I always thought that yodelling and lyrics were mutually exclusive.

Joe,

Thanks for the link to New Glarus. Sure it has polkas, but the really big festivals are the Heidi Festival in early summer and the Wilhelm Tell Festival on Labor Day weekend. That 's when the big outdoor theater productions (of Heidi and Wm. Tell) take place and the locals all wear Swiss costumes down to their knees so they don't have to change outfits for the evening show. Cheese Days, alas, is not a New Glarus event. Cheese Days is celebrated in Monroe (about 15 miles south of New Glarus on Hiway 69) in the fall of alternate years. The "modern" Cheese Days was ressurected in the mid 1960's. I only know this because I graduated from Monroe High School in 1965 and my dad continued to live there until 1974.

This brings us to Shake Rag Street in Mineral Point, Wis! It was lead (aka mineral) mining that brought the first group of settlers to Mineral Point. Many of the first group dug into the hjillside and lived in the "badger" holes they dug, giving Wisconsin is Badger State nickname. In a few years Cornish hard rock miners moved in and brought their superior technology and experience. Shake Rag Street got its name from the habit of the miners wives going out of their houses along the street and waving pieces of cloth to their husbands on the opposite hillside to summon them to eat. The street is a tourist attraction today and some of the old Cornish houses have been restored.

I guess it is one of my duties in life to badger "Badger Joe" about the badger holes in the "Badger State Lore" file in his software. It seems that if you've got a computer on the left coast that was programed from the right coast, hten the middle coast sometimes gets squished.

rich r