Upon crossing the Mackinac Bridge onto the UP, one enters the picturesque village of St. Ignace, where seemingly every other ramshackle store featured a hand-painted sign advertising in large letters, “PASTIES”. I couldn’t help but wonder how many strip clubs there could possibly be in the UP to support all the pasty establishments. But after a diligent, extended search failed to turn up a single such club – and I looked hard, selflessly willing to delay arrival at my ultimate destination in the spirit of rigorous academic inquiry – I decided that perhaps the UP was home to a huge pasties manufactory and wholesale distribution center, much the way Castroville in California supplies the world with artichokes.
It further occurred to me that perhaps the various pasty establishments had photographs of their offerings being worn? Perhaps even live models! I veered back onto the road – still possessed of the aforementioned spirit of disinterested inquiry - and decided to pose as the owner of a chain of strip joints in need of lots of pasties, and go check out the wares.
Imagine my surprise to learn that in Yooper parlance pasties are not like those in the first picture but rather foodstuffs as in the second one. They were created to be eaten for lunch by Cornish miners but their appeal has apparently spread, since I didn't meet a single Cornish miner during my entire stay on the UP.
Having - with some admitted disappointment - gotten to the bottom of the pasty puzzle, I continued on. The initial part of my trip across and upward through the UP took me along the northern shore of Lake Michigan. It was a warm, sunny day (the last such day I would see) and the lake was almost as blue as the Caribbean.
The Driggs River crosses route 28 somewhere between Seney and Shingleton and I intended to stop and commune, or perhaps even do a little pre-arrival fishing there. My host-to-be, the Amazing Woody, had assured me that it was marked with a sign. But although I reëxamined the map quite a few times, and drove back and forth along a ten mile stretch of route 28, I never did find a sign identifying it. This was mystifying since I slowed at every small bridge and saw signs for, among other notable bodies of water, “Duffy’s Creek”, “Ya, Sure, Brook”, “Busta’s Trickle”, and “Clyde’s Mud Puddle”…but no Driggs. Perhaps the explanation is that anyone but a “troll” (Yooper-humor-speak for anyone who lives “below the bridge” – get it?) could find the Driggs without assistance, but Clyde’s Mud Puddle would be otherwise easily missed by even the most astute cognoscenti of UP high-lights. At one point I came upon a decent size, if somewhat muddy stream about where I reckoned the Driggs ought to be and followed a logging road along it for a way until I found myself axle deep in good, wet, clingy UP clay and figured I’d better try and get out of there, so my only lasting reminder of the Driggs, if such indeed it was, was the drying clay thickly caked on the wheels and undercarriage of my car, large hunks of which would break off every few miles for the rest of the trip.
Arriving at last at our rented cabin on the shore of a small lake which Amazing Woody insists is a river, I was pleased to see that Black Hills Bill had already arrived and was coming out of the door to greet me.
He looked much as I had imagined he would – vigorous and distinguished. The last picture is a close-up taken of him upon the occasion of his being granted a long-delayed doctorate in post-structural deconstruction and obfuscation from the Millard Fillmore Academy of Literature and the Tonsorial Arts, a correspondence school with accreditation pending in three southern states.
But although Black Hills Bill’s (or Doctor Black Hills Bill, as he insists on being called) appearance jibed with my preconception, nothing could have prepared me for the effect his opening remarks were to have:
“Chief Inspectuh! It coitainly is a pleazhuh to meetcha! In da woids of da Belle a’ Amhoist,
SOFTENED by Time’s consummate plush,
How sleek da woe appeahs
Dat t’reatened childhood’s citadel
And unduhmined da yeauhs
It further occurred to me that perhaps the various pasty establishments had photographs of their offerings being worn? Perhaps even live models! I veered back onto the road – still possessed of the aforementioned spirit of disinterested inquiry - and decided to pose as the owner of a chain of strip joints in need of lots of pasties, and go check out the wares.
Imagine my surprise to learn that in Yooper parlance pasties are not like those in the first picture but rather foodstuffs as in the second one. They were created to be eaten for lunch by Cornish miners but their appeal has apparently spread, since I didn't meet a single Cornish miner during my entire stay on the UP.
Having - with some admitted disappointment - gotten to the bottom of the pasty puzzle, I continued on. The initial part of my trip across and upward through the UP took me along the northern shore of Lake Michigan. It was a warm, sunny day (the last such day I would see) and the lake was almost as blue as the Caribbean.
The Driggs River crosses route 28 somewhere between Seney and Shingleton and I intended to stop and commune, or perhaps even do a little pre-arrival fishing there. My host-to-be, the Amazing Woody, had assured me that it was marked with a sign. But although I reëxamined the map quite a few times, and drove back and forth along a ten mile stretch of route 28, I never did find a sign identifying it. This was mystifying since I slowed at every small bridge and saw signs for, among other notable bodies of water, “Duffy’s Creek”, “Ya, Sure, Brook”, “Busta’s Trickle”, and “Clyde’s Mud Puddle”…but no Driggs. Perhaps the explanation is that anyone but a “troll” (Yooper-humor-speak for anyone who lives “below the bridge” – get it?) could find the Driggs without assistance, but Clyde’s Mud Puddle would be otherwise easily missed by even the most astute cognoscenti of UP high-lights. At one point I came upon a decent size, if somewhat muddy stream about where I reckoned the Driggs ought to be and followed a logging road along it for a way until I found myself axle deep in good, wet, clingy UP clay and figured I’d better try and get out of there, so my only lasting reminder of the Driggs, if such indeed it was, was the drying clay thickly caked on the wheels and undercarriage of my car, large hunks of which would break off every few miles for the rest of the trip.
Arriving at last at our rented cabin on the shore of a small lake which Amazing Woody insists is a river, I was pleased to see that Black Hills Bill had already arrived and was coming out of the door to greet me.
He looked much as I had imagined he would – vigorous and distinguished. The last picture is a close-up taken of him upon the occasion of his being granted a long-delayed doctorate in post-structural deconstruction and obfuscation from the Millard Fillmore Academy of Literature and the Tonsorial Arts, a correspondence school with accreditation pending in three southern states.
But although Black Hills Bill’s (or Doctor Black Hills Bill, as he insists on being called) appearance jibed with my preconception, nothing could have prepared me for the effect his opening remarks were to have:
“Chief Inspectuh! It coitainly is a pleazhuh to meetcha! In da woids of da Belle a’ Amhoist,
SOFTENED by Time’s consummate plush,
How sleek da woe appeahs
Dat t’reatened childhood’s citadel
And unduhmined da yeauhs
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