(mellow music)
- [Voiceover] Coming up next on Wisconsin Life .
- The letter says, "Pssssh!"
The confetti says, "Welcome to Clown College."
I went, "What?"
- To catch a 12 pound fish is a fish of a lifetime.
- Without work, no kolaches.
(laughing)
- I do take a little bit of pride in that
to make sure I give the best possible product.
(upbeat music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part by
Alliant Energy
Lowell and Mary Peterson
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Hi, my name is Don Grasse and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- [Voiceover] The sky blue waters surrounding
the Door Peninsula provide some
of the best fishing in Lake Michigan.
Just ask captain Don Grasse.
- The fishing around Door Country is very good.
- [Voiceover] Don grew up on the northern end
of the peninsula and started fishing these waters as a kid.
After retiring from teaching, he bought this boat.
- [Don] Okay, everybody ready?
- [Voiceover] And opened a charter fishing business
out of Gills Rock.
- [Don] We fish around the bluffs.
So we only have to go out about five minutes
and we're already in over 100 feet of water.
And that's a very unusual aspect of this area.
- [Voiceover] As a charter boat captain,
Don's day starts before sunrise.
- Get down to the dock by four o'clock.
Get the boat set up. Get ice in the cooler.
Get to know the people on-board and start fishing.
Alright let's go get them.
- [Voiceover] And there's more to it than just
throwing a line in the water.
- You've got a number of things to check.
You've got the color patterns the lures are in.
You've got what the wind has done to the lake
as far as temperature.
The depths that those fish are at.
I'm just setting the downriggers,
then I'll lower those down
to a certain depth in case fish are in different depths.
These are planer boards.
They're used to get our lines out and away from the boat
so we can run more lines without having them get tangled.
These are Dipsy Divers.
They work as underwater planer boards.
It takes the bait down and away from the boat.
If something is off a little bit in your presentation,
say the speed might be off, the color isn't right
or the location isn't right, you can fish for weeks
without having any luck whatsoever.
You need to understand that fish are a creature
that sometimes are willing to bite on metal objects
or plastic objects and some days they're not.
There's a fish. Fish!
- It's a rainbow!
- [Don] Sweet.
Mainly up here we're catching Chinook salmon
or we call them King salmon.
The small ones are in the three pound range
up to as big as in the 30 pound range.
- [Voiceover] And as any angler knows
your luck can change just like that.
- [Don] I was out here with four clients
and for the first half an hour we did not catch anything.
And it looked like it was going to be a slow morning.
Then one of the rods hit.
Then they all went.
We only had six in the water.
We ended up with 19 fish that day,
and I think the smallest fish was 15 pounds.
So it was quite a morning.
- [Voiceover] It's an unforgettable experience
for the anglers and for Don as he watches them
reel in the catch of the day.
- A lot of these people that come out fishing with me
have never caught a fish in their life or the biggest fish
they've ever caught is an eight-inch Blue Gill.
- [Man] Holy cow, Rachel! - [Don] Alright!
- [Man] That's a big fish! - Woo hoo!
- [Man] Good job Rachel!
- So for them to catch a 12 pound fish
is a fish of a lifetime.
There you go.
- Uh. (laughing)
- [Man] Lift it, Rachel!
- I've been out here with people from
Saudi Arabia, South Africa.
Last week I took three people out
from the country of Belgium.
I also get the enjoyment of seeing people that are
excited over fishing when they catch fish.
It's great work.
I think that the main objective is that they enjoy the trip.
Have a good time whether it's reeling in a lot of fish
or telling stories or just the camaraderie that you get.
My philosophy is that if you can do something
that is your hobby and make some money out of it,
I don't think you are working a day in your life.
And my office is some of the most
beautiful scenery in the area.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Greg. - I'm Karen. - And I'm Emily.
- And we're the DeSantos and this is our Wisconsin Life .
- [Voiceover] On a weekday afternoon the DeSantos
look and sound like any other family in Baraboo.
- We are goofy, but we're not like super goofy
but maybe we are, I don't know. (laughing)
- [Voiceover] Greg works at the library.
Karen runs the local Boys and Girls Club.
And Emily is in high school.
But their everyday conversations
probably aren't the same as yours.
- House and car insurance is due.
So we need to do that.
We also need to find out your schedule for Chicago
if you want to be a guest clown
on the Ringling Brothers Circus.
- [Voiceover] And look a little closer at the bookshelf
and those family photos.
- Emily, our daughter, has had a few friends
that have come over that don't know what we do.
And they've kind of done the look-around a little bit
and they see the pictures on the walls and the posters.
And then they're like,
"Your parents really must like clowns and stuff."
(upbeat music)
- [Voiceover] The DeSantos don't just like clowns.
They are clowns.
- Once they find out, then they go, "Ohhhh.
"Oh, so that explains it."
- We call it, "Just slapping it on... slapping it on."
- It feels good. I like my clown face.
It makes me happy when I feel when it's all done,
and I look at it in my itty bitty mirror.
I'm like "Ah, look at you."
- It's like getting ready for work.
And this is part of what getting ready for work is,
putting my makeup on.
- [Voiceover] Give them a few minutes and they go
from Greg and Karen to professional circus clowns
known as Greg and Karen.
- We're here! - Very exciting.
- All right, were here. - Our clown is us.
I mean it's just our personalities that are exaggerated.
And sometimes they're exaggerated with makeup
and wigs and the costume and things.
- It's not really a character. It's me.
I really don't change so much.
I even forget that I'm wearing the makeup.
- [Voiceover] Greg didn't grow up
wanting to join the circus,
but he enjoyed slapstick comedy.
And in college he saw a flyer for Clown College.
- If they accepted you,
offered you a contract to tour with the show,
you had to give them a year on the circuit
as an apprentice clown.
And I'm thinking, "Well I'm 20 years old.
"I could do anything for a year. That sounds cool."
- [Voiceover] Ten years down the tracks,
Greg was a veteran and spent the end
of the season teaching at Clown College.
- I literally was looking through a magazine.
And there was an ad for Clown College in the magazine.
- [Voiceover] Karen tried out and was expecting
to travel to Florida, where Clown College used to be held.
- The letter says, psssh, confetti says,
"Welcome to Clown College.
"It will be held in Baraboo, Wisconsin."
And I went, "What?"
- [Voiceover] Baraboo brought these two clowns together.
After college Karen received a contract.
And they went out on the road
with the traveling circus, working on gags.
- So basically we beat each other up with lemons,
and squeezers and water.
At one point I shove a lemon in his ear,
and I squeeze it and it comes out the other side.
That was good. That was good, remember?
- I don't remember how we did that.
- It took a lot.
- But that's where we just developed a good
working relationship and then, you know...
- Then he fell in love with me.
- [Voiceover] They went on to perform everywhere.
(crowd erupting)
- When you hear in an arena erupt
over something you did, that's like amazing.
- It's addictive. I mean it really is.
That's when you just want more of those.
Those kind of laughs and those kind of "Gosh, yeah."
Those are great moments.
- Then, it kind of took us around the world.
I mean which was really cool.
- And you know all worlds end up back at Baraboo...
- Baraboo, Wisconsin! (laughing)
- [Voiceover] When Karen was pregnant with Emily,
they decided to find a permanent gig.
- Circus World Museum.
Remember when you went to Clown College?
They have a circus there in the summer.
They sit there for four months.
You do two shows a day. You're done at four o'clock.
It seemed like it would make a lot more sense
for two brand new parents with an eight week old baby
that still want to do what they do, to come to Baraboo.
We are part of this community now.
- I can't tell you how many times people have said,
"I've got a picture of you guys and my dad
"on our refrigerator."
That we're on refrigerators across America.
We really are.
- [Voiceover] Greg and Karen still perform
when they get the chance.
- You know, I still enjoy going to these buildings
and playing them.
- Because the laughs are good. Any time you get,
you know, a couple hundred or a couple thousand
people laughing at you, it's a rush.
- [Voiceover] And Greg is the executive director
of the International Clown Hall of Fame.
- I think clowning really is a pass-me-down
kind of an art form.
It's an apprentice-master type of situation.
You learn by watching. You learn by doing.
There's Emily when she was a very young clown.
- [Voiceover] At first, Emily didn't want
the family business passed down to her.
- It didn't interest me.
I didn't want to be in the spotlight,
and I didn't want to be performing,
because it scared me a lot.
- [Voiceover] But a few years ago she started
asking other clowns for advice.
- I started doing some clowning more
and I was, "Oh, this is awesome."
And I love getting a laugh,
and I love getting like feedback.
I just never wanted to like be what they did,
do what they did.
I wanted to kind of make my own character
my own like clown and my own performance.
When I get my nose on, I don't know,
it just makes everything come together.
- [Voiceover] As Emily the Clown,
she's a different performer from Greg and Karen the Clowns.
Instead of the big gesture,
she prefers one on one encounters
especially with children.
- It's the best feeling in the world,
like connecting with someone.
Even an adult, when you have that special connection
that you know they're going to go home and talk about,
it's just insane and it's awesome.
- But she does it in her own way,
and that's the beautiful thing, and watching her.
We couldn't be more proud,
just because she's doing it in her own way.
She's not, certainly not riding our coattails in anyway.
- [Voiceover] In or out of makeup,
clowning is what they do.
- [Greg] It really is a lifestyle.
- Once it's in you, it's in you.
Because you can't get rid of the clown
because you are the clown.
- We're pretty darn lucky to get to do what we do.
Not everybody gets to do that in life, I guess.
We could say honestly we ran away and joined the circus.
(upbeat music)
- [Voiceover] Still to come on Wisconsin Life ,
meet agriculture instructor Don Hawkins
who's been sowing seeds for half a century.
- It had been 17 years since he taught here
but everybody that I met,
"Do you know? Have you met Don Hawkins yet?"
- [Voiceover] Take a tour of his growing outdoor classroom
later on Wisconsin Life .
(upbeat music)
- Hi. I'm JoAnn Vogel and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- [Voiceover] The Czech and Kolache Festival
in Kewaunee County aims for the tastes buds,
and brings visitors back to their childhoods
with a treat straight from their grandmother's kitchen,
the kolache.
- Oh, they are good. Want a bite?
(laughing)
- [Voiceover] Over the course of two days,
they will sell 12,000 kolaches.
All of them made by a crew of volunteers
the night before, led by the queen of kolache,
JoAnn Vogel.
- It takes more than a village for this project.
It takes a city.
- [Voiceover] The work starts a few days
before the festival, when JoAnn and her crew
gather to make the fillings.
Over the course of a day they'll fill
an industrial refrigerator with buckets of apricot,
cherry, strawberry rhubarb, prune,
poppy seed and raspberry filling.
- I hope we have enough. (laughing)
- [Voiceover] The dedication to quality starts here.
- The strawberries were handpicked.
The rhubarb's handpicked.
- [Voiceover] According to JoAnn, there are no shortcuts
to the perfect kolache.
And her apron has a saying that bears that out.
- This says, "Without work, no kolaches."
(laughing)
- [Voiceover] The real work starts Friday evening.
A kolache is made from a sweet raised dough.
- You do a double batch of kolaches,
which is nine cups of flour, one cup of milk,
one cup of buttered-flavored Crisco, six eggs,
a cup of sugar, three tablespoons of yeast
and a half cup a water.
That goes into your dough.
That will make 100 to 105 kolaches.
One double batch.
- [Voiceover] Every batch is mixed by hand.
- We tried to have a dough mixer in the kitchen,
and I tried one batch in there.
And then we dumped it.
And I said, "Shut it down. This is not quality."
- [Voiceover] After the dough lifts the cover off the bowl,
it's time for some more handiwork.
(cutter hits board)
- Every kolache we make, hand cut, hand rolled.
No one does all of that anymore.
You just don't do it.
And so I think that's why we are really very popular.
People drive from Chicago just to buy the kolaches.
- [Voiceover] JoAnn started making kolaches
for Czech Fest in 2007.
That year she made 2,500.
Each year they added another 2,000 to their output,
working 15 hours straight.
Now they make 6,000 a night.
- We work from six o'clock at night
until 11 o'clock the next morning.
And my sister would say, "JoAnn, are you trying to kill us?"
(laughing)
No, I don't want to kill you!
- [Voiceover] Eventually they split into shifts,
with JoAnn supervising the 2:00 am to 11:00 am group.
- It takes about 35 people a night in two crews.
- [Voiceover] The work is hot and non-stop.
- It's got to be up to 80/90 degrees
for the dough to raise properly.
So you're going to suffer a little bit
while you're doing it.
- [Voiceover] As the moon passes overhead,
the tables fill up with boxes of kolaches.
- We've got to clear off the tables
because they're coming out fast.
- [Voiceover] Most of the volunteers met by taking
one of JoAnn's Czech baking classes.
- And they said, "Would you please teach us
"how to bake kolaches?"
Our grandmothers are gone. Our mothers are gone.
And many times they didn't even leave a recipe.
- [Voiceover] JoAnn herself learned the recipe as a child.
- My best memories are baking with my grandma,
and she'd give me little lids from jars to make kolaches,
and baking with her on her old wood stove.
- [Voiceover] Like many people in this part of the state,
JoAnn is 100% Czechoslovakian.
- Full-blooded.
Well, we came from Bohemia and Moravia, that area.
- [Voiceover] She has returned to her ancestral country
many times and is convinced her recipe is the best.
- Our dough is a lot better.
People say it just melts in your mouth.
- [Voiceover] A full night's rest isn't part of the recipe.
- About three hours a night.
I'm lucky. (laughing)
- [Voiceover] As the sun rises out of Lake Michigan,
the crew is still baking.
- Yeah, we have to pace ourselves.
- [Voiceover] For JoAnn it's a labor of love.
- I love what I do.
I love the women I work with.
- [Voiceover] More volunteers arrive to load the kolaches
and take them to the festival grounds,
where customers line up out the door,
waiting to buy a little taste of their past.
- They're remembering their grandma
baking on Saturday morning.
They're remembering their mother's baking.
- Thank you for being so patient, waiting.
- Well thank you for kolaches.
(laughing)
- Have a good day!
- Thank you!
(upbeat music)
- I'm Don Hawkins.
This is my Wisconsin Life .
(mellow music) (birds chirping)
- [Voiceover] Outside Mineral Point Elementary,
there's a classroom that's open year-round.
It's a savanna.
Land with prairie grass and scattered trees.
- Now here's a keeper.
- [Voiceover] Among the trees is a teacher.
Retired agriculture instructor Don Hawkins.
- Students need outside.
And this is a good place to be outside.
- [Voiceover] From 1951 to 1983, Mr. Hawkins taught
at Mineral Point High School.
When he retired, his work continued.
- I was determined I wasn't going to be
a grouchy old person.
- [Voiceover] Instead, Mr. Hawkins threw himself
into community work.
He was interested in creating two native oak savannas.
One by the town's high school.
And this one by the elementary.
- [Don] When we were thinking about
converting that piece of woods, they called it,
everything growing very dense.
Dense to the point of the desirable oaks
were losing their lower branches
because they were in the shade of undergrowth.
- [Voiceover] Along with students and community members,
Mr. Hawkins has spent more than a decade
removing invasive plants and replacing them
with native grasses and saplings.
At one point the community even named this land,
calling it the Don Hawkins Community Oak Savanna.
- When I started teaching here 15 years ago,
he'd actually been retired for 17 years.
And in Wisconsin, in a lot of the communities,
the AG teacher is very well-known and very well respected.
Even it had been 17 years since he taught here,
but everybody that I met,
"Do you know...? Have you met Don Hawkins yet?"
- You know what pollinators are?
- [Voiceover] By now... - Bees! Right!
- [Voiceover] He has.
Several times a year, teacher Mike Robinson's
high schoolers team up with younger children
to add plants to the savanna.
Mr. Hawkins is usually on hand.
- Today, we've talked about this cycle of harvesting seed,
thrashing seed, planting seed.
- [Voiceover] The goal for these seeds
is to grow through the winter.
And be transplanted into the savanna come spring.
- When this all gets grown,
remember that's what it's going to look like.
- [Kids] Pretty!
- I think the goal is to make sure we've got
the correct variety and species in there
to attract the things in wildlife.
And then to show what can be out there
as far as variation on a prairie or oak savanna.
- The plants you put in today, we refer to as pollinators.
They attract things to come to their blossom,
get the nectar, and then go to another plant.
And that's the way we get viable seeds produced.
- [Voiceover] Come spring, those same students
stream into the savanna with the seedlings that survived.
- Grab a little shovel.
- We realize that in nature everything doesn't succeed.
But my dad used tell me, "One to rot, two for the crow,
"and three to grow."
- That way we can just stick it in the ground.
Separate out the dirt a little bit, and just pack it down.
(children talking)
- [Voiceover] It's a chance to ponder the plants,
and where they come from.
- I wonder where the seeds came from for that oak tree.
- Well, they came from this one probably,
because it looks like it has this leaf.
- Very likely it came from that one.
But maybe a squirrel picked one up from the tree over there
and started hoarding, building up a stash.
- [Voiceover] Soon, the third graders
are part of that cycle, too.
Planting the new additions under the eyes
of the high schoolers.
- I hate spiders, can I get it off?
- There we go, that's...
- [Voiceover] Within an hour, the seedlings are planted.
But Mr. Hawkins believes they've planted something else.
A love for the land and the cycle of life.
- I hope by marking this site today,
these young people will come out and see.
I'd like to know survival.
And if we could get across to the young people,
everything we plant doesn't survive.
If we could get 50 percent, they'll be happy.
I know that there's a risk.
They might come out and see nothing.
But that's life.
- One, two, three.
- [Don] That's our mission.
Give them the chance to think about the cycle of life.
(upbeat music)
- Hello, my name is Art Schultz
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- [Voiceover] There is usually a packed crowd
ready for the action on the rink in Madison.
But who's the person that ensures
the slickest slate in the state?
For the past 40 years, that's been Art Shultz,
affectionately known as the Ice Man.
- I started way back in 1974.
I take care of the women's practice and games
and the men's practice area, and the sheet of ice.
- [Voiceover] And when you're responsible
for multiple rinks, each with its own characteristics,
there's not much down time.
- Normally, I come in the morning, check the ice out
after the practices the night before,
make sure it's ready to go.
Do an edger, which takes care of the edge of the rink,
and then drive the Zamboni out
and give it a full cut and flood.
- [Voiceover] There's much to be said about experience,
but having a couple of state-of-the-art machines
definitely has its advantages.
- Zamboni really perfected that part of it
with the hydrostatic transmission and all that.
So it's a pretty smooth operating machine.
(motor starts)
Basically, it's just like a car from up there in front.
I think the two hardest parts are getting on
and getting off the ice.
Usually I try to have a pattern so when your last pass is,
you're heading off the rink.
It takes 12 to 15 minutes,
depending on the size of the rink
and how fast you are basically going.
- [Voiceover] And while an intense match with the Badgers
definitely leaves its mark, it seems like nothing compared
to those caused by the training staff.
- And the coaches present challenges with
how they leave me the ice after practices.
But, I can do it.
- [Voiceover] It's not just for looks.
- We watch for either broken glass,
misplaced glass and gouges in the rink.
I think it's a lot for safety for people.
But I don't want to have a small kid or adult,
I don't care what team they're from,
they come out here, and because I didn't do it right,
they catch a rut and their career is maybe ended
because of a knee or an ankle injury.
So I do take a little bit of pride in that,
to make sure I get the best possible product that I can do.
Game time is missing spots on the ice,
and if it's by the students' section,
they will let you know that you missed a section of the ice.
That is the biggest thing.
It's to try to give them, during a game,
a quality sheet of ice in the shortest amount of time.
- [Voiceover] But even with some worries,
Artie can't complain.
- [Art] Really there's not a lot of things
I don't like about the job.
It's nice.
- [Voiceover] Curious to know more about the people
featured in this week's stories?
Go to WisconsinLife.org to learn more about
Don Grasse, the DeSanto family, Don Hawkins,
JoAnn Vogel and Art Schultz.
We want to know, what's your Wisconsin Life ?
This week, George from Oconto County shares video
of a close encounter with a bear that used
George's oriole feeder to satisfy its sweet tooth.
Go to WisconsinLife.org to find out how you can have
a chance to see your Wisconsin Life moments
featured in an upcoming program.
(mellow music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part by
Alliant Energy
Lowell and Mary Peterson
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.