Burnt Underbelly
by Michael Seidel

One of the most exciting aspects of living in Wisconsin is that the olfactory stifling winter always gives way to an intensified appreciation of summer's infinite smells. Freshly mown lawn. Lilacs. Coconut sunscreen. And, of course, meat. Charcoal is ignited every night up and down city and suburban streets — packages are unwrapped and freed raw slabs are tossed onto the grill with a sizzle. You can't escape the far-reaching allure of an active grill. It peppers the air for what seems like miles, creeping in even through windows kept shut to trap in conditioned air. It's one of those situations that can only be expressed through cliche: your mouth just waters.

Naturally, many things get charred — fish, fowl, the loins of pig and lamb; our gluttony, after all, is not exclusionary — but the most overwhelmingly popular and fervently savored is bratwurst. Hands up, hands down, hands all around — hands, hands, hands greedily reaching out, wanting eagerly to wrap around a tube of, well, a tube of question-marked mush.

Its popularity is the only thing about bratwurst that isn't a mystery. There's the tang of spices, intensified by the smoke and occasional tickle of a flame, creating a smell that captures your attention like a tornado test alarm going off in the distance. There's the ungodly amounts fat, the palpable feeling of arteries hardening with each breath between bites. It's sin in a casing, and impossible to resist.

Bratwurst is cultural glue. It, along with beer, corn on the cob and slices of cheddar, define what it is to be a Wisconsinite. The grilling spurs fond reminiscences of nightly family reunions, sweltering humidity and being stuffed to the proverbial gills. One whiff and even the most ardent vegan will start salivating. I've seen it happen.

We know we like it, but what we don't know is how it comes about. Notions abound and it seems so primordially simple: a few types of meat, a few spices and voila! But what meats? What spices? Our knowledge falters when it comes to the specifics. And that's precisely the problem.

The headquarters of Klement's Sausage Co., Inc., purveyor of some damn fine brats, is located in the Milwaukee's Bayview neighborhood, an area experiencing the first tremors of gentrification. By and large, the draws of the area are cheap rent, one large park, sunny cafes and most perhaps importantly, lots of taverns. Through the years, however, industrialism cast a very long shadow across the neighborhood — a fog seems to hang constantly in the air, hugging the buildings and wreaking pot-holed havoc on the streets.

Klement's is on Lincoln Avenue, right off Kinnickinnic Avenue, a street that cuts through the brunt of the Bayview and is considered the area's main drag. It stands out as a squat, boxy, white eyesore amongst the block's brick-fronted flats, bars and corner stores. Its incongruous exterior should act as a scentless, silent indication that something horribly amiss is taking place within — actions morally reprehensible to even the most soulless among us. But it's easy to cast aside judgement when a cheery red sign bearing a brand name synonymous with delicious, delicious brats looms high above the building. Just slightest consideration of those nine letters erases all better judgment, and set your buds a-flowin'.

But when night strikes, reality sets in as Bayview homes within a mile radius of the factory are assaulted by the brutally ripe smell of brats being processed. There's nothing savory about it. It's absolutely repugnant — it's the smell of death: a flood raising a graveyard of corpses out of their burial spots, scattering them, and leaving them to a slow, humid rot. It's a sausage holocaust. This isn't flippancy or exaggeration. The smell is unequivocally vile.

And if the whiffable atrocities of brat processing aren't bad enough, envision this: workers in white coveralls and matching surgical masks unloading armloads of unmarked boxes from the factory into the trash bins out back. It's one of the scenarios you can never figure out, but can only witness in a state rapt curiosity. You imagine boxed bits, the stretches of veins and bile that are too disgusting even for bratwurst. You imagine spoiled or misshapen product — fleshy, salmonella-ridden dead letters. You imagine until you can't imagine anymore and run off to the john, green as a spinach leaf.

Then you lose your appetite and swear to go vegetarian. What choice do you have? None. The choice makes itself. A stain of abjection has been cast across your idealized notions of brats as a component of summer fun, and you couldn't go back even if you wanted to.

This is Wisconsin, it's summer. Keep this in mind. Whatever you do, keep this in mind.

A call comes in, an invite. Some friends are having a barbecue. Bring a twelver of PBR and a dish to pass. The grill is already going the time you get there. You hear that old familiar sizzle and, oh, there's that smell. That one that you swore you'd never give into again. But along comes a wave of nostalgia — it topples your reserve. Next thing you know, you're reaching for the ketchup.

E-mail Michael Seidel at michael@alsatia.net.

— graphic by Alison Paddock (arpdesigns@hotmail.com)