Not everyone gets to give a simple answer to the question “where are you from?”. They may answer “I’m from all over”, or “we moved around a lot.” For me the answer is simple: Wausau, Wisconsin. I was born, raised and lived there until I graduated from high school. My hometown has always felt like home to me, but there is another, higher form of belonging that I would only find later in life.
But let’s start in Wausau. Living through eighteen years of childhood with the same group of people is powerful. High school was not always comfortable, but I never felt like I didn’t belong. I was seen and known by pretty much everyone, even if I didn’t always fit in perfectly. By the time I graduated I knew almost all of the 300-plus kids in my class by name.
After my graduation ceremony, there was an event for the students at the Boys and Girls club with food and beverages, and there was even a hypnotist. The three hundred strong class of us healthy youngsters heading into the prime of life sat on the community gymnasium bleachers as a few among our number were persuaded to do something silly, like sing a song, stick out their tongue or whatever hypnotists convince high schoolers to do.
It was a fun evening, and I still remember it. It was the last time the Wausau West class of ‘07 was together. There were people I would consider friends, and even good friends, that I have not seen since that evening almost twenty years ago. And at this point I don’t think I should expect to see most of them ever again. I belonged to that class in a simple and straightforward way, and through it was connected to hundreds of people, some more intensely than others, but all to some degree. For years, I thought I would never experience belonging like this again, but it pointed to a higher belonging I would discover through faith.
We tend to forget, but this kind of civic connectedness used to be much more pervasive, and not just limited to school. Civic dance halls, particularly in the Midwest including Wisconsin, used to be a staple of social life. Up until the 1960s or so, they were the place for young men and women to meet, socialize and dance together.
I recall a photograph of one of these civic dance halls which was displayed in the historical museum in Wausau. It was probably from the 1910s, somewhere on the Eau Claire River and maybe near the Dells of the Eau Claire River, the site of a present day county park. It was a picture of a crowd of perhaps 100 people wearing the sturdy but good looking work clothes of that time, and with the somber looks of people required to sit still for minutes for a photograph.
I think of the restrained energy that would have been present at such a place. Moral norms informed by religion ensured that the desires and hormonal electricity of the young was given form and direction. Everyone in the community was invited and encouraged to attend and participate, so long as basic norms were followed. How sweet it would feel for the young men to put their hands respectfully around a woman of the community, and how pleased the woman would be knowing she was desired as a dance partner. This warm, structured and welcoming element of community is sadly long gone.
You can get a glimpse of dance hall culture in its heydey in movies like “The Music Man” and “Oklahoma”. All the young people in the community look forward to the dance, and it is a site of interpersonal drama, romance and community bonding.
In “Oklahoma”, there is dramatic and romantic tension over the girl, Laurey, between the possessive and menacing Jud and the all-around good guy Curly. Despite this dramatic plot undercurrent, the dance is still portrayed as a cornerstone of community life. There is an auction in which the women auction off their picnic baskets as a way to raise money. A musical number shows the friendly rivalries and differences between the cowmen and the farmers.
In “The Music Man”, the dance is where the community coalesces around Harold, the huckster who meant to rip off the parents by selling band equipment but ended up falling in love with the local librarian and maybe a little bit with the town itself. At the dance is when the librarian begins to see his charm as the community does as well. There are other charming romantic pairs who embrace and dance with each other.
In “Marty”, you see the dance hall culture start to turn a little seedy, and you see what led to its ultimate collapse. The men in the movie are merely prowling around the dance floor, looking for sexual conquests. Marty, the main character and moral center, is uneasy with their behavior, and is looking more for long term connection than short term release. He meets a shy schoolteacher, and the movie ends with him calling her rather than stalking another dance floor with his bachelor friends.
The civic rituals of the dance hall and high school graduation have value, but point to something higher. Interestingly, “Marty” has a Catholic heart, and shows Marty going to mass with his mother, his younger brother, his sister-in-law and nephew. Marty is rooted in his biological family and spiritual family. The movie shows how difficult it can be to maintain those commitments, particularly to his mother, but also how redemptive they can be. In my own faith journey, it has not always been easy to maintain religious convictions, but I have gotten so much more than I give up.
The fact is that all people desire the warmth and connection and belonging that existed in settings like my high school class and in these community dance halls. And hopefully, I do still see glimmers of a nascent common society where this connection is felt.
I see it, for example, at the Wausau Art fair when I go there for the weekend. While I have not lived in Wausau for almost 20 years–as I wander from booth to booth looking at the art, some good and some pretty–I realize I feel at home. I would feel comfortable starting up a conversation with anyone I saw there. And carrying my infant son, I didn’t even have to make the effort. People came to me, making faces at baby Jimmy, asking about him and making conversation. It is the most relaxed and at home I have ever felt in a downtown.
One year, I bought a painting from a man. His compositions were shockingly good. I started chatting with him, asking him about the paintings, wondering about how this ordinary old man from Menomonie Falls had gotten quite so good at landscape painting. He told me had been employed as a graphic designer, but had been laid off. His paintings really were both technically strong and beautifully composed.
I also sensed a sort of secret society of Teutonic good nature and celebration at Pinewood Supper Club. It is truly a gem of a restaurant, at the end of a forested country road in Mosinee. The plate glass windows open up over a beautiful bay on Half Moon Lake. The food is excellent, and the service is attentive. The supper club was meant as a place where you could not just eat a meal, but also socialize, and the Pinewood is a place where that still feels possible. No, it’s not Upstate New York or Vermont where the wealthy of the East Coast relax, it’s Central Wisconsin.
What was surprising about the old community dance halls, and even my high school class, was how universal they were. The highest and the lowest of society were there together, participating in universal community life. The universal community life, as represented in the old community dance halls is gone, but it has a sort of afterlife in temporary events, or removed set-aside places like the Pinewood.
One of the forces that made that universal society work was the conservative German Catholicism that was widespread in Wisconsin in the past. Catholicism emphasizes universality, and the belonging of all types of people to Christ’s church, how they all have an important role. The “body” metaphor, used by Paul, shows how organic and asymmetric the spiritual community is. The toe, the leg, the eye and the arm are all different, but they are all necessary and all belong in the body. In the same way, the Church has always been able to hold together the differences of ordinary people in a single, universal belonging.
You can see the fruit of this worldview in action in Kohler, Wisconsin, which is a company town created by the Kohler family, who were devout Austrian Catholics. The aesthetic vision of Kohler included good design for everyone, a vision that is still carried forward by the Kohler company, a billion dollar business still headquartered in little Kohler.
The town of Kohler still, I believe, bears the imprint of its namesakes’ faith with its emphasis on beauty and universalism. There is the residential section of town, with its rows of beautiful but modest brick houses. The Kohler family still operates a museum called the Waelderhaus or “forest house” right there in Kohler. It is a large wooden house built like the houses of the Kohlers’ homeland in the Austrian Alps. It is decorated with impeccable carvings, beautiful artifacts, and yes, Catholic imagery. There is also the Kohler Design Center, a sort of museum to beautiful plumbing that is free and open to the public.
Since reverting to faith, I have gained a sense of being at home. I have seen how the civic expressions of belonging in my high school, or in dance halls, are only earthly reflections of the belonging that is our birthright in Christ’s body. No matter where I travel in the world, I feel at home kneeling alongside my spiritual family at the local Catholic Church. No matter what sins or desires I bring to God in prayer, He always accepts me, and gently offers healing grace. In the Catholic church, I am once again at home and I know where I most truly belong.