I’ve now been to Mars Cheese Castle about n times. I pass its way often, and while I don’t always stop there, visits over 40 years have added up to n. Like Wisconsin itself, or Milwaukee, or a healthy number of other places.

After much of a day in Milwaukee, for the latest Doors Open Milwaukee event, we stopped at Mars, mere miles north of the Wisconsin-Illinois line on I-94. First thing, I decided to document the sticker situation at the base of the highway sign.

I don’t see you-know-who from a much larger chain of retail establishments whose mascot is known to dam streams and sue alleged lookalikes. There are no locations yet in Wisconsin, but he is waiting, biding his time.

At 80 feet, the sign is a story unto itself, with the Wisconsin legislature specially allowing the store to keep it when the whole complex had to be moved in 2011 to accommodate the expansion of the highway. By that time, 80 feet was too tall for a modern roadside sign, but Mars was grandfathered in. Could be that Wisconsin respects its ’50s roadside heritage.

Inside, the mouse is still around. I don’t know that he has a name. Maybe Mario Mouse, after the original owner of Mars Cheese Castle, one Mario Ventura Sr., a gas station owner who pivoted into cheese in 1957 after his gas station burned down. Pivoting into cheese is a thing you can do in Wisconsin. Eat Cheese or Die.

Tom recently sent me by email — out of the blue, coincidence or synchronicity? — a picture of us with the mouse from our ’22 trip around Lake Michigan. A favorite photo of us, he explained, and it is a good one.

Of course, I’d been there before, such as in ’15. The mouse seems to have moved since then.

Cheese hats and other extruded yellow shapes are for sale, along with edible cheese, sausage and other meat, candy, beer and many other comestibles, plus knickknacks, gimcracks and gewgaws galore.

Mars apparently has its own line of wine.

Lore associates mice with cheese – who’ll eat pretty much anything in your pantry – so why not wine? Another version of the mascot could be sprawled nearby, a wine bottle in his hand.