WE GENERALLY JOKE ABOUT THE CHEDDAR CURTAIN.

In Wisconsin, though, there are people who would like to raise the Sturgeon Bay drawbridge.

Tension rose last week as the local health department reported the first two COVID-19 cases in Door County; both patients are local residents who had traveled recently. At the same time, more out-of-state license plates have been spotted, Lienau said. And yes, many of those plates are from Illinois. The sheriff’s office has fielded calls from people who want the bridges raised (they won’t be). Notes have been left on cars, and out-of-towners have been confronted in grocery stores.

On the Door County Vacationers Facebook page, spats have broken out, where at least one local member joined the page purely to get a sense of how many out-of-towners were planning to come up.

“The only tourists who surprise me are the ones who don’t act like complete sociopaths when they come up here,” wrote Joshua Olson, a Sturgeon Bay nursing student. “Otherwise, their entitlement and disregard for others is the norm.”

That sort of talk used to be good fun, oh, those F'n Illinois B*****ds, clogging our ski slopes, disregarding the no wake buoys, hitting on our girlfriends at the bar.

It could get real.

This is a conversation playing out in resort destinations nationwide: in Cape Cod and the islands in Massachusetts; in the Catskills and the Hamptons in New York; in the Florida Keys, where state troopers have set up highway checkpoints to verify drivers’ residency. The Wall Street Journal has reported on the value of vacation homes in helping to isolate sick or potentially vulnerable family members.

Resort towns have responded by shutting down short-term rentals and reiterating nonessential travel bans. Coastal towns in Michigan likewise are urging would-be travelers to stay home.

If I recall correctly, the bridges linking Door County east of the canal to the rest of the state are movable to permit the movement of shipping, including the military's ships being erected at the shipyard on the east bank. Easier to implement that closure than Rhode Island's attempt to exclude New Yorkers.  Problem is, the only thing worse than F*I*Bs congesting the waterways and buying the beers is no F*I*Bs to spend money.