If you lived in the UP, you couldn't get on a game show. You couldn't make a hit record. You were not going to have anything happen. You don't get historic floods that are featured on Nightly News with Brian Williams. Those sort of things only happen to people from other parts of the country. Though I did find it funny that when Nashville went half way under water, someone tried to blow up Times Square and there was thousands of gallons of oil leaking from a mile deep on the bottom the Gulf of Mexico. I noticed that the news was always happening somewhere else when I lived in the UP, and it was still true when I lived in Nashville. It goes to show that no matter where you are, there is important news happening, but not being covered.
What got me thinking about how nothing happens to anyone in the UP, I was listening to The Kings of Leon. the Kings of Leon are from Mt. Juliet, TN. You know who else is lives there? My regular weekday coworker, Mary. While she is nearly 60 years old and doesn't know who the Kings of Leon are, I was still surprised to find out she had no idea who they were, considering how popular they have gotten on a national level and they were from the same town she lives in. If the Kings of Leon were from Ishpeming, I promise you every 59 year old would know who they were.
I was watching Who Wants to Be A Millionaire a couple months ago. You know, the syndicated one on daytime television, with Meredith Viera. They were having some sort of competition among the winners, where if you won the most money, you would come back for a tournament or something like that. Well anyway, the leader is from Antioch, TN, which is just a few miles from me right now.
These examples are small, and rather insignificant, I suppose, and I'm sure there are much better examples I could come up with. I won't state the obvious about all the major country stars that are from here because that's not a surprise. That's what this town and area are known for. And I could also counter myself by pointing out that there was a Negaunee High School graduate that was on Jeopardy like, a year or two ago. And Kevin Tapani was a Major League Pitcher, and he was from the UP. Escanaba, to be specific. The guy who made Starbucks was an NMU grad, but that doesn't count, I don't think.
The point being that I always had a feeling living in the UP that nothing would ever happen up there. Marquette doesn't get flooded. Marquette doesn't have a The Kings of Leon-equivalent to call the area home. Hell, friends of members of my band are friends with Paramore. I'm pretty sure some of them went to the same high school. It's just weird that that happens here, but not there. I always wondered about things, like flu pandemics and stuff, and I was like "No that won't happen here, stuff never happens here." Nothing except snow storms, but that's not that unusual. Things can happen here. No one wins the lottery from the UP. They win in places like Nashville, or Antioch, or Mt. Juliet.
I think I'm finally realizing how little amount of people actually live in the UP. Things happen to people here because there are more people here. It's just a numbers game. I always thought of the Marquette area as being rather populous, and that's totally not true. I didn't know that until I moved to a populated area.
So I'm feeling like something will likely happen to me, more likely good than bad because I'm an eternal optimist. Because things happen to people here. I'm going to start playing the lottery more often, just in case.
