Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My wife is originally from the Fond du Lac area and I am from Beaver Dam so we are quite familiar with Fondy. I dont think anyone making their comments about Fondy considers all the folks there rude and inconsiderate! I will say that having lived there and raised in close proximity of Fond du Lac I believe we can put our two cents worth in. We know alot of individuals that are originally from Fond du Lac that feel somewhat the same as the I HATE FONDY post. I was not impressed with the city at all having lived there! I now hear from my brother in law how the gangs are beginning to infiltrate the area, the water problem is a major concern as are taxes and then the fact that there is not much going on for people to be involved in. I dont make these comments vindictively, just straightforward and honestly as I believe others have with their opinion of the city. My brother in law who worked at Mercury was treated just god awful terribly there and he says that Merc is more than likely on their way out of the city because the other outboard manufacturers are outperforming Merc on all levels! What will beocme of Fondy when they close? I am thinking ghost town. I know Giddings was sold to a foreign company awhile back and that tells me they could eventually be in trouble. I for one think there are more bad apples in Fondy than other cities I have lived in, and I am NOT singling anyone from there out! There are bad apples and negative people in every city, big or small! Its just the way it is in our ever changing society! Its just that after having lived in Fondy I personally would never move there again!
The reason you like the people is because you are a native and are accepted. We also don't live "high off the hog" by any means. After we pay our basic bills (mortgage, electric, water, food, etc.), there is little left. The income taxes in Wisconsin are quite high, so we don't see a whole lot of what my husband makes in the first place. And we certainly don't live in a fancy house by any means. In fact, it's actually kind of run down and not in a very nice neighborhood. And neither my husband nor I drive SUV's. We both drive well-used vans. Are you not bothered by the radium in the city water and the fact that they plan to blend it with the lake water to "remedy" the radium issue and then jack up the cost 50%? It also seems that there are an awful lot of sex offenders living in the community. With kids, that's scary!
Also, don't judge Minnesota by what I say. I have never had any problems with people being unfriendly there. Just the opposite! People go out of their way there to welcome outsiders. After reading the other posts on Fond du Lac, maybe you natives should start being friendly to those that move there from other places. You are the ones that give Fond du Lac a bad name by being so unfriendly! And maybe instead of sitting in your driveway or in a bar drinking beer, you should organize family and children oriented activities so people have something to do in that place!
Also, just to let you know, we lived for a while in South Carolina, and we had our share of being called Yankee, but we also made a lot of friends there. We felt more welcome there despite being called a Yankee than we have in the whole time we've lived in Fond du Lac!
Maybe I'm not the norm here, but I AM friendly and welcoming to everyone. It's unfortunate that some other Fond du Lac natives have jaded your opinion so deeply of this place which I proudly call home and happily raise my family in. I do have a daughter and yes, it's creepy about sex offenders, but watch the news...it's everywhere, not just Fond du Lac. Until someone that has some kind of pull in the system comes up with a better solution for those pigs, it's something everyone has to deal with. We just have to do our part as parents to protect our kids, teach them how to protect themselves, etc. NO matter where you live, you'll need to deal with that kind of thing.
Maybe without knowing it someday we'll bump into each other or you'll come across my mother who raised me to be who I am today or anyone else I know for that matter and you'll get to meet someone from Fond du Lac that is the opposite of what you've encountered thus far so that you can realize that what you've seen is not all there is.
Hi Proud Wisconsinite! I'm so happy to read that someone else has found the apparently limited bright spots of FDL! HaHaHa I'd love to know where these folks have lived in our city. Over the past 45 years, I have lived in several different locations in town and never had neighbors in their driveway drinking beer. I've also never heard of anyone in a run down shack paying $4,000 in taxes. Yikes! What about researching the place you plan to live before moving there? I feel so bad about having stumbled upon these comments that I would love to invite these people to my neighborhood for dinner just so they can see how awesome many, many residents here actually are. I'm one of those neighbors who welcomed the last new neighbors we had with a basket of homemade cookies. So we are out there - even in nasty old FDL!
Obviously, everyone loves their home town and if I had to move to a new location unwillingly, I'm sure I would have nothing but negative comments to make as well. And as for Minnesota, I just spent a week there and couldn't wait to get home. There were no red carpets rolled out for me! I am somebody who smiles at people walking past in the mall, on the street, etc. I was met with a blank stare more times than not. And don't get me started on the drivers. Holy cats - I felt like my life was in jeopardy. I'd much rather travel Hwy. 41 to get to Milwaukee or Appleton - which I do regularly - than travel the freeways in and around the area I was visiting. And I was not in Minneapolis or St. Paul!
So anyway, hello fellow Fondy lover. Life is good and bad no matter where you go - just make the most of it and smile!
Hello everyone. I dont want to get involved in this conflict, but i got interested and decided to see the Wisconsin forum. Fondefender i have to agree with you. Like you said life has its goods and its bads no matter where you go. Every state has its problems and its bad areas. At least Wisconsin is not like Michigan. You can always look at it that way.
I take it that Fond du Lac might not be the best place to live but i have heard many good things about Wisconsin. Some neighbors that live down the street from me are from Milwaukee and they say how nice Wisconsin was. Im not here to get involved in this conflict, but i will say every single state out there has its problems.
I would agree that every place has problems, but it depends on what the problems are and what you are willing to live with. I don't know if the two that are native to Fond du Lac are living in a teetotaler neighborhood, but just about everyone in our neighborhood sits around drinking beer outside constantly. It's also pretty disturbing to take our kids to the supposed "family event" called Walleye Weekend and have to leave by about 2 p.m. due the excessive amount of drinking. My daughter had a soccer game that morning over there which we took her to, and after that, her and her little brother wanted to stay for the kid events (the inflatables, etc.). We weren't there very long, and it seemed like a lot of the adults standing around that area were drinking or were drunk and everyone was smoking around the kids, dropping cigarette butts all over the place where little kids were playing. Granted my youngest is almost seven and is out of the stage of picking up everything, but there were little kids picking up cigarette butts. We ended up leaving. In our hometown in MN, they had family events every two weeks or at least once a month in the winter, more often in the summer, where NO ONE drinks and smoking is not allowed around the kids. Did you read the earlier post about the person's sister who moved out of WI due to the "excessive alcohol consumption (beer)"? Obviously, it's an issue.
Also, other than sports, what is there for kids to do there? They closed Toys R Us and Loads of Fun which were about the only thing for kids to do inside that isn't sports oriented. The new McDonald's playland is pretty small and always very crowded. Why can't the Forest Mall sponsor some family events or kid activities especially in the winter? All the places we have lived including our hometown had a mall that sponsored family/kid events regularly. It seems that most of the activities geared towards kids are sports oriented. What if your kids aren't interested in sports? The activities are very limited.
Also, we've never lived in a place that did not allow trick or treating on Halloween. We ended up driving to Brownsville just so the kids could go trick or treating on Halloween. We found out later that in Fond du Lac, there was trick or treating from 3-5 on a different day than Halloween. Then the rest of the time was geared towards adult costume parties in the bars. Halloween is mostly a KIDS' holiday. It's not supposed to be another excuse for adults to get drunk in the bars.
I don't know where you two live in FDL, but in the neighborhood we live in, not one single person has ever said "hello" to any of us. They act like we don't exist unless you count the very rude person a block away who screamed at me and my 6-year-old son for riding bikes on the sidewalk. We were riding on the sidewalk because he is too little to ride in the street and the very rude neighbor to the back of us who screamed at my 9-year-old and her one and only friend for giggling in the backyard, not very loudly either.
I also notice that you don't address the city water problem. For one thing, it tastes terrible, and I notice that most people at the grocery store buy jugs of bottled water. If I had known that we were moving to a city that allows its residents to drink water laced with radium, I would have told my husband to turn down the job offer that got us there. And the solution is NOT to try to dilute it with lake water that has agricultural and industrial run-off in it. The ONLY solution is to get the radium out of the water altogether. And the cost of that water is ridiculous. I have had it confirmed personally by a city official there that when they do add the lake water to the city water, they DO plan to up everybody's bill by 50%. Ridiculous!
Also I think it is very presumptuous of the school officials to not have bussing to the high school and assuming that the kids have tons of friends and can catch a ride. My son knows no one, is treated like he's invisible at school, does not drive and even if he did, would not be allowed to take the car anyway. Paying $9 or $10 a week for him to ride the city bus back and forth to school is too expensive. I have two elementary children who I need to personally get to school, so I don't have time to take him clear across town to the high school. Despite what you say about the drivers, there have been too many reports in the Reporter in the last year of kids getting nailed by cars while riding bikes, so I would totally not feel safe letting him ride his bike to school. This issue has caused immense stress for our family, as well as making it very difficult for him to get much needed tutoring after school or to try to join anything to try and make friends. He is currently begging his grandmother to let him live with her, so he doesn't have to deal with that again this year.
As I said before, to each his own. If you two like it there so much, great, but if you read the other posts of people who have lived there or have knowledge of the area, it seems like there are more people who don't like it than like it. No job or salary is worth somewhere where you are uncomfortable and the problems far outweigh the good points. Try putting yourself in an outsider's shoes and see if you would like to live with the above issues and the issues I addressed in earlier posts. Would you want to live somewhere where not one of your neighbors ever says "hello" and treats you and your family like non-identities? Would you want to live somewhere where bars, drinking and watching sports is the main things to do if you have no interest in any of those things? I don't think so.
I'm new to this forum so I've been scanning all the posts. I have to say, great forum with lots of people offering useful and valid information. Thank you for that. As for this IHATEFONDDULAC person - get a life. You have way too much time on your hands and apparently are frequenting drinking establishments far too often. A good friend of mine and several relatives live in FDL and I've never heard of such antics taking place as you have described. Did you know that in FDL - and many other cities in Wisconsin - you cannot smoke in restaurants, on the grounds of county buildings, hospitals - need I go on? Please refrain from all the bashing and offer up some useful information. We get it - you hate Fond du Lac with a passion. Boo hoo, do some investigating and perhaps you'll end up actually enjoying yourself every once and again - and so will your "poor" children! Realize what your role is in all of your complaining - revelations can be quite insightful!!!!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
More On Fondy
