Looking for America

Finding it in the U.P. of Michigan

I felt conflicted going into this last Independence Day. On one hand, it feels like we’ve lost so many freedoms in the past six months and more are about to fall away. I mean ‘we’ as Americans, as people in this country, as women, or as people who don’t have the means to fight back when staggering changes upend our world or our ability to take care of our families.

Then I remember that I have a life, with far more freedoms than most. And that I need to buck up and march on, to help others maintain theirs, and to fight for compassion over steamrolling. So in the days after a Minnesota heatwave, my husband and I took a short road trip northward to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I didn’t know I was looking for America, but I found it anyway.

We stayed west of Marquette and decided to leave Sault St. Marie and the ‘fancier’ shoreline of Lake Michigan for another trip. We drove through the tall pines and cedars of Chequamagon National Forest for miles without a break. When we hit Ironwood, we were pretty hungry by mid-afternoon and its older downtown had seen better days so not many restaurants were open. Then I spotted a sign that said “Pasties”.

A Cornish pasty in Ironwood, U.P. , Michigan

I didn’t know what a pasty was and pronounced it wrong when I inquired inside the narrow storefront building with a small kitchen and a few formica tables. Lots of their business is takeout - or order pickups of bags of the frozen pasties. Asking the manager/cook, he explained it was a hand-held meat pie and went back to bring me one when I gave my ‘what the heck’ look.

Pasties, it urns out, are a big deal in the U.P. (they call themselves Yoopers) as they came over with the miners who left overworked mines in England’s southwest, places like Cornwall and also from Ireland. The warm meat pies, shaped in a half-moon and crimped well at the edges were filled with hot ground beef or sausage, potatoes, carrots, rutabagas and other cheap root vegetables that would fill you up for a day underground, I ordered the Cornish a classic and it came out on a piece of wax paper, no plate needed; it filled me up for the rest of the day, even though there was no hard labor involved. Immigrants built the U.P. - the English for the mining, the Irish brought their railroad skills and plenty of Finns came for the logging. We’d see that going further north with smaller logging towns still going, a mill much reduced in size and Finnish bakeries still thriving.

At the pasty restaurant, we were the only non-locals in the place; a stout older man sat and read the paper and then came up to order lunch to bring home for he and “the missus”. He asked about the cook’s father in-law who had taken a fall; they talked about a team I didn’t recognize. A woman carrying a baby with two kids in tow came in to pick up orders.

We found pasties further north on the peninsula in Copper Harbor and Eagle River, but I went for Superior whitefish instead - a cold, cold water fish that tastes a little like Walleye, maybe milder, poached in a buttery liquid. The Finns that still populate those towns know a bit about cold waters. In a Copper Harbor restaurant, large log cabin steylplace on main stree s packed. and still at seven thirty. - I think they served until they ran out of food. We ordered local beers and then waited. And waited. And waited. The waitstaff were running, literally from table to table, one waiter joking in a language in funny English expressions with a thick Eastern European accent, maybe Polish or Ukrainian? The other waiters, quieter, also had accents, the younger ones with excellent English. It was noisy, fun, and in spite of the long waits and crowds, I heard zero complaints.

At the table next to ours, an uncomfortable toddler would erupt into squalls to be hoisted onto her dad’s shoulder until her mother brought out a book and began singing the words to “Five little ducks” to the baby and her sister. I don’t know how many times I heard that song in her pretty voice until the waiter brought their two local pizzas with a flourish, but I could hear it again, baby squall and all.

After driving until the road ran out, we went to get a glimpse of a lighthouse and watched a young girl dare her brothers into the Big Lake’s bay, going far out in the shallow freezing water and diving in. Her brother announced he’d put his head under water for one hundred bucks! No takers but he went in anyway - a future entrepreneur. It brought me back to all the first swims I had with my brothers and sister just a few weeks or even days after the ice went out in our small town lake. We’d try for April and were always fish by mid-May. The colder the better the brag.

We drove through Calumet, an old mining town with its abandoned ruins, red granite buildings and several churches still standing but in disrepair, with smashed windows. But not all of them. We poked our head in at St. Paul the Apostle where a devout woman was holding vigil before the Open Eucharist that would start soon an a Friday evening. She thought my husband was there to take his vigil shift. The gilt-painted ceiling and richly colored stained glass, still maintained, came from a devout people who never lost faith, even when the mining business collapsed around them and the logging and mills fell off. l’m not sure how they keep it going. All of it.

Fire Station in Calumet, U.P.

Further east, in Marquette - we arrived the day before the 4th of July and walked up the hill from our parking spot to the market happening to a downtown lined with historic downtown buildings, flower boxes on bank walls and creative tacos, fat-tire bikes galore, henna tattoos, stone mobiles, healing oils and a saxophone busker putting his whole body into his music, his chest rising and falling with the notes. We ate heirloom tomatoes and watermelon topped with white balsamic vinegar and feta and I thought ‘this could be my new desert island dish’. Of course, it’s not just one food.

Catching the light at the Pier in Marquette

A boat parade and then fireworks were happening at the big park along the Lake Superior waterfront, so we found a spot to sit on the small retaining wall along the sidewalk. Behind us, a tween boy on his own was meeting a girl and her fiends - it was a sweet conversation and they ended up doing the running commentary for us on the boat show trying to one-up each other, amused by everything. A small band started playing tunes in the background, Americana style. No John Philip Sousa though, they were saving that for the big day I suppose. Marquette’s on the western edge of the east coast time zone and north of us, so the sun didn’t set until 9:55 that night. We thought the fireworks would start at 10 or 10:30 at the latest.

We met the people next to us - also over the boat show, they’d driven in for the event from a place just out of town. “From Minnesota?” she asked. "I was born there!” Turns out it was the town where I went to high school - I knew her hospital.

Boat parade at dusk in Marquette, July 3

It was dark and getting buggy but finally a laser on the iron ore pier wall that spelled out “3- 2- 1!” to start the show. Then we all waited. A crowd of more than a couple of thousands, hundreds of tired but excited little kids, a baby with a nebulizer going, her parents taking turns bouncing her. We waited together.

After “3, 2, 1!” there was nothing. More waiting. It was almost 11 p.m. The music turned to old favorites - Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” got to the tweens behind us who started singing along. The couple next to us started packing up and saying goodby, but not before joining in the songs. What struck me about that night the most is that everyone around us stayed in good spirits for the several hours we were there together. No one complained. Certainly no heckling. I didn’t even hear kids whining as they began to realize these fireworks were not coming. (A technical glitch - no ‘lift-off’) . By a quarter after 11, the jig was up and we filed out together, moseying along, adults with blankets folded over arms, dads carrying little ones on their shoulders, teens hand in hand, grandmas moving along the shore with walkers, all of us

Leaving to go our separate ways in the dark, we came together over Sweet Caroline and the lyrics “Sweet Caroline — (crowd chants ‘Da-da-dato!!” “Good times never seemed so good. . . . “ “So good! So good! “

So good.