Sunday, April 3, 2005

Yooper roots run deep Marty Kovarik, one of the most prolific outdoor writers of the Upper Peninsula, stopped by my booth here at the Marquette Sports, Boat & RV Show to chat. Marty is originally from southeast Wisconsin, but he moved to the U.P. 20 years ago. He lives in Scandia, a short toot south of Marquette, just off Highway 41 on the way to Escanaba. To put it in a Wisconsin perspective, that would be like living in Ino or better yet, Oulu, since Oulu is off the main highway (U.S. 2) between Ashland and Iron River. Ino, by the way, is the little blip on U.S. 2 where Bayfield County E goes south toward Delta and a whole heck of a lot of good trout fishing. Ino is also the "Wood Tick Capital of the World," or it used to be. The Ino Bar used to host the annual Wood Tick Races each summer at the height of the season (when the ticks are big, bold and abundant). Winners and losers alike were unceremoniously popped at the end of the race. That was probably the only race in the world where all the participants are sacrificed as part of the victory celebration, but that's another story for another time... Anyway, Marty was telling me about a conversation he had with an old-timer, who told him "You ain't a Yooper." "Hell I ain't," Marty told him. I've been here 20 years, my kids were born here..." The old-timer stopped him right there and said, "That's the best you'll ever be [^] related to a Yooper." I had many similar encounters when I lived up in Bayfield County 30 years ago. People asked where I lived, and when I tried to explain, using road names, they'd just get confused, so I'd say something like "North out of town, over Polack Hill, left at Guski's and past Stance Komborski's place. The red house on the left of the dead-end. Only place on the left." "Oh, the Smolen Place," they would smile. "Why didn't you say so?" I didn't say so because Albert Smolen had died in 1948 and his widow sold the farm to Bill Bromberg in the late '60s, and I bought it from Bromberg. But as long as I lived there, and that was 15 years, if I said the old Smolen Place, everybody knew right where I meant. I hasd no hope of becoming a "local," but once I accepted that fact, I got along with everyone just fine. I became known as the guy who took out the phone line because once winter I felled a small maple that fell across the phone wire and snapped it. For years, whenever I went to vote at the Town Hall, Mrs. Maki, the town clerk, had no trouble finding me on the voter rolls. "You're the guy who took out the phone line," she would smile and mark me down as having voted. Most of those old-timers are gone now, so I don't know what the old Smolen Place is called today. It's been sold and resold and even subdivided in the past five years, but I'm hanging on to the 40 at the dead-end to keep all my options open. Oops! Time to get back to the Sports Show! Later... 9:32:43 AM    comment []

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