If you're wearing a Stormy Kromer hat, a chamois shirt with a wool vest and swampers when you go to the mall, you might be from Michigan.
Last Thursday, Sassafras and I went to the Mesick Mushroom Festival to purchase some canopy supplies for the year. Our supplier was set up there and we were on our way to Clio, MI. and simply drove a couple of hundred miles out of our way to get what we needed. Anyway, I had put on a pair shorts, the kind with all the pockets, a pair of argyle socks that came up over my calves, an Hawaiian shirt over a tank top and to finalize my wardrobe I had put on a wool vest over the shirt and a Stormy Kromer hat. This would be the height of fashion in the UP. The Hawaiian shirt is a statement that we think warm even when it ain't, the argyle socks are to keep the bare legs warm, the Stormy Kromer hat doesn't need explanation and the wool vest is so you don't freeze to death while making a fashion statement. When I got out of my van and walked towards a couple of vendor friends of mine, they started laughing at me and making fun of my ensemble. It didn't bother me because I knew they were just a bunch of Trolls (people that live below the Mackinac Bridge).
On Sunday, I had on the same outfit when we returned and went into a restaurant near out house. I asked the waitress how she liked my outfit. She said she had a wool vest and really liked it. She also said she always thinks that Hawaiian shirts look good. I asked her if she thought I looked odd. She gave me a quizzical look and asked me, "Why would I think that." I told her, "Exactly" and then related how I had been made fun of and she just shook her head knowingly (she also knows that Trolls just don't get it.)
Well, that is my story of being a Uper (pronounced Yoooper) and my experience with going to another world.
Mick