Wisconsin is the English spelling of a French version of a Miami Indian name meaning “this stream meanders through something red.” In other words, the Wisconsin River. Two places in the state are special to me, both of them Green.
I was born and raised in Green Bay, but have lived in all four continental time zones. I am now back in Wisconsin, although not in Green Bay. What is the first thing you think of when you hear “Green Bay” or “Wisconsin”? The Packers? Cheeseheads? Please don’t say beer.
The Packers’ Lambeau Field is known as the Frozen Tundra because of the legendary Ice Bowl in 1967. When the Packers played the Dallas Cowboys for the 1967 championship, the temperature was −15 °F and the field was frozen solid. The game was a sell-out with over 50,000 fans risking frostbite. I did not attend.
In fact, I have never attended a Packer game. Growing up, I wasn’t a Packer fan. We’d have glorious Sunday afternoons, but no one wanted to come out and play. They were inside watching the Pack. My sister remembers tossing a football with Dad during home games because the games weren’t televised in the local market. This was during the Glory Years. I remember singing the Packer fight song in elementary school, but I can only recall the final line: “Fight, you Packers, Fight, and bring the bacon home to Old Green Bay.” Not until I left Wisconsin did I appreciate the Pack.
My sister, brother, and I returned to Green Bay last summer and visited Lambeau Field. It is nothing like the simple stadium of my childhood.
School field trips included places like Wequiock Falls where we learned about rock formations and the Neville Museum (part of a Carnegie library built in 1901) where we saw things like the skeleton of a Native American found in the area. 
I didn’t often visit the attached library. We frequented the North Branch, closer to home. I always headed for the children’s corner and hunted for Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka books or the boys’ counterpart, Snip, Snap, and Snur. Sadly, the North Branch closed in 1982.
After church in summer and fall, we’d often stop at Bay Beach Amusement Park and Wildlife Sanctuary. 
I loved the Ferris wheel and live ponies. Dad and my sister enjoyed the bumper cars, but I never rode them. They scared me. Why would you want to be in a car wreck? My brother reminded me of the Wildlife Sanctuary recently with his offhand comment about the geese messing up the neighborhood. “To think we used to pay to feed these buzzards.”
Every year starting after Thanksgiving, H C Prange’s, the big department story in town, would fill their street-level windows with animated Christmas scenes. 
We’d rush over after church on Sunday to view the magical displays, even if it meant standing in the glacial tundra gales. For me, that was the beginning of the Christmas season.
During the summer months, we often visited Green Lake, a small town about eighty miles southwest of Green Bay, traveling through corn fields that were knee high by the Fourth of July. My grandparents had a summer home in a trailer park located on the shore of Green Lake, the deepest inland lake in Wisconsin. Most residents were retirees, but on the 4th of July, they held a big party for extended families. There were games like an egg toss (yes, I went home in a gooey, sticky, eggy mess one year) and finding pennies buried in the sandy beach for us kids. There were big tanks filled with ice and soft drinks, something we didn’t get at home. I always hunted for grape soda.
When we needed a break from Grandma, best taken in small doses, we drove around the lake to the American Baptist Assembly.
The grounds are beautiful with trails through wooded acres and lanes parallelling the lake. We’d climb a hill to the Judson Tower and then climb the metal spiral stairs up to the tower’s peak and enjoy the vista of the lake.
In those days, the tower platform was completely open. Today, it’s surrounded by a chain-link fence for safety.
You didn’t want to be up there when the hourly chimes played; right in your ears, they were deafening. The grounds are now the Green Lake Conference Center, a beautiful Christian retreat.
The drive from Green Bay to Green Lake, or from Green Lake to my present home south of there, is breathtaking for me. Green fields, blue sky, white clouds, small towns. I’ve traveled around the world but there’s no place like central Wisconsin.
Terri Wangard has written several novels in the World War II era, a time period she hadn’t planned on concentrating in. Her first book, Friends & Enemies, was inspired by German family history and meant to be a standalone. After an editor told her she’d likely need a series to land a contract, she continued with the subject.
Her family’s forty-year magazine publishing business came to an end this year, so she now has more time to devote to writing. 
Her latest series, Unsong Stories of World War II, saw its first release, Seashells in My Pocket, in 2024. Book #2 in the series, No Leaves in Autumn, came out in March 2025. Book #3, Listen For the Chickadees, will be published in March, 2026.
Check out Terri’s Amazon Author Page to see all her books!
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