for "the careers wrecked through falsehoods" (p. 295-300) The grave along the Fox River in St. Mary's Parish Cemetery was certainly serene the day we visited (in honor of J. Lindemann's birthday). Perhaps the Exorcism worked? We sat before the stone pondering it for awhile then made several negatives, one of which contains an orb emanating from a yellow silk rose filled marble urn.  That Tail Gunner Joe flamed out by age 48 of complications of alcoholism reminded us of the "Wisconsin: Not so Boring if You're Drunk" t-shirt we bought online recently. 

Senator Joseph Mccarthy film obit newsreel circa 1957 provides a 1:44 account of his illustrious career

On a summer drive home from Sparta along Wisconsin Highway 21, we spotted signs pointing to the Queen of the Holy Rosary Mediatrix of Peace Shrine in Necedah. Unaware of this infamous Wisconsin pilgrimage spot, we pulled over to check it out. A signed asked women wearing shorts to don one of the supplied wrap around skirts made of heavy cotton duck in order to "observe modesty in dress" while visiting.

A series of elaborate glass-encased Christ's passion shrines (see above post card example, note wounds) encircled the former Van Hoof farm land. We learned the Roman Catholic female goddess/icon oft-referred to as the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) appeared to a "farmer's wife" named Mrs. Fred Van Hoof (1909-1984) nine times starting in 1949 often in her farmhouse bedroom. A replica of the farm house stands amongst the shrines. Life (magazine) covered one of Mrs. Van Hoof's apparitions on page 21 of its August 28, 1956 issue after 80,000 descended upon the small Wisconsin town cramming the grounds with cars and pleas for healing and deliverance from nuclear annihilation. In the printed matter we picked up For My God and My Country, Inc., the organization operating the shrine, conflated the BVM, flying saucers, anti-abortion campaigning and American patriotism hence broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. The group has been building an ambitious cathedral, House of Prayer, following the instructions Mrs. Van Hoof  received from the BVM during an apparition. With only the concrete foundation completed, it looked like a flying saucer landing pad. A web site documents slow yet continual work. There was an info center/gift shop where we bought rosaries, scapulas, books, and other ephemera. The last time we passed through, a turbulent thunder storm was rolling in allowing us just enough time to revisit the Sacred Spot Place of Apparition. Lighting streaked through the sky and we made one negative recording a glowing apparition.