Oshkosh Beer: December 2024

The City of Oshkosh was just 15 years old when it was inducted into the ranks of nation’s most wicked cities. The special status wasn’t entirely unearned. But the town’s savage renown became so thoroughly inflated that some accused Oshkosh of being nothing but a fevered myth. It all started as a joke.

Fun with the boys, the girls, a cop, and a horse in Oshkosh; circa 1892.

A Little Fun
Oshkosh stumbled onto the world stage in 1868. The introduction was provided by the Fond du Lac Commonwealth. The newspaper published a gory story painting Oshkosh as gleefully awash in liquor and violence. I’ve included the full text of the original story at the end of this post. A summation will do for now.

It goes like this: A do-gooder minister heads to Oshkosh for some soul-saving. As he approaches the city, he encounters a series of drunken, battered men. One of them carries pieces of chewed-off flesh in his pocket. The minister asks the men for an explanation. Each replies that he has been up in Oshkosh, “having a little fun with the boys." The demoralized minister abandons his mission, concluding that Oshkosh cannot be saved.

Of course, not a word of this was true.

The Fond du Lac Commonwealth was a flimsy, four-page weekly scrounging for content to wrap around the advertisements that were the paper’s primary source of revenue. They came up short for the February 19, 1868 edition. Edward McGlachlin, city editor and printer of the Commonwealth, dashed off a piece of filler he titled Having a Little Fun With the Boys. His 500 words of bullshit not only filled the hole, it pandered to the envy Fond du Lac folks had developed for Oshkosh.

Edward McGlachlin

In the late 1860s, Fond du Lac was stagnating after two decades of growth. Meanwhile, Oshkosh was ascending, on its way to becoming Wisconsin’s Second City after Milwaukee. McGlachlin’s story consoled his readers that their town was at least morally superior to a northern neighbor grown superior in every other respect.

Later, McGlachlin recalled thinking that the piece was hardly worth publishing. But he needed to fill that empty space. He never dreamed his thrown-together fiction would become the cheap shot heard ‘round the world. Fun With the Boys became the most widely distributed text concerning Oshkosh ever published. McGlachlin accidentally created an urban legend.

Making a Myth
There were few readers of the Commonwealth outside of Fond du Lac. But those outsiders tended to be other newspaper editors fishing for extra content to flesh out their papers. One of them worked for the widely read New York City Dispatch. The Dispatch reprinted McGlachlin’s entire tale in the “Weekly Gossip” section of its Sunday, April 5th edition. There was no stopping it after that.

By the end of May, the story had appeared in dozens of eastern newspapers and rebounded westward. As it traveled, it changed. McGlachlin’s story mutated – like the off-color joke The Aristocrats – with each teller putting another slanderous spin on the yarn. The theme, however, remained the same: a minister on his way to Oshkosh gets spooked after hearing of the debauchery festering there.

Like a contagion, the story continued to spread. It sailed over the Atlantic, landed in London, and kept going. Fun with the boys in Oshkosh turned into a multinational catchphrase for boorish behavior. As a writer for the Milwaukee Sentinel observed, “There may be back towns in China and a few dark spots in Africa where the inhabitants haven't heard the remark, but I doubt it.”

Fun with the boys, all ages.

Oshkosh, with a population of less than 13,000, had become perhaps the best-known, most written-about small city in the world. And the myth-making was just getting started. Other newspaper writers followed McGlachlin’s lead. If the need to fill space arose, they’d concoct a fantastic story, set it in Oshkosh, and send it to the printer. Even the origin of the city’s name was reimagined, born in a bar where drunken orders for “hot scotch” were slurred into Oshkosh.

By 1877, the reported outrages committed in Oshkosh had become so numerous and outlandish that the New York Times questioned if there even was such a place.

The unthinking majority of the public, of course, believe that Oshkosh has an actual existence, and bona fide inhabitants. There are those, however, who not only look upon Oshkosh as intrinsically improbable, but who insist that altogether too many things happen in that alleged town… The very fact that a vast quantity of extraordinary things are constantly said by unscrupulous newspapers to have happened in Oshkosh is extremely suspicious. Why should that unseen Wisconsin town have almost a monopoly of remarkable events?
– New York Times, July 10, 1877.

Tough Love
For the most part, Oshkosh embraced the freakish publicity. McGlachlin’s myth and its rough-hewn mystique were adopted as part of the city’s identity. The phrase “fun with the boys” was soon popping up all over town in advertisements and in the ever-plentiful newspaper stories about Oshkosh saloons and the antics of their patrons.

It sometimes seemed as if the city was doing all it could to live up to – or down to, depending on one’s appetite for fun – the reputation that was thrust upon it. When Oshkosh wasn’t literally on fire, it burned with horrid stories that made McGlachlin’s fiction sound entirely plausible. After reports began circulating in 1871 that Oshkosh was home to a celebrated rat pit, newspapers throughout the state once again lit the “fun with the boys” torch.

The “boys” at Oshkosh are having a great deal of what they call “fun” at the rat-pit there. They had an orgie last Saturday evening, and probably think it’s a good way to get ready for Sunday.
– Milwaukee Daily News, February 17, 1871

Rat baiting in the 1870s.

Edward McGlachlin suffered no retribution for his deathless jape. He was regretful, nonetheless, saying the story was meant only as a “take-off” and that he would take it back if he could. Clearly, there was no need for remorse. Three years after the publication of Fun With the Boys, McGlachlin moved to Oshkosh to work for the Daily Northwestern.

But the jokes were wearing thin for some of McGlachlin’s earnest colleagues. In 1877, the Daily Northwestern ran a po-faced piece saying it was time to “fix Oshkosh in the eyes of the people of the whole country as the the home of virtue, enterprise, wealth, eloquence and beauty.” The invocation was ignored. Meanwhile, the notorious “Bad Man” Fred Zielke and his posse of prostitutes were setting up a new dive on South Main Street after a two-year hiatus. A panting Northwestern reporter called it “the toughest hole on the south side.” Reputation rehabilitation projects would have to wait.

The following year, George Lampard, a Main Street music store owner, set the city’s sordid fame to music. His score for “Fun with the Boys March” was published by a Chicago sheet-music house and became an immediate hit. It was meant to be played loud. “The music in melody and harmony is stirring and has a fullness of volume which renders it very desirable,” one critic wrote. “The name is a popular one, and the march promises to have a big run.”

Living the Dream
Fun with the boys grew so deeply embedded in the Oshkosh psyche that people here forgot where it came from. It had become a feature of the place, like the weather or the river. As a new century approached, a younger generation began asking questions about where this all began. There were enough old-timers around to point them in the right direction.

In 1896, Edward McGlachlin, then living in Stevens Point, was called back to Oshkosh to fill in the details. He was as contrite as ever for the “mischief” he created. His regret remained unrequited. McGlachlin wrote a story for the Northwestern re-telling his side of the tall tale. His update set off another round of Oshkosh fables. McGlachlin Oshkosh fantasy was hardening into folklore. Taking stock in 1901, the New York Times observed that “Oshkosh, Wis., is one of the most advertised places in the world.”

The old meets the new, 1896.

McGlachlin scratched out his fever dream of Oshkosh 156 years ago. The myth endures. Every so often, Oshkosh fun stumbles back into the national news: the 1974 St. Patrick’s Day riot, the 1989 beer riot, the May 13, 2020 rush back into the bars amidst the Covid debacle. And then there’s the annual listing of Oshkosh among the drunkest cities in America. Most folks here have a healthy appreciation for our spirited lore.

Main Street Oshkosh, late March 2020.

Like any good folktale, McGlachlin’s fable burrowed so deep that its influence lingers without having to be repeatedly retold. It’s been 25 years since the last publication of the story. It’s time to tell it again…

Countless interpretations and variations of Having a Little Fun With the Boys have been circulated over the years. Here’s Edward McGlachlin’s original text, as it appeared in column seven on the front page of the February 19, 1868 edition of the Fond du Lac Commonwealth.

Having a Little Fun With the Boys

We have recently heard a good story – good only as it represents the moral condition of Oshkosh society.

A minister from a neighboring town started to go over there one day last week, on a kind of missionary enterprise. He drove his own team and when within about six miles of the end of his journey met a man limping along, with blood running down one side of his face.

The minister asked him if that was the road to Oshkosh. "Yes, you are on the right road. I just came from there; I've been up there having a little fun with the boys."

About two miles further on he met another man, one arm in a sling, one eye badly bunged, and his clothing in a badly dilapidated condition

"How far is it to Oshkosh?" asked the minister.

"Only (h-i-c) five m-miles," answered the pitiable object. "Oshkosh is a live town; I've just been up there having a little fun with the boys."

With a sad heart the minister drove on, falling into a reverie on the depravity of man in general and the Oshkoshians in particular, when he suddenly came upon a man sitting by the side of the road. One leg was sprained, one ear had been bitten off, and, seated by the side of a puddle of water, he was seeking relief by bathing the parts affected.

The minister was perfectly awe-struck. Stopping his horse, he inquired of the man what terrible accident had befallen him.

"Oh, not any, at all," faintly responded the bleeding wreck. "I have only just been up to Oshkosh, having a little fun with the boys."

"I suppose you mean by that that you have been engaged in some brutalizing fight," said the minister.

"Yes," said the man. "I have heard that’s what they call it down at Fond du Lac, where they are civilized, but they don't call it by that name up at Oshkosh. There they call it having a little fun with the boys."

"What do you suppose your wife will say when she sees you?" asked the reverend gentleman.

At this the man looked up with a sardonic smile. Putting his remaining well hand into a pocket, he pulled out a piece of nose, a large lock of hair, to which a part of the scalp was attached, and a piece of flesh he had bitten from the cheek of his opponent, and holding them out for the minister's inspection, growled out, "There, what do you suppose his wife will say when she sees him?"

This was a squelcher. As anxious as the minister was to overcome sin and do good, he was not yet prepared to invade the devil's stronghold, and turning around, he returned home.

The next time he starts on a missionary enterprise to the frontier town of Oshkosh, he will take good care not to go alone. He likes a little fun now and then, but he don't care about having it “with the boys.”

Coda
I don’t remember when I began collecting Fun With the Boys tales, but I do recall the first time I heard it. On January 12, 2005, Jim Metz, a former editor at the Oshkosh Northwestern, told the story as part of a talk he gave at the Grand Opera House. I found out later that Metz had an abiding love for the story. During his time at the Northwestern, he re-published it three times and referenced it often in the newspaper and in books he wrote. For me the video below is an absolute treat. It’s from that night in 2005 when Metz shared his version of Fun With the Boys at the Grand Opera House.