Patty Loew:
Scenic rivers, cheese and the Packers are a few things that bring Wisconsin fame. But there are many more historical facts that make our state unique. Liz Koerner shows you a popular exhibit where odd Wisconsin is on display for all to see.

Liz Koerner:
In the basement of the Wisconsin Historical Society there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of state history, items that are normally hidden from view. Recently, a hand-picked selection of these intriguing items have been put on display at the Wisconsin Historical Museum. The exhibit is called “Odd Wisconsin.” Joe Kaplar, exhibit curator, took us on a tour starting with an item that is odd and dangerous.

Joe Kaplar:
What we have in front of us here is something that maybe older visitors are going to remember. Maybe when they went to get their new shoes they stepped up and put their feet into a shoe X-ray machine. And through these portals at the top you can see where the salesman would look in and perhaps mom or a spouse and look down in and get a realtime X-ray view of their foot. The idea was that through careful viewing of the foot, you could get a better-fitting shoe.

Liz Koerner:
What the clerks and customers didn't know was that the scope was spitting out dangerous levels of radiation. By 1960, 34 states, including Wisconsin, had banned their use. But by that time nearly 10,000 fluoroscopes had been sold in the United States alone. Another odd but helpful device was found in beauty parlors starting in the 1920s. This Medusa-like contraption is a Permawave machine.

Joe Kaplar:
Each of those ends of those electrical cords, there’s about a dozen or so, little mini curling irons. A rod and a clamp would be heated up and the hair would be wrapped around that. A little bit of chemicals and quite a bit of time, hours, those clamped to your head, you could get those curly hairs you desired.   

Liz Koerner:
Another item that attracted female consumers was the paper dress.

Joe Kaplar:
And in the late '60s, that had become an international craze of paper dresses. Even some of the major high-end dress manufacturers started making some paper dresses. But that idea came from a Wisconsin paper company.

Liz Koerner:
The dresses were made by Scott Paper Company and cost $1.25. It started out as a marketing gimmick to promote Scott toilet paper, napkins and paper towels. Within six months, orders for a half a million dresses flooded the company, making it impossible to produce their primary products. They chose to end their paper dress promotion.   

Liz Koerner:
Even though the exhibit is called “Odd Wisconsin,” not every item is off the wall.

Joe Kaplar:
Some things you're going to laugh because they're whimsical. Other things are more serious. Hm? What? Eww.

Liz Koerner:
One of the most spectacular pieces is a tuxedo jacket worn by Wisconsin’s own piano impresario Liberace. It weighs in at 6.5 pounds.

Joe Kaplar:
We regularly peruse auction catalogs. There are treasures that belong back in Wisconsin. We were able to purchase this with an endowment fund, although most of the items come through donation.

Liz Koerner:
One of the artifacts was donated by artist Marge Engleman.   

Marge Engleman:
The piece is entitled the “Land of the Freed-Up Woman.”

Liz Koerner:
She made it in 1971 in the early days of the feminist movement.

Marge Engleman:
I was inspired by at the time we thought the women, the feminists, had burned their bras. They really never did. But it was inspired by them. And then about that same time the pill came out and the pill came in the format that you see in the field of blue. It seemed like they were symbols of women having more freedom. I was in Green Bay at the time, and there were a lot of positive reactions, but then, of course, there were people who thought that I was desecrating the flag.   

Liz Koerner:
This walleye, made out of concrete, also represents a period of time in Wisconsin history when emotions ran high.   

Liz Koerner:
During the late 1980s, protestors in northern Wisconsin confronted Native Americans at boat landings. The Indians were exercising their treaty rights to fish for walleye with spears. Greg Guthrie is a Native American who lives in Lac du Flambeau. He donated this artifact.

Greg Guthrie:
The idea was that these concrete walleyes would be planted in the lakes and Indian spearers would mistake that for a real walleye and spear the concrete walleye and break their spears. The problem with the concrete walleyes is they didn't move like the real walleyes moved, so they weren't very much of a real decoy.   

Liz Koerner:
The Odd Wisconsin exhibit has many more intriguing items on display, each with its own remarkable story. Kaplar is counting on curiosity to help connect visitors with their past.

Joe Kaplar:
It shapes the world we live in today. If you can get that in these stories, I think that's a great way to be accessible to history.   

Patty Loew:
Seems like there are plenty of Wisconsin oddities to go around. Since the exhibit first opened last year, 40% of the items have been switched out. For more information, just go to wpt.org, then click on "In Wisconsin" for a closer look. So far nearly 100,000 people have toured the Odd Wisconsin display. It will remain open through this summer.