Mitten Wars
175 years after Wisconsin loses the U.P., the rivalry resumes
“You forgot how righteously screwed Wisconsin was out of the Toledo War. As part of the deal we in Michigan got the Upper Peninsula … which at the time wasn’t a big deal, until we realized it was just one big hunk of Iron and other valuable things.”
— Wexshane, comment on Cracked.com
My buddy Paul Stoy, who grew up in Hudson, Wisconsin, (where Minnesotans go to buy liquor on Sundays) and with whom I once shared a ratty apartment in Freiburg, Germany, swore that militias in Michigan and Wisconsin nearly came to blows over the rights to the Upper Peninsula back in the 1830s.
He said that in 2000, during a weekend of camping in Seney, Michigan, on Highway 28. Stoy and I (and Bryan Hoefs, from Appleton, Wis.) fished, ate beans from a can and drank whiskey along the Fox River, to emulate a young Ernest Hemingway who had hopped trains in the U.P. after World War I. Hemingway’s autobiographical protagonist, Nick Adams, was wounded inside from what he had seen on the front lines in Italy. In the short story “Big Two-Hearted River” Adams saw grasshoppers that had survived a forest fire: their backs were charred black, but they were still alive.
When I got back to civilization I tried to verify Stoy’s claim of an historic rivalry between Michigan and Wisconsin. Al Gore had invented the Internet a few weeks earlier, so it made the research pretty easy.
In fact, the Badger state did have reason to be peeved at the Wolverine state. In 1835-36, Michigan and Ohio “fought” the Toledo War, a completely bloodless boundary dispute that resulted in Ohio getting the narrow stretch of land where the Mud Hens now play baseball, and Michigan getting three-quarters of what’s now the Upper Peninsula from Congress (it was previously considered “Indian territory”). Michigan’s gain was Wisconsin’s loss, as the western part of the U.P. would yield untold mineral wealth — and the historic Calumet Theater — over the next century and a half.
Wisconsin became a U.S. state in 1848, and contented itself with the cheese curd as its gourmet food favorite, and not the meat and potato-filled pasty, which the Finnish immigrants to the U.P. carried with them into the mines. Wisconsin’s bitterness simmered, for 175 years, like Golum clutching the ring deep in the caves of Middle Earth.
That angst finally boiled over this week when the Travel Wisconsin website posted a knit mitten shaped like the state of Wisconsin on its website as part of a winter tourism promotion campaign. Michiganders who identify themselves in the world beyond with an open-faced right hand, took the news as a humorous, yet serious, challenge.
“People in Michigan, we do identify ourselves so closely with the Mitten State,” Alex Beaton of the Awesome Mitten website told the Washington Post (seriously, the Washington Post?). We’re America’s high five!”
Tom Lyons, who works in public relations in Neenah, Wisconsin, countered, “Wisconsin is the left mitten. Michigan is the right mitten. Even children know that one mitten doesn’t cut it when it comes to Midwestern winters.”
The Post reported that Michiganders have turned their mitten identity into profits. Terri O’Brien and Lisa Burnia sell “Don’t Mess with the Mitten” shirts in southeast Michigan, and “M is for Mitten” is a popular children’s book in the state. The “Wet Mitten Surf Shop” has stores in Traverse City and Grand Haven, and Ludington boasts the “Mitten Bar”.
Was Wisconsin’s mitten theft an intentional case of pouring salt in the wound following the University of Wisconsin’s last-minute victory over Michigan State — due to a bizarre football technicality — in the Big Ten’s inaugural championship game last Saturday?
Dave Lorenz, public relations manager at Travel Michigan joked to the Post: “We’re not going to take this lying down. Wisconsin already took the Rose Bowl from us this year. They’re not going to take the Mitten State status from us.”
On Wednesday the Michigan tourism website Pure Michigan launched a poll asking viewers to decide: “Who is the real mitten state?” As of Friday at noon, 83 percent had voted for Michigan, versus 17 percent for Wisconsin — in numbers that closely resembled Hamid Karzai’s margin of victory in the most recent Afghan elections.
With Lorenz’s fighting words as inspiration, a few friends and I compiled a purely scientific list of how Michigan and Wisconsin match up in the categories that matter the most. Please feel free to add to this list:
Michigan vs. Wisconsin
• Wisconsin cheese curds vs. Michigan’s fruit orchards. Michigan is the second-most agriculturally diverse state in the nation, following the Eden of California. Wisconsin’s cheese curds will make you obese, eventually.
Point, Michigan
• Scott Walker the anti-labor tyrant who single-handedly awoke a nationwide workers movement early this year vs. Rick Snyder the conservative pragmatist (Both are new governors elected in 2010)?
Point, Snyder
• Shuttered Pabst brewery in Milwaukee vs. cobweb-laden auto plant in Detroit?
Tie
• Smooth Hefeweizen at the student union in Madison vs. strong sangria at Dominicks at the law quad in Ann Arbor?
Point, Madison
• The spicy goulash (and cocktails) at the Weary Traveler on Willie Street in Madison vs. the hippy hash at 4 a.m. at the Fleetwood in Ann Arbor?
Point, Wisconsin (Well, depends on the characters at the Fleetwood)
• Bernie the Brewer sliding into the keg after a home run in Miller Park vs. another octopus on the ice at Joe Louis Arena?
Point Wisconsin
• According to the Ojibwe legend, the mother and bear cubs left a forest fire in Wisconsin and swam across the lake toward Michigan, before they became the Sleeping Bear Dunes and Manitou Islands?
Point, destination
• Joe Stalin’s daughter dying alone in a cabin in northern Wisconsin last month vs. the Unabomber, Ted Kaczinski, who locked himself alone in his room at East Quad in Ann Arbor last century?
Tie
• Violent Femmes vs. Ted Nugent?
Point, Nugent
• Winning on a Hail Mary pass in October (Michigan State) vs. winning on a bizarre technicality in a championship game in December (Wisconsin)?
Point, Badgers, lamentably
• Door County and its rocky shoreline vs. Leelanau County and its Caribbean-like beaches? Oh, and Leelanau has wine and great restaurants. Door County has meat packaging plants.
Point, Leelanau
• Madison’s Saturday farmer’s market vs. the dairy store at Michigan State?
Point, Madison
• Green Bay Packers, America’s publicly-owned team vs. the Detroit football team known until recently as the “Lie-downs”?
Point, Packers
• Little Caesar’s Pizza vs. Culvers (frozen custard + butter burgers)?
Point, Wisconsin
• Leinenkugels vs Bells?
Point, microbrew
• Michigan boasts 22 Fortune 500 companies, including GM and Ford. Wisconsin has only nine, including Johnson Controls.
Point, Michigan
• Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross & Madonna (Michigan) vs. Les Paul & Liberace (Wisconsin)?
Point, Motown
• Lucille Ball, James Caan, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones & Gilda Radner (Michigan) vs. Gene Wilder, Spencer Tracey, Chris Farley & Oprah (Wisconsin)
Point, Wisconsin
• Russ Feingold the dethroned Wisconsin Senator who’s now working to overturn “Citizens United” which allows no limit on corporate money in politics vs. Carl Levin, Michigan’s current Senator, whose bill will permanently protect the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore?
Tie
• The Wisconsin trash that washes up on Michigan’s west coast beaches, and which we have to deal with?
Point, Michigan
• The Wisconsin beer that washes up on Michigan’s west coast beaches
whenever there’s a shipwreck (like the WB Phelps in 1882)?
Point, beer
• Harley Davidson (Wisconsin) vs. any other two-wheeler?
Point, Harley
• Wisconsin labor leader Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette (whose bust adorns the second floor of the capitol in Madison) vs. Michael Moore?
Fighting Bob
• Tom Izzo, Michigan State hoops coach, vs. Bo Ryan at U-W?
Izzo
• Sailors race from Chicago to Mackinac (Michigan) not Manitowoc (Wisconsin)
Point, Michigan
• Prince Fielder, current Brewers’ first baseman, vs. his dad Cecil Fielder, former Tigers’ first baseman (and with whom Prince won’t speak)?
Point, Brewers
• Sunset over Lake Michigan (Michigan) vs. Sunrise over Lake Michigan (Wisconsin)?
Who kisses during the sunrise? Point, sunset
• Apostle Islands on Lake Superior vs. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan.
Com’on, we’re the most beautiful place in America! Point, Sleeping Bear.
This GlenArbor.com story was sponsored by Sunset Watersports, your number one source for ski boats, jet skis and pontoon boat rentals in Leelanau County.
