Mike Bino, editor of our Wisconsin magazine is here, the Christmas issue.
I love the Christmas issue.
Now, I got to ask you, Mike, when do you put this together in the summer?
I mean, you don't put it together in the Christmas time.
That's true.
We, Inc.
on paper publishing, doing this the old fashioned way.
We're usually working on the Christmas issue early, early fall.
like that, gathering up the Holly Jolly photos and the snow and all of that.
And we get out ahead.
And you know, there's some here, there's a little, we're kind of Congress here.
This is old fashioned ink on paper publishing and stuff that people can hold in their hands and read and enjoy.
And the AM radio, you guys, I hear Paul Harvey on there.
There's some,
Nostalgia stuff from my past.
I'm not going to say you're all old fashioned, but I'm going to say you're a lot like us and it's good to be on WR Jan.
Yeah,
and now with our new stations in Milwaukee, when we get it all set up perfectly, you'll be able to hear us from Sheboygan all.
all the way down to Gurney and Illinois.
So you'll hear a big swath of land for WRJN.
Right now we're right here.
Right now we're 107.3 FM in Milwaukee.
When we get on 1290 and get that all set up for you, you'll be able to hear us everywhere on Earth.
That will be it.
When
are you coming to Manitowish waters?
Any second now, civic media by stations by the by the hour.
So you never know when.
Let's talk about some of the articles in here.
My wife and I read this one last night.
And it was about aluminum Christmas trees.
I never knew there were collectors of these aluminum Christmas trees.
I never knew they, I thought they still make them.
I never thought it was a, you know, a trading commodity, but apparently I'm wrong because... Well, yeah.
Everglean Christmas trees, Manitowoc, and maybe you have a station coming there pretty soon.
Manitowoc, Wisconsin has a long history of aluminum manufacturing.
Miro craft boats, Miro cookware.
They had a couple of different, two or three different big aluminum manufacturers in that area making all kinds of products.
And in the 1960s, I think it began in 59.
They seized on the idea of aluminum Christmas trees.
They're sparkling, they're merry, they're bright.
Aluminum specialty company, that became the world's largest manufacturer of quality aluminum trees.
I'm reading here off the box.
And they made millions of these things out of factories in Manitowoc and Chilton.
And it was indeed a fad.
It lasted
ferociously through the 1960s.
John, you may have memories of this, but I was five years old in the early 60s, and I went to my grandparents' house, and there's this big conical piece of tin foil, so to speak, in the corner.
They were kind of fluffy and furry, like needles, and it was just silver.
Now, in order to light it up, you didn't want to be stringing electrical lights onto that big piece of metal in the corner.
So they had a little lamp on the floor, plugged in, and there was a rotating disc in front of that lamp.
And here comes red.
Now the tree's all red.
It casts a glow on it.
Now it's green.
Now it's yellow.
And I sat mesmerized by that rotating disc and the changing colors.
at age five or six, probably pinned me to the chair for an hour.
There's gifts, there's food, there's stuff.
No, I'm just staring at this tree.
And I have to think that a lot of adults through the years got a lot of peace and quiet from kids like me staring at the tree.
They had them in pink and several different colors.
But I'll step back in a moment here, but the story, the real part of this story that's kind of fun is
a retired art teacher in Manitowoc, Barb Bundy Yoast, appointed herself as the president of Manitowoc Aluminum Kitchmas president, okay, M-A-K-I.
She just found some of these trees online.
Her grandparents had one and she was devastated to find out the family threw the aluminum Christmas tree away when they were
cleaning out the home.
And she went on the hunt to get one.
And she's finding these things on eBay for 800 bucks a piece.
And it was a little out of her budget as a retired art teacher.
So she started saving $100 a month.
I read
that.
She could buy one and then she had to hide it from her husband for two years down in the basement.
Eventually he got into the spirit and now they
for her gigantic collection of aluminum Christmas trees.
But she talks about an eBay.
She waited till the final two minutes before the auction was up and she was the only bidder and she got the tree for $800.
And
she said it says you won and her daughter is looking over her shoulder saying, how did you win?
You're going to pay 800 bucks for that.
Hey, you know, it's only worth what you say it's worth.
That's it.
it's worth to you.
That's what it's worth.
It would be worth $800 to me, but through a collector and somebody who loves it and brings back memories, it would.
Now I think she said she's got them in in different stores all along the route where she lives.
Now that well this is right and your listeners now pay attention to this because you can see these ever gleamed trees annually in Manitowoc.
The downtown merchants of businesses.
along 8th Street in Manitowoc, along 8th Street.
They've got these things in all different colors in their display windows, up and down, up and down the downtown area.
Manitowoc Public Library as well has a display.
But this one I'm talking about along 8th Street, you can see that it's up right now.
You can see that through January 5th.
So if somebody from, well, you've got radio stations all over the east side of Wisconsin and Manitowoc's right there.
So take a drive up to Manitowoc and get in the spirit and look at the evergreen trees.
They made millions, literally millions of them.
And so a lot of listeners, I think, would have the same kind of memories that you and I do of these trees.
And we're spending this holiday morning with Mike Bino from Our Wisconsin Magazine.
In the last segment, we talked about the aluminum Christmas trees, but here's another Christmas tree.
This woman actually makes her own out of fabric, which I like because it's easy to set up.
You just put it on your, wherever table you have in the living room, you can set it up right there.
So let's talk about this lady, because you said there's a, there's a Racine connection here.
There is, and these,
I do like these fabric Christmas trees, too, because there's no needles to prickle my little thing, lily white fingers.
There is a Racine connection.
Kathy Soly is our Racine County field editor.
Now, we have field editors in most of Wisconsin's 72 counties.
There's few counties open yet.
These are volunteers who keep their eyes and ears open for us for tips, for story ideas.
And if somebody produces a story that covers a page or more in the magazine, there is some freelance payment for them.
Our field editors do qualify for that.
Anybody does.
But they're really in it looking for neat stories.
Kathy Soli's sister.
Carol is a crafter.
Okay, and she's in a she's in over in Eau Claire Kathy lives in Racine Carol is a crafter.
She's very crafty and She's in it.
She's in an apartment complex and she has her sewing table and her all her Oh Name it the supplies that they have to pick up and she came across this pattern
that was long forgotten for fabric Christmas trees.
Okay, you can, they're stuffed with almost like pillows.
They're cushy.
They're all different colors, of course.
The fabric depend, you can change it to fit the season.
And she made one of these 15 inch tall, beautiful little trees and stood it up on the shelf outside her apartment door.
Okay, pretty soon people are knocking.
Raving about this little stuffed fabric Christmas tree that she makes at her sewing table with her two cats.
And could you make me one?
Well, certainly I can make you one.
She goes ahead and makes it.
And you can see where this is heading.
Pretty soon she's making 40, 50, 60, 70 of these things.
And it's just word of mouth.
People love them.
And you can make them.
And as I said, you can make them any color.
She's completing these Christmas trees.
And I think for her fabric and things, she has to charge a very small amount.
But it doesn't begin to really cover that, or even the time she says, I do it for the joy that it brings to people.
And her trees, like I said, 16 counting.
The requests aren't drying up anytime soon, but it just kind of shows how one person, you know, can get into the spirit and people join in.
You need, you know, somebody jump into the pool first and then pretty soon everybody's happy and jolly.
And I think we have a couple of other stories like that in this holiday issue as well.
It's neat.
There are people who are leaders like that and make the people around them happy.
You know, we are going to talk about a few in the next half hour, including one which almost a bit of tear jerker because my parents are long gone.
And we're going to talk about a woman who opened up a box and found stuff her mom made for her.
We're going to talk about that one because I get very mushy when I hear those kind of things.
But I'm going to talk about your road people here.
We go on the road checking out things.
And one of them, and I always mispronounce this place, the Aztlan.
I hope I'm saying it right.
Aztlan State
Park?
Yeah, I've heard it said.
I've heard it said that way.
I think you're closer.
But there's some interesting archaeology going on there.
You're talking about Julie Gilkey, who's our managing editor.
She lives in Appleton with her husband, Gary.
And they're empty nesters now.
And so we said, hey, you got a little time.
The kids are off to school, off to other parts of their lives.
why don't you go and explore some counties of this state that uh... you have places you haven't been you to monitor take a couple of days and go and find the interesting back roads kind of things hidden gem some things the counties are famous for like the park you just talked about uh... but also find some uh... little hidden gems county by county uh... we've got
Julie and Gary Gilkey going out and finding what's cool about Wisconsin.
So Jefferson County is who we are featuring this time.
They did it during a cold time of year because we're in our winter issue here.
And so they went to Jefferson County and they went to Palmyra, rushing waters, fisheries, so a trout pond.
Gary got in there and it took him about five minutes to catch a bucket full of brook trout.
I think that's better odds than when you get, when you're just catching wild fish.
And they did that.
Then they went and they went ice, no, first before they went ice skating, they went on a quilted barn tour.
There are attractive barn quilt patterns on
buildings all through Jefferson County.
Now Green County as well has these, Sean O'County has these, but this in Jefferson is a driving tour where there's at least 100 quilt blocks colorfully attached to these different barns and they all have a story behind them.
These are family farms and some of these quilt blocks
harken back to some of the histories of the families, and that's available to see and learn about.
It's just a nice little spot on the landscape you can see, especially during wintertime.
And Julie's the daughter of a quilter, so Julie Gilke, so she's happy to go see that.
They went to Harmersons Pond for some ice skating, heading off toward Fort Atkinson.
And they went to the warming shelter in the wall-to-wall windows and got some refreshments.
And that was fun, Port Adkinson.
Jones sausage, breakfast sausage, love it.
They went there.
That's dates to 1832.
They went and saw some history and had some great stuff to eat.
And of course, as tell in State Park.
There are pyramids on the bottom of the lake bed.
We're talking to Mike Beano, the editor of Our Wisconsin Magazine.
We're talking about the latest issue, the December, January issue.
So many great articles in there.
Before we move on to the next one, I just wanted to mention this.
We talked about Aztalyn State Park, which is, and you say with Jefferson County, is that where it is?
I'm lost.
I don't do well in directions.
Is that where it is?
Lake Mills, yep.
Okay.
We went there during COVID because we were looking for outdoor places to go to where we didn't bump into anybody.
So it's giant mounds, Native American mounds.
This is the whole backstory on the whole place, but you climb them.
They have steps put in there so you don't think it's not like a hike up a mountain, which it kind of is.
And the story behind it, and it's a vast place, but the history behind it, where you're walking, it's a cemetery basically, their body's buried there.
But the back,
yeah.
a lot of archaeology from 1050 AD to 1200 AD.
You're talking a long time ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's a good place to visit.
Lake Mills.
It's a good way to spend a nice day.
I don't know if you want to spend it when the snow, but when the springtime comes, it's a nice place to go.
Let's talk about this.
The article about the woman who opened up a box of things her mom made for her years and years and years ago brought back a lot of memories.
And I can relate to that.
Let's talk about that article.
Well,
You know, the title we chose for this little Christmas story is sent from above, S-C-E-N-T.
The sense of smell is tied, I think, tied more directly into our brains than sight, hearing, anything.
When my grandfather
died in 1970, but to this day, if I ever smell any old spice cologne, it takes me right back to my grandfather.
Kapow, it's like he's there.
This is a little bit the same.
Denise Falkowski of Tomahawk sent a memory story about going back to her teenage years in the 1980s.
Her grandmother, Lil,
She asked this teenager, what can I get you for Christmas?
I don't have any ideas and she didn't know what to say.
She had just made me something.
So grandma was a kind of crafty and she went ahead and made her knitted or something and in second year she went ahead and
Oh, she made her some tea towels.
That's what she made her with embroidered bluebirds on them.
The next year, she made an afghan, very big afghan, colorful, many squares, all different colors, and put meticulously together out of wool, a woolen afghan.
And so she had these two big, these beautiful pieces made by her grandmother and her grandmother said, I'm sorry to tell you this, but
My hands just can't take this anymore.
All that work.
They're getting, it's hurting.
So I won't be able to make you any more gifts.
I'll have to go buy you something.
Well, okay.
So she put these away in her hope chest and the years went on from the 80s on and 2006, grandma passed away.
So she, through the years, carried some of this stuff and kept it in an ottoman in plastic bags.
They were all wrapped up and one day now she's far into adulthood and she's in her own home and wintertime and the furnace went out.
Okay.
Waiting for some repairs, but it's getting chilly in the house.
And so I get another blanket and she opens up this ottoman.
She sees, she knows there's this
big afghan in there and it's wrapped up.
She hasn't seen it in 30 years.
And she pulls it out.
Wow, this thing's heavy.
Okay, just a ticket.
Throw that right over the top of the bedspread and now I'm gonna be good and toasty.
And she throws that over and snuggles in.
And instantly she's relaxing, she's warmer, and she smells a light fragrance.
And it's as if her grandmother is in the dark alongside her.
She's snuggled up in this warmth.
It's warming her and she can smell her grandmother all around her.
She felt good.
What's going on?
And it dawned on her that grandma always had this sweet powder scent.
It was something called Chantilly dusting powder.
It came with a big
pink puff.
And when the kids didn't know what to get grandma for Christmas, they would get her her favorite powder with this pretty pink plastic container.
And she grandma's head was well stocked with that.
And she put it on.
She smelled like that.
So it instantly took her back to her grandmother.
So she went to see her mother.
Pat, she says, I have something to show you.
And she opens up this plastic, and the mother had no idea what this thing was.
It was blanket.
Opens it up.
She says, smell it.
And she kind of looks at her.
Huh?
What's it?
Oh, OK.
She takes a little whiff.
Instantly tears running down her face.
That's my mother.
That's my mother.
How can this be?
It was a neat and interesting story, and I think, you know, to this day, both of them remember this.
They both remembered at Christmas, and she shared one more little story, the writer.
She said, when she was at her college graduation, she was making, it was a sunny day, she was making ready to go and graduate and head off into her life.
And there was a bluebird desperately pecking at the screen trying to get in the house.
Right there were grandma's bluebird tells she made for her.
So these are the kind of personal stories that our readers send in and share with us.
And some editors somewhere couldn't make that up and send a reporter to write a quick 500 words on that.
Our readers themselves write a lot of this magazine.
That's why I like this job, because every day is a little bit like Christmas.
You don't know what you're going to open up in the mail, and how touching some of those stories can be.
Before we get to our next story, let's talk about the, you take a break, but I'm going to talk about the Gateway Fold.
You have this issue.
What a beautiful picture.
Yeah, Gate Fold and the issue.
We have a color photo essay in the center of every magazine.
It's about 10 pages.
by pro-photographers that are all over the state of Wisconsin.
And what we're going for here is maximum color.
And so, you know, when you flip this open, one of our photographers is Rob Resnick of Oshkosh.
A very active guy goes all over the state.
And he took a picture of a farmstead in Seanal County near Gresham, just at sunset.
with the Christmas lights all on reflecting off the snow.
And it's a base calma fold out.
It's a three-page gatefold, horizontal big splash of color.
And yeah, this one's merry and bright.
And so that's one of the, thanks for bringing that up, Don.
We go for maximum color on the best paper we can possibly find.
Keep it slick, keep it nice.
And there aren't many magazines like that anymore.
helps us stand out a lot of Christmas in that center section.
This hour we're with Mike Bino from Our Wisconsin Magazine talking about the Christmas issue of Our Wisconsin Magazine.
This story that we're going to talk about now probably probably affected thousands and not hundreds of thousands of soldiers who fought in Vietnam when they had to spend Christmas in Vietnam away from home.
Let's talk about that and what's a great title to this if only in my dreams.
And this is a story that's dreamed about by a fellow named Terry McGowan in Rhinelander.
He's retired up north here.
He's about 80 now.
Terry's an interesting person.
He spent his entire career working as assistant DA in Milwaukee County under E. Michael McCann.
Had a lot of stories about some interesting cases, but he shared this story.
And it's a heartfelt story.
Again, it came in the mail to us here.
We invite the readers themselves to chip in stories for the magazine, Our Wisconsin.
And he remembered this story about a special Christmas, and he went to the Rhinelander Library and typed it out on their computer there, because he apparently doesn't have one.
So it's about Christmas 1970.
and he's in long been vietnam a g i with many others and christmas day in nineteen seventy it was uh... hot humid there was jungle uh... all all the things uh... the the images you can conjure in your mind that we've seen of vietnam through the years and uh... they went to the mess hall for their special holiday meal which was probably uh... powdered milk and
dry potatoes reconstituted and some kind of can can mystery meat the the mess hall guys are trying hard to make it make something special wasn't quite the same and bob hope was there with his minstrel show um putting it on for on christmas day for the guys far away from home and he was bob's out there that he was big into golf and of course he had a celebrity sports guy johnny bench was there with a his wooden golf club a louisville slugger so they did a joke
Let's get around that.
And they had the singing girls and the musicians and dancers.
And Bob got out there and cracked jokes.
And he did his little stick of flirting with the pretty girls.
And then at the end of the show, the entire cast came out and wrapped it up singing, I'll Be Home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.
And these guys, as the music faded away,
are teary-eyed and they had a nice show, but they wound up kind of glum and homesick and nostalgic and slowly sauntered back to their barracks because they aren't home for Christmas.
And finally, one guy by the name of Skip Butler out of Boston breaks the mood there and says, come on, snap out of it.
My mom sent me a canned ham, and I'm willing to share if somebody's got some cold beer.
And Terry McGowan and the guys in his barracks had a little refrigerator and you could get beer for a dime a can over at the PX and some labels you never heard of, but it was cold.
It was better than the chemical water they were drinking.
And, okay, and another guy pipes up and he says, hey, I've got some, these from Texas, Ray, I got some sauce and crackers and I'll put those out.
Another guy named Bob from Virginia had some oysters, a tin of that.
And a guy from Jim from Louisiana had some shrimp with toothpicks, all canned, all very salty or very sweet.
Everything that was supposed to be crisp was in pieces like Terry's mother sent divinity candy for Christmas time.
And they were green and they were pink and they were red and they were all smashed in a thousand pieces.
That's okay, we'll eat it.
And so they start...
Spreading out this buffet this buffet on a bunk on a on a footlocker on and somebody else comes in and volunteered some of this stuff and So they're they're having a little gathering, but then pretty soon more guys they they don't know Just kind of hang out on the periphery word got around that something was happening over in this barracks You know and so people just sort of came over it and they had they
Some of them didn't have anything to bring and put down there.
They didn't have anybody at home sending them anything.
Come on, get in your joints, try some of this stuff.
And it grew.
And it grew.
And one kind soldier took some goodies out to his buddy who was unlucky enough to draw guard duty out on the perimeter.
It brought it out to him.
And they're...
They're in their PX underwear and flip-flops and it's hotter and I'll get out.
And what it was was, you know, some sad, lonely and scared soldiers far away from home kind of spontaneously coming together.
And Terry said that, you know, he's had 80 big
Bountyful Christmas meals in his life, the family all around, warm, happy decorations, way too much dessert, way too much food, cookies, candy, all of that stuff.
And those all blend together in his mind.
But one stands out.
And as he says at the end, he says, our food was unconventionable, unconventional, and nearly inedible.
Yet the meal was so imbued with kindness and generosity.
I've never experienced before or since.
Those are the kind of touching stories that come to us continually here, Don.
And I think the heart in those stories is what makes the magazine go because the people of Wisconsin are sharing from their hearts in our
pages.
during the Vietnam War, World War II, the Korean conflict, they all went in there risking their own lives to entertain the troops.
Bob Hope, one of the big leaders of it, and yeah, kudos to all those people.
How do you get Wisconsin, how do you get our Wisconsin magazine?
Well, if you want to pick up a single issue, we have them for sale here.
I'll give you, and we handle the shipping.
We can send you this very one we're talking about.
The phone number is...
715-543-2311.
One more time.
715-543-2311.
Now
what do
you have a website they can go to in
case they missed that?
We do have a website and this one's a little longer.
It is our Wisconsin MAG MAG.
dot com.
Oh, that's easy.
I
can even I can remember that one.
Well, that's just that's great.
And by the way, if you want a subscription, there's a way to get it to because that's what we've had since issue number one.
We've had every issue of our Wisconsin magazine and I love when it comes in the mail wrapped in plastic.
So you don't get anybody's hell DNA all over it.
Thanks
so much for sticking with us.
It's been, we're into our 14th year.
We launched it off the kitchen table up here in the Northwoods, a press guy, Wisconsin, and people seem to like it.
I don't go fishing much anymore, but that's okay.
You know, a gentleman across the street was in his 90s.
He passed away during COVID, but when he was ill, we gave him all our back issues.
So we can read him when he was at home by himself.
And when he passed away in the obituary, it mentioned that the Rosens gave him these magazines to read.
It was our Wisconsin magazine.
He had him in his house to keep himself company while he was in his 90s and he wasn't very on his feet anymore.
That guy was out mowing lawns and shoveling snow in his 90s, by the way, before he caught COVID.
So this guy was not a guy hanging around the house all the time.
It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Mike.
Mike Pino from Our Wisconsin Magazine.
I love talking about you.
My wife and I read the magazine in bed.
She does the reading, because she reads it very well.
And she reads the stories.
We pick them.
I am so sorry.
I picked all the articles this time.
Usually I let you pick one.
I pick one.
I couldn't do it this time.
That's all right.
I tried.
I've read them before.
I tried, but I couldn't do it.
Thank you, Mike.
I want you to have a nice Christmas.
I want you to have a nice new year.
And we'll pick it up when the February issue comes out.
Merry Christmas, Don.
