The Do’s and Don’ts of Door County

I am in the process of writing a book. Or maybe I’m collaborating on a book. Or maybe I am compiling a book. Whatever the appropriate appellation, I am in the process of preparing a manuscript. Thus far, no publisher has expressed any interest whatsoever in this book and my own best estimates optimistically place projected sales in the neighborhood of 57. I am undeterred, nonetheless.

Before I tantalize you with a sampling from this work in progress, I should provide just a little bit of background.

In 1981 a small paperback book of cartoons by Simon Bond swept across the country. Everyone either loved or hated the book. It was entitled 101 Uses for a Dead Cat. I happen to like cats, but I still liked Bond’s completely irreverent humor. The success of this book gave rise to innumerable books entitled “101…” in the years that followed, but Bond’s book remains the “one that started it all.”

One of the books that followed in this tradition was the locally popular 101 Things to Do in Door County by Richard Rusnack and Richard Rusnack II. Targeting summer visitors, this book has gone through several revisions during its years in print and has remained popular throughout its history. Unlike, Bond’s book, the Rusnacks’ volume is simply words, without illustrations of any kind, offering insights and tips of places and items of interest on the peninsula and was not intended as a humorous piece at all.

So, I started thinking about combining elements of these two books (sans cats) and injecting some of the various observations I have made during my 41 years visiting or living in Door County. The working title of my manuscript is 101 Things Not to Do in Door County. Like the Rusnacks’ book, the target audience will be summer visitors (though my projected sales figure of 57 copies includes mostly friends and family, all of whom live on the peninsula throughout the year – in other words, I probably won’t sell a single copy to my target audience). And like 101 Things to Do in Door County, my book will provide useful tips to those who come to the county – things they won’t find in any visitor bureau publication or other brochure. Indeed, in many ways, my own, 101 Things Not to Do in Door County could well be considered a companion volume to the Rusnacks’ successful title.

And because I admired the illustrations in Simon Bond’s book, I’d like my own book to be illustrated. I have sent a query letter to Maira Kalman, of New Yorker fame, but have yet to hear if she is interested in the project.

So, without further exposition, here are some samples from my book-in-progress, 101 Things Not to Do in Door County, which will probably never appear in a bookstore near you.

• Don’t ask a local “What do you do in the winter up here?” Pick any day in January, February, or March and come find out for yourself.

• If it rains, sleets, hails, snows, turns bitterly cold, becomes unbearably humid and hot, or any other freak occurrence of nature happens during your stay, don’t blame it on the local populace or complain to them about how your vacation is being ruined. If any Door County shop owner, bartender, restaurant manager, waitress, lifeguard, auto mechanic, store owner, bank teller, etc. could do anything whatsoever about the weather they would not be in Door County trying to earn a full year’s salary in five months, and then struggling to stay afloat for the next seven months.

• Don’t complain about how Door County is changing. The entire corridor from Evanston, Illinois to South Milwaukee, Wisconsin is wall-to-wall condominiums/townhouses and strip malls. Door County residents may not be perfect in our land use planning, but we are way better at it than you are!

• Whether you live in a big city, small city, or a rural community – if you don’t do any parallel parking at home you cannot suddenly presume that you are expert enough at the maneuver to attempt it in front of the Bayside Tavern in downtown Fish Creek on the Fourth of July weekend. You are not that good!

• Don’t ever complain that the locals have boosted the prices on household staples like food and gasoline just to fleece you during the busy summer season. No matter what you have heard to the contrary, the locals pay the exact same prices that you pay; only they pay them every day throughout the year. Under normal circumstances delivery routes are loops, with a truck leaving the distribution center and making stops so that the driver has only a short trip back to the center with an empty truck. Door County, however, is a peninsula and peninsulas are dead ends. So when the gas delivery truck, for example, drives up to Door County (through all the summer traffic) to make deliveries, the truck drives back (through all the summer traffic) to the distribution center empty. Someone has to pay for that driver’s time. Guess who?

So there you have a sampling of my work in progress, folks. And at this point you probably have a clearer understanding of why my projections only forecast 57 sales (you may even consider that figure optimistic). Before I close this column, however, I’ll toss in one more on a subject that regular readers know is quite close to my heart.

Do not – under any circumstances – bring your dog on vacation. Dogs are territorial creatures and their territory is your house, your yard, your block, or maybe the lot down the street. Your dog likes its territory. It likes the sites, smells, and sounds in its territory. Your dog’s territory is not a motel room, the sidewalks of downtown Egg Harbor, any of the Door County villages’ beaches, etc. These are filled with unfamiliar sites, smells, and sounds. Your dog thinks these are bad. Listen to your dog. Hire a dog-sitter.