[clock ticking]
*[funky pop with sharp guitar]
[chik-chik-cha- chika-cha-chik]
- How ya doin'?
My name's Mike Perry.
Wisconsin born and raised.
Cheesehead from day one.
[pitchfork clangs]
Grew up on the wooden end of a pitchfork.
Educated by farmers,
loggers, and public-school teachers.
Owner of one nursing degree, two broke-down pickup trucks,
and, occasionally, some pigs.
I've written some books,
sung some songs,
and told some stories.
Outside my duties as a father and a husband,
the most meaningful thing I've ever done
is serve beside my neighbors
as a volunteer firefighter
and emergency medical responder.
But through it all, I've been a clodhopper.
The term is part euphemism for "flat-footed roughneck
"who can't even polka
and who could never pull off fancy ,"
[sassy, sinuous crooning] - * Ooh, ooh, oh, ya, ya
* Ah, ah, ah ow
- But it's also true
I grew up hopping from dirt clod to dirt clod
in my father's farm fields;
sometimes in shoes,
sometimes not.
So, a few years back,
when Wisconsin Public Television asked me
to file some reports from my part of Wisconsin...
How ya doin'?
You're not from around here, are ya?
...it just seemed natural to call it
the Clodhopper Report.
[ax thwacks] There you go.
It's called a 'four-banger'.
Now that's [chicks peeping] what I call a Twitter message.
We did a bunch of 'em.
[metal clinks] Some in my backyard,
some in the swamps, some in the trees,
and at least one
from the back of a manure spreader.
We're gonna take a little time now
and look back at a few of those old Clodhopper Reports.
See what you still recognize,
see what I still recognize.
From back when this beard wasn't so white,
and this hair...
Well, you'll see.
[man singing] - * Woot, ooh, ya, ya
* Ah, ah, ah, ow
* [Free-spirited indie folk]
From the get-go, I hoped the Clodhopper Report
would reflect the people and part of the state
that shaped me--
mainly the area north of Highway 64.
But I also wanted to weave in things that any Wisconsinite--
be they from the city, the cornfields, or coasts--
would recognize.
For instance, many of our warm-state friends
think that snow equals cold,
whereas us ear-flappered Cheddarheads know
that the worst cold is cold without snow.
And whenever possible, I wanted to work in a little humor.
Humor is a form of self-deprecation.
And where I come from, if you don't self-deprecate,
somebody's gonna do it for you.
One of the self-imposed forms of self-deprecation
is comparing the old you to the...
even older you.
So, let's go back in time
[wrestling with mailbox]
and get this over with.
[chik-chik-cha- chika-cha-chik]
* [earthy wavering Blues] How ya doin'?
Oh, it's been cold up here north of 64!
It's cold and brown.
Cold and brown is a whole different deal
than cold and white.
Cold and Brown makes a guy kinda wanna grouse.
* [guitar slide twangs]
Grousing's like--
It's like whining, only with coffee and donuts.
You can kinda' hang out and grouse.
The expert grouser never plays the first card.
It's a high-stakes game.
And he who goes first, gets trumped.
- Stormy Kromer hat: So, is it cold by you?
- Packers cap: Ah, yeah, it's 22 degrees below.
- Stormy Kromer hat: Ah, well, it was 24 below up by us.
- Packers cap: [gulps]
- Stormy Kromer hat: 'Course that was on
the milk house thermometer,
and that always reads about 3 degrees high.
- Packer cap: [resentful breath]
- Stormy Kromer hat: Yeah, froze the manure spreader up,
broke the worm gear.
How much you figure
a little chunk of steel like that'd run ya?
- [Packers cap groans audibly] Tangible evidence of tragedy.
- Stormy Kromer hat: $127 bucks.
- Packers cap: Mmm, out-groused!
- Stormy Kromer hat: Well, that's farming.
- Packers cap: Ooh, out-martyred.
- Grousing martyrdom,
a favorite Wisconsin winter pastime
playing now at a café near you.
Man, it's cold!
Is it cold by you?
* [playful Dobro slide twangs]
* [fun guitar-picking blues]
O, sweet innocent youth.
You know, I still have two of those three hats.
The hair?
Well, I don't mean to grouse,
but let's just say there's a reason
I keep all that extra headgear on hand.
Around here,
staying warm
is a way of life.
[chik-chik-cha- chika-cha-chik]
[driving banjo-pickin' folk]
[breathing heavy, brushing snow]
How ya doin'?
It's wintertime and we're splitting wood like mad.
I don't know,
splittin' wood's kind of a multi-disciplinary activity.
It's kind of your tai chi, your yoga,
your Pilates
all rolled into one.
Not for this winter.
A little late for that.
No, this is firewood for next winter.
I know there's been a lot of talk
of climatic creep and global changes.
I ain't no meteorologist,
but I'm betting that the winter of 2010
is going to be cold.
*
There you go.
[exhaling vigorously] It's called a 'four-banger'.
Oh, I like splitting wood.
My wife wants me to have a wood splitting bee
where we get in an automatic splitter
and have a bunch of family and friends over
and she'll make some chili
and she says we can get it all done in one day.
But where's the fun in that?
No, I like to get out here and chop
and feel the bones and muscles do the work.
Get a little bit sweaty out here in the cold.
That's alright.
Kind of a peaceful thing.
Kind of rhythmic.
And I like to take a break
and just kind of gaze off over the territory
like I'm some kind of hardy woodsman on the frontier.
Just another Abe Lincoln,
albeit a little shorter and a little dumber.
And unlikely to change the course of human events.
Of course, I spend most my time
splitting big manly chunks of oak.
By the way, if you've got yourself a problem teenager,
here's what you need.
You need to get yourself a great big gigantic splitting maul,
send 'em out in the backyard with a huge round chunk' a elm.
You won't hear from him for a week.
A lot of reasons people split their own firewood.
I split my own firewood because I'm a man
and with every stroke of the ax
I'm providing for my family.
Our first year on this place, I'd be out here splitting wood
and my wife would come out and she'd say,
"We're not going to have enough firewood."
I just kept splitting.
She'd say, "We're not going to have enough firewood."
I just kept splitting.
Of course, we didn't have enough firewood.
Had to have a man come with a load of firewood.
It's a humiliating thing for a man
to have to stand beside his wife
in the middle of 37 acres of woodlot
and write a check to another man
for wood he didn't split.
* [guitar plays resigned tone]
*[dreamy, optimistic folk rock]
My belief in firewood as a parenting tool
has only deepened
since the day we filmed that piece.
Having now raised one child into adulthood,
I can't tell you the number of times
we started stacking in steam and silence...
and by the time the wood was neatly arranged,
so were our feelings.
I still run this thing.
Split a truckload with it last winter.
Ain't gonna lie to ya though.
There are easier ways...
[log splitter's engine sputters and chugs]
One of the things the Clodhopper Reports--
silly as they are--
have caused me to consider is:
What do we fight to preserve,
and what do we graciously let go?
[chik-chik-cha- chika-cha-chik]
- Fifty-eight! [auctioneer chants quickly in rhythmic monotone]
Fifty-eight dollar, fifty-eight now-now!
Fifty-nine dollars! Sixty, y'abletabid
Sixty-one dollars, sixty two, how about three, raised to four?
How about five dollars, sixty- two, how about three, four?
Sixty-five, somebody on the end, seventy!
- How ya doin'?
I don't want to brag,
but I picked up a couple of bargains last week,
didn't have to go anywhere near the mall.
Got them the old-fashioned way.
Went to an auction.
Try and find yourself one of these at The Sharper Image.
If you're going to go to an auction around these parts
you got to work on your nod.
You know, a lot of folks think ya got a wave,
wave your little paddle,
but you just gotta give him the nod.
My buddy Mills goes to a lot of auctions
and he says about 12-degree tilt is about right,
just go...
That's a bid right there.
Saw these babies on the hay wagon
and this is the first object that I bought.
These are logging tongs.
These are for hauling your, ah, your log outta the woods.
And, boy, you know, I started bidding on it
and I realized once the bidding started
I really didn't know how much one was worth
so I just kept bidding
and I think I got it for about 30 bucks.
Of course, as soon as I won it,
I walked away carrying it proudly,
and this guy comes up me, goes "Whaddya pay for that?"
And I looked him right in the eye and I said, "Twenty dollars"
because when someone asks you
what you paid for something at an auction,
you lie to 'em.
I ain't telling how much I paid
'cause if you tell them how much you paid,
sure enough, he goes,
"Aw, cripes, you can get those for eighteen dollars brand new
down to the Farm & Fleet."
I don't want to know that.
Don't tell me that. That's not helpful.
Then I was--
They had one of them deals where they just kind of--
They hold up a bunch of junk and you bid on 'em
and I've been looking for a corn knife
and I saw a corn knife in this mess of stuff here.
And they held it up.
Two bucks for this whole assortment
and I want to tell you something I scored.
This right here
is an aluminum case for putting notebooks in
and kind of like what we use on the ambulance.
I always wanted one around the farm here
to put my notebooks in 'cause...
'Cause I'm not sure why, but I always wanted to have my own.
And I had my eye on these.
They were on a big pile of stuff on a hay wagon.
And I wandered off somewhere
and when I came back, they had already sold that pile.
And I was looking at the pile
and the guy who bought it,
he looked at me and he saw my long face
and he said, "Did you have your eye on something in there?"
And I said, "Yeah, I was kind of looking at them,
them aluminum folders there."
And he said "Well, what will you give me for it?"
I said, "I'll give you two bucks."
And he said, "All right."
He paid five bucks for the whole pile
and I paid two bucks for these aluminum folders.
But he said,
"You gotta take the computer."
So, I got a computer.
The other thing I wanted was a mattock
and they had one there
and a mattock is a pickaxe.
It's got a flat blade on one end
and several of the old timers said,
"You know how to run that thing, son?"
and my standard joke of the day was,
"Well, I keep looking
and I can't find the starter on it."
And I said that joke about four or five times,
got a nice laugh.
About the sixth time, I met somebody funnier than me
and I said, "Well I can't find the starter on this thing"
and he looked at me and he said, "She's at home."
It was cold and rainy at the auction that day.
Perfect weather
because the farmers couldn't get into the fields,
so they all came to the sale.
They had a great turnout.
But the mood sort of matched the weather.
I've been having a good time talking about auctions here
and I, I like going to the auction,
I like bidding for stuff,
I like giving them the old nod.
But the truth was we were participating
in the end of the line
for a long-time hometown family business.
This was the place where my dad bought his first tractor.
I'll try to keep that in mind when I use that corn knife.
[auctioneer announcing in background]
* [peaceful guitar music]
Time rolls on.
We try to preserve some of it by buying old things
and even using old things.
When the beloved old white pine that sheltered our family's
farmyard for generations came down,
I used these to haul off the chunks.
Made me feel good to know that they were still doing the work
for which they were intended.
You know what would have been really cool, though?
Is if I'd had an old tractor to match.
[chik-chik-cha- chika-cha-chik]
How ya doin'?
* [upbeat gentle country pop]
Up here north of 64, the past has become the future.
The local implement dealer sells more used tractors
than new tractors.
Did I say "used"?
Vintage!
The farmers who bought these tractors new,
they're not buying tractors anymore.
These days, your average tractor buyer
is looking for something that will go nice with the gazebo.
They get a little patch of land up north.
Pretty soon, they get the tractor bug.
I understand.
Tractors are time machines of the heart.
First tractor I ever drove was a John Deere B.
Johnny Popper.
My dad let me take it through the gate.
Man, I pushed that hand clutch forward
and I was the captain of the Queen Mary.
First tractor my dad ever bought new
was a Massey Ferguson 135.
A little smaller than this tractor.
Same beautiful color, same excellent logo.
Man, I spent a lot of hours on that thing.
Cutting hay, plowing,
pulling a drag,
thinking about love.
I even wrote a poem once.
"And that tractor would be a plunging white charger,
"in plowing daydreams
"where you waited to be rescued
at the end of every row."
Yeah, everybody wants to be
the knight on a shining Massey Ferguson,
or an old Ford,
or a Minneapolis Moline.
The old ways are going, going, gone.
They always are.
But on an old tractor, you can go back for another round.
Why didn't I ever write a poem about manure spreaders?
[loud diesel passes]
A show like this is, by definition,
about the past.
Old trucks, old tractors, old times.
But this next episode
is unfolding right up into the present.
Isn't that right?
[buck, bok, bok]
[chik-chik-cha- chika-cha-chik]
[bird chirps, door rolls mechanically]
How ya doin'?
Feed mill called yesterday and said, "Your chicks are in."
Now that's what I call a Twitter message.
* [sunny, relaxed reggae]
How was your trip? [chick peeps]
A lot of folks don't realize it, but these little chicks,
they come in the mail.
You'll get a call from the Post Office,
or in this case, down at the Feed Mill,
and they'll say, "Your chicks are in."
It's one of my favorite things.
It's kinda like Christmas right in the middle of summer.
OK, kids, gonna leave you to it.
Put the safety screen over the top.
That's intended to prevent varmints and 2-year-olds
from getting to the chicks.
Weight it down a little bit.
And then, put out the heat lamp.
Give 'em a little sun to soak under, as it were.
And you come back in about 15 minutes
and they'll be all together
in one little yellow fuzzy cluster
right under that heat lamp.
The stock tank is just the first stop.
That's the crib, that's the nursery.
The next stop is the pullet house.
[rooster crows]
Hello, ladies.
I call it the pullet house, but, actually,
it's just our old chicken coop.
You may remember this building from the day I remodeled it.
* [vigorous electric guitar]
That was a long day.
Alright, ladies, here you go.
These are pullets which means that they're young hens
and they should start laying eggs sometime in the fall,
at which point they can earn their keep.
So, these young ladies
will be in this coop for a few more weeks,
and then, when we think they're ready to go pro,
we'll move 'em to the big house.
* [Rat Pack big band jazz]
How about this baby?
Welcome to the rolling poultry palace!
A chicken coop on wheels.
This is clearly an upgrade on other properties.
[boc-boc-boc-urrrk, bok bagok]
Take special note of the sill-less construction
which allows hassle-free by-product extraction.
Centralized food distribution center.
Detachable porch!
Hand-crafted portable gate unit
with auto-lock.
Fully cleated, detachable ramp.
Fully interiorized pocket door componentry--
simply remove, raise,
and insert to hold.
And how happy are the residents
of the Perry Portable Poultry System?
[kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh] Let's ask them.
What do you think, ladies-- Oh, look at the joy!
You can feel the joy in their wings,
you can hear the joy in their voices.
Are ya happy? [boc-boc-bawk-buck-bok-bagok]
Do ya like where you live?
Are ya happy with that?
Are ya satisfied? How about you, sir?
Are you happy with your Perry Portable Poultry System?
[cluck, cluck, cluck, cock-a-doodle-doo]
[chicks squeak contentedly]
From the stock tank,
to the pullet house,
to the big house,
it's all about one thing.
* [sunny, relaxed reggae]
[rooster crows]
[hens clucking]
[tuk-tuk-kah]
[cock-a-doodle-doo]
Remember when I said
firewood was the perfect parenting tool?
Chickens come a close second.
*[fun, carefree, jaunty music]
[boc-boc-boc-urrrk, bok bagok, buck-bok-ba-gaw]
Chicken chores, sure,
but the birds are also instructive
regarding entrepreneurship, profit-sharing,
government regulation of the free market,
and gumption,
as it pertains to sticking your hand
in the nesting box of the one that pecks.
[clucking]
[chik-chik-cha- chika-cha-chik]
* [upbeat guitar, banjo, mandolin, bass, and drums] *
[birdsong]
How ya doin'?
It's spring here in Wisconsin,
sort of.
If you take a look over there on the horizon,
you can see that the bare bones of the trees
have started to thicken with buds.
You can see that the bud scales on the maple,
which are dark red,
put a sort of smoky maroon haze over everything.
You do hear more birds.
The garlic's coming on.
We got some early onions up.
And here, in this old cold frame
we've got a great head start on the dandelions.
I figure that's what it must be like
to be a dandelion in Tennessee.
[rooster crows]
It's a time of rediscovery,
including things you should have taken care of last fall.
You can feel the countryside just itching to bust loose.
And maybe by the time you see this, it will have.
But for now,
we're cautious.
*[plucking strings watchfully] Yesterday, it was 70 degrees.
Today,
it's not.
That's the trouble with spring around these parts.
You love it, but you just can't trust it.
In short, it is a dysfunctional relationship.
I, for one, am prepared to make a commitment.
Today, I put the snow shovel away.
* [quirky, twitchy, plucky strings] *
* [sweet, gentle country pop]
I not only love being from Wisconsin,
I love being of Wisconsin.
I feel the same about my hometown.
But I'm not as susceptible to romanticized reminiscence
as I used to be.
When I watched this next video
all these years after filming it,
I smiled in recognition,
but I was also braced by all the things
that no longer apply, or perhaps never did apply.
But one thing hasn't changed:
I'm still grateful to be from around here.
[chik-chik-cha- chika-cha-chik]
How ya doin'?
* [sassy mid-tempo blues rock]
We're in the midst of a kind of a 'back to the land' movement
up here north of 64.
And this time, it's not just hippies.
Well, we do get some hippies.
They're on their second go around.
This time, they've got retirement plans.
If you come up here to live or even just to visit,
at some point, somebody is going to look you over
and then they're going to say,
"You're not from around here, are you?"
Did you ever wonder how we know?
Perhaps you used your turn signal on Main Street.
No need.
Could be you keep calling the town hall
to see how long it'll be before the snowplow comes by.
Or maybe somebody asks you how Boober Olson's corn was doing,
and you said you hadn't noticed.
[speaking in incredulous tone] You don't know Suzy Johnson?!?
The one who run off with the pastor?
You can't back up your boat trailer?!? [laughing]
You passed a load of hay on a double yellow?!?
Slow down!
That's why you moved up here.
The number one dead giveaway
that you're not from around here.
Ya keep mooing at the cows.
Please, don't moo at the cows.
I don't know why they moo at the cows.
They don't bark at the dogs.
They don't squeak at the muskrats.
They don't uff-da at the Norwegians.
* [thick rock guitars and breezy banjos] *
* [country music with a Down South rap beat] *
Well, that's a wrap on my Wisconsin.
There are plenty of other Wisconsins,
and I respectfully commend you to them.
As time passes,
I am ever more grateful to share my stories,
but I also feel it is my duty
to help amplify the stories of others.
To honor the past
while holding the door open for the future.
Things change, and for the most part,
that's OK.
I've changed...
I hope!
Although I am always and forever...
a clodhopper.
How ya doin'?
Grousing's like whining
only with coffee and donuts.
Mmm!
I like it out here,
laying in the grass, looking at the sky.
Up here north of 64,
the past has become the future.
This is a farm boy's dream come true here.
How ya doin'?
*
* [happy, bouncy, quirky acoustic guitar] *
- Funding for Michael Perry: How Ya doin'?
was provided by
Ron and Colleen Weyers,
Stanley J. Cottrill Fund,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
*
To purchase a copy of Michael Perry: How Ya doin'?
visit W-P-T dot o-r-g
or call 1-800-422-9707.