Recently my sainted son-in-law sent me the following piece by comedian Lewis Black:
“I love Wisconsin. I love coming here. I perform here a lot, because I've discovered that you people apparently have some sort of federal grant for drinking. It's - you're insane! You pay less for liquor than anybody I know anywhere in the country. Nobody pays less for liquor than you! What'd you, wh- ho- HOW? I don't know if you're using that farm subsidy money, or if you're just hijacking liquor trucks, but this is insane. (from the audience) "It's volume, Lewis!" Is it volume? It's unbelievable. It's staggering! I come here 'cause basically if I spend four days here drinking, even with the plane ticket it's cheaper than drinkin' in New York! How do you know when it's New Year's? That's the big mystery to me! What's the difference? I've been in bars here, and it's like New Year's every night! Oh, New Year's, that's when w-w-we drink with hats on. Now I've been drunker here than anyplace else I've been in my life. And remember this: you are not, you are not alcoholics. You, and my hat is off, are professionals.”
I’m really surprised that someone could still write about Wisconsin’s drinking culture. I was almost certain that the binging had ended there some 30 to 40 years ago. If it still exists today, that’s amazing in light of the Nanny State’s efforts to ban anything and everything that some dyspeptic drudge thinks is harmful in any way, shape or form.
I told my friend a few Sundays ago about the drinking culture in Wisconsin that I remembered from my younger days. He laughed and told me that his Virginia teen and young adult years were filled with the same wild insobriety. But then he added that things had changed there because of drunk driving laws. On balance, he thought that the DUI laws were beneficial because they had saved lives. When I told him that I didn’t agree with him, he was shocked. “I don’t believe you," he said.
You see, my high school years were filled with trips to Olsen’s Gas Station in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin to look at wrecked cars. Back then, the word would spread quickly that someone had “totaled his car,” and everyone would flock to Olsen’s to review the remains. In some eerily Darwinian manner, the inept drunk drivers had rolled their cars - six times bumper to bumper was always a very good number - and took themselves out of the gene pool. And that only made things more secure for the better adapted drinkers. Our comedian friend is so right about Wisconsin drinkers not being alcoholics: little by little, many there learned to function adequately with a belly full of beer and to display a behavior that would be considered woefully beyond the pale in almost any other state.
It was a cultural thing. I'm told that Wisconsin drinkers consumed 10 million cases of brandy per year back then. Understand that: it was one quarter of the total annual production of brandy in the United States. And it was consumed in just one state!
I remember going to Connecticut on a field service trip for a machine tool company I worked for, and like any good Cheesehead, I found myself in the Holiday Inn bar late at night. One of my co-workers was a big beer-gut Wisconsin farmer and he had ordered “a shot of brandy.” The bartender didn’t have any shot glasses and, after looking at his display of liquor bottles, he told him that he didn’t have any brandy as well. The farmer pointed to his bottle of Courvoisier. He told him that Courvoisier was brandy. “Just give me a shot of that,” he said.
The bartender didn’t have any suitable glasses and he finally settled for one of those double old-fashion glasses. The farmer told him to “dump a couple of shots” into the glass. He picked up the glass, sniffed it, and poured the contents down his throat. “Do it again,” he said. The bartender stood there, shocked, with his mouth open. He poured again. The farmer tossed that down as quickly as the first glass. The bartender called out to another man sitting at the bar and said, “Hey, Charlie, check this guy out.” He poured another double and told the farmer to show Charlie how he drank. The farmer pounded that one down as well - just like it was an everyday thing. Those folks in Connecticut had never seen anything like it in their lives. People there drank mixed drinks one after another. But nobody ever drank anything straight. Pretty soon different patrons were vying to buy the farmer glasses of brandy just to see him drink them. He had become a circus act. When he had knocked off half a fifth of booze, the farmer stood up and told everybody he was going to “hit the hay,” and sauntered out of the bar as if he hadn’t had a single drop to drink in a fortnight. Yeah. A true professional who had survived Olsen’s wrecked car collection.
I suspect that the Wisconsin drinking culture has now changed. Perhaps it still exists today as it once was in a slightly edited form in remote and isolated areas. But it cannot be the same as it was when I was tending bar for my father in the 1960s. All of the “regulars” then were functional alcoholics, and it never occurred to me that there was anything the least dysfunctional about those people at all. It’s what you did: you stayed mellow pretty much throughout the day.
Now, it’s all changed. The nannies have taken our cigarettes away. The cops are chasing drunk drivers. The lawyers want a piece of McDonald’s keister, or at least the fat that fills it out. Oh, yeah. No asbestos, no leaded paint, no smoky chimneys on those electrical generating plants - the list goes on. Always some shushing librarian-type telling the rest of us to shut up and to sit down, or to eat our vegetables and to jog five hundred miles a day. They really don’t care just what you might happen to think about all that. And that is the real problem: their concept of a healthy lifestyle is being crammed down your craw without so much as a by-your-leave at all. Does any one of those nannies ever ask you if you mind? Do you really think your bacon is safe in the sequestered darkness of your refrigerator? It’s just a matter of time before those health-nut nannies break into your house to nab your sugar-cured, apple-and-hickory smoked bacon. Check out the movie, Demolition Man, if you want to see how nannyism is building our aseptic future one silly law after another.
But sometimes I wonder if all that shushing and hand slapping is really getting to the point. Recently an Ohio State Highway Patrolman picked up another patrolman and the two of them went speeding down the highway with sirens whining and lights flashing. They were responding to a call. A woman ahead of the cops pulled to her right to let them pass and the Highway Patrolman driving the cruiser rear-ended the lady. All three people were killed in a fiery crash. Subsequent investigation revealed that the driver of the cop car had a 0.8 percent alcohol content in his bloodstream - legally drunk here in Ohio - while he was on duty! Yeah. While he was on duty.
So, what’s the point of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) when cops booze it up on the job? The point is not drinking per se. Hundreds, even thousands, drink every day in Wisconsin and drive without hurting a single person. And the point is not driving per se, either, because thousands die each year dead sober, like the lady who pulled over to let the speeding cops pass by. The real point is responsibility in drinking (or driving) that is consistent with human freedom. Right now the MADD-inspired laws are draconian in the extreme because they do not allow that responsible discretion in drinking. Have one drink and the cops will arrest you on a DUI charge. It’s insane.
So I say, here’s to those Wisconsin drinkers. Keep your freedom and have one on me. And while you’re at it, pass me those donuts, will ya?
