Coming up next, on Wisconsin Life ...
- Whatever else I've got going on, it's not life and death,
but my other job is.
-Like our mission,
'It's better to sweat in our gym than to bleed in the streets.'
- My name is Ken Anderson, and I'm the Mayberry guru.
I remember thinking, "Wisconsin is the prettiest place.
This is what I want to paint."
*
- Funding for Wisconsin Life
is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- I'm Deneen Carmichael,
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- Whoa!
So, mornings at our house
are always filled with adventure and a little bit of chaos.
But we try to get up and out the door
by about 7:30 in the morning at the latest.
[laughing]
So, getting a 5 1/2-month-old baby ready
and an 8-year-old ready for 3rd grade
is a little bit chaotic.
The most rewarding things, I would say,
about owning a business
is the freedom to make certain choices.
Usually get here between 8:00 and 8:30
and just kind of settle in, do some paperwork.
Sometimes, I rearrange the store.
My favorite thing in the world to do is
clean the windows on the front door in the morning.
It's a very nice thing,
especially to see the other business owners
opening up their shops and everything.
There's kind of a camaraderie there, "Yep, you know,
"we're all here doing this here on Parmenter Street,
and opening our little shops."
So, that's kind of nice.
I was spending a lot of time, a few years ago,
in the fire station
because I started fitness training with a private trainer.
It was really being in the fire house,
hearing calls come in
and kinda' getting more interested,
like, "Where are they going?", like, "What do they do?"
That intrigued me.
And the more I learned about it...
Then it became less of, "Do I want to do this?"
and more like, "I have to do this."
There's no question. I can't not do it.
*
Deciding to become a firefighter
was completely unexpected.
The training was intense,
very educational, very thorough.
It was more cerebral than I had anticipated.
So the more academic, more cerebral part of the training
was certainly fire science.
Just learning construction of buildings,
learning about fire behavior,
learning about reading smoke,
learning about chemicals.
You know, areas that were a little more challenging for me
were the equipment.
I had never been exposed to many of the tools
that we use on the fire department.
[metal crunching]
The extrication equipment...
It's very bulky, very heavy,
can be very dangerous.
And so really acclimating myself to the use of heavy equipment
[chainsaw buzzing]
was something that I had to...
...to challenge me.
[chainsaw cutting]
[emergency vehicle siren]
So, responding from work is ideal for me
because I'm, like, a block and a half from the firehouse.
So, I generally respond on foot
because it's faster for me to sprint from my business
to the firehouse than to drive in my vehicle.
You experience every possible imaginable scenario or situation
on fire calls,
and things that you would never imagine.
Certainly, structure fires is what people think of
when they think of the fire station and the fire department,
but it's the people who I remember most,
those interactions.
And they're the things that kind of tug at me late at night.
*
Seeing things that are difficult,
tragic at times.
It really...
In the moment, I don't think it really sinks in so much
because you're there doing your job
and I think that as a first responder,
you're able to kind of tune that out
and do what you need to do to stabilize the situation
and do your job.
Afterward, it's tough.
There are things that make you go home and hug your family,
or stay awake at night and stare at the ceiling,
and really be grateful.
It shifts your perspective significantly.
Whatever else I've got going on, it's not life and death,
but my other job is.
It really is life and death.
*
I get asked a lot
when people find out that I'm a firefighter--
especially at my business--
People say, "Well, what in the world made you do that?"
I say, "I really, I don't know.
"I just know that I couldn't not do it
once I was exposed to it."
This may be cliché,
but I feel like I was born to do this
at this time.
Ten years ago maybe not, but at this time,
it was the exact thing that I needed to do
and I'm exactly where I need to be.
*
- Hi, my name is Frank Porter, and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- We pledge allegiance to the flag...
- In a corner of a South Milwaukee park
is the city's only building named for an American Indian.
- We are one nation under God...
- It's the Del Porter Pavilion,
home to the Ace Boxing Club.
- Two, three, left.
- Run today by Frank Porter.
- The mission is to provide a healthy,
diverse resource center.
We focus on the at-risk and underprivileged,
but we just do the same to every youth and young adult.
Two.
- What they do is provide
free training in the art of boxing.
- Get in your boxing stance.
One.
Now if he doesn't move, he's gonna get popped.
- With a mix of life lessons.
- Take a look. Everybody look at each other.
Turn around and look at each other.
Diversity is our strength.
That's why it's called 'United States,'
not 'Segregated States.'
- Frank is the son of Ace Boxing Club founder, Del Porter,
and part of long line of boxers and trainers.
- I've got your life in my hands.
You understand me, everybody?
- Yes, Mr. Porter.
- We're going to war in that ring.
When that bell rings, your opponent wants to beat you.
- Welcome to Track 1 of the boxing CD.
This track...
- Do not look around. Be ready.
This is your boxing round.
- One, two, three, four.
- CD: Right straight, left hook.
- Frank: Right straight, left hook.
Say it.
- Right straight, left hook.
- It may seem strange that teaching kids a fighting sport
would keep them from fighting in the streets.
- One, two, three, four.
We have that program--
You've seen the poster in there:
"Drop your guns, and pick up our gloves."
Like our mission:
"It's better to sweat in our gym
than to bleed in the streets."
That's the saying here.
- My son, he have a little bit of...
- Frank "Anger?" - Angerment, yeah.
And now, he no fight no more in school.
- If they have negative energy
that they often find in the streets,
they come in here, use it out on the dummies,
and learn structure and how to handle their anger management.
Left hook, right upper cut.
Left hook. [laughs]
- It's okay. We all make mistakes, Mr.Porter.
- There you go. That's human.
Okay, everybody, face your dummies.
I'm going to repeat the audio CD.
It gives them a sense of someone caring about them
and monitoring them
and helping 'em do the right thing.
And if they make a mistake,
that we're there to help them fix it.
Not... [smacks glove against hand]
- Frank may be forgiving of mistakes
because he knows he's made plenty in his life.
- I was a street person.
That's why these kids can relate to me.
Everybody knows what goes on in the street life.
You become an alcoholic, drug addict, drug dealer.
- Group: Grant me the serenity...
- Leader: to accept the things I cannot control...
- Frank eventually cleaned himself up.
- It took the twelve-step program
to help me change the way I think.
- Frank and his father Del had had a rocky relationship,
but that changed once Frank was in recovery.
He sought his father out.
- I said, "Dad, I need to talk to you."
He said, "What'd I do now, son?"
- I said, "Nothing, Dad, I just need to talk to you."
So I met him the next day. We went into his office.
I just said, "Dad,
I just want you to know that I forgive you the past."
- "Wait a minute, son," he goes.
"This is perfect timing.
I was thinking the same thing last week."
- I said, "Dad, but the key is, as of today,
can you and I start over a new son and father relationship?"
- That's what broke the chain and that's what bonded us.
- Frank was welcomed back into his father's life
and the gym he founded.
- I know he's gone. I know he's gone to glory,
but I miss his relationship.
And I'm proud to carry on his legacy.
I'm proud to carry on the mission.
What happens if I'm not looking? Yes?
I can hear him come out of me when I'm training.
"Get them hands up, son."
Or I'll call one of the kids "son."
It just comes out of me. "Hey, son!"
One, two.
Pull back and hit.
And bring that arm back, like a rubber band.
He doesn't give up on the dream
because he's discovering the champion inside of him.
- It's better to sweat in the gym
than to bleed in the streets.
- mom: I like that. - son: It likes you back.
- [Frank laughs] It likes you back.
My dad wasn't out to make money.
Neither am I.
Neither are the volunteers here.
We're out to make memories.
When you build a legacy,
when you look down, when we pass,
when we're away from this earth a hundred years from now,
you want to look down with your creator and say,
"Look how many people I reached out to."
That's your legacy.
- One, two, three. Go!
- Thanks for the session. Woot, woot!
- There you go.
- Still to come on Wisconsin Life ...
- So this is your wildlife area.
And that's always sort of stuck with me.
- Meet DNR educator Britt Searles and find out
how she gets to work with these majestic migratory birds.
Later, on Wisconsin Life.. .
*
- I'm Steve Kozar and this is my Wisconsin Life .
My relationship to Wisconsin is kind of interesting
because I consider myself a full cheesehead.
I grew up in northern Illinois--
Don't hold that against me, Wisconsinites!
I always loved Wisconsin, have very fond memories.
And when my wife and I just got married,
we lived in Chicago when I was going to art school.
We drove across the country
cause we had an offer to get a free car from my dad.
And as we drove back, all the way across the country,
I remember thinking, "Wisconsin is the prettiest place.
This is what I want to paint."
I'm a realist painter
who does this very, very fussy,
very realistic work.
I was that kid.
I was the one that was always drawing.
I always loved art.
I had a particular art teacher who said,
"You should try water color. I think you'd really like it."
And I took to it right away.
That same teacher, he said,
"You could probably make a living at this, Steve."
Something like that.
And I thought, "Oh, I'd like to do that."
When I'm trying to decide what to paint,
it's one of the hardest things.
I spend a lot of time driving around, shooting lots of photos.
Thinking about what I might shoot next.
I'm obsessive.
Even when I think, "Maybe I have enough," I never stop thinking,
"Well maybe there's something even better."
Out of the millions and millions of things I could paint--
I mean literally every day
I see something and I think to myself--
I can't turn it off--
I think, "Well what would it look like if I painted that?
What if I shift it?
What if I was up? What if I was down?
What if I waited 'til the light was different?"
I mean, I'm always thinking about that.
I make the decision sometimes
because I've narrowed down some parameters artificially
just to give myself some reason to pick one over the other.
So, for instance, right now,
I thought, "I want to do something that has deeper colors
that's more like evening.
And I'd really like to get something
that has glowing lights and reflections--
either water or rain.
When people see a painting of mine
with all the little details and they think,
"Did I contrive some of this?
Did I add things that weren't there?"
I don't. I just--
Part of that is because
I'm a realist and so I want it to look real.
And if you insert something into a painting
that wasn't really there, it looks difficult
for the proportions to be right or for the lighting to be right.
I depend on a real scene
that I've captured with really good photos
so that nothing is out of place, or nothing is confusing to me.
So that when I look at it back in the studio,
I see everything as it really was
and I can capture it with painting.
It has a feeling of space.
It has a feeling of light.
It has the feeling of depth.
I love that when it's just a flat piece of paper,
but it looks like it's three-dimensional.
I just love creating that effect.
I've found out that I have adult attention deficit disorder.
So I actually take medication for it and everything.
And I know that I have a difficult time focusing.
I know that it helps if I narrow down the parameters
and I don't create too many distractions for myself.
So I'll focus my attention on the painting and one other thing
especially if it's a program or CD.
Something I know that's going to go for the next hour.
It'll engage my attention so that
I'm just going to stay here and work because I have to,
but also because I'm interested in the other thing
that's holding my attention for that time.
I'm mentally tired at the end of a day of painting.
Not necessarily exhausted in the sense that
I don't want to do this anymore
but I just realize
I've been thinking all day long, as I'm working.
I'm constantly evaluating
because I'm looking at an actual photograph
and then I'm thinking about,
"Is this the right value? Is this the right color?
Is this the right angle? Is this the right curve?"
There's all these things you learn to think of as an artist.
And if you ever turn that off, you're going to make mistakes.
Sometimes people say,
"Do you have a hard time parting with the painting?"
And I understand why they say that
because they imagine I spend all this time
and now you have to get rid of it right away.
And they don't understand
if I don't sell it,
I'm usually in financial trouble.
Plus, it is the best compliment out of all
the people who say, "Wow. That's great."
Some guy says, "Yeah, that's great.
And here's a check for $6,000" or whatever.
That, to me, that feels really good, too.
I paint the painting with the hope that somebody would buy it.
I can't imagine not being an artist.
I really can't.
I've thought of that,
especially when financially, it was really difficult.
And the thing that kept me
going back to being an artist was not,
[in a mock dreamy voice] "I love being an artist so much I don't want to give it up."
It was, "Who's going to do all these paintings
if I'm not doing them?"
I already have all these ideas.
I feel this passion about getting these paintings done.
And then, the end result
I'm passionate about.
Everything in between is a lot of work.
And a lot of late nights.
But when the end result is done
and I see the final image and I say,
"That's the thing that I decided I was going to do.
"I went out and found that scene, I photographed it.
"I came home and I spent all this time painting it.
"And it feels really good.
Really, really good."
*
- My name is Britt Searles.
I'm a DNR educator and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- In the backwoods of central Wisconsin,
Britt Searles is in her environment.
- When I'm outside with wildlife,
that's a good day.
- When the brake lights appear,
you also know it's a good day.
Because Britt is on to something,
like a porcupine high in the tree.
- He looks like he's sort of wrapped around the branch.
I'm a teacher by training.
I was working at a school
that was very environmentally focused.
I've always had an interest in wildlife.
I went from middle school kids to wildlife,
which was not a big jump.
- Now as a Department of Natural Resources educator,
her classroom encompasses more than 9,000 acres
at the Sandhill Wildlife Area near Babcock.
- It was started in the '30s as a game farm
by a man named Wallace Grange.
And he was a conservationist.
He was really interested in wildlife management,
which was kind of a new thing.
He did that until 1962
when he sold it to the state.
When he sold it, he wanted
the State to maintain it as an education and research facility.
This is a State Wildlife Area.
And it belongs to the State of Wisconsin,
which means it belongs to you.
So this is your wildlife area.
And that's always sort of stuck with me,
that education and research
is really something that we all can have a part of.
- On this day, Britt will witness an ancient migration
that is repeated year after year.
And there's no other crane experience like it in Wisconsin.
- When Wallace Grange was here
in the '30s or '40s or so,
he was fascinated with Sandhill cranes.
And there were less than 30 Sandhill cranes
in the state of Wisconsin.
- Less than 30 in the entire state.
The Sandhill cranes had been hunted to near extinction.
- People were just hunting them,
along with all sorts of other critters,
to the point of really harming the breeding populations.
- And that makes what's about to happen even more amazing.
- Britt: We'll see thousands of cranes tonight.
So a huge difference between the populations then and now.
And it's right in our backyard.
I think a lot of people don't realize that
we have a staging area right here
with these huge numbers of birds coming in.
- During the migration season,
bird watchers hunker down in the tall grass
and prepare to wait as they search the autumn sky.
- Patience is really, [laughs]really the big part of it.
Just sit still.
And sit still a little bit longer and a little bit longer.
They'll start arriving in maybe even late September.
The later into October and early November,
it'll start to be really big numbers.
This is pretty typical.
I think probably over 3,000 cranes are coming in.
They're coming into Sandhill into the Gallagher Marsh
because it's a staging area.
- This marsh area was formed by a glacial lake--
an expansive region that is now flat marsh and woodlands
covering parts of seven counties.
- Britt: And they're all flying
from wherever they've spent the summer
to these little pockets of marshes,
like the Gallagher Marsh.
It's close to ag fields
where they can feed for the day.
They'll head down to Jasper-Pulaski,
which is a federal area in Indiana.
And that's a main staging area.
So after that, they'll head to Florida.
- The comeback of the Sandhill crane is
an environmental success story.
- Britt: It's just an amazing sight.
It's nothing that I knew happened here.
I didn't realize that you could
see something so amazing
right here in central Wisconsin.
*
- My name is Ken Anderson, and this is my Wisconsin Life .
[TV zaps on]
- It began back in 1960
when The Andy Griffith Show first came on.
I was a freshman in high school.
- [whistling] Announcer: The Andy Griffith Show.
- And I started watching it a little bit.
Then my dad died in 1961.
I got really interested in it
'cause Andy Griffith was such a father figure on that show.
- My history book? - Sure.
All kinds of good stories stuck in there amongst the history.
- Yeah?
- So I kind of gravitated towards him
as a role model to kind of follow.
[car door clicks open ]
My name is Ken Anderson,
and I am the Mayberry guru.
[door thuds shut, engine starts]
[1950s style music]
I live in Putnam Heights in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Barney Fife was the deputy of Mayberry.
He was the only deputy that Andy had.
He only could get one bullet.
He had to keep it in his pocket because he had a greasy finger.
[gunshot, laughter]
He was kind of a bumbler.
And I kind of identified with that.
- [Barney yells] Sir, sir, mayday, mayday!
- And a car came up for sale.
[sporty music]
It's a 1965 Ford Galaxy 500 replica Mayberry squad car.
It's almost exactly like
the one used in season six of the TV show.
And I decided I was going to buy it.
So I bought it sight unseen.
And from there, it just really took off.
[turn signal clicks]
[optimistic music]
We do many parades, car shows.
We go to community events.
When I'm at car shows and parades,
people know I'm officially on duty.
Ma'am, you look like you're
a little unsteady on your feet.
First, I want you to say,
"Rubber baby buggy bumpers" three times.
- Rubber baby b-- [laughs]
- Number two.
- Rubber baby... what?
- Ma'am, you failed that one. [woman laughs]
That's inattentive walking.
You were walking and drinking a shake at the same time.
- Rubber baby bi--
- Oh, no, no, no.
Right there. Failed sobriety test.
Fortunately, I'm only giving warnings tonight, though.
- Thank you.
- Don't let me catch you at another car show.
- I'll be better. - Okay.
You'll take her home? Thank you.
I don't try to imitate Don Knotts.
People ask me,"Do an imitation." I say, "No."
- Got your one bullet?
- Do I got my one bullet? Right there!
You didn't think I would have that did you?
That's not my purpose.
I grew up in a real small town, Dorchester.
It's halfway between Eau Claire and Wausau.
I don't take money for what I do.
When I do my presentations and parades
sometimes people want to pay me.
But I take donations
and I have those donations
given to my small town library in Dorchester.
They just tallied it the other day.
I've given them just about $5,000
since I started doing this a few years ago.
I tell people, "I'm a motivational speaker."
I'm motivating them to slow down.
I take people back to a slower and simpler time.
It's kind of the theme that I use.
There you go. I'm just giving you a warning.
- Thank you. - You're so polite.
You get a ticket and you thank me for it.
Some people...
they laugh
and they think I'm really being foolish for doing it,
but most people understand and they enjoy it.
It's so much fun.
I drive through little towns and people holler,
"There's Barney!"
They wave and they enjoy it.
I enjoy it much more than they do.
*
[TV zaps off]
- Curious to know more about Deneen Carmichael, Frank Porter,
Steve Kozar, Britt Searles, and Ken Anderson?
You can go to WisconsinLife.org to learn more
about the people featured in this week's stories.
And remember, we want to know: what's your Wisconsin Life ?
So send us your ideas to WisconsinLife@wpt.org .
Finally, we leave you this week in Pierce County
with the scenes of the Rush River Produce Blueberry Farm,
part of our Wisconsin Life .
*
- Funding for Wisconsin Life
is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.