• Sunday-What'sUP June 5 - 11:35 pm

If you are new to the Pasty Cam, it's a place where we explore Michigan's Upper Peninsula - past and present - in words and pictures. And if you're not acquainted with pasties (PASS-tees) from the U.P., we invite you to order some before you cruise off to the next web site.

Yesterday afternoon we enjoyed the lovely summer-like weather with a drive down to Escanaba. The town was swarming with vintage cars for the annual Cruisin' event near the U.P. State Fairgrounds. It reminded me of seeing some old cars in our Guest Gallery here at Pasty Central, now with over 21,000 photos. For this week's Shoebox Memory first we call up Clyde Elmblad's album with a shot of cars around the Oja-Maki store in Pelkie in the 1920's. Clyde has a nice collection of Baraga County photos in one of his sub-albums, and on his personal website. Then we fast forward to 1959 for a glimpse of J.R. Manninen's Edsel, shown here in an Independence Day Parade in Dollar Bay.

Speaking of parades, consider this a personal invitaion to motor on up to Calumet for Pasty Fest 2005 on Saturday, July 2nd. It kicks off with a parade downtown at 10am, and if you are among the first 400 to bring the special coupon at lunch time, the Pasty Central crew will treat you to a free pasty. There will also be the exciting bake-off competition, to see which individual and which bakery in the U.P. makes the most delicious pasty. For more info see mainstreetcalumet.com

Have a good week :o)

Nice Cars!!

Wow, cars sure have changed from then up to now.
I don't think there was any fiberglass bumpers or
fiberglass fenders back then. Cars were built much stronger. Just a small dent or scrape on todays cars, runs into hundreds of dollars to fix.

Were Edsels driven by remote control? This one seems to be lacking an on-board driver. No wonder they bombed in the marketplace. Not only were they beauty challenged they were also chromatically challenged (refering to the color, not the bumpers.) Maybe the second photo should have been in black and white also.

Charlie,

Where do we get the "Special Coupons", we want to be among the fortunate-four-hundred. Getting hungry already!

Thanks!!!

The coupons will appear in the Daily Mining Gazette, and we are also considering the possibility of having one you can print online.

Hey J.R. gotta love them Edsels!! What a tank! Hard to bounce them off the road around corners! Heading out to a car show today ourselves with our Camaro.

Gary-CO: Oh, I don't know about that color being so bad-- maybe they were ahead of their time. I see all kinds of clothes in the stores in that color!! (NOT that I would ever wear them! It's not my color, either)

I love that top pic of the old cars in the 20's. It instantly evokes a slower 'Sunday' kind of day!

Pelkie in the '20s looks like Saxon in the 60's.

where do you get that "special" coupon...for the free pasty ?
my wife and I are thinking of driving up for that weekend...that would be a great day up in Calumet..and eating a real pasty

Like the Edsel! I have one my self. A "58" Corsair 4 door hd top. Powered by a 350 HP 410, which was known as an E-475. 475 is pnds of torque. That was the biggest engine made in 58. I also have a "59" T-Bird convertable, 300 HP 352, that I'm having fun with. I'm retiring in a few weeks and moving back to the UP and will ship both cars as well. Realy like those "50"s cars.

I have seen the 59 Edsel around, I am not thrilled with the color, but it great to see the old cars around. They were built solid, not like the cars today.

J.R. Manninen and his Edsel are lined up in front of the Catholic Church in Dollar Bay heading towards the High School waiting for the Parade to begin,that is why he is not in it yet.Dollar Bay is a Great Place to be on the 4th. of July,along with many other town's in the U.P.Thank you for today's memory as I walked that street to and from school with many other of my childhood pal's.

Best place to be on the 4th of July........

G A Y hands down

Does anybody remember the Calumet Village July 4th parades? It ended at Morrison School and we all got ice cream bars handed out by Ike Forsberg.
My brothers and sisters and I got to go down to Barsotti's and pick out one 4th of July treat after the parade was over. The toy or whatever we chose, didn't last much longer than the 5th!

who in the Keweenaw sold new Edsels back then..

If you were in the U.P. in the late 1950s, there was just one
thing about the Edsel that caught your attention, and it wasn't
the color or the horsepower. It was that grill! It looked just like
the mouth of a lamphrey (sp?) eel, and it was beyond gross! It
was at that time that the lamprey (that looks better ) eel had
been identified as the import responsible for the drastic decline
of the whitefish in the Great Lakes. It was hard to imagine that a
company based in Michigan as Ford was could come up with a
grill that looked like the maw of a lamprey. (Soon the head of
Ford would go to Washington to run the Defense Dept. during
the Viet Nam War. What a leader!)

I was in the U.P. in the late 50's and you never saw an Edsel. They were too expensive for Yoopers! But, there were plenty on Finlander Caddilacs. The Chevy Im-pala.

when I was a kid I always saw a face in the chrome grill of a
car. Headlights big eyes and grill big grinning mouth. An
Edsel was one scary beast!

lampreys, now they were really something... we used to
seee them nailed on the wall of Falk's fishing launch in
Skanee. Are they still a problem for the lake trout?

Just a heads up that the date at the web site is showing Sunday "May 29th"

Thanks for your astute observations, USTA-B. The easiest way to start a new week is to copy and modify the old one. Just didn't modify enough. Fixed.

I enjoyed the picture today also especially since it was in Dollar Bay. Dollar Bay has a great 4th of july celebration. Like Dave in the Smokies my friends and I often stopped at Kus's and bought frozen Milky Ways and then down that street to school. Our family went to St Francis,a pretty little church

I always thought the Edsel was strange looking.

Was born and raised in the Sturgeon River Valley (Pelkie), nice to see a picture of my hometown on PastyCam.

To: flyin da MOONEY

I really laughed when reading your message today.
My husband and I don't miss the Gay parade either. I grew up there, but had to move at age 14 down to the big city. I always enjoy seeing old friends - it's really a hoot.

Liz after the parade they had a money scramble at Barsottis parking lot for the kids -Phil Belisle threw cange for yrs there--after Phil died Skipper Johnson from blue jacket threw hundreds of dollars in change there when he came up from Detroit on 4th--seen the money bags at there home

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Hey I still got my Edsel from long ago!!
Dave H. in TN, you've seen this car, don't think you've ever rode in it. You probably will someday, we are redoing it again! It's been all around Dollar Bay, Woodside and the whole UP!
The "horsecollar" grill was supposed to be reminiscent of the old Packards and others in the 30s & 40s. Later, 60s Pontiac and others copied that style grill! Those colors are typical of the 50s and were popular on the late 60s, early 70s, "muscle cars"!
For an updated view of what the Edsel would have looked like in the late 90s www.edsel.net/96.html Cool!!!
OOPS I guess I don't have the right image upload code.

OOPs I guess I did get it right!

Photo was taken in St. Clair Shores MI Too many years ago! (Film image!)

TS, I didn't get in on the change scramble that I can remember. But the parade was always a highlight of the summer. Thanks for adding the rest of the story.

Joe Finn: I also used to drive a Finnish car: the Suzuki VI-tara