I saw a sign of the apocalypse a few days ago– I saw someone driving a pickup truck down the street with a snow blower in the back.
Okay, maybe “sign of the apocalypse” is a little too strong of a term, but still– it’s the end of August! It’s not going to snow around here for, like, three weeks yet. Do you really need to haul your snow blower around with you just in case?
It’s one of those times you say to yourself, “Something’s amiss in the U.P.” And that got me to thinking: maybe we need to pay more attention to those little things, those signs that, at least metaphorically, something apocalyptic could be on the horizon.
So here we go–a list of a few things to look out for, some of the signs of a “Yooper Apocalypse.”
The first? A tourist walks into a pasty shop, buys a couple, and asks, in all seriousness– “Can you put fudge on these?”
Next? The Packers don’t make the playoffs, but the Lions do.
Another sign? An entire day goes by without someone stopping in the middle of or complaining about one of these.
Then there’s this– any store, anywhere in the U.P., runs out of beer at any time during deer season.
Or this– we have so little snow in February that they have to cancel a sled dog race, and then we get 100 inches of the white stuff in the month after that.
…oh, wait…that actually happened, didn’t it?
One of the most important potential signs of a Yooper Apocalypse? That we go through an entire calendar year without seeing another map with the U.P. labeled as part of Canada.
And finally, the number one sign the Yooper Apocalypse might be nigh? We come upon a scene like this– a beautiful day at the lake– and fail to think to ourselves, “We are so lucky that this is home.”
Now hopefully, none of these will ever come to fruition. But if they do, feel free to freak out the way I did when I saw that snow blower in the back of the pickup.
After all, it could be a sign of a “Yooper Apocalypse.”
I’m Jim Koski, and that’s another slice of “Life in the 906.”
