(My theme for April's A to Z blogging challenge is postcards. If you want, read my intro post).
A Yooper is a term that is particular to a certain region in the United States. It refers to a person who lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. You can find this term in the urban dictionary, and it was added to the 2014 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
If you're not familiar with North American geography, the state of Michigan has two peninsulas that are connected via the Mackinac Bridge, the second-longest suspension bridge in the USA. The first word is pronounced as it it were written with a "w" at the end. The bridge is 5 miles long, and you can see it on the bottom of the card.
The lower peninsula is lower peninsula or mitten (I will explain the latter in a bit), but the Upper Peninsula is commonly referred to as just the "U.P." Hence, the word Yooper, a person from the U.P. Michigan is the only state in the USA that has two peninsulas. It is also surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes.
How do I know all this, having not been born in the USA? Well, when I immigrated, my first residence happened to be in the U.P. , and I spent 13 years there. My two adult children are Yoopers because they were both born there. While I have not been there since I left in the mid 1990s, I still remember the Yooper ways.
Anyway, I was quite surprised when I received the card you see above via Postcrossing (the largest postcard exchange site in the world) as the U.P. is not exactly a populous (nor popular) area. Only 3 percent of Michigan's residents are Yoopers. Lots of cold and snow there (it's the reason I left in the first place). The true Yoopers who were born there love their area, of course.
Anyway, as you can see, the card shows just the upper portion (U.P.) of Michigan. The lower portion (lower peninsula) looks like a gloved hand with the thumb to the right. That's why they call it the mitten.
Now, you probably wonder if I know the sender of the card. Sadly, no. While the card originated only one town away from where I used to live, it was sent by the staff from a long term care facility in St. Ignace, and they did not reply to my thank you message.
1 comment:
How sad that you didn't get a reply. I had not heard the term Yooper before, but it makes sense. I didn't know about the mitten or upper or lower peninsula until I saw a show called How the States Got Their Shapes. So much to learn about the U.S. You'd think I know more because I live here. Nah.
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