One Yooper’S Journey: An Unauthorized Autobiography

By Jack Perante

One Yoopers Journey: An Unauthorized Autobiography is a fictionalized autobiography. It needs to be fictionalized just as a resume needs to be embellished. It may not be as believable, but the fictionalized parts are intended to be much more entertaining. The events described in the book really happened. The specifics, such as the minute details and the dialogue, may not be historically accurate. The term unauthorized autobiography, though somewhat oxymoronic, has a purpose. Real Yoopers may take exception to the use of this word in the title, since the author has lived most of his life outside of the Upper Peninsula. His journey parallels at times and intersects at other times with the journey of his favorite relativehis Uncle Hal Nowell. Uncle Hal teams up with him from time to time with a mix of shared adventures and misadventures. The author was positively influenced by the town and the many good people of Escanaba.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543412970

Jack Perante

Jack Perante is a retired healthcare executive turned writer and author. He has been married to his wife, best friend and inspiration, Grace, for 47 years. Their daughter, Michelle, and son Jeff, both live in Southern California. All provide him with great support in his writing projects. He continues his life-long love affair with the game of hockey. He plays with the Bald Eagles Hockey Club, a group of fellow retirees and hockey enthusiasts. Jack is a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a "Yooper", and now lives in northern Illinois. In addition to writing and hockey, he loves golf, travel, reading and the craziness of politics. His latest work, One Yooper’s Journey, is a humorous, fictionalized autobiography.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE S.P.I.T.E. INCIDENT

From the very start, not only was I burdened with dealing largely in reality but reality had been far from kind to me at times. My life began with a sharp poke in the eye, the left eye to be exact. It was accompanied by excruciating pain, fear of permanent loss of sight, and the shame of crying in public. The painful event brought with it sufficient trauma to burn the memory of the event indelibly into my brain. I could describe the event in minute detail years and even decades later to the sheer boredom of my listeners.

This incident occurred on my first day of my first year in kindergarten. Tommy Andresec and I were leaving the school on a cold, drizzly Upper Peninsula day with his older sister, Carol. The incident began with a seemingly innocent invitation in the form of Why don’t you come under the umbrella with us? There’s enough room. The invitation was extended to me by Carol. If I only deluded then what I delude now, things could have turned out quite differently. It was an obvious pre-meditated set-up for Tommy to do his evil deed.

As I attempted to step under the shelter of Carol’s umbrella, Tommy jumped up and hit Carol’s arm with obvious malicious intent. What he hoped to do was to drive one of the long, pointy spoke things on the umbrella through my eye socket, deep into my cranial cavity, through my medulla oblongata, and out the back of my neck, possibly damaging the spinal cord in the process. Did I mention that Tommy didn’t like me?

Tommy’s grand plan of inflicting grave bodily harm in the form of blindness, mild brain damage and partial paralysis was thwarted but he happily settled for seeing me writhing in pain for several minutes. I couldn’t even kick the little rat in the balls because they weren’t there yet and I wasn’t yet aware of the pain that that could cause anyway.

Amazingly, this sharp-poke-in-the-eye, or the S.P.I.T.E. incident, as I came to remember it, was only the second most notable event that involved me on that September day in 1953. That day turned out to be my first – and last – day in kindergarten, at least for that year. Remarkably, I bombed out of kindergarten after one day. Actually, it was after only a half a day. What could I have possibly done in that school in a half day class that made the teacher decide to kick me out?

The truth is that I don’t know what really happened. Since my very earliest memory is the S.P.I.T.E. incident, and that occurred while I was on my way home from school, I have no memory of what occurred while I was in the school. All I know is that I was the only one who flunked out after one day; excuse me, half a day. Apparently, at about the same time I was getting poked in the eye with the umbrella, my teacher was on the phone with my mother telling her to keep me home for another year.

Later in my adult life I would have a neighbor who frequently used the expression, Well, it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye. The saying never made any sense to me and I always thought the guy had the mental capacity of a railroad tie. But that aside, I tried to apply the expression to my first and last day in kindergarten, 1953. It didn’t work. I bombed out of kindergarten and I got a sharp stick in the eye. Even at five years old, I realized that I was not having a good day.

I tried several times to talk to my mother about why I couldn’t go back after that first day, trying to get her to tell me what the teacher said about me. Her answer was always pretty much the same, Be quiet and go clean your room, or, Be quiet and go shovel the driveway, or, Be quiet and go stoke the furnace. For obvious reasons, I stopped asking.

However, I have imagined several different scenarios that could have occurred in that phone conversation between the teacher and my mother. The one conversation that I imagined most frequently would go something like this:

Teacher: Jack was such a joy to have in class, but he’ll be more mature and fit in so much better in another year.

Mother: I understand. I will really enjoy having him home here with me for another year.

However, since I don’t really remember what I was like back then, several other scenarios keep gnawing at me. Each one involves a teacher who is not so taken with me:

Teacher: If that little brat lifts up my dress one more time … . Or,

Teacher: The damage he caused in the block throwing incident will cost a couple of hundred dollars. Or,

Teacher: How many times does that kid have to go to the bathroom? And, does he know that ‘piss’ and ‘shit’ are not nice words? Or,

Teacher: The other child only required five stitches, but I think Jack should stay home for another year to acquire more discipline.

You get the idea.

Nothing happened in my life for another thirteen months; or at least nothing that stuck in my long-term memory. Moving forward through my memory banks, I pick up a little something again in kindergarten the following year. Webster Elementary School officials decided to let me stay that year. This event is quite significant. It is here that I establish contact with…the Carbos. Well, not all the Carbos, just Rat Carbo. The Carbos – Cliff, Macky, Blacky, Jacky, Bug, and Rat – would play a prominent and influential role in my life during its formative years. They were generally known as the most notorious sociopaths in Escanaba. The manner of the first meeting, in retrospect, was very appropriate.

Early memories of Rat Carbo, whose given name was Matt, always seemed to take place in the context of disciplinary action. From the very start, he seemed to have some difficulty grasping the concept of rules. Possibly he understood the concept as it applied to others, but as it applied to him, it just didn’t seem to fit.

Even though we only attended school for a half day in kindergarten, some overly educated person had determined that a nap period was necessary. Some of my most vivid memories of kindergarten involve me feigning my nap primarily due to the fact that I wasn’t remotely tired. The reason I can remember these faked naps was that Rat Carbo would not fake his nap. He wasn’t tired and he wasn’t about to waste valuable play time when all the toys in the room were available.

Matthew, don’t you think you should lie down and rest like the other children? the teacher, Mrs. Hiller, would implore.

Are there any more of those really long blocks? Rat replied.

Matt, I think you would really enjoy your nap like the others. Come over here on your blanket and lie down, please, she continued.

Those kids ain’t sleepin’. How could anyone sleep with me making all this noise? For a five year old, it was a pretty logical argument.

Matt, you get over here and lie down on your blanket this second! Mrs. Hiller was trying to impose her own kind of logic on the situation.

I don’t like my blanket, Rat stated as he crossed the room toward his pre-assigned nap location. On his way across the room, he stopped at where Larry Landers was seemingly napping. Rat bent over and grabbed one edge of Larry’s blanket with both hands and yanked the blanket upward sending Larry rolling into the girl next to him. I like this blanket, he exclaimed.

MATTHEW!!! Mrs. Hiller screamed, You can’t do that. You can’t just take someone else’s blanket like that. Nap time was unofficially over at this point. It was not even possible to fake it any more for fear that you might miss something.

Well, I was going to tell him that I was going to take it but he was sleeping. More Carbo logic coming out with that statement.

You give Larry back his blanket and tell him that you’re sorry. Then you will sit in the corner for the rest of the day so that you won’t bother any of the other children, Mrs. Hiller said, trying to bring closure to this little episode.

But I’m not sorry, so I’m not going to say it. And anyway, he can have my blanket. Then it’s only a swap. That way I’ll have a nice blanket and I won’t have to beat anybody up on the way home from school today, Rat said, keeping the issue open for a while longer.

Apparently, Larry saw some logic in Rat’s last remark, saying, That’s OK, Mrs. Hiller, he can have my blanket. I’ll get a new one at home.

No, no, no, said Mrs. Hiller, It’s just not right for you to act that way, Matt. You cannot just take things from other people whenever you want. Now give Larry his blanket and come with me. The significance of this moment in history escaped me at the time, but, reflecting back on it, it was clear that Rat and Mrs. Hiller left the classroom undoubtedly on Rat’s first trip to the principal’s office. How many times would that be repeated during his school years?

Needless to say, Rat beat the living crap out of Larry Landers on the way home from school that day. At least by kindergarten standards, it was the living crap. Now, to be clear, Rat was not your typical bully, at least not like his older brothers. All of Rat’s brothers, and maybe even some of his sisters, were bullies, but they were pretty big guys, like bullies were supposed to be. Rat was one of the smallest kids in our class. Larry Landers was quite a bit bigger than Rat. Rat just felt it was his place to be a bully; it was his birthright. He made up for his lack of size with pure meanness. That and the fact that when Rat said he was going to beat you up, you pretty much believed him. Rat understood the concept of gaining a psychological edge at a very early age.

As I contemplated Rat’s plight, I have imagined various telephone conversations that may have taken place between Mrs. Hiller and numerous other of his teachers in coming years, and Mrs. Carbo. None of these imagined conversations were in any way pleasant. Such phone calls probably followed a similar format and theme:

Mrs. Carbo: ‘ello.

Mrs. Hiller: Hello, Mrs. Carbo. This is Mrs. Hiller, Matt’s teacher.

Mrs. Carbo: What the hell did he do now?

Mrs. Hiller: Uh, well, Matt is having some difficulty playing with the other children in class and I …

Mrs. Carbo: Just smack him a coupla times and he’ll quit it.

Mrs. Hiller: Well, Mrs. Carbo, I don’t think that that will solve the real problem. He needs …

Mrs. Carbo: OK, then, just send him home and I’ll smack him a coupla times.

Mrs. Hiller: Mrs. Carbo, I think Matt’ problems go much deeper than that.

Mrs. Carbo: OK, then, just send him home and I’ll have his Dad smack that little bastard a coupla times once he sleeps off his drunk from night.

Having met Mr. and Mrs. Carbo, I could not imagine the conversation going in any other direction than that. Rat and his brothers were real fighters. They had to be just to get up in the morning and make it through the day. They had little chance to be any different than they were.

CHAPTER 2

THE LAND OF THE YOOPERS

The UP is, in its simplest geological descriptive form, a large frozen rock, comprised mostly of copper and iron ore. It juts out from, but is not a part of, the state of Wisconsin. Rather, it is part of a state, that being Michigan, which it does not touch or come within five miles of. Its geological purpose is to separate Lake Superior from Lakes Michigan and Huron so as to prevent them from being the single largest single body of fresh water on the planet.

From a meteorological perspective, it is said that summer in the UP occupies roughly two weeks in mid-July. Spring is the week preceding that period; autumn the week following. Winter takes possession of the remainder of the calendar. For those who might take that to be an exaggeration, please note that the start of the Little League season in Escanaba one year was cancelled due to a blizzard that dumped a foot of snow overnight – on Memorial Day. Or, the fact that in 1968 there were snow flurries in Sault Ste. Marie during the Fourth of July Parade.

In addition to those seasons created by the various movements of the Earth, its revolutions and rotations and tilts, there were also the liturgical seasons. Most notable of these by the very religious Yoopers, were Advent and Lent. Then there was deer season. This was the shortest season, but perhaps the most anticipated season each year. It was observed religiously by the males of the UP. Come November each year the men held a mass migration to hunting camp, while the womenfolk maintained things on the home front. Deer season was likely much more enjoyable for the ladies than for their guys.

And, yes, people did enjoy living on that frozen rock. Good people and obviously hardy people. These people are proud to be Yoopers, natives of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They are not necessarily as proud to be Michiganders. Yoopers often felt slighted by the other and more populous part of Michigan, the glove if you will; or, da mitt.

Before it was the home of Yoopers, it had gained a literary name, that being the Land of Hiawatha, as it was dubbed by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his 1855 trochaic tetrameter poem, The Song of Hiawatha. Longfellow had long ago discovered the magnificent beauty of the land, from the pictured rocks along the south shore of Lake Superior, to the falls of the Tahquamenon River, on to the scenic Porcupine Mountains. This contemplative beauty remains largely unaltered since Longfellow cast his eyes upon it.

While the Yooper gods brought hellish weather down upon the good folks of the UP, they apparently tried to compensate in another way to make up for this. In the Yooper version of manna from heaven, a heavenly food was brought to them as well. This was not as much from the gods as from the miners from Cornwall, England. The food they had brought into the tin mines back home in England, their wives now made for them to carry into the copper mines in the UP. The Cornish pasty is the official staple of the Yoopers; a meal of beef, potatoes, rutabagas and onion, enclosed in pastry and crimped on one side. It was heaven in your hand, when lunch break came in the mines. It still is heavenly manna to many Yoopers.

Efforts were made long ago, in the Eisenhower years, for the UP to break away from Michigan to become its own state, what would have been the great state of Superior. When that effort failed, they considered seceding from the Union entirely, rationalizing that they could receive more in foreign aid from the US than they were currently getting from the state of Michigan. Encountering the immovable object that was political reality, cooler heads prevailed and the UP remained the coldest part of Michigan.

CHAPTER 3

ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE, PATRON SAINT OF NORT’TOWN

Kindergarten would turn out to be the only part of my formal education not provided to me by some component of the Catholic Church. For the next sixteen years, I would be taught and physically, mentally, and spiritually tormented by Dominican Sisters, Christian Brothers, Apostolic Priests, and the respected yet dreaded Jesuits. As I reflect back on the overall experience, it can be noted that physical scars heal first. Those of the psychological nature endure much longer. I would also point out with some pride that I did not only receive the torment. I did return it, though only in small part and done mostly in a passive-aggressive manner.

I grew up Catholic; let me make that very Catholic. Although Escanaba was a town of only 12,000 people, there were five Catholic churches in the area: St. Joe’s, St. Pat’s, St. Ann’s, All Saints and St. Thomas the Apostle. We belonged to St. Thomas, which was by far the poorest of the parishes. It was on the north side of Escanaba, or Nort’town, which was literally and figuratively on the other side of the tracks. People in Nort’town would aspire to be blue collar, but most would never achieve such a lofty goal. Unemployment and underemployment were the order of the day. The collection basket that passed around each Sunday at mass needed not to be very large. Nickels, dimes and quarters did not take up much space and did not need to be folded.

The church reflected the economic condition of the area. The church was a small, flat-roofed structure no more than fifteen feet high. Its bell tower added only another five feet to its overall height. Simple can best describe its interior. A plain altar was highlighted by the crucifix hanging above it. The crucifix may have been the only religious icon that contradicted the poverty of the parish. It was very ornamental. It was graphically gory in its depiction of our suffering Savior. It was perhaps too large for such a small church, seemingly dwarfing the rest of the surroundings. And it was quite scary when first viewed by a child.

Father Arthur Therrien ruled the Catholics of Escanaba’s north side. St. Thomas the Apostle Parish was his empire. Mass at St. Thomas was a painful experience – literally. It was the only parish in town that could not afford cushions for the kneelers, at least until the mid-1960s when they were forced to install cushions lest there be a mass migration to the other churches in town. The kneelers were of a rough hewn, uneven and made of the hardest wood grown on earth. It was impossible to get comfortable when kneeling at St. Thomas.

It wasn’t until my first visit to St. Joe’s that I realized how pathetic the church at St. Thomas was. St. Joe’s was a classic gothic cathedral. It was enormous in its size and ornate in its religious splendor. Its pillars could not be fully encircled by two people fully extending their arms. The pillars of St. Thomas were identical to those supports in our basement at home; the ones you could wrap your two hands around. In the church at St. Thomas, the Stations of the Cross were framed pictures, no more than 8 by 12 in size, placed between the vertically narrow windows, seven on each side of the church. The Stations of the Cross at St. Joe’s were fourteen life size sculptures, each occupying its own alcove throughout the perimeter of the church.

Aside from the gory depiction of the crucifixion above the altar, St. Thomas had only five other statues in the entire church. These included statues of Mary, Joseph, The Infant of Prague, the Sacred Heart and St. Thomas the Apostle. St. Joe’s had seemingly hundreds of them, of all shapes, sizes and locations throughout the various facilities.

I never made the connection that St. Thomas did not have as much as St. Joe because its parishioners did not have as much as the parishioners of St. Joe. When you grow up poor, you do not necessarily know that you are growing up poor. This is especially true when virtually everyone you encounter is also poor. When you are amongst friends doing things that are fun, you cannot possibly be poor.

Our area of Nort’town, where we grew up, was known as Rose Park, for the small park across the street from Rose Park Store, where we lived. The six of us with our Mom and Dad occupied the three bedroom living quarters upstairs, above the store. My mother tended the store below during the day and evening. We spelled her from time to time as needed, accepting greater responsibility as we were able and to the extent we were trusted. Balancing the till at the end of the day was the pass or fail criterion.

The store was the gathering place in the neighborhood. It was in many ways the typical neighborhood grocery store. For the adults, it provided the household staples, fruits and vegetables, a deli counter for meats and cheeses, and of course, beer and wine. My parents even ran a small post office in the back of the store.

For the kids in the neighborhood, the long candy counter was the magnet that drew them into the store. Half of the expanse of this counter contained the penny candy. The other half was for the more affluent in the neighborhood, for those who came into the store with nickels and dimes. Deals abounded for all. How could you possibly go wrong if you opted for the 3 for a penny candy deals at Perante’s Rose Park Store?

Early on we made the rule that there would be no girls in the family to spoil the fun. So, it was just six boys, to grow up among. There was Jerry, the oldest, followed by Tom, Jim and myself. It took my parents five years to create the four of us. Then there was a gap of four years, at which point you get Ron and Don, the twins. Although I never confirmed this with my mother, I had always conjectured that this was one last attempt on the part of my parents for a girl, and, lo and behold, twin boys.

Elsewhere in the immediate vicinity of Rose Park, in addition to the six Perante boys, there were the seven Almonroeder kids, four Fishers, eight Garretts, and a number of other families with two or three or four kids per household here and there. We were never without companions and we were always out and about keeping busy. We were primarily occupied with sports, mostly baseball back in the ’50s and ’60s, but still keeping with the seasons and what the weather would allow, we played them all.

In many instances, given names were replaced by nicknames. Some were earned; some couldn’t be avoided. People were often dubbed anew based on a physical characteristic, or a misdeed, or by the need for someone else to diminish them in some manner. That was just the way it was.

Jimmy DeMarco became But-Boy because he seemed to end every sentence with the word, but, as if there was more to come. Apparently, he was just very indecisive. Dale Bittner became Crash Bittner because he seemed to run into people a lot. His younger brother Mickey became Crash Jr. Jerry Dishnau became Duck Dishnau. The darker skinned Bernard brothers got hung with the unfortunate and politically very incorrect nickname Nig; one was Big Nig and one was Little Nig. This in a town that was approximately 100% Caucasian.

Nick Kesley was called Fork because of an incident over dinner one day. It seems he was berating his brother as brothers will do. Brother Barry got a bit irritated and flung his fork across the table, hitting Nick across the bridge of the nose. The fork stuck firmly into the flesh with a little bobbing-up-and-down motion, like an arrow quivering upon hitting its target. The tale was very believable in that it was verified by the four tine holes in Nick’s face. The nickname, Fork, didn’t stick as well as the fork had stuck, however. As soon as the holes on the bridge of his nose disappeared, so did his nickname.

In addition, there were a couple Jugs, based on the Archie comics of the times. There was Frog and Worm and Itch and Pud, which rhymes with ‘good’. Following my summer time haircut in the mid-50’s, a friend of mine apparently thought my head was shaped somewhat like a melon. I became Melonhead, which was quickly shortened to just Melon. By high school, it was down to simply Mel. If my parents had only known, they could have christened me Melvin and saved everyone a lot of trouble.

One of the most noteworthy events of my childhood occurred in1957, and it involved one of the Rose Park residents. The Escanaba Little League All-Star Team made it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The team was led by Jim Almonroeder, one of the two starting pitchers for the Escanaba team, along with Terry Derouin, another Nort’towner. The team eventually lost in the semi-final game to a team from Monterrey, Mexico, but the team had brought enormous pride to the city of Escanaba. Jim was everyone’s hero in Nort’town and was unofficially dubbed the King of Rose Park upon his return from Williamsport.

The Almonroeders lived about a half block from us. The Almonroeder girls were the closest thing the Perante boys had to sisters. Each of us seemed to have an Almonroeder girl about our same age and in our same class. My counterpart was Mary. She was in my class from kindergarten through senior year in high school. We once went on a date in high school, which is when we both realized that we were more like brother and sister than boyfriend and girlfriend. I guess it was good that we both came to that same conclusion.

One of the other things that distinguished Nort’town from Escanaba’s south side was where we swam – the south siders swam at the Escanaba Public Beach and the Nort’towners at a spot called the culvert. When I was growing up, I had always thought that this was the one true advantage that we had over them. The culvert was adjacent to the Escanaba Power Plant near Wells. The water was always warm at the culvert –