Welcome to all the new visitors to our humble website who discovered Pasty Central this month in NEWSWEEK Magazine. I'm Toivo from Toivola, your weekend editor, while Mary Drew from Lake Linden does the weekday honors here on the Pasty Cam, and our webmaster Charlie Hopper from Eagle River cracks the whip to keep the crew at work. Behind the scenes, Jonathan Hopper keeps the system running, Daryl Laitila of Hancock maintains sponsor websites, Debbie Potter of Copper City covers phones, and John Schneiderhan of Calumet keeps Pasty.NET members connected. (It's a real team sport!) And not to forget John Bramble and the crew who man the pasty kitchen, and about 56 residents at Still Waters who occasionally peel veggies, sample pasties, and maintain quality control.

Every Sunday we feature a "Shoebox Memory" with a picture from the olden days in the U.P... Erik Nordberg over at the MTU Archives, sent this historical photo from the 5th annual Winter Carnival at Michigan Tech in Houghton. The History of Michigan Tech's Winter Carnival will be the topic of a public presentation at 7:00pm on Thursday, January 22, 2004. The event will take place in the lower level Study Hall in the historic Douglass Houghton residence hall on the MTU campus in Houghton, Michigan. Snow statue building has already begun for this year's carnival and other activities will be underway in the next few weeks - - MTU Winter Carnival Schedule.

I'm not sure what activity is taking place in this shot - - anyone have any ideas?

Good Morning Pasty Central, old AND new friends tuning in...
Wow, I have the first posting this morning??
It looks like the largest groups of people are actually on the shore (or at least nearer the shore)... and that there is quite a steady line walking out to the middle for some reason...
our guess is that they are are cutting ice on the Portage - maybe watching some new fangled 'electric' ice cutter or saw...
of course, maybe they are just playing "Red Rover" (Red Rover, Red Rover...send Fred over...)

I love these shoebox memories. What was the large structure on the north (Hancock) end of the bridge? Looks like the wall along the highway leading up to Hancock was in place.

Anyone have information and pictures from yesterdays Polar Bear Dip into the Portage?

Thank you to the whole team. Enjoy this site so much, need to start each day with a Pasty Com boost. Bless all of you!

PSmittSC- Its the old Hancock Coal Dock, the "wall" is the coal bins, and you can make out the crane which was fited with a clam shell to unload the coal from the boats to the coal bins.

It was called Peoples Coal Dock. I have photo in Gallery of my late Uncles steamboat unloading there.

The shoebox memories are my favorites. It reminds me of Earl Gagnon's Green Sheet in the Saturday Gazette way back when.

I think they were trying to institute a toll to cross the bridge and people are protesting by walking across on the ice. Or maybe they are having submarine races. No, no -- I know -- someone dropped his pasty while ice fishing and they are all trying to find it before it gets cold! :>)

Toivo, thanks for mentioning the ones who make this web site possible for so many peoples' enjoyment. I know it is one of the first sites I check out everyday and I'm sure it is for a lot of other people too. Keep up the good work guys
and gals!

Looks like a singles dance to me, guys on one side, girls on the other.

To Dave from Farmington I found a link to photos of the Polar Bear Dive at: http://pasty.com/pcam/POLAR-BEAR-DIVE
I hope this helps you. There are some great pictures. The Z-Man is the one who has the pictures in his album!!

Helen: Thanks for the link to the Polar Bear Dive pics. A person has got to have something loose upstairs to do a thing like that, don't you think? BBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once a week is not enough shoebox memories!!!!!
They're GREAT!! (and so are the other pic's)

As far as the polar bear dive, I don't see how this can be at all healthy. It seems like such a shock to the system, I think even more so if one has first taken steam in the sauna. I always think someone is going to have a heart attack doing this one of these days. Is that really a "sauna" in the pics? I think this yearly dive is absolutely crazy, just has to be difficult for the heart to take.

I just checked out the photos of the Polar Bear Dive. Are
those wearing scuba gear with the sheriff's dept? Good
to see they have safety and rescue in mind in case
something went wrong. Still, those photos made me
smile- such jolly souls to do this in January! Imagine the
sauna was a welcome touch!

My mother was born in Laurium in 1903. I visited my
grandarents (Jurmu) there many times. My
grandmother used to make "slingshot bread" and I
would like to get the recipe for it. Anyone have it?

Holy Wa, hey, Dave from Mohowk-- the Green Sheet is a shoebox memory itself!!! I had forgotten all about that! And I used to deliver da Gazzette as a youngster!

They can't be all crazy Finns who dived into that frigid water. Yikes.

Nope they all aren't crazy Finn's... we had a nonFinn guest in our sauna last night, who did a nude polar bear roll in the snow!

We were thrilled to learn about pasty.com in Newsweek. My father-in-law is turning 80 this week, and pasties are the perfect gift for him. My husband says his family spent almost every summer of his childhood in the U.P., much of it searching for good pasties!

One of those houses on the hill is where the 'bridge-cam' is located now, right?
Hei, RCW, saw Matt and Gloria and her mother at the Finnish Heritage Center yesterday during the HEIKKEN PÄIVÄ celebration. Kilpela and Friends played there. Along with other musical groups.

Hi N.S., Lake Bluff, IL- I lived and worked in Lake Bluff from June to Dec. 1969. Will always have fond memories of that great little town. Even greater folks there!

I haven't a clue about the Shoebox Photo. Sure is a curious shot.

way to go PANTHERS

Milwaukee had the green sheet and Toledo had the peach section....and I read em both from DHH in 1964. What a wonderful old residence hall. "Harverd" should eat its heart out at the ivy and brick............

Helen, Thank You for the Polar Bear dive pictures. I just love seeing those brave, drunk, crazed, or all of the above dive into that fridged water.

The Green Sheet and Earl Gagnon were classics. Michele, not many girls delivered da Gazette back when I did it. The recent Pasty-cam picture of the old Gazette building and the Library Bar precipitated a lot of interesting messages about the John Davis era (w/o POR and the first World Frisby Championships, strangely.)

Over the years, hundreds of us must have waited on that street for the Gazette presses to print the papers. We picked up the papers for delivery after school, and counted them before fanning out over town. Hitchhiking to the beginning of the route was OK in the 50s, and probably half the people in Houghton picked up a paperboy at Franklin Square at one time or another. (Thanks to all of you who gave us those rides in the winter when we couldn't ride a bike.) Remember the Thursday collections when we punched the blue cards on a ring and the customer's white card? That reminds me of those sheets of movie tickets for matinees at the Lode every Saturday afternoon in the summer. The Lode was around the corner from the Gazette; down the hill was where the South American docked and where the Twin Cities Band greeted them. But those are other stories...

Did you notice how sparse the trees were on Quincy Hill in the picture? It took a long time for the trees to cover areas like 'the Trestle' to the left of Mont Ripley. Somewhere in the Pastycam archives, there is a recent photo from a similar spot, now the Houghton Park.

Dear Wistful,
You and I remember many of the same things, but I grew up in the sixties. We still paid for our paper on Thursday and the punch cards on a ring would be punched after an extremely nominal amount of green cash was paid. We got tickets to the show on punch cards, but they were at the Pic in Hancock. I haven't thought about the green page in years! I haven't seen a newspaper show up in the afternoon since I left Houghton, either. Paperboys here get started at 3am and they are adults. Those were the days... back when TV stations and Radio Stations went off the air at 11pm and came back on at 7am, each time playing first and last our national anthem! They should still play the NA at those times, it wouldn't hurt anything, would it?

Chilled said:
"It seems like such a shock to the system, I think even more so if one has first taken steam in the sauna."

It might well be a serious shock if you had not done the sauna first.

'Tis hard to believe unless you've done it, but surprisingly, if you take such a jump in the lake right from the sauna you'll feel as though you were wrapped in an insulating blanket of warm air, and you'll hardly feel the cold! As long as your stay in the water is fairly short, at least - but that ice-walk back to the sauna might be a frosty experience!

That said, I'm in no great hurry to repeate the experience.

(From a displaced Yooper Finn/MTU grad who'se been there, done that, quite a few decades ago.)

I delivered the Gazette in the early 80s and we still used cards.

We're still on for our talk tonight at 7:00pm (see the link at the top of this page). Very appropriate that it will take place in a blizzard.

It's nice to see so much traffic about this photo. Those first years had the carnival as more of a sports competition out on Portage Lake.

From the Gazette, March 3, 1927 (the year of this photo):

"The Winter Sports Carnival of Michigan Tech proved to be a success...The slush on Portage Lake seriously handicapped the carrying out of the program and caused the spectators to move from one side of the lake to the other as it was difficult to choose suitable courses for the events...

"The carnival opened at 12:30 with a parade which was the outstanding feature of the day. The students showed their originality in the making of varied kinds of floats...

"One of the most thrilling events of the day was that of the ski riding behind the airplane, which at times gained the speed of 60 miles an hour. A number of exciting spills added interest to the event."

The article goes on to list winners in several events including: dog race, high school boy's ski race, men's open snowshoe race, women's adult ski race, MCM obstacle snowshoe race, and a "fancy skating" event.

Also interesting to see another column in that same issue which confirmed the "Hartman Bill" had been adopted by the senate and sent to the Governor for his signature on February 25, 1927. This was the legislation that changed the name of the college from the "Michigan College of Mines" to the "Michigan College of Mining and Technology."

Connie-Colo- Yep delivered the Milwaukee Journal in western Houghton in about 60 or so. Up very early! Then to school with frozen feet and a runny nose.

This photo is dated March 1927, perhaps the reason everyone is out on the Lake is because the MCM ice rink had burned down just 3 months before. The Amphidrome Ice Rink located next to Portage Lake was the indoor ice rink that was used by the MCM hockey team and other local activities at the time. The Amphidrome burned to the ground early Sunday morning January 9, 1927. Perhaps like today, many of the Winter Carnival events took place inside the ice rink but this year, 1927, were held outside because their indoor ice rink was gone. The indoor ice rink was rebuilt in time for the beginning of the next skating season. Finances for this rebuilding were coordinated by James R. Dee with the support of many other local businessmen. Hence, it was renamed the Dee Ice Rink. See my webpage for more info: www.cchockeyhistory.org