Dennis McCann: Next time you're in Disco, Wis., say hello to the duck for me

Originally published Aug. 18, 2008

Last summer in Bayfield, where I now make my home, I saw a girl walking down the street in a t-shirt that read "I Don't Care About Your Blog." I didn't take it personally, despite having just started writing a Midwest travel blog for the newspaper where I was then employed, but merely wrote it off as the smug insolence of youth, a condition that is sadly universal but, on the bright side, often only temporary.

I can only trust that a year later, as I begin this new blog on WisconsinNative.com, that age has softened her heart and that she will be at least a little curious to see where this new venture takes us as we move ahead.

Hey, I know I am, and I'm the guy that's supposed to be driving this blog. But I've long argued life is less about the destination than the journey so let's get moving and we'll worry about the direction later.

Most first-time meetings begin with introductions so this is as good a time as any to share my Badger bona fides. I am, as it happens, a Wisconsin native of the first order, born to parents who were themselves Wisconsin born, raised in Janesville, schooled in Madison and, except for a brief, misguided stint at an Illinois newspaper (it meant living in Schaumburg, which explains the "brief" part) I have lived and worked in this state my entire life.

And when I say that I mean the whole state. In 1983, when I was hired as farm writer and state rover or the Milwaukee Journal, I began traveling Wisconsin for work as well as pleasure and by the time I retired from the now Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last November it was, as I wrote at the time, "almost 25 years, hundreds of thousands of miles, countless hotel nights, six company cars and two roadkill deer later."

I'm sorry about the deer, but the rest was a gas. On any given day my "office" could be a forest trail or a Rustic Road or, when I could press my expense account to its limits, a room on an island lodge or a Mississippi River boat. I wrote from every county in Wisconsin and most of its cities, and while it is still possible for me to get lost on back roads it's a lot harder than it used to be. I tried log rolling in Hayward, rode with stunt pilots in Fond du Lac and hung on for dear life while a runaway harness horse on the other end of my reins raced around a track in Richland Center.

In 1997 I was privileged to write a book of historical essays about Wisconsin for the state's sesquicentennial, and from that point until I accepted my newspaper's buyout offer in November I was on the road year-round as a twice-a-week travel columnist, all of which is intended to suggest that if I should someday tell you there is a small community in Wisconsin called Disco and I once walked in to the little store there to ask about the famous duck, well, you know that it's so.

Just as you can probably guess that the store clerk thought I was nuts.

But all of that was then and blogs are now. Because we haven't opened the map yet it's hard to say for sure where we're going but expect to meet people and go places and learn new things, even things you didn't think you needed to know. There will be cosmic issues at times, and comic issues, too. I take an expansive view of the state's borders so while Wisconsin is our turf it's likely we will occasionally stray to places like Galena or Duluth or even the Upper Peninsula, which is rightfully part of Wisconsin anyway and where so many Yoopers are also Green Bay Packers fans that the border is only a technicality. Because I live on the shore of Lake Superior much of the year it's certain these musings will have a northern accent. And because blog is just golf spelled backward, or close enough, and because the cursed game has a hold on me like no other expect to find a mention or two of that as well.

We shall see, is my point. And if the girl in the "I Don't Care..." shirt hasn't come around by now, I hope that moths have their way with her wardrobe.