Antarctica, Michigan

...Errr... make that ESCANABA, Michigan!  The Freudian Slip in the title should provide some insight to the true nature of this account.  Atypically for yours truly, there are absolutely no stretches of imagination, no embellishments, no outright lies herein - so help me.  And where this author was not personally witness to the following goings-on of the youngsters in Anta Escanaba, I do hereby confirm the accuracy of all you are about to read.

The reasons for that certainty is pictured below - Becky and Jane.  They look like "a couple of friends" - right?  Well, as I said in the opening, they are..... but there's a bit of a story behind this particular friendship.  I guess "You won't believe this but..." is as good an opening as any.  And so....................

You won't believe this BUT.....  Once upon a time, not so terribly long ago (not so long ago given that the planet Earth was born some 12 BILLION YEARS ago) these two Snow-cones met in kindergarten on one of those rare days when they survived the five mile uphill walk to school in waist high snow. And as you can see in the following picture, the sun sets very early during those winter days - but these two trudged on, uphill again, back home together at three in the afternoon.  And there they are, Becky and Jane one, but typical dreary,winter afternoon in 1955.  If you look closely you might see their frozen breath being lifted above them by the whipping 50mph winds.

 Before I continue,  hit the clicky below and just let the song run in the background as you read the rest of this true story.  Matter of fact, the story line only goes to substantiate these accounts.

Very, very few of you might be saying to yourself - "well it's about time he (that's me) posted this thing!".  The fact is that I had this "put to bed" as they say in the publishing business a month ago and then for whatever the technical reasons - after doing a spell check (thank you Jesus) 75% of it disappeared.  And after rewriting most of it back in I had to save it unpublished for a while.  When I came back to put the dot on top of the eye - it vanished again.  So here I am, another month shot trying to recollect my ramblings and to make matters worse, even though I took impeccable notes during Dennis and Jane's visit, those scribblings aren't quite as "peccable" as I thought.  And so I will truncate this summary to a single subject - winter!  ANYWAY....

Those treks back and forth to school took its toll on Jane and Becky seen below at the 3 mile mark.

On most days when the girls finally made it home, they would have to climb the temporary stairs to the attic window to get into the house - think I'm kidding?  A picture is worth a thousand words.....  Yeah I know what you're thinking.. not really their house - right?  Well.... duhhhhh OK, ya got me.  And to make matters worse, I pirate these pics off the internet without so much as a howdy-do.  So sue me.

This particular picture depicts quite accurately the girl's accounting of those days on the UP.  This one reminds me of yet another story of their survival.  On those days fit for neither man nor beast, the kids had a great way to get to school.  Tunnels!  Yes that's right, no kidding, tunnels in the snow that make the Holland Tunnel look like a gopher hole.

The picture above is taken from inside the central tunnel - a massive cylindrical excavation that connects each individual home tunnel to the underground corridor that goes to the street in front of the school.   From there the girls, and many other students from this part of town exit the subterranean system and make a mad dash up the front steps of the school.   

The tunnel system had its good - and had its bad points.  The good of course is that travelling underground (or is that undersnow?) eliminated the effects of the whipping wind chill which on a day with ambient temperatures of -30 degrees, could be as low as -50 or so.  And, there were no mosquitoes in the tunnel system.  Apparently Escanaba mosquitoes  don't die off in sub zero temperatures like other non resident mosquitoes do.  I don't mean to go off subject here, but it seems that nothing in Escanaba is typical.  What the heck... while off subject I'll also mention that most all homes, buildings there are heated with coal furnaces.  The good news there is that the United States has a nearly limitless supply of coal.  The bad news is that one of the combustion byproducts is soot.  There's  the other good point about the tunnels - no soot!   Who'd a thunk it!  One of the benefits of travelling the sub-snow transit system was - no soot!  On the negative side however, since all kids in Escanaba had a tunnel from their home to the central corridor, they never got to enjoy a "snow day" off from school.

Now then... we have all heard of little boys sticking their tongue to the aluminum flagpole right?  Well, in Escanaba it was quite common to see one of those stupid boys with his tongue stuck to the chain link fence located just a few feet from the tunnel exit in front of the school.  Dares, Double Dog Dares, and even those ominous Triple Dog Dares could be heard throughout the entire tunnel systems as the kids made their way to school.

Dennis and I sat there during that visit, me taking notes as furiously as I could, and he.... well, we really didn't get a word in edgewise but he did manage to get a point in towards the end of the visit, something about finding something... but I'll be darned if I can remember - find what?  And .... I can't read my notes - find WHAT?  I'll probably never know unless Dennis can remember.

POST SCRIPT.......

In the opening statements I referred to the friendship of Jane and Becky and then got lost in the telling of the snow storm, whipping winds, and extremes of temperatures on the UP.  And in those ramblings I never did explain why this is such a great friendship.  As I understand it, they met in OR before kindergarten and spend the next 6 years or so growing up in Escanaba.   Becky's family moved to California and at age 12, the two kids had to part ways.  Fast forward maybe 15 years and the two got together for a day or so while Jane was on vacation (I am guessing) in California.  Fast forward through the next 30 years more or less with the rare telephone call, occasional letter, season greeting's card, and emails most recently.   Please raise your hand if you can say that you and your kindergarten buddy have maintained your friendship over some 50 years.  Pretty special huh?