I don't remember exactly what was said, only the chronology of events: as we ascended, I spoke to my dad, asked him a question, I think. My dad answered back, and the strange man suddenly turned to him.
"You're definitely from Maine," he said, then turned his attention to me. "And you hail from either the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, northern Wisconsin, or northern Minnesota."
My dad and I flashed each other a puzzled glance. The man milked this a moment or two, before revealing that he was a language professor on campus, who specialized in colloquialisms, dialects and accents.
I may not remember what was said, but I do know the whole thing happened in under twenty seconds. Both my question and my dad's response were under five or six words a-piece. They had to be, as the building we were in couldn't have been more than four or five stories, allowing for a fifteen second elevator ride at most. For having so little to go on, this guy was spot on. My dad grew up in Portland, Maine, and I was at that time in the midst of being northern Wisconsin born and raised.
It's impressive in hindsight, but at the time it left me self-conscious, and not a little deflated. Throughout high school, my brother had cultivated a hearty distaste for our hometown and everything associated with it, as teenagers tend to do (his choice of an east coast school had as much to do with putting lots of distance between himself and 'home' as anything else). And as little brothers tend to do, I followed his lead, carved out my own indignation about where I was being born and raised, started wanting to be too good for it all just like he was, and as he excitedly geared up for college far, far away (New York City, no less...his freshman dorm wound up being across the street from Lincoln Center), I don't mind admitting I was feeling pretty left behind. I surely was in no mood to be pegged as a northern Wisconsinite. Everything I associated with northwoods culture was nothing cool: The McKenzie Brothers' 'hoser' humor (riding high on SCTV at the time), Polka Party, which aired every Saturday morning on the local radio station (and was exactly what it sounded like), Da Yoopers, a musical/comedy act from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan whose songs include 'Diarrhea' and 'Someone Ripped One on Da Dance Floor', and the Chmielewski Fun Time, a polka variety TV show that aired every Saturday night at five on a television station out of Duluth.
If something resembling Chmielewski Fun Time appeared as a joke on a TV sit-com or in a movie, or as a skit on Saturday Night Live, I'd probably be far more likely to roll my eyes than laugh. But CFT was very real.
The Chmielewski Fun Time Show aired every Saturday evening on a local television station when I was a little kid.
But in the summer of 1985, my brother was getting out. I was stuck there, stuck in the northwoods, for at least another six years. It was difficult enough to be dealing with an identity crisis at the dawn of the angst-ridden teenage years, not to mention so significant a life change as a sibling - my only sibling - going off to college, now I had just been branded 'one of them' by a complete stranger in an elevator.
I was one of them then, as it turned out, whether I liked or realized it. And truth is, I feel as though I am one of them still.
The accent in question was exaggerated to the Nth degree by Frances McDormand in the movie Fargo, and the culture from which it springs was funny stuff for Betty White's character Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls. It's rooted primarily (though not exclusively) in Scandinavian ethnicity (Norway, Sweden, Finland...), though my application of it can only be some form of nurture over nature, as I do not have a drop of Scandinavian blood in my veins.
Nevertheless, to this day, there are present in my speech certain totems to the environment in which I grew up.
* My 'O' sound is very thick, with certain words - 'boat', 'pole', and 'bowling' for example - usually plopping out of my mouth like clumps of clay.
* Also with certain words, I pronounce the short A sound as a long A sound. For instance, bag is pronounced 'bayg', 'hag' comes out 'hayg'... and on July 4th, we all proudly fly the 'flayg'...
* The word 'sure' usually gets pronounced 'sherr'...
* "Yah", or "oh yah', or "yah hey", find their way into my speech fairly frequently, particularly in moments of indifference.
* And of course, 'eh...?' has long been a readily selected punctuation to just about any sentence.
That the Fordham professor of 28 years ago specified northern Wisconsin or Minnesota when placing me somewhere is significant; testament, I think, to the man truly knowing his stuff. It really is a microcosmic culture, separate from the rest of those states. And the difference between the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Lower Peninsula? Forget it. If Yoopers could secede, they surely would.
But to be honest, Chmielewski Fun Time notwithstanding, I think that whole culture is misunderstood and often unfairly characterized. Frances McDormand's accent in Fargo is a little too exaggerated, Rose Nylund's St. Olaf stories, while funny, are just a little over the top, merely gag lines written by script writers who may know humor, but don't necessarily know anything about what they're making fun of. In fact, I seem to recall an episode of The Golden Girls where they take a trip to the fictitious St. Olaf, and come to the bus station in Minneapolis, which, as depicted by the tableau built for the scene, has a pot-bellied stove in it. This is utterly laughable, of course, as even in the 1980s there was nothing 'rustic' about the bus station in Minneapolis. It was as plagued by top notch urban depravity as any; I know this first-hand, having picked my brother up numerous times on visits home. I've always considered that scene a good example of how little people on the coasts know about what - and who - lies east of the Rockies and west of the Appalachians.
Not knowing the story, or at least the whole story, is the crime. Yes, the McKenzie Brothers are funny, kind of, as are Da Yoopers , if I'm in the right frame of mind, not to mention Bananas at Large - of 'Da Turdy Point Buck' fame. I get why these things resonate with people, and they're not entirely inaccurate in their exaggeration. But they barely scratch the surface, and I would ask any outsider to dig a little deeper, don't rely on stereotypes, and you'll find northwoods culture is much more intricately textured, the heart that beats to keep the northern body warm more complexly wired.
Often, Yah hey, signifies much more than indifference.
Though I don't live in northern Wisconsin anymore, and probably never will again, I'm proud to hail from there, proud to talk like 'one of them'. While it may not be the sexiest accent in the world, that which it is, it is. I'm looking forward to wearing it like a name tag for people I meet on 1/48/50.
Wherever we are, there might be no more elemental representation of who we are (or at least what we once were), than the way we talk.
