- This week on Wisconsin Life: Meet a drum maker in Ashland County, [beating drums and singing] a family with a tradition that keeps growing, a hobbyist with a tiny need for speed, and a couple with a tale to tell. It's all ahead on Wisconsin Life! 
§ §

- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part by Alliant Energy, Lowell and Mary Peterson, and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

- All aboard! I'm Angela Fitzgerald and welcome to Wisconsin Life. We try to keep in touch with all the people we've met through the years. So this week, we decided to travel back to the Toy Train Barn Museum to see what our friends Buck and Jan Guthrie have been up to since we last visited. Their bright orange barn in Argyle houses the museum and was once used to milk cows. It has now been transformed into a must-see destination for train enthusiasts of all ages. Buck, a retired locomotive engineer, started collecting trains as a child and slowly built these miniature worlds using anything he could find around the house. There's a tilt-a-whirl run on magnets; a hospital helicopter made from piano parts and a sky-top restaurant that uses VCR electronics. Everything here is controlled by these microwave panels. 
[beep]

We'll check out more of Buck's creations but first, we meet another enthusiast bringing their passion to life. We head to Ashland County to meet a community leader who shares his craft that brings the beat.

§ §
 
[geese honking]

[fire crackling]
- Out in the woods and into nature, Dylan Jennings finds life and energy. 
[thud]

- It's a very powerful place.

- It's this sense of place that has grounded Dylan.

- This time of the year we're finishing up sugar bush, our Iskigamizigewin.

- The maple syrup season marks the arrival of spring in Ashland County for the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Anishinaabe.

- It's a very humbling thing to think about when you realize that everything you need to survive and to live healthy and to live a really good life is right in our own backyard.

- As a twenty-something, Dylan is very aware of where his people have been. It's the lessons of the past that carry him forward.

- Our reservation was established in the Treaty of 1854. 
[geese honking]
The majority of our reservation is on the south shore of Gichigami or Lake Superior but we're predominantly located in wetlands all over the place. My spirit itself gravitated towards this place because of the spiritual power that these homelands have for us as Anishinaabeg. My name is Dylan Jennings or Bizhikiins is the name that was given to me.

- Preserving and protecting the indigenous language is also important to his way of life.

- Aaniin nindinawemaaganidog, (Hello all of my relatives)
niijii gakina. (and friends)
Niin sa Bizhikiins indizhinikaaz. (I am known as Bizhikiins.)
Waabizheshi nindoodem. (I am of the marten clan.)
Mashkiiziibi nindoonjibaa. (I am from mashkiiziibi.)
Good evening, everybody, in our beautiful and descriptive Ojibwe language.

- It's a language the tribe is trying to resurrect.

- We try very hard to speak to my first-born daughter as much Ojibwe as we possibly can so that she grows up understanding and comprehending our language. 
§ §

- Passed down through the generations, language, culture, and ancient traditions go hand-in-hand.

- I've been making drums-- or trying to make drums-- since I was a little kid. Every hide is different too. This one is elk hide. You don't want to pull 'em too tight. And then, you don't want to make 'em too loose either. The drum has taken me all over the world traveling and that's one of our teachings. You take care of the drum, the drum will take care of you. That's a very real and true statement.

The drum then dries, kind of molds to that frame.

- Taking care of the drum is both sacred and ceremonial. 
[drum reverberates deeply]
[chanting with drum beat]

- People recognize the drum as being our heartbeat of Mother Earth and the power that it brings to our circles and our ceremonies and our communities. I was very fortunate to be exposed to some of our ceremonies and some of our language at a young age. And I'm also very inquisitive about those things. You know, my grandmother was a really big advocate for our way of life. 

Cultural revitalization is a huge component of all the work that we do nowadays as tribal communities. It's almost as if we are picking up the pieces of what's left. 
§ §

- Calendula is a powerful skin healer.

- Picking up the pieces and forging ahead also meant a foray into politics.

- I had a lot of our community members approach and ask me if I would consider it. I think I was one of the youngest individuals to be elected into this capacity in our community.

- In addition to being a young tribal leader, Dylan also works for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission educating young and old alike. 
[students chattering]

- I knew at a young age that teaching in some capacity was going to be a part of my life. And outreach specifically and educating people on our way of life. That's what I do for a living.

That's the portal or that's the gateway or nexus to eliminating stereotypes, to eliminating misconceptions about indigenous people and to help us all to move forward in a better and more productive society.

This drum here was created and there was a lot of good blessings put into it when it was created.

- Moving forward with lessons from the past, Dylan is a role model for the next generation. 
[chanting with drum beat]

- I stay drug and alcohol free. Stay close to our ceremonies, try to learn our language and try to be a good example for our young people. [striking drum in unison]

If you're still waking up every day, you're healthy, you have relatives that care about you and you feel good about yourself and who you are, I think that's what success is for Anishinaabe.

- Our next story takes us to Eau Claire, where a husband's touching tribute has grown into an annual tradition.

[melodic wind chimes]

- Take a late summer drive on State Road 85 in Eau Claire County, and odds are one of nature's most colorful creations will be on display.

Sunflowers are a symbol of adoration. A great example of that is this field, and there was no bigger fan of these flowers than Babbette Jaquish.

- Oh, she liked all flowers, but sunflowers are kind of a happy flower, and... that was probably her favorite flower.

- She convinced her husband, Don, to plant sunflowers on their family farm. They brought her family joy, just like Babbette.

- She was kind of like a sunflower. I mean, she was, like, always smiling. She was always bright. She was always happy.

- Even as she faced the fight of her life. In 2006, Babbette was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer that affects the plasma cells in bone marrow.

- She was really sick at the time, and so they gave her just a couple of weeks to live if she didn't respond to the treatment. And if she did respond to the treatment, they gave her two years. And she lived eight and a half.

- Babbette's passing in 2014 was devastating, but Don was determined to make sure her spirit lived on.

- My wife was my soul mate, and I just... It's hard to-- hard to not have her around. It'll be going on four years in the fall. And I still miss her dearly.

- In the summer of 2015, he rented land from neighboring farms along State Road 85 and planted sunflowers. § § Four-and-a-half miles of sunflowers.

- And I just wanted everybody to know how much she meant to me.

- His touching tribute went viral. Emails poured in from all over the world.

- We got some letters from China. We got some from the Ukraine.

- It just exploded. Everybody loved them, and Don and I kind of put our heads together and decided "You know, maybe we should make something more of this because it's kind of what she wanted to do." So that's how we formed Babbette's Seeds of Hope.

- Babbette's seeds of hope is a non-profit organization that raises money for cancer research.

- There's hardly... a family around, of any size, that doesn't have somebody in their family that's had cancer.

- Their biggest fundraiser takes place every August when part of Jaquish farms transforms into a sunflower maze.

- All of the proceeds that are donated at the maze go into cancer research.

- They also sell sunflower seeds, and for a donation, let visitors pick their own sunflower to take home. Thousands of people flock to Jaquish Farms each year for the two-week event.

- Oh my, look at this! Ooh, wow! Whoo, that's pretty!

- Some come to snap pictures. Others come to spread hope.

- I'm one of the lucky ones; I survived cancer. And it's really important to have the support of others when you're going through cancer, of any type of cancer. So that's why it's important.

- For me, the sunflowers have made me realize that I'm not alone; there are a lot of other people out there like me and like our family. 
[horse-drawn wagon creeks]

- It's a fun family thing to come to. And who doesn't love sunflowers? They just make you smile. I love it.

- Babbette's Seeds of Hope has raised more than $50,000 for cancer research. Don's act of love ensured that Babbette's legacy will continue to grow year after year.

- It's kind of like a celebration of her life every year. Every year, for the sunflowers, it's something new for us to look forward to, and to continue on, and never give up. 
§ §

- I chatted with Buck and Jan Guthrie to learn more about their barn and their latest inventions.

The Toy Train Barn all began when Buck was just a young boy.

- When I was a kid, I started out with an idea of a museum, a toy train museum. I was five years old and I just thought that would be really cool thing to do. So, I just started collecting and gathering and bringing it together to put this together. It's grown a lot. It's really coming along.

- Coming along is an understatement.

- I think it's gone over the top. [chuckling] But, that's what I set out to do. It's nice to see it coming together. People come to see it in color and all of it getting completed.

- How has it evolved over time?

- Well, there's been a lot of bridges we've gone over. The collecting and gathering, putting it all together and then figuring out where to put it.

- The barn sees visitors year-round and anyone can interact with the exhibits.

- Oh, we get lots of visitors. They're all ages and they can push buttons. And we've got a scavenger hunt, an "I Spy" list that you can do. Makes you kind of center in and find the little details in here, which is good. And just spend time looking at all the different new stuff.

- Buck's sprinkled his newest creations in with the old.

- This is a really cool layout. It's only about a year old now. I come in and gutted out what was here. And I built a new layout using these old standard-gauge trains from back in the 1930s. They're really big. Fun to have them out and see kids play with 'em. Up above are O gauge trains. I tried to combine the two to get as much as I could out of this barn. I think we did pretty well. There's buttons and controls in here so the kids can come along and hit the button and start these trains all up.

- Can I start one up?

- There's number two. You make 'em go.

- While Jan still has her favorites. We have a little man in a swimming pool here. He's made with a microwave oven motor and magnets.

- Oh, that's how he's moving?

- That's how he's moving around. There's the house on fire down here. Real water and then smoke comes out of it.

- How is the smoke produced?

- That's made with a defroster out of a car and you put mineral oil on it and then the smoke will be starting here in a second. And then, that's a windshield washer pump out of a car.

- That is so creative.

- Smoke in there, yup.

- So these were all created. There weren't parts that were already assembled?

- Nope, Buck's made all this stuff. And his stuff is always made to repair. I mean you can fix it easy, if you need to get to it.

- Right, especially if you know how it was created 'cause you did it. Makes it easier to repair.

- I can only call him to repair.

- Buck's built an entire world in this barn but not without support from his family.

- If it wasn't for Jan, I couldn't have done any of this. That's a fact. And then my son, he's come along. My daughter, she's been a big help. Dylan, he's an engineer on the railroad and when he has free time, he's got a model railroad here that he works on.

- And he keeps going 'cause there's never an end. 
[Angela laughing]
 You know there's never an end, right?

- Buck: Right.

- Jan: Right!

- For a small fee, guests are welcome to come and enjoy this museum inspired by one man's love for trains.

Buck and Jan have a lot in common with our next story. We meet another miniature maker in Wauwatosa who's competitive on a tiny scale.

[whimsical music]
- Get down by the fence, you watch them go by.

It's just a cool feeling. I like loud noises, especially when it's coming from a hot rod car or something. 
[electric car motors whirring]

Slot car racing has been around for, I'd say, thirty-plus years. 
['50s-style police drama music]

It started back, I would say the late '40s, early '50s by guys having motorized cars that they raced on a track with a hand controller. 
[zzzzzeeeooowwww]

Well, we usually try to race once a month on Friday nights. And again, depending upon weather during the wintertime, we've had four people all the way up to fifteen. The track is Tosa Raceway Park. The table is 7' by 14'. Seven feet by fourteen feet. The track surface itself is 6' by 10'.

Every time I redo a track, I come up with something new to build walls or come up with a different design of how the pits would be. The fencing is rain gutter guard. This fencing right here, the plastic is vinyl siding that I cut in strips. It's nice and flexible. It's easy to bend. All the lighting on here is LEDs, which helps a lot. I mean years ago, that's all they had was just regular 12-volt. It was quite draining on the power system. But now, I can run hundreds of lights with just a single source. It's like a model railroad, where you can always add, subtract, build something new.

It's almost like real racing, where you do let off a little bit in the corner and hit it again.

Depending upon what track we're on and the car, sometimes if it handles decently, you can just keep it pretty well full-throttle all the way through.

The cars get wrecked and they're all fixable. No matter how bad it is, they're all fixable. And so is the track itself. 
[crash, clank, indistinct unhappy expressions]

- Give me a push.

- Took out a sign, too, dude! 
[sputtering whirr]

- Aww man, that's two.

- Well, that's why I put them up with Elmer's glue: so they break. I got four sprint cars. I got 12 jalopies. And probably eight, eight or nine sportsmans.

And then, probably, six to seven stock cars.

As you can see in the case, I have a section for just my dad's stuff. You know, it's just great. I mean, we built a lot of cars together. We built a lot of tracks together. And it's just in memory of him. After he passed away, I was bound and determined to keep this thing going. 
[slot cars' electric whirr]

To this day, I never thought it would be like it is today. I don't foresee myself getting out of this in the near future. I mean it'll probably be till the day I die. But it's just a lot of fun. And it's fun to build this stuff. And it's fun to be with everybody that comes over. You just come down here and you think of what you can do next.

It's just fun. That's all I can say.

- Next, we met a couple in southeast Wisconsin whose journey across the state was more than rough.

[cheerful music]

Meet Sotiris, or "Soto" for short. Soto was born with a retinal defect that left him blind. That would scare away some potential pet owners, but not Cassidy Kraus.

- Soto I had adopted and rescued out of the shelter here in Milwaukee where I was volunteering in 2013, May 2013. And he was wonderful. We lived alone for a while. I met Brett and then we started dating.

- Soto now lives with Cassidy and her boyfriend, Brett Weyers, in Milwaukee. They were a happy family, but in early 2016, Brett came down with puppy fever. The cure? Another dog adoption!

- She told me, "You know, let's look close, like close to Milwaukee. Let's try and stay in the area so we don't have to go very far."

- They looked online for a dog to rescue, and that's where their story becomes quite the tale.

- She goes, "I found the perfect dog for us." I go, "Awesome, sweet! When can we-- Let's go see him this weekend!" And she kind of looks at me and she goes... "Ahh." and I go, "Oh, great. This is going to be real good." He's in Sacramento, California.

- This is Batty. Like Soto, a birth defect left him blind. He was also abandoned at an animal shelter. It just happened to be 2,000 miles from Wisconsin. The shelter told Cassidy and Brett they could adopt Batty, but they had to drive to Sacramento and bring Soto with them.

- Brett: So we did.

- We made that awful drive.

- 36 hours one-way.

- They rearranged their work schedules to make a 4-day road trip across the country. 
[circus music]

- It was...

- It was the worst road trip ever.

- It was bad. 
[music distorts]

- First stop, the emergency room.

- Eight hours in, we stopped to get food. I got food poisoning.

- Then we were like, "Is this a bad omen? Should we turn around? Is this a bad sign that we shouldn't be doing this?" I was like, "No, we're going to do it."

- Next, they'd dodge tire shrapnel in Wyoming.

- I'm asleep and just get jolted awake as she slams on the brakes and screams. I wake up and here's this semi in front of us but one of the tires exploded. Here's all these rubber shrapnels coming at us.

- Oh, it was not good.

- Then we're like, "Is that another sign?" We were like, "Nope, let's keep going." [chuckles]

- Even Mother Nature refused to throw them a bone.

- We hit a snowstorm in Tahoe.

- Cassidy Kraus: That was bad.

- All of this, and there was no guarantee Soto and Batty would even get along.

- I had so much anxiety that we would have driven all that way and they wouldn't have clicked. Oh God, I was sick to my stomach.- It was a once in a lifetime adventure. Cassidy and Brett made it to Sacramento. The moment of truth had arrived. Batty and Soto met for the first time.

- The meet and greet went flawless.

- Here he comes bouncing around the corner and I'm like, "Oh, this dog is... This is perfect."- The two dogs would become fast friends. Cassidy and Brett changed Batty's name to Agios, Ago for short, and brought him home to Milwaukee. Ago learned to fit in with his new family, where to sleep on the couch, and of course, how to root for the Packers.

- Want to run some more? Do you have more energy now that you've been sitting?

- Cassidy and Brett learned that while love is blind, it can also give you pause. Sometimes, four of them.

- People have this stigma around handicapped dogs. Blind, deaf, incontinent, whatever it may be. That they're hard and they're not worth it. And it is such the opposite.

- I can't even describe how much we love both of them and how happy we are that we made that 36 hours.

- It was the best chaotic decision we have ever made.

- Yeah.

- By far.

- The train is about to leave the station, so I must say good-bye. If you'd like to learn more about the Toy Train Barn or any stories you've seen here today, visit WisconsinLife.org. While there, you can check out our digital-first project, Wisconsin Life: Food Traditions. It's an in-depth exploration of personal identity and food traditions found across the state. Here's a look.

- Cooking in my kitchen, it's like therapy. That was my way to reach out to my parents is through food. What I want to recreate is just that feeling of deliciousness and welcomeness.

- Mm-hmm.

- A lot more people are embracing returning back to our indigenous diets. It's something that's celebrated now instead of something that is ashamed.

- You have all those opportunities to share this culture. The fact that it's coming from very hardworking people.- Share your story with us at WisconsinLife@wpt.org.

- I'm Angela Fitzgerald and this is our Wisconsin Life. Fire it up, Buck! 
[engine starting]

[train horn]
 
[bell clanging]

- Choo, choo! Whoo-whoo!

- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part by Alliant Energy, Lowell and Mary Peterson, and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.