What’s Going On In Our Wisconsin?

And let's say hello to Mike

Bino, editor of our Wisconsin

magazine. Good morning, Mike.

Good morning, Don. It's sunny and

nice up here in the north woods.

Later in the summer, the bugs are down.

It couldn't be a better summer up here.

We avoided the recent rains and I'm

sorry to hear about some of those

problems in the southern part of the

state, but getting cleaned up now.

Anyway, it's nice up north. I'm glad to report.

Man, at which waters?

It is not living up to its name.

Man, it's just waters.

We didn't have it down here in

Racine, but just north of us.

We had some employees here who just

couldn't come in the next day because

their house was flooded ahead of the

water. I mean, that's hard. I had a

once when I lived in brown deer,

just north of Milwaukee.

That's when the interstate was

underwater. We went by the bridge by

the interstate I 43 and the cars

they were just underwater. You see

bubbles of oil and gas coming up.

And that's about it. But yeah,

it's horrible when, you know, nature

says I'm going to get you wet.

But I'm glad it's drying out.

Yeah, I got it. Before we talk

about what's inside our Wisconsin

community, it's an interesting

place to see, you know, the

culture is covered because I love

that expression on the cows face.

There's a little, there's a girl.

She's holding a cow by the reans

and she's got a beautiful smile on her

face. And the animals she is

holding. So look like. I don't

eat you, you did it perfectly.

It's like, yeah, he is giving

that it's time to steer.

And she's a member of the

want to key whirlwinds

4-H club. And she's showing

her steered toddy at the

Lodai agricultural fair.

She has a very fetching

smile, a very pretty young lady

at the fair showing

her steered toddy. And she's got

this fetching smile. But toddy

is, you can see, he's kind of

giving you one eye. It's sort of

a baleful stare toward

photographer Michael Napstein.

And I think that maybe he's

thinking of you Don because he's

looking out, he's looking out

and saying, you don't mess with me

Baba or this girl.

Well, I told you I had heart

surgery 14 years ago when I have a

bovine cow valve inside of me.

And probably took one look at the

me and said, oh no, you ain't

getting my valve. Get back off.

That's a moving story.

But look at that expression on that

steer. Whoa.

So the and we like to in our

Wisconsin magazine. Okay.

In a state as pretty as this.

Okay, it's pretty.

It's not difficult to find

beautiful landscape pictures to

go on the cover of a magazine.

Any corner of Wisconsin,

you'd think about it. There's

something very pretty about it.

The landscape and it says

Wisconsin, which is a place.

It's a place.

It's a place.

It's a place.

This magazine is really about the

people of Wisconsin and what's in

their minds and hearts.

They share here in their love of

the state. So when you have a

Wisconsin person doing Wisconsin

things on the cover of this

magazine, that all sort of comes

together for us here.

Anyway, it's a wonderful cover.

Before we get to the first story,

we were talking and he had a

root beer bottle from root beer

soda and it had a like a

class bonnet that that locked

it tight. And he said,

why don't we put something in

throw it overboard and see what

happens, which is highly illegal

doing it from the cruise ship.

But we did it for some reason.

In there, we put our business

cards, which is pretty dumb

because if we get caught, we

put our business cards.

It was open in the glass bottle.

And we threw it overboard.

And it was, it was, it could,

Cuba was in the distance somewhere.

So we threw it overboard and that

was back in the 90s.

We haven't heard squat.

Now, it doesn't mean someday you

won't hear it. Who knows if it

washed up on the shore of Cuba

wherever one of the islands.

And maybe someday we'll hear

something. Let's talk about how

the tide has turned. That's your

idea.

I'm excited with that story because

this is something similar except

the different outcome.

Well, a message in a bottle.

You know, that indicates hope.

You'll hear back from a friendly

soul somewhere. And as long as

you're not shipwrecked and looking

for help anytime soon, it's a

pretty cool thing to do.

So, yeah, you're talking about a

story that involves a fellow name

Bill Lyndecker of Okonomowak.

The articles in our

Wisconsin come generally

from the readers.

And this gentleman is sharing

a story of something you're

talking about.

He, as a child,

in 1965,

was camping with his parents

on Lake Michigan.

And they're doing the usual

things. They were having

cookouts and they had

cakes cooked over the

campfire.

And so, they emptied a log cabin

syrup bottle. And he's got

this empty bottle.

Young kid in grade

school. So, he writes his name

on this piece of paper,

Bill Lyndecker.

And he tosses it in

to the...he was camping

at Point Beach at Two Rivers.

I should clarify.

And he's from Jamesville.

He's from Lake Michigan.

Sure. The Rose are in

Lake Michigan at Point Beach.

Ok, 1965.

Hoping for a pen pal.

I guess this qualifies as

social media back then.

It wasn't unusual for people to

look for pen pals in the 60s.

There were publications,

print publications that

advertised for kids looking for a

pen pal. It's a different era.

So, he's looking for a pen pal.

He never heard a word.

Never heard a word.

1965 sort of forgot about it.

Now, let's fast forward to

Fall of 2024.

About a year ago.

Bill hits...

makes a trip

to Brown County,

Qwani County, Wisconsin.

A little bit east of Green Bay.

The unincorporated town of

Poland. There's a banquet hall

called Eddie Whips,

a lot of fried chicken.

And a lot of weddings

held there.

And he was at a gathering

at the banquet hall.

And a woman comes up to him,

named Kathy Dutcher.

And she mentions to him,

I was sitting at the table near

you. Did you happen to say

your name is Lion Decker?

And he said, yeah.

Kathy lives in Denmark,

a little east of Green Bay.

He was in the short

of Lake Michigan in 1965.

And the name on it was

Bill Lion Decker,

and she never forgot it.

This guy's jaw drops.

He's 70 years old.

He said, you have to be

kidding. So when he was

a ten-year-old, he throws

this in the lake.

She finds it and

remembers for 60 years.

And they find each other

a little bit east of

Green Bay.

Small world story.

And they got together

and talked about

they've thrown off of

all of the SS badger,

the car ferry, trying to find people

in Wisconsin or Michigan.

Bill did hear back

from a fellow in

Luttington who found that bottle.

And grandfather

gave it to his grandson.

And he was the one

who found it anywhere.

But happy ending to his story

from a ten-year-old,

we got a picture of him

sitting at the picnic table

aged in with a family

with his log cabin bottle.

Then we got a picture of him

70 years old,

with Kathy Decker

who found his bottle

and they found each other.

What's interesting about

him?

So if they find it,

I know.

Yeah, same phone name.

I've been here 26 years.

There was a nine-year absence

but 26 years total.

And if Adele Castro's brother

finds it off the coast of Cuba,

I mean, you know,

give me a call.

Yeah, Raul.

We'll invite you to come visit.

Hey, give me a call.

And they didn't there.

To put on you.

And the bottle was sealed air tight.

And then we were told it's illegal

to throw this stuff overboard into the ocean.

But by that time it was too late.

It's talking about school buses.

I only took a school bus in kindergarten.

That was it because then I had a walk.

But in kindergarten, I did.

And I was telling you off the air,

who was on the bus with me was Jerry Seinfeld.

We rode the same school bus

in kindergarten.

I remember everything about that school bus.

Now we're talking a lot of years

back in the early 60s.

Actually, it was 1959.

And I remember the bus driver Mr. Clancy

was a volunteer fireman.

I remember his face.

This bus we had was yellow bus

but it had black fenders on it.

It's funny what you remember

about your first school bus ride.

And this article talks about school bus drivers

and people remembering their

trips on the school bus.

This one is by Heidi Overson

from Westby in Vernon County.

She grew up in the dripless region

right next to Mississippi River

in Coon Valley.

And she sent in a story

and it's a touching story.

Heidi may have grandchildren now.

She's about that age.

And Heidi recalled

all the school bus drivers

who her parents entrusted her to them

to get her safely through school

to school in the dripless region

in the winter time where there's a lot of hills

and ridges and tough driving.

And she remembered

five men very vividly

who through the years

of her grade school and into high school

in this very rural area

got these kids to school.

And she recalls

one gentleman,

Julian Rundhagen,

a lot of Norwegians out there,

who laughed and laughed

because Heidi's father told her

snow is pretty high here, dear.

You better put some

bread wrappers

and put them on your feet.

So you won't get wet

when you walk through the deep snow

to get to the bus.

And little six-year-old girls

waiting through the snow

and Julian's got the door open,

you know, waiting for her

carrying her lunchbox

and she waits through the snow

and takes her first step on the bus

and he takes one,

looking, burst out laughing

because she put these

bread bags over her boots

and could barely walk

because she's got this plastic

that's supposed to be

over a stocking feet, you know.

So, and she's got

dear stories from

all these five guys,

Paul C. Lynn Lyle Hansen,

Lawrence Wildner,

Eugene Bolden,

about gifts she made

for them at Christmas

and how touched they were.

She invited at least one of them

to her wedding when she

later on when she's,

and how these men touched her

and you're exactly right.

What we remember

from when we're children

on up is just astonishing.

I don't remember what I had

for breakfast yesterday.

But I remember Byron Nelson,

a classic, not the golfer,

but that was his true name.

And he took us to high school

in D. Pier Green Bay,

Abbott Pennings High School

and read enough

about Byron Nelson,

and he's a big

strapping, he's

post office carrier,

mailman, but he was a marine

in the service.

Great big guy with a booming voice,

but he grew up in a family

of seven boys,

and so he got along

with high school boys very well,

repartee, and

we just loved him.

And it's interesting,

my mother's been

being here for four hours

ago, and I'm pushing age

70 now.

I drove four hours down to

Green Bay to see his

family in winter time

and then drove back

that same evening.

But that's how men like that

and women now,

these school bus drivers,

touch us and stay

with us all our lives.

And he was a volunteer

fireman, so that's

somewhat easier to trace.

But he taught me one thing

and I never forgot it.

I don't know if this is all

over, but in the town I

lived in one long

siren, an emergency.

Two short ones was a house

fire and that's how the

volunteer fire department

knew what was going on.

You don't forget this stuff.

It's been a long time

since we've been here.

We've been here before we

break for the news.

We're reaching for the sun

sunflowers.

The reason I want to talk

about this was just yesterday

we used a story on the air.

A man set the Guinness world

record in America for the

tallest sunflower 30 feet

six inches.

We still waiting to get that

record.

My wife is what five foot

four five foot five maybe five

six.

The sunflower was a little taller

than her and I thought that

was huge.

This one is 30 feet tall.

I mean that's huge.

I don't know how that stands

straight up, but it does.

Let's talk about reaching for the

sun. Great sunflower story.

Well, you better get some of

that.

It's called the Auburn Dale

Wisconsin, which is west of

wasa dead center of the state

really.

We can sum this up with a quote

from a teacher there 25 year

teacher Mark Cornoyer.

He says it's hard to be unhappy

in a sunflower field.

And I think you got it.

I think he just nailed it

because it brings

peace to your heart, smile to

you.

So Mark works for the Auburn

Dale schools.

And he is a Wheeler dealer.

They traded some land

with a farm and some wooded

property and they got some

tillable and wooded property.

And he uses this land

as an outdoor classroom.

And part of that is

growing crops.

Okay. Sunflowers with

high oil seeds are

a marketable crop.

And they're beautiful.

So he's working

with the schools

to have these students

go out until the fields

using using farm equipment.

They use a grain drill

to drill in the seeds.

They plant the crops.

They tend the crops.

Some farmers in the area

lend some equipment to help

with this.

They grow the crop.

And then they harvest it.

Okay.

They harvest it,

sacked the seeds,

and sell them.

And all the money goes to charity.

Now, how much?

One field has 100,000 sunflowers.

And another one on a back acreage

has 250,000 sunflowers.

People are welcome to come out,

use them for photo ops.

They have little spaces

with chairs and things

you can sit on and pose for photos.

People have their wedding pictures

taken out there.

Cars are coming through.

At the end of October,

when they do this harvest,

they get 7,000 pounds of seed.

And people come through,

and people come through their cars.

And the kids sacked these seeds.

They sow the sacks.

They label them.

People s tires.

Collect the money.

And they raise $30,000 for toys

for tots in the last few years

since 2020.

Okay.

So for growing seasons,

they re into their fifth now.

So, you know,

something that s really beautiful in August

will benefit kids at Christmas time.

So my guess is,

I m guessing those sunflowers

are standing tall right now

in the middle of the year.

It s hard to be on happy

in a sunflower field.

And in this teacher

and all these students

from middle school and high school

are making a lot of people happy.

But are they 30 feet tall?

That is.

I didn t see any of that tall.

But that sounds like a tall tailed

down. I need that verified.

And the Guinness World Record

people are going to verify it.

That s the story on yesterday.

And I m looking at the side of my house

thinking that s bigger

that s past my roof.

Yep.

Yeah.

Roops aren t much higher than 30 feet

on standard houses.

Well, this is 30 and a half feet actually.

30 feet six inches.

Out of the how it stands up straight

at that height.

But that must be some

of the most beautiful

things in the world.

What do you think?

You can try growing one up to the

peak of your roof.

Yeah.

I didn t see a picture of it.

It was on our prep service.

That s where I saw it.

We re going to take a break.

We re going to come up at just a moment

here.

And then we have more stories.

And the other side.

We re going to visit this

house.

We re going to take a

town.

It was little Fat Gretchen s restaurant

was there.

We saw the ad and we said,

oh, pack up.

We said, So the, let s stop there.

And we saw the ad.

The ad looked good.

We stopped and we had the lunch at the restaurant.

They re pie.

I love the name little Fat Gretchen s.

Good.

So they reú

I spliced up.

They crlined and we found

a marketplace building.

We talked to it for three years and he had

three customers.

And we had canine

you in an ice market,

some of the restaurants and stuff and种 are really

neat in the good magazine.

All right.

All you have to do is call

715-543-2311

and free shipping.

We'll get a we'll get a copy out to you right away.

Now you got to get the full to you.

If you'll get the full year now it's six issues a year

because it comes out every other month.

You got to get the whole thing.

You can't just get one.

It's like a statute.

So if you want to get the six issues,

you got an 800 number, toll free,

call 877-717-8925.

Six issues in a year.

Always 82 pages.

Not a lot of advertising.

No.

A lot of stories, color pictures.

You're right.

It's not a lot but the ads in there are just worth reading

because they're all local ads for the most part.

They are.

We try.

We try to keep it 20% or less.

So there's a lot of reading.

But the ads tell you interesting places to go.

Yes.

Events and destinations.

People use this.

They tag the pages and they use this to plan trips.

Yeah.

That's how we go.

We're talking to the editor of our Wisconsin magazine.

Mike Bino is with us this morning.

He's here every two months because we talked about the latest

issue of our Wisconsin magazine.

You know, Mike, I was trying to figure out how to describe it

to somebody.

This is going to be one of the most positive magazines.

There's no politics in it.

There is no negativity in it.

It's all positive stories.

They kind of make you feel good while you're reading it.

So it's it's just to the feel good magazine because you don't

have anything in there that's negative, political,

anything like that.

So if you want to get away from all the world, get away from the news.

This is a magazine that does it.

And it's really up to date of it talks about Wisconsin.

I was telling you that.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

We try hard to keep it bright, upbeat, positive.

And enjoyable.

Fun.

And as you say, there, there's some, you don't have to go very

far to find negativity in the world.

We want to be that ray of sunshine landing in people's mailboxes

every two months that may sound right calling this a ray of sunshine.

That's coming from a letter from a reader who said, please

keep it coming.

We love this.

Yeah, I told I think I mentioned this once before.

If I didn't, I mentioned it again.

We had a vet, a former war vet living across the street from us.

He was in his 90s.

And he was, you know, he wasn't a bedridden day.

He was out there mowing his lawn of his 90s.

So we've been getting our Wisconsin magazine since issue one.

So we brought our, we saved every back issue.

And we brought him over there to him.

And we said here, you know, COVID, it just began.

And he was, you kind of in the house didn't come out.

So we brought him, he lived alone.

So we brought him all the magazines.

And when he did pass away, the obituary mentioned us for bringing him

those magazines.

And he said he really enjoyed them.

And he sat there in his latest bed and read our Wisconsin magazine.

But because of the magazines, we got mentioned in the obituary

to thank us for for doing that.

And was your magazines?

Good for you, Don.

Good for you.

Good for you.

Good for looking out for people.

This magazine is indeed about neighbors.

The neighbors in Wisconsin are writing it.

It's there's not a lot of sophisticated professionals

in an ivory tower talking down to people.

It's very conversational.

It's a little chummy.

Once in a while, there's a corny joke code

that we've never met upon.

We didn't like.

And that's good.

It's all done to be lighthearted.

And it's in good fun.

That's what some of the comments are.

It's in good fun.

That's what some of the contests are for.

A little, little diversions, a little bit of fun.

And every two months, people are ready for another dose.

You know, when I came back to do the morning show,

I was gone for nine years.

It came back.

And I said, no politics.

We're not going to do anything like that.

This is people going to wake up.

And then I'm going to deal with it now.

We do have the news on the air.

But I'm not going to discuss it.

And that's it.

It's going to be all positive.

Fun stuff.

Yeah, all the music.

All these.

That's what we play.

And they said, OK, and when I came back a couple of

years ago, no politics.

Just.

Yeah, it's classic journalism.

Newspapers in radio.

You've got a little bit of entertainment.

You've got news.

There's several jobs you're doing.

OK, you're imparting information.

You're keeping people safe with alerts.

If there's bad news, you share it and get it.

Get onto it.

Get on to something else.

And you've got some entertainment and fun too.

Here in this product, our Wisconsin, it's only the fun.

We're not journalists here.

We're entertainers.

We're here to find fun stories with a beginning, middle,

and end, and put them in between covers.

You're not going to have a whole lot of polysilabic

unpronounceables with somebody showing off their vocabulary.

Well, we have a good writer.

What was that word you just used?

Polly what?

I can't say it twice because I can't remember very well.

Like I said, I'm not a journalist.

Yeah, polysilabic unpronounceables.

But if you were mowing your lawn and you're going to,

you see your neighbor in his backyard and you're going to stop him

from mowing and you're going to catch his attention,

say something to him, to tell him something.

There better be a payoff.

You're not going to stand there and spew a whole bunch of words

to impress him that lead nowhere.

And too often, that's what some of this printed stuff

and other media is.

It's sort of showing off.

And it's not really a beginning, middle, and end,

and fun story spinning.

Okay.

And you're going to tell him a joke or something,

a little kicker.

And that's what we try to do.

Polysilabic.

I got it.

How much did that word cost you?

You don't have enough money for him to tell you.

By that online that word and you can use it for a year.

Let's talk about the article.

Now you talked about the sunflowers that money went to charity.

There's another kind of story like that.

Meet the geyser cleaners and geysers,

just like what it sounds like, the old geysers.

Let's talk about these guys who take vegetables

from the field and donate them.

I'll talk about these guys,

but I want to talk about apples too,

because we're getting a lot of letters now about that one.

So the geyser cleaners.

Okay.

In Dane County and Columbia County,

you've got some farm fields out there.

And right about now things are ripening coming in,

and all kinds of truck crops,

as we say cabbage, potatoes, bell peppers.

You name it.

It's coming out, and the farm stands are loaded,

and we love it.

So there's a group from Dane County

since about 2007.

These are retired professors of agronomy and soil science

and environmental science at UW-Madison.

That have retired.

And they're living out in the area.

You hit retirement.

Now what are you going to do?

And one of them was looking around,

followed the year, 18 years ago.

And noticed that there were a lot of cabbages sitting in a field.

And then he saw some other, some potatoes.

And so he started talking to farmers saying,

hey, you got some cabbages there.

Are you done, you're done gleaning this field?

Looks like you got a few left.

Yeah, I've probably just turned them in.

Well, wait a minute.

I don't know how many countries might want this if it's good.

So these retired guys went out,

and they started picking up some of this produce

that would have been left in the fields.

Okay.

That first year, Ron Dursties, 83 in Madison,

they collected 14,000 pounds of food.

This is just like three or four couples together,

because these guys are doing their wives into doing it too.

They're doing their wives with pounds of food.

And so other people joined them.

They'd see them out in the fields.

And they're out there gleaning.

So what I mean, they're swinging machetes.

They're cutting their cabbages and they're throwing.

And they type pink ribbons on them,

so they don't lose their tools in the field.

And they get out there,

and they're not as surprised they used to be,

and don't aim to get to food pantries.

The average age is about 75.

A lot of these people are in their 80s.

And they stretch out with a human conveyor belt,

just tossing a cabbage one to the other,

to the other,

so they're not carrying in them long distances.

And throw them in a truck, pile them up,

and take them to the food pantry.

Now he's talking about a farmer who heard about them,

and he had overplanted his watermelon crop.

So he had some of these big melons out there,

and he wanted to donate that food.

So he called them,

and they show up to pick the field.

Okay, three couples.

I mean, old couples.

They go up with their gloves,

and they're going to go to work,

and the farmer says,

okay, is anyone else coming?

He's looking very concerned,

because he's got a big fieldful.

Anyone coming?

And they knew what he meant to say,

but didn't was,

is anyone younger coming?

He didn't say that to him,

so instead he said,

well, we won't,

we probably won't get it all today,

so he took him to a little corner of the field,

and they tore it through it in pretty short order,

so he's, oh!

Okay, well, we got that little plot done.

Let's go here to another plot, bigger.

They cleaned that up.

Well, let's go to this big field.

They cleaned that up.

By the time these old guys are done,

the farmer says, hey,

you want a job?

But they're doing it for exercise.

They're doing it for camaraderie

and getting together,

because there's health benefits

in mixing with people,

and not just hermiting up after you retire.

Mix with people, do something,

and you never grow closer with people

than you do when you're working with them.

Toward a common cause to get a gold done.

And that's what they've discovered.

That's what they're doing,

and they have collected like 400 tons of food

in this time since 2007,

since they've been doing this.

400 tons of food that have gone to a good cause.

And I would guess they're going to be out there pretty soon now,

because we're heading into September.

But we go into the biggest cabbage patches

in Franksville, Wisconsin, not far from us.

And when they start harvesting that stuff,

boy, you can smell it,

driving through Franksville.

You can.

And Bear Creek has a cabbage

and it's famous for crout.

You got Franks crout.

You got plant against crout.

And one of my jobs,

we have my first job story in this magazine,

quite often.

I had to stop crout.

I had to get in this cube,

fiberglass cube,

which was probably 10 feet high,

by 10 by 10 by 10.

In hip boots,

and they salt the crout as just salt

and basic crout as salt and cabbage.

They'd salt the shredded cabbage,

put it in there,

and I had very clean boots,

I will say.

And I had to stop it down

because you got a pack,

so crout.

I had to stop.

Oh, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

I wouldn't.

That's not a job for me.

We're talking to the editor

of our Wisconsin magazine.

Mike Bino is with us this morning.

He's here every two months

because we talk about the latest

issue of our Wisconsin magazine.

I think I shocked Mike by telling him

I've never tasted an apple

in my entire life.

Never had a piece of apple pie.

Nothing new with apples

because our next story is about apples.

And I think I shocked them.

And I couldn't give them an answer

why I didn't like apples.

It's just I'd never tried one.

There, I think there's a law

against never eating a piece of apple pie.

I think this astonishes me,

but you weren't able to tell me

why you won't try an apple,

but I'll just leave it there.

And maybe there's something to do

with the Garden of Eden.

I don't know.

But maybe those apples,

maybe those apples in the Wizard of Oz,

I don't know.

I can't give you an answer why.

Okay.

Well, we're going to talk about

Wolf River apples.

Now, you see some of these small orchards

with very old trees.

You'll see people talking about

heirloom apples.

I don't know exactly what that means.

There are apples grown in Wisconsin

that go back to Roman times.

There are some orchard varieties

that are that old.

Prospect Hill near Racine County,

a walkershot county in Racine County,

is one spot where they have

such an orchard.

But we're talking about apples here

that kind of fit the bill.

They're rare.

Now, Wolf River apples.

Okay, the Wolf River in Wisconsin.

And I guarantee you,

you're not going to find this variety

of apple in the regular supermarket.

You got a hunt to these small orchards

to find them.

But these apples are so big.

An individual apple is often

heavier than a pound.

They look like small pumpkins.

And they're famous as a baking apple.

Not really an eating apple

with crunch and sweetness and tart.

They're a baking apple.

And Tom Davis, who writes for us every issue,

goes through a little bit about Wolf River apples.

And what he, where he and his wife

find them in Wisconsin,

their roots are literally

on the Wolf River in Fremont,

where they were planted in the 1800s.

Walt Disney is said to have been

a huge fan of these when he lived

in Marceline Missouri 1906 to 11.

This is before he hit California.

His mother would take one apple,

one makes a pie.

One apple will fill a whole pie

when it's cut up.

They're that big.

And Walt Disney was thrilled with this

and telling people about them

deeply into his life.

Now, I have one story myself

about this, these Wolf River apples.

First house I purchased

was in Northern Illinois,

right next to the Wisconsin border,

when I was in my 20s.