Love to help, Matt...but I grew up 20 miles southeast of Green Bay in a town of 1900 people.
World of difference between the metropolitan/cosmopolitan Green Bay, WI area and Bugtussle, Wisconsin. I can tell you though that EVERYONE in Northeastern Wisconsin owns at least one cow, didn't get indoor plumbing or an indoor telephone until the mid to late-90's (we climbed the telephone pole just like in Green Acres) and .... ok.... I'll shut up.
Tell you something, I was exposed to large metropolitan areas early on and often even as a farm boy. Frankly, I served a lengthy internship in Washington D.C. and
could have stayed on there as a full-time salaried employee but just could not shake my farm-boy roots - just could not have adjusted to living in a concrete jungle. Nice to visit and LEAVE the East Coast. Since then, I've lived in nearly every corner of the State of Wisconsin (kind of a crappy job right out of college) and just felt the need to get home. Now, I recognize that isn't unusual...most everyone has warm and fuzzies when thinking back to their childhood and hometown and such, but, this was different. Northeastern Wisconsin is one best kept secret that we'd like to keep that way.
That's not to say that we don't have the same problems that other areas have with drugs and gang activity...given the geography, most people think that there is NOTHING between Chicago and Green Bay. In reality the Fox River Valley area is populated by about 400,000 people from Oshkosh north to Green Bay and it is a 2-hour drive (if you do the speed limit) from Green Bay to Milwaukee via US Hwy 41 on the West side of Lake Winnebago, or, via I-43 along the Lake Michigan side. In the metro areas, people commute that every day to work. Takes me 22 minutes to get from my back door to the employee entrance at work from Oshkosh to Fond du Lac -- approximately 27 miles via Hwy 41.
A traffic jam here is being the 4th car in line to turn left against on-coming traffic. The air is clean. Perfect strangers say good morning to each other with a smile at Starbucks.
Truthfully, here in NE Wisconsin, we go about our business and really don't give a rat's behind WHAT the national pundits say or think - we're built that way. Sometimes though, I wish the camera guys would not always zero in the largest and most unattractive women, or, the drunkest buffoon wearing a flippin' cheesehead that they can find in the stands at Lambeau, but so be it ... I'd like to extend my invitation to the national media to visit, leave their money and go home.
We like it here.
