Dairies, Unions, and Immigrants: 14 Hours in Janesville, Wisconsin

It’s impossible to get a fair view of a city in 14 hours, and that is my disclaimer. When we decided to stop for the night in Janesville, Wisconsin, I remembered that Paul Ryan hailed from there, but everything else was a blank. Industrial warehouses dotted the roadside and trucks rumbled by.
On a brief walk the next morning through sprawling housing developments, I kept my eyes open and found a few clues to the local culture and history.

I. DWINDLING DAIRYLAND

​First, I came across a plaque on a rock at the edge of a tiny meadow and pond. It recorded the story of a couple who ran a farm there during much of the 1900s. The inscription evoked nostalgia for Wisconsin’s glory days as “America’s Dairyland.”

"In summer months, their dairy herd grazed in the woodlands beyond and every afternoon gathered at this pond to drink. Homes and streets have replaced the farm, but this park remnant preserves a special place, when, in days gone by, the sounds of frogs, cows and birds filled the air.”​

Behind me, a quiet neighborhood of houses spread out. Jarringly close, the Interstate created an inescapable wave of noise.

I thought of the words, “in days gone by, the sounds of frogs, cows and birds filled the air” and could only regret that nature is so often subsumed by industry and progress.

This field was being turned into a housing development in front of my eyes.

But within the neighborhood I found activity: a man raking leaves on the second warm day of spring, young wives jogging, dogs chirping at every passer-by.

II. POLITICAL FISSURES

Outside one house, a sticker demanding the recall of conservative Governor Scott Walker reminded me of the harsh measures the governor had taken several years ago to strip state employees of their unions. I can see now that the high-stakes drama between union members and the governor should have been a bell weather of the ideological warfare now pushing our country to new extremes.

The owners of this house displayed a Union Proud sign on their lawn.

III. IMMIGRANT AMERICA

Before we left, I saw a different side of Janesville, a side that revealed the diversity of America’s heartland. I knew that Puritan New Englanders and German immigrants had settled the area and guessed that their descendants still predominate. Yet when I returned to our hotel, I found three or four women from India, one middle-aged and the others barely out of high school, cleaning the rooms. A grandfatherly man carried towels slowly, moving with a stiff gait. Two young men in tight t-shirts worked their smart phones.
​
They stood together in a group and I was certain they were a family and the hotel owners, their success another example of immigrants who are realizing a new life in America.

This hotel spelled financial freedom for one immigrant family.

Check out a version of this essay on Medium.com