If you’re going to go in pursuit of cheesiness, what better place than Wisconsin?

I’m not talking about cheddar or gouda or even curds. I’m talking about a whole different kind of cheesy; it’s defined as “lame” or “corny” (cheese corn?).

I love cheesy tourist attractions. I guess it helps me stay in touch with my inner child or something, or maybe I’m just a colossal bore. I’m the kind of guy who, if I had time, would take a detour off the interstate to peruse somebody’s World’s Largest Ball of Twine or Biggest Pile of Bat Guano.

So when Karon and I made plans to spend the Independence Day weekend with some good friends in Wisconsin, I told them they had to do one thing for me. I asked them to find the cheesiest tourist attraction in the Wisconsin Dells. They live nearby in Reedsburg, so it’s a short drive to tourist heaven (or hell, depending on how you look at it).

If you’ve never been to the Wisconsin Dells, it’s not necessarily easy to describe accurately. I want to say something snarky, like “the Wisconsin Dells is a place for people who find Branson, Mo., too sophisticated and cosmopolitan,” but that’s unfair; I’ve never been to Branson, so I can’t make the comparison, and in addition to the cheese the Dells and its surrounding area have some really great restaurants, some gorgeous surroundings and some really cool attractions (one night we even went to an outdoor theater and saw a very good production of “The Taming of the Shrew”). Still, there are attractions in the Dells that are a bit light on tastefulness.

My friends Steve and Nancy are great people and absolutely smashing hosts so they went beyond my expectations. They found two cheesy tourist attractions. They came up with the first on their own, with the help of the high school AP English class that Nancy teaches, but a friend of theirs came up with a second suggestion.

Steve and Nancy’s idea was Top Secret. It’s basically an old-fashioned funhouse, with a twist. The concept is that somehow, the White House disappeared and reappeared when it crashed out of the sky and into the Dells. The outside of the place is a not-quite-life-size simulacrum of the White House, upside down and looking like, well, it had fallen from the sky. When you go inside, there are various replicas of White House rooms, including the Oval Office, with all of the furniture attached to the ceiling and the paintings upside down. There also are various other fun-house features, like ink-black passageways and one of those walkways surrounded by a spinning cylinder. It’s a guided tour, thank God, because some of those tunnels were a bit hard to navigate.

What makes it one of the great monuments to cheesy is the sheer illogic of the thing. Why would the White House crash into the Wisconsin Dells? Why is one room devoted to aliens? Why, in the press conference room, is there a magazine on the upside-down podium? Why does one room contain a mummy?

But to ask such questions is to be merely picayune. No, one doesn’t explain cheese, one merely savors it.

I enjoyed Top Secret, but the other place took the title hands-down for the most tasteless tourist attraction it’s ever been my privilege to see. It was the Museum of Historic Torture Devices.

Located downtown in the Dells – across from a wedding chapel, which is highly amusing to anyone who’s ever been divorced – it’s a small building crammed with replicas of just about every torture device you’ve ever heard of and a few you probably haven’t, unless you have a very interesting private life. It was actually pretty informative, but it’s not something you’d like to tour after, say, eating a heavy meal. It certainly gives you an appreciation for the ingenuity our forefathers put into finding ways to make people suffer. Some of these guys had, shall we say, issues. If you don’t believe me, go on the Internet and look up “Judas chair.”

Needless to say, I bought a T-shirt. I’m going to wear it on the first day I TA a writing class this fall.

You may ask, “Why in the name of all that’s holy would anybody go into places like that?” (and I’m talking about both attractions). I’m a fairly sophisticated guy; I like art museums and symphonies and have fairly wide-ranging tastes.

But what gives me a huge kick from places like the Wisconsin Dells is that they are so quintessentially American. They are everything this country is, bad and good – loud, obnoxious, tasteless, friendly, exciting, illogical and somehow oddly charming, if ultimately inexplicable. When we drove by Top Secret, the first thing I thought was, “How do you look at a space in your downtown and say to yourself, ‘Hey, that would be a great place to build an upside-down, ruined replica of the White House with a funhouse inside’?” I can understand why people might build overpriced condos or something, but building a ruined building is something only an American would do.

Other countries have their own styles of cheesy, but in America, it’s so brazen. I mean, where else in the world could you get married, have a cold beer and then go examine an iron maiden, all within a space of half a block? Being a graduate student, I’m thinking there could be one hell of a sociological study done there, but then, like I said – it’s not to be explained, but simply enjoyed.

Of course, I’ll admit not everybody enjoys looking at a replica of the rack and reading a description of what it would do to its victims. I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t, but hey, there’s no accounting for taste.