One Community with a State Line that Really Doesn't Matter

The Marinette-Menominee area may be the center of our world, but that's not the case for someone born, say, in Boston, Mass., or Fresno, Cal.

So when I was in college in Madison and I told someone from afar that I was from Marinette-Menominee, they asked me, "What's that?"

My reply was always the same: "It's two cities in two states, but really it's one big community."

I still believe that. In fact, I believe that more than ever. I know it to be a fact. So do a lot of other people.

That's what I was surprised a few weeks back when someone apologized to me for something happening on one side of the river and not the other. I didn't see a need for an apology, just because my house happens to be in Marinette.

What's good for one city is good for another. No one - well, no one who gets it - is keeping tabs on which city scores more new residents or more new jobs. For many years, people traveled across the state line to work, go to school, date, and marry. In fact, that's how I came to consider both cities my home town: My parents came from either side, went to Our Lady of Lourdes, and raised their four children in both states at one time or another.

I would be hard pressed to choose sides. In fact, I would not. I could not. But I have to live somewhere and my husband (a Menominee native like me) happened to own a home on the Wisconsin side.

The M&M Game is just two months away. Yes, this long-standing rivalry between Marinette and Menominee high schools is a lot of fun, and even for a Catholic Central alum like me, there's excitement in the air during M&M Week. It's one week out of the year.

Cheer for your team. Fight like crazy. But when something good happens on the other side of the river, cheer for that, too.

Because when one city wins, so does the other.