Friday, 12/12

I think I finally get it.

Here's a fun fact about me.  When asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?”, I've only ever had three answers.  One was “astronaut”, another was what I'm doing now, and the third, apparently. was the first career field to which I ever aspired...

Garbage collector?

I don't remember this at all, but according to my dear  mother (hi down in Florida, Mom!) when I was a little kid I wanted to be a garbage collector.  There was apparently a very specific reason for it, in that  when I was young I was enthralled with the sound and the clatter that a garbage truck would make.  According to my mom, every single garbage day I would eagerly await the arrival of the truck, and then stare in wonder as the workers tossed cans in and the machinery within made a ruckus that would raise the dead.

As we've all figured out by now, I was a very special child.

I've always kind of chuckled at that story, really believing that I wasn't mesmerized by the racket made by the garbage truck.  But then I walked to work Wednesday.  On my daily stroll down to the station I pass a day care center where kids are always running around outside, burning energy, and most days even waving at me.  However, on Wednesday they weren't doing any of that, because their attention was placed elsewhere.

They were watching a garbage truck's mechanical arms pick up a bin and placing its contents into the top of the truck.

Now, I'm not talking just one “very special child” doing this.  Nope; a dozen kids—boys & girls—all under five years old, stood staring intently at the truck, mesmerized by what it was doing.  I don't know why; after all I was thinking, much like a cranky old man in training, that it was probably almost too loud for a city street.  But the kids were just rapt, staring at what they perceived as an awesome sight.

Apparently much like I did when I was young.

Now I have no idea if any of those kids would answer “garbage collector” when asked what they want to be when they grow up.  But if one of them were to do so, I guess I would kind of understand.

Because apparently there's just something about kids & garbage trucks.

Have a great weekend!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 12/11

To quote a great American philosopher, “Oops...I did it again”.

Sigh.

All this year I've been writing about a strange habit I've picked up, the habit of writing newspaper articles for the History Center, turning them in, and then promptly forgetting about them until weeks later when I open the paper and am shocked by what I see.

I'm thinking that maybe I should just stop reading the Mining Journal. That way I won't be shocked by myself.

8-)

So I'll once again re-purpose something I wrote weeks ago and then totally put out of my mind. This time of the year, we can always consider it the gift that keeps on giving.

That's okay. You can thank me later.

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

Let’s Go To The Mall

By Jim Koski

Marquette Regional History Center

Up until the early 1970s downtown was the center of Marquette commerce. From national chain stores to mom & pop outlets, from banks to grocery stores, when you needed to buy something, including all the holiday shopping one usually does this time of the year, you went “downtown”.

That all changed when the Marquette Mall opened.

In 1971 three developers announced plans to build one of the UP's first enclosed shopping malls on the city's west side. That area of Marquette was being rapidly developed, and in the previous few years had seen the building of several major projects, including a Holiday Inn and a ShopKo store. The Marquette Mall, sitting right alongside US-41, was set to cost four point six million dollars, and in promotional materials was being labeled “a park under a roof” with plans for up to 40 stores inside and free parking for almost 2,000 vehicles outside.

Construction started on the Mall in early 1973. Just a few months later, several stores had already opened, while the Mall itself held a grand opening November 7^th, 1973, set to coincide with the public unveiling of its main anchor store, Woolworth's. To reinforce the “park” theme of the new facility, palm trees from Florida were flown in for the event, while live music was offered while shoppers explored what the mall had to offer.

Woolworth's, which took up almost 40% of the project’s total square footage, was just one of the businesses that relocated from downtown Marquette. The other mall anchor, Angeli's Super Valu, also made the move west, as did other stores ranging from Stern & Fields Clothing and Jean’s Jewelry to The Sound Center.

The opening of the mall had an immediate impact on local shopping habits. With so many stores under one roof consumers no longer had to make their way through bad weather or traffic going from store to store on Washington and Front Streets. That soon led to an exodus of department and grocery stores and other shops from the downtown area. The mall's center court also offered a gathering place for many different community activities, ranging from exhibitions by the Boy Scouts and radio fundraising telethons to a visit in 1978 by then Vice President Walter Mondale.

However, the heyday of the Marquette Mall didn't last for long. The Mall didn't have the high ceilings and wide aisles of most malls, and the store that took up almost half the space of the building, Woolworth's, only had about half the sales per square foot of other area department stores like ShopKo or K-Mart. When the Westwood Plaza expanded into the Westwood Mall in the late 1980s many Marquette Mall stores and shoppers migrated there. It was just a few years later that both original Marquette Mall anchor stores–Woolworth’s and Angeli’s–closed, and traffic in the facility fell drastically.

By the turn of the 21st century the mall had undergone several ownership changes, and large sections of it were closed off to the public. In fact, the biggest tenant remaining in the building was a car dealership run by the mall’s then-owners. Once that dealership relocated to Marquette Township, most of the original mall building was torn down. All that's left today is an empty space in the section of the building that used to be Woolworth's, along with an empty restaurant building and a still functioning car wash in what’s left of the parking lot. But during its heyday in the 70s and 80s, the Marquette Mall had a big impact. For the most part, Marquette area shoppers no longer went downtown to do your Christmas shopping or pick up whatever essentials you needed. Instead, you just hopped into your car, and you “went to the mall”.

Wednesday, 12/10

There. Christmas decorations at the station are now up--

Yesterday someone asked me if we had any holiday decorations to stick up around here and, to be honest, we really don't. However, during Covid I had picked up a Charlie Brown Christmas tree and stuck in the lobby; it did seem appropriate at the time, after all. Since then, it's been sitting in a box under my desk and when I was asked about decorations it immediately sprung to mind.

So now the station's decorated for the season.

I've also dug the small LED tree that Loraine and I use at home out of our basement, and it's up in our apartment, a week or two earlier than usual. That's a tree we've had ever since we moved into our current place, and it's showing wear & tear after now (gulp) 18 years. It has these little plastic “needles” on them that fall off everywhere, and it's not uncommon for us to find them lying around months after the holidays are over. In fact, Loraine found one and taped it into the anniversary card she gave me last year.

To show you how long after the holidays we keep finding them, keep in mind that our anniversary's in April.

So now that the trees are up in the two places in which I spend the most time, I guess we're good to go for the holidays. Well, except for the baking of cookies. And the wrapping of gifts. And the mailing of gifts. And the getting of food for the feast. And the...

Never mind. Maybe I should just be glad that at least the trees are out.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 12/9

Okay. Maybe I lied just a little bit.

When I was writing about making Christmas cookie dough yesterday I mentioned that I practiced safe baking, in that I wash my hands quite q bit while baking. And that's true, especially when handling things like raw eggs.

However...when making the dough I, of course, wanna make sure it's okay. I wanna make sure it's turning out the way I want it to turn out, and I wanna make sure that there's nothing untoward about it. After all, I'm giving most (if not all) of these cookies away, and like any good baker I need to make sure they're gonna be edible. So when the dough's done, I grab a spoonful and taste it, to make sure that it's good to go.

That's right. Despite all the warnings, despite all the advice of experts, I eat raw cookie dough. So maybe the use of the phrase “safe baking” wasn't 100% accurate.

Maybe.

Yes, I know you're not supposed to eat raw cookie dough, especially raw cookie dough that has raw eggs mixed into it. I know that you can theoretically get all kinds of food-borne illnesses from consuming even one microgram of raw cookie dough. Heck, even the bag of flour I was using told me not to eat the flour raw, whether it was in cookie dough or not. But apparently I like being a rebel. Apparently I like living on the edge. And that was quite apparent last night when I made four kinds of cookie dough and ate four bites of the raw stuff.

And yet, I'm still alive.

Now, I know that it's probably a bad thing to do. I'm aware of what kind of organisms can lurk in uncooked foods. And I wouldn't eat a piece of raw chicken or even, like Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky”, quaff an entire raw egg. But I've been eating small samples of raw cookie dough since I started baking cookies as a kid. And not once in those 40+ years have I gotten sick from it. Sure, the possibility of barfing all over the kitchen exists, but the amount of “dangerous” material in a tiny bite of raw cookie dough is probably so small that I don't have to worry. Either that, or I can apparently ingest all kinds of toxic material and not be affected by it.

Unless, of course, I turn into a nuclear-powered super hero (or evil villain). Then I'll know I WAS affected by it.

But I understand why experts (and even flour bags) warn you NOT to eat raw cookie dough. I'm sure some fool out there once made cookie dough using 14 eggs and four-year old flour, ate it all in one sitting, blew their stomach out, and sued the food manufacturers for not telling them not to do it. After all, that's the American way. But having one small bite, just to make sure it tastes up to standards? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing to do. Like I said, call me a contrarian, but I've been doing it since I started baking cookies, and I'm guessing I won't be stopping any time soon.

(jim@wmqt.com), bad boy of baking.

Monday, 12/8

My fingers smell like rosemary. Of course, they're also red at the moment, which means that there's something strangely weird going on. Or weirdly strange. You pick.

My Christmas cookies are in the process of being created; one of the zillion things I did during my long weekend was to make the dough for them, and that's the particular reason why my fingers are confused. One of the cookies I made accounts for the way my fingers smell; that would be the lemon-rosemary cookies of which I've become so fond. This year, I decided to use fresh rosemary, which means that I had to tear off and cut up the leaves from the stems I bought. I'm glad I did it; the aroma from fresh rosemary made the dough smell amazing, a taste I hope will transfer to the cookies. But since I had to hold the rosemary by hand to tear and cut it the oils from the herb transferred onto my fingers, where a day or two later the smell still resides.

Of course, I LOVE rosemary, which means I think my hands smell heavenly. But that's just me.

Here's where the strangely weird (or weirdly strange) part comes in. My fingers smell like a green herb, yet look like they were attacked by a red one. One of the other cookies I made were my traditional cherry-chocolate explosions, which means that I had to cut up a jar of maraschino cherries. I don't know how much food coloring was placed in those cherries, but by the time I finished cutting up the jar the fingers which I used were a very bright, almost neon red. They smelled like rosemary, mind you, but looked like they had gotten involved in an intimate relationship with a Twizzler.

Don't believe me?

No matter how many times I washed my hands (and I washed them a lot while making the dough, because I practice safe baking) the red coloring would not come out of my fingers. Even after taking a shower this morning the red coloring still hadn't come out of my fingers, although it's faded a bit. I'm hoping it comes out soon.

But if it looks like I have red fingers on TV tonight, you now know why.

Hopefully, the red disappears soon. The scent of rosemary can stay if it wants, although that's disappearing at a much greater rate than the color. But who knows—maybe when I eat one or two of the cookies I can get a little of the smell to rub off on my hands. To play it safe, though, I may use gloves when eating the cherry cookies.

Just in case.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 12/4

I don’t mind birthdays. It’s the part about getting older that I don’t like.

Some of you may know that it’s my birthday today, and I guess I’m okay with that. I don’t expect people to make a big deal out of it; it’s nothing more than the anniversary of me finally relieving my mother of the burden of carrying me around for ten months. If anything, she’s the one who deserves the honors, since I wasn’t born until a month after my due date, and this was the day she was finally relieved of that misery.

So thanks for the extra 30 days, Mom!!

But whenever you have a birthday you’re forced to confront the fact that you’re getting older, and if there’s one thing you might have learned by reading this ramblings over the past however many years it’s that members of the Koski family don’t like to confront the fact that there’s nothing you can do about getting older. It just happens, whether you want it to or not.

Who do we see about changing that, by the way?

As I’ve gotten older I’ve noticed, despite my best efforts, more and more signs popping up reminding me of that fact that I am indeed getting on in years. Of course, the latest popped up last night, right before my birthday. I finished working out and was about to go through a few pages of a magazine (yes, another one of those signs that I’m “old”) and I noticed that I couldn’t quite make out the print on the page, which I found odd, because I usually have no trouble making out the print. It was then I realized that I wasn’t wearing my glasses, which, as for most “old” people, are bifocals. I slipped them on, and then had no trouble reading the print.

Aside from the heavy sigh the incident provoked, a bit of curiosity bubbled to the surface, as well. Even without glasses, I’m usually able to read things with no problem. In fact, when I read magazines or newspapers after working out or when I read in bed every night it’s usually without eyewear. Yet for some reason yesterday I couldn't read the print in the magazine until I put my glasses on I don’t know if it’s because the print was smaller than usual or because the room was rather dark or if (gasp) my eyes are just getting a little worse as time (gasp) marches on, but I couldn’t focus on the type well enough to read what was on the page. It didn’t matter how close I got to the page, or how far away I held it, something just didn’t work out until I used my glasses.

Oh, woe is me.

Since then, I’ve read a few other things—including the same magazine —without wearing my glasses, and I’ve been able to see them just fine. But that fact that I had this particular problem a day before turning another year “older” affected me in the way that all incidents related to aging affect me—with me not handling it like an ”adult” would.

So at least I’ve got that going for me.

Don’t worry; I’m sure that as these incidents keep popping up, I’ll (hopefully) get a better grip on them. After all, as I’m always told, these incidents DO pop up more and more as you age more and more, and, as I’ve found, there’s nothing you can (yet) do to stop that. So like I said, while I don’t mind birthdays, this whole getting “older” thing is just not my cup of tea.

Sigh. . .and make it a heavy one, if you’d like.

Since it IS my birthday today I have tomorrow off, and will be back with a new one of these on Monday. Have a great weekend!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 12/3

Because I have “High School Bowl” in a little bit, and because I haven't really shared any of them yet, I'm gonna take the easy way out today.

I hope you forgive me.

Actually, technically, it's not the “easy” way out, considering how much time I've spent putting this year's “season” of “Pieces of the Past” together. I've been writing about them in here since, what, February, and working on them pretty much since. Thankfully, they're all done, and we've been in the process of rolling them out the past month. I shared the first one—the epic “...And Put Up a Parking Lot”--with you, but I haven't said anything about the three we're premiered since them.

So, I guess, that serves as today's “easy way out”.

The first “Pieces? The story of how an iconic Marquette building—the building where my parents actually met, meaning it was kind of important to my existence—almost burned down--

The second? The story of how one company shaped downtown Marquette more than anything other than the hills and the Great Fire of 1868--

And finally, the story of the most unique school in Marquette history--

With that, I'm off to be a dork on TV. More tomorrow!

(jim@wmqt.com)