Red State Blues

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Red State Blues Page 14

by Martha Bayne


  My mother and Jerry, and other family, used it all season, but I only ever came for opening and closing. (I’m not a fan of the mosquitos and jet skis that dominate much of the summer.) After the first year, we honed our work systems, and closing and opening took just a few hours of the three-day weekend we insisted we needed to properly do the job. The rest of the time, Jerry and the guys fished, I sat around reading, or went for bike rides. At night we ate what they caught—or Jerry’s world-class chili or gumbo—and sat around the fire pit with drinks: Manhattans prepared by ancient family recipe for them, beers for me. We’d watch the wildlife, muskrat and deer, owls and bats, occasionally a bald eagle. On clear nights, the Milky Way, and once, the brilliant green Aurora Borealis. We’d critique each other’s fire-building skills and talk about the Cubs or Bears or family stuff.

  Over the years, I came to love Chetek and look forward to the seasonal trips as markers of the year’s progress, seeing familiar faces and places. The people at the bait shop, the bakery, the diner, and the bar were all friendly. It’s not like we became real locals, though Jerry and Marty did subscribe for years to the Chetek Alert, the weekly newspaper, to keep up on events in the off-season. When I was there, I sometimes drove as far as Rice Lake or back to Eau Claire to get the New York Times. I had to have my crossword puzzle fix, and liberal op-eds.

  Which might have made me stand out had I gotten to know any Chetekers better.

  Chetek is in Barron County. In the 2016 election, 169 people there voted for Jill Stein, and 726 for Gary Johnson. Hillary Clinton got 7,881 votes. Trump won big, with 13,595 votes, 60.4 percent of the total ballots cast. In Chetek itself, Stein got 6 votes, Johnson 22, Clinton 375, and Trump 650.

  Jerry and my mother sold the cabin in 2006, as her health was deteriorating, and the lung condition that would eventually take her life could not tolerate the campfire smoke and pollen count. After she passed in 2008, Jerry and Marty and I did our best to get up there at least once a year anyway, staying at the resorts we used to drive past. Our last visit was mid-May in 2016.

  As I pedaled my bike through town and out to Dallas—a small hamlet ten miles away with a fine microbrewery, Valkyrie Brewing Company—I noticed lots of Trump yard signs, a few for Cruz, and zip for Clinton. I pondered the relationship between this rural and Republican place and my urban and liberal point of view.

  I knew about the economic stuff. Whenever I visited, I made it a point to spend money in Chetek, to keep the local economy going. I gassed up for the drive back at the Lakeland Co-op rather than the BP station. I always bought presents at the consignment store, which consistently offered great jewelry, sports paraphernalia, and Wisconsin kitsch. When the local historical society opened a small museum, I happily paid my entry, left a donation, and bought a t-shirt memorializing the wooden “Chetek Boats” that were manufactured in town for a few decades. I’d bring the seedless rye and the M&M cookies from Chetek Bakery back to friends, and I always loaded up on postcards at the one bait shop that sold them.

  These postcards were like a time capsule from the past. Except for some depicting the New Bridge, they could be anywhere in the state, featuring generic Wisconsin scenes or gags—deer in a meadow, astonished fishermen landing a bass bigger than their boat. CHETEK WISCONSIN was embossed on the front image, and I pictured salesmen selling the same cards in other small towns, other names stamped on the same images.

  I sent these postcards back to friends and family all over the world, but mostly in Chicago. Like FIBs, big cities subsidize rural parts of their states with the tax dollars generated by their larger and more dynamic economies. Despite the fact that rural white folks in the Midwest seem to vote against government and taxes, they get more back than they pay. A recent study in Illinois showed that the urban counties around Chicago got 80 cents back from Springfield for every dollar sent there, while some rural counties got more than two dollars back. I suspect the same dynamic takes place in Wisconsin.

  That’s structural, but the personal matters too. While I’d been coming to Chetek for decades, it’d be a lie to say I’d really gotten to know anyone there beyond the shallowest acquaintance. The servers at Bob’s Grill, where we usually came into town for breakfast, changed year by year. I did frequent Mary’s Pub, where I liked to sit and write my postcards in the mid-afternoon. Mary was usually there, and over the years she remembered me, and would comment on what she called my “notes” as she served me a $1.25 Leinenkugel or, more recently, a $2 New Glarus Spotted Cow.

  Jerry had a different experience. He spent much more time there, and got to know lots of people just going about the business of having a cabin with a boat. Every spring, the dock had to be re-set after the ice cleared. Every fall, the boat had to be put in storage for the winter. Buildings and vehicles had to be maintained or repaired, and so the hardware store was a frequent stop. And you have to eat, so he was well known at Chetek Bakery and various grocery stores.

  These relationships start out as economic, part of the cash nexus that lets FIB money flow into Cheesehead bank accounts. But people are people, and friendships inevitably happen. The owner of the resort to our north kept an eye on the cabin when it was empty, and when Jerry’s sister was there alone, as a break during chemo treatments, he watched extra close, and alerted the local paramedics that she was there, just in case she needed emergency assistance. Guys at marinas would put a repair Jerry needed to the front of the line, knowing he might only be in town for the weekend—but also because they’d gotten to know each other over decades. Once, Jerry needed a small part to repair a water ski, and it would take a week or more for it to arrive. The mechanics took the part off their display model, knowing that the grandkids were only visiting for the weekend and it’d be a shame if they couldn’t get some skiing in.

  These were some of the stories told around that fire, but there were no Chetekers sitting there with us. We might have been in Chetek, but we were not of Chetek.

  When it was time to sell the cabin, Jerry never formally put it on the market. As he brought the boat to its winter storage spot, he mentioned to the guy renting him the space that they were probably going to sell soon. Word travelled through the grapevine to the grandson of the carpenter who built the cabin and sold it to Jerry. The young man hadn’t been able to afford it then, but he could now, and so the cabin returned to its family of origin. A very small-town transaction with folks from the big city, a bit of a karmic subsidy.

  Current political debates about red state/blue city identity politics often revolve around the question of bubbles. Are liberal “elites” in big cities somehow unable to see or imagine the concerns of “real” Americans in small rural towns? Or are those red state Americans disconnected from political and economic realities, not to mention urban diversity and progressive ideas that would actually help them?

  Everyone lives in some bubble or another, but the ongoing relationships people develop in resort towns like Chetek can perhaps pierce them a bit.

  Contemplating my experiences in Chetek, I recall how damn hard people worked. Everyone seemed to have multiple jobs. At shift change, the bartenders were all either coming from their other job, or leaving to go to it. Folks I met at Mary’s had day jobs with the county or some of the remaining light industry in Rice Lake or Eau Claire, but also rented cabins to FIBs like me, or stored boats over the winter, or worked as fishing or hunting guides, or repaired cars out of their homes, or did house-cleaning for resorts they didn’t own or stay at. This seems not unlike the growing “gig economy” that post-industrial urban Americans are being trapped in. But that’s a political reality still very much working itself out, some yet-to-be articulated experience blue city and red state people might share.

  Chetek also is connected to the American political divide in two other ways, one historical and kind of comical, the other contemporary and deadly serious.

  At Bob’s Grill, there’s a funny connection to the Cold War and the origins of the space race, back when most Ame
ricans agreed that Russia was not on our side. While the United States was inspired by the Soviet launch of Sputnik to increase spending on science and education, one citizen of Chetek had another response, the “Spudnik.” As their menu recounts: “In October 1957, the Soviet Union stunned the world and set opened [sic] the ‘Space Race’ when they put Sputnik I into orbit. [Owner] Gert Pabich decided to boost America’s spirits in the fall of 1957 by launching the Spudnik. The potato based donut-hole was born and has been a part of Bob’s fare for near 70 years.” The English prof in me loves the perhaps-unconscious poetry of “boosted,” as in rocket boosters and raised spirits both. I cannot speak for all of America, but Spudniks have certainly boosted my spirits more than once, along with Bob’s pancakes and sausage links. This, I sometimes thought, was hilarious: a small-town diner responds to an event of vast geopolitical significance with … a high-calorie food item. Hatred of the Soviets, and love of sweets, united Americans, at least in 1957. Nowadays, maybe not so much.

  More recent visits have involved other manifestations of red/blue political divisions over energy policy and environmentalism. The post-glacial geology of Barron County includes significant deposits of the silica sands required for fracking in oil fields from the Great Plains to Canada. Some local farmers sold their land to multinational corporate mining interests, which moved in to extract this resource. Disused rail lines were put back in service, and new sidings built. What had been a bucolic countryside now hosts vast industrial sites, and the road between Chetek and New Auburn, County SS, handles massive truck traffic. Whether locals in Chetek support fracking in the abstract—Drill, baby, drill!—plenty of people I overheard in the bar were not happy with this transformation in their landscape. So much of the local economy is based on people coming there to hunt or fish, and giant mountains of freshly mined sand, along with trains and trucks, all visible from the highway into town, wouldn’t appeal to nature lovers, FIBs or otherwise.

  Of course, the counter-argument is classic contemporary conservative “philosophy”: the farmers who sold to the silica miners could do any damn thing they wanted with the land they owned. Private property rights matter more than any common good or shared ill. I wouldn’t claim to know anyone’s particular opinion about climate change, but it seems that climate change denialism and love of private property rights correlate closely, and always on the red side of the argument. But, as many have said and written, Republicans can ignore the facts, but the facts won’t ignore them. On May 16, 2017, an EF-3 tornado struck Chetek, killing one, injuring 27, and leaving dozens of families homeless. The tornado’s path was the longest single tornado track in Wisconsin history. Not Harvey or Irma, but perhaps another extreme weather event with some global warming behind it. But when Chetekers talk climate, I just write my postcards.

  In the twenty-five years I’ve travelled from Chicago to Chetek, I’ve seen many changes, one of which speaks to the distance between locals and out-of-towners. The old bypass off I-90 onto US 53 in Eau Claire got so built up with malls, super stores, and stoplights that the state built a bypass around the bypass. So much of America’s infrastructure (literal highways and informational ones) is designed to allow swift passage through the landscape (natural or political) without any direct contact between traveler and local. Whether my Chicago family’s long-term connection to Chetek will ever add up to anything is an open question. But one thing is for sure: as much as I depend on, and love, Chetek for recreation and connection to nature, Chetek depends on the likes of me, and my tax dollars, to survive at all. Like it or not, we are all connected.

  LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

  WHEN ICE COMES TO TOWN: LESSONS IN RESISTANCE FROM ELKHART, INDIANA

  SYDNEY BOLES and ROWAN LYNAM

  In Pembroke, Illinois, it started in Hopkins Park; in Gary, it started right across the street from their small airport; in Crete, it was Balmoral Park. In Elkhart, Indiana, it started at the intersection of county roads 7 and 26. It was a stretch of weeds and snow next to the county’s correctional facility and its huge, methane-leaking landfill, catty-corner from the well-worked farmland of German immigrants.

  This unremarkable piece of nowhere, Indiana would have held over a thousand immigrants in ICE civil detention. They would have been held in a private, maximum-security facility with the capability to hold 60 in solitary confinement, encased in a total visual barrier.

  Would have—because Elkhart, like so many Chicagoland towns before it, said no.

  CoreCivic Comes to Town

  Civil immigration detention in the U.S. is growing. Since President Donald Trump’s directive to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to round up and deport undocumented immigrants regardless of priority status, federal agencies and private prison companies alike have been preparing for a capacity expansion of nearly 10,000.

  The Midwest is a primary target for that expansion.

  The region lacks any private detention facilities, instead splitting its immigration detention capacity between several county jails that have contracts with ICE. The country’s two major for-profit detention players, CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) and The GEO Group, have been struggling to change that since 2012, when CoreCivic set its sights on Crete, Illinois.

  CoreCivic has withdrawn its proposals for immigration detention centers time and time again over the past six years, but it has continued to search for a home in the greater Chicago region. In Gary, Indiana, there was a riotous anti-deportation campaign, and the proposal never came to fruition.

  But this time, in Elkhart, CoreCivic was seeking to open a detention center securely in “Trump Country.” A full two hours’ drive from Chicago, this county voted 68 percent for the President and seemed far away from the coalescing immigrant and labor forces to the west.

  Evidently, it wasn’t far enough.

  An unlikely pair lead the Coalition Against the Elkhart County Immigrant Detention Center, which formed immediately following CoreCivic’s proposal. Richard Aguirre, a fiftysomething professor at the local Mennonite university and longtime progressive activist, is a mustachioed Mr. Rogers type, soft-spoken and thoughtful. Marbella Chavez, 22, came back to her hometown specifically for this fight, having grown into activism at college in Bloomington. The two organized a consciousness-raising event at the Concord Junior High School cafeteria on December 14, 2017, where about 300 people, bundled in coats and scarves, made their way over a parking lot slick with black ice to attend.

  The cafetorium, as it would be affectionately introduced by the superintendent, was packed with rows of green plastic chairs crowded with coats slung over the backs. Residents reached across rows to shake the hands of people they recognized from neighboring counties or church congregations. Nervous energy buzzed in the room. A single person brought a poster-board sign: “Immigrants make America great.”

  Aguirre waited with a soft smile in front of the projector, an image of the Statue of Liberty behind bars casting bright yellow and blue light on his face. The light caught his round glasses so you couldn’t quite see his eyes. It was time to start.

  The City With a Heart

  Elkhart is a city of 60,000 with a bustling main street and picturesque river views. It’s called both the “RV capital of the world” and the “City with a heart.” Bordering the snowy downtown streets, standing almost as a symbol of midwestern determination in the face of economic struggle, is a 25-foot-tall traveling statue of Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The resolute couple stands, pitchfork and suitcase at the ready, staring out over Elkhart as snow once again begins to fall. They will remain with Elkhart as silent, colossal watchers until February 2018, when they will continue on their midwestern journey.

  This is a city on the mend, bouncing back from the 2008 economic crash that left the RV industry in tatters and Elkhart with the highest unemployment rate in the state, at nearly 20 percent. Now unemployment hovers around 2 percent, a number economists deem well above full employment. In other words, most people who wan
t a job can find one.

  County Commissioner Mike Yoder, a centrist Republican torn between his Trump-voting constituency and his own track record of supporting immigration reform, is one of three commissioners who would have voted for or against the detention center. Once the CoreCivic proposal got approval from a zoning board, Yoder and his two fellow commissioners, Suzanne Weirick and Frank Lucchese, would have voted the final yes or no. It was towards these three local politicians that the coalition directed their substantial activism.

  He was the only commissioner who showed up.

  The point of the event, Chavez would say later, was to make opposition to the facility easy to spread from neighbor to neighbor. “You can’t really mobilize people to do something if they’re not informed about it,” she said.

  It was a tactic Chavez learned from Black Lives Matter events at the University of Indiana. After the 2016 death of her uncle at the hands of the Oklahoma City Police, Chavez learned how affirming it could be to stand up in front of a crowd and tell her story.

  Just over five feet tall with bright eyes, Chavez spoke with a practiced calm. The eldest of four children born to Mexican immigrants, she grew up translating for her parents at doctors appointments, school meetings and immigration proceedings. When her family moved from Chicago to Elkhart 12 years ago, neighbors spray-painted racist slurs on the family car within weeks, she said.

 

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