Weird Things In My Old Hometown
I grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, in a dying mining town called Ishpeming that is also, coincidentally, generally considered the birthplace of organized skiing in the U.S. As such, the landscape of my childhood was marked with many artifacts of the mining industry and outdoor sports like skiing and sledding and tobogganing. It wasn't until recently, however, that it ocurred to me that many of the things I thought of as commonplace when I was a child are actually really kind of weird. To document this, I took advantage of a visit home in May of 2007 to photograph the biggest and best examples so I could present the following:
The top 10 sights in my hometown that were totally normal for me as a kid, but which now as an adult I realize are actually pretty fucked up.
Number 10: Merricks
Merricks was an actual, honest-to-god Five-and-Dime, complete with a terrifying lunch counter, bizarre inventory covering everything from kids' toys to sewing patterns to minor hardware to velvet Jesuses and Elvises, and had a generally octogenarian clientele. This was an old-school store like they just don't make any more. The fact that it stayed in business as long as it did (at least into the 90's) is a source of amazement to me. It wasn't until I went to college that I realized anyone from an even remotely urban area had no idea what a store like Merricks was since in those places Five-and-Dimes had died a dignified death some 20 or 30 years earlier.
Number 9: My Backyard Was A Bluff
It's not a particularly huge bluff, but it's sizeable, and since my house was on a hill itself, by the time you got to the top of the thing you were easily a couple hundred feet above the level of downtown Ishpeming. There were wild and hidden parts that weren't easy to get to, fenced-off cave-in grounds (see numbers 6 and 4, below), and really just everything needed for a kid like me with a wildly overactive and fecund imagination to spend a day making shit up. By the way, the brown house in this photo was not the house I grew up in, but this gap in the trees and buildings presented the best photo op for me to capture the view of the bluff as close as possible to the way I would have seen it as a kid.
Number 8: Dirt Roads Everywhere, Some In Better Repair Than Paved Roads
For serious. I have not been in many places where this is the case. We just called them alleys and it never occurred to me that any town wouldn't have lots of alleys and dirt roads like this to use as short cuts. These unofficial "streets" served to greatly increase the amount of bicycle, motorcycle, and 4WD traffic in town.
Number 7: Strange Gated Properties All Over The Place
These are all mine buildings, of course. Some had been mansions reserved for mine bigwigs touring the facilities back in the day. Some were labs or research facilities. All have fallen into various levels of disrepair, some have been demolished, some are still used, but in a different or reduced capacity. Some of them — and I swear this is true — I still can't find anyone in town who knows exactly what they were or what might have gone on there back when the property was active.
Number 6: Strange Gullies All Over The Place
I remember these being called "cave-in grounds" when I was a kid, and they were very common. When the area was being mined, if they started working an area and realized there was nothing there to mine, or they quickly tapped out a spot, I guess they'd just throw up a fence and leave it, and everyone grew up knowing that if you went in there, you did so at your own risk. I don't know if anyone ever actually so much as stubbed their toe in one of these places, but I remember hearing plenty of urban legends about a kid who knew a kid who had a cousin whose boyfriend from out of town stepped on an abandoned air shaft and fell hundreds of feet underground and died.
Number 5: Comfort Trumps Fashion. Always.
Sometimes people ask me why I have no problem wearing nylon running shorts to an evening's get-together with friends, say, or brown with black. Well, it's 'cos I grew up in a place where everyone just always wore what was comfortable. Yes, even the girls. If you grew up as an outdoorsy kid (which was pretty much every kid) in the U.P., you quickly learned that whatever you wore outside on a given day would, by afternoon, be covered in dirt, grass stains, and/or red ore dust (which never, ever comes out), so nice clothes were kind of silly to have. Of course there were plenty of times when your mom and dad went out for the night dressed up just fine, and of course there's prom and whatnot (which I didn't even attend, anyway), but in general, you just went with what was comfortable and no one cared really what it looked like. Lots of guys walking around in jeans, orange hats, red plaid vests, brown jackets, and Sorels to this day. It'll never change.
Number 4: Strange, Deep, Dangerous Man-Made "Lakes" All Over The Place
These things actually really freaked me out, even when I was a kid. They were once quarries or gullies (like in number 6, above) or mine shafts or mine pits until they were abandoned and somehow filled with water. Whether they were filled by an underground stream or an aquifer or what I don't know, but there you have it. Because of their origins, some of these lakes or ponds or whatever could easily be a couple hundred feet deep, but that's not the main reason these things were (are) pretty fucking dangerous. The water was (is!) disgusting and filled with who-knows-what chemicals and minerals, and lined with sharp rocks and slippery, brambly brush. Lots of undocumented urban legends about these things, too. ("There's muskies in there 12 feet long!", etc.)
Number 3: Red Buildings
I can't remember what this stone is called, but it's everywhere in this particular part of the U.P. It's not brick, but a big ol' quarry-style stone. Perfectly normal to me as a kid, but now...damn that looks lurid. Weird.
Number 2: Strange Abandoned Mine Buildings All Over The Place
Okay, so this shit has always given me the creeps. There are these...buildings, everywhere in town. Abandoned labs(!) with broken windows and smoke stacks, strange barn-looking things next to 50s-style institutional buildings that look like tiny boarded-up schools, and most dominating in my memories of childhood are these three beasties: the Obelisk, the Box, and the Cross. I realize now the Cross doesn't really look much like a cross, but that's how I always thought of it as a kid. These buildings stand over old shafts, or house various mining and railroad car-loading machinery, and the astute reader will note they are not fenced off. You can't see it in this picture, but off to the right is another giant obelisk building, much closer. I took this photo from the parking lot of a grocery store, to give you an idea of how easy these things are to get to, though I've never been in any of them, and I know no one who has. I don't even know anyone who's tried to get into them, which is weird, right, 'cos kids'll go anywhere. But not there. Even back then we all were sure these things were dangerous as fuck to be in, and I'm sure they still are.
Number 1: Suicide Hill Ski Jump
I suppose this one's self-explanatory.