First of all – I blame the coffee. Unusual for a Seattleite, but I had coffee too far into the day yesterday, so I stayed up late, so I got up late. But I do not shut off my alarm on the weekend. [too worried I won’t remember to turn it back on] I just listen to the radio on those Saturday and Sunday afternoons, or turn it off. The radio is tuned to the local NPR station.
This morning as I sort of woke up, they were talking about the UP! (Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I really forget it is not a common acronym when you get far away from Michigan.) Even wanting to listen did not completely wake me up, and they would go to the news or other bits occasionally. So when I finally woke up for real, I went to the computer and spent the better part of an hour listening to all of the segments. It is focused on the Marquette area folks.
For those that loved the movie Fargo for the accents, check these out, you won’t be disappointed, and they are real.
One of the segments is on pasties and specifically on the Lawry Pasties.
Quick story. In about 1980 I had a used 1976 Mustang that I drove from Colorado to the cabin (in the UP) for a summer vacation. Somewhere in Nebraska (I think) I got some bad gas. On the trip out in various backwaters we had the fuel filter and fuel pump changed out (2 different stops). Going up a hill the car would lose power and sputter. This seemed to do the trick. That is until the trip home started. As soon as we were on a hill of any kind it would start to lose power again. I pulled over to a corner store in Ishpeming, and the kind kid (with the strongest accent I have ever heard) told me there was a Ford dealership in Marquette. Glancing at the Colorado plate he then told me where Marquette was located. The Marquette dealership was kind enough to squeeze us in to their schedule, that is after a drive around the city in which a butterfly kamakazied on my arm out the window, and the car finally lost power for the mechanic.
So – my friend and I are waiting in the dealer’s showroom, and decided to have lunch. As luck would have it, my father had purchased pasties from Marie’s (I think) in the Soo the day before, heated them up in the morning and wrapped them in newspaper to keep them warm for our trip. When we unwrapped them and the smell filled the room, several workers popped out of their offices and asked if we had bought them at Laurie’s. (My mind spelling, which I now realize would be Lawry’s.)
For the autophiles, the problem was finally located in the gas filter directly at the fuel tank, which they replaced. No further problems with loss of power until we almost ran out of gas in South Dakota. Their work had apparently knocked the gas gauge a bit out of whack, so it did not appear at E when in fact it was. Just a short run down the exit ramp after push starting the car with my friend in the driver’s seat, and coasting into the gas station.
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