August 13, 2003

Saying 'yah' to U.P. get-away

By
Herald Editor

      By this time next week I'll be in a world full of flying Noseeums, unintelligible accents and rutabaga pasties. Admittedly, it seems a strange place to celebrate a tenth wedding anniversary.
      With a spirit of adventure - and perhaps misguided judgment - my wife and I are going back to our humble beginnings. We are headed up to the U.P.
      In honor of our momentous occasion, we Traverse City trolls are traveling to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. From 1993 to 1996, the Leivas called Yooperland home. While such an auspicious start might doom other marriages, we took the Nietzsche approach to U.P. living. The six-foot snow drifts and rabid black flies only made us stronger.
      So to mark our decade together, we decided to take a road trip to Pictured Rocks. Even though it's August, I'm bringing along my choppers, chuke and swampers. Translation: I'm packing mittens, stocking cap and boots.
      It was in the U.P. that I cut my teeth in the newspaper business. As a cub reporter, I covered the police and fire beat for the Evening News in Sault Ste. Marie. Some of my clippings made the Weekly World News "Hitler's Skull Speaks!" headlines look legit. Two average examples would be the guy busted for putting dead salmon in mailboxes or the woman arrested after driving her car through a gravel pit to escape aliens.
      I also remember traveling 60 miles one way to cover Luce County board meetings. In a chapter straight out of the "Worst Case Scenario Handbook," I would drive my 1974 Buick Regal back home on black ice at 11:15 p.m. on a stretch of road so desolate you counted bullet-ridden speed limit signs to stay awake. All of this for a page 5 story below the fold and $7.50 an hour.
      However, I did learn one life-long lesson from my editor: never smoke unfiltered Lucky Strikes.
      During our three years in the U.P. we also learned a new language - one without declarative sentences, but only questions ending in eh. We even learned to eat boiled whitefish and tolerate winter. Although I could have lived without the frozen car battery on Christmas morning and a record-breaking six-feet of snow in less than 24 hours.
      Although getting snowed-in with the one you love makes you appreciate lake effect.
      Even as newlyweds, we scraped together enough money to put a roof over our heads. However, the house belonged to someone else.
      For the first year of our married life we were part of the Quinn family. More expansive than a crawl space, our fully furnished upstairs apartment was on the cozy side of square footage. If the La-Z-Boy chair was fully reclined you could touch the north and south walls in the living room. Unfortunately, we lost another 100 square feet because of the high shag carpeting.
      The Quinns were great landlords who even brought us freshly baked bread. However, they had one hang up - no flushing the toilet after 10 p.m. Of course it wasn't a legally binding rental agreement, just a request. We tried to honor it by heeding the famous yellow mellow words uttered by the late Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley during a 1970s water shortage.
      Residing above the Mighty Mac puts life in a different perspective. One of my co-workers at the newspaper - a born and raised Yooper - showed me a piece of paper that said it best. The form letter was from a credit card company that stated he was ineligible because at the time he "lived outside the continental United States." I guess the waters around the Keweenaw Peninsula are a bit foreign.
      This time next week, my wife and I will be up to our necks in Noseeums and holywahs. Then again, given the volatile nature of island weather, it could snow in August. Just a perfectly normal way to celebrate a tenth wedding anniversary - rutabaga pasties by candle light.
      Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416.