The Story of Madison, Wisconsin will be written in short chapters, years from now between the bigger stories that serve as the main attraction. The story will run something like this.
People came here out of courage and determination, people who had nothing much to lose and a great deal to gain or so they hoped if they worked and prayed very hard and kept something back for their children. They displaced a native people who lived amid the trees and lakes and buried their dead for thousands of years without much devastation, because after all, those indigenous folk knew nothing of engineering or cross cut saws and steam engines or guns.
It did not take long for civilization to take hold and it will not take long for civilization to pay for what it has taken.
Six years ago an eleven-year-old girl died after being shot in the head by a stranger in a passing car in Madison. The shooter did not act alone. Two others rode in the same car and eventually, after long investigation, those three young men were convicted and sent to prison. They are there now. The girl who died would be a middle aged woman by the time two of those men are released, unless they are paroled, and she would still be in her twenties upon release of the third culprit because he got a much lighter sentence, but of course she’s dead now so none of that matters.
What matters is the fourth man. He didn’t ride in the car, but after six years of investigation that fourth man is charged with racketeering and conspiracy to deliver over 10,000 grams of THC or tetrahydrocannabinol that is processed marijuana which he allegedly kept in a storage facility which got robbed; so the shootings, nineteen of them between June and August of 2020 which included the death of the child and a case of domestic arson were all related to what accomplices of the fourth man testified were acts of revenge for which they hoped to be rewarded by the fourth man for his drug losses.
Remember the verdant wilderness of what became Madison? Remember the hopes and dreams and faith of the people who came later?
After establishing a drug network that reportedly involved multiple trips between Madison and the West Coast to spend an estimated $1 million in cash for drugs to be distributed out of the Capitol of Wisconsin, after six years of investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies, the fourth man appeared in court a few days ago and walked out on signature bond.
He paid nothing.
Even those three guys in prison must wonder how that happened.
They must wonder about the unspoiled wilderness and the lakes and the trees and the sky and the hopes and the dreams of those who came before and maybe they wonder with the rest of us what the hell went wrong.