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If you like to get stinking blotto drunk Wisconsin’s the state for you.

I’m new in town, after 30-some years away, and I stand outside the collective conciousness. No one here likes to admit it, but there’s not much to do in this state except drink, so everyone drinks. They drink in restaurants, theaters, taverns, bars, clubs, parties. They drink after work, on the weekends, at night, on holidays, at Baptisms, birthday parties, weddings and convenience store openings. They even drink—God help us all—at the Milwaukee Public Museum. “Food and Froth Fest”.

WTF Milwaukee? Your museum is so pathetic you have to get people drunk to get them to visit it?

And what do these people do after they drink? Well, they drive home, of course.

Everywhere else they call it “driving while impaired” or “operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of an intoxicating substance”. But here, no one says a peep as “Good Old Jason” staggers out into the night, keys a-jingling. They only get legal about it if you really push the envelop—Like Duane R. Champeau, 45, 421½ Marcella St in Appleton, Wi, who has three convictions for drunken driving. Last month he was arrested four times (yes—F O U R), with expired AND stolen plates on his car. Anywhere else those will be his fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh convictions, but due to a peculiarity of Wisconsin law, each arrest counts as number four because he hadn’t been convicted of any of the others at the time of arraignment.

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