Some images are both vivid and useful. The pig in the anaconda is one such. Up here along the North Shore, the image has multiple uses, with Highway 61 literally being the “snake” route along the water’s edge. The evenly spaced towns are, so to speak, the pigs where the anaconda body spreads out. But as we like to say up here, there’s more, the “more” being that each of the little pigs tries for the fullest fill it can get. In tourist season (at times it is thought that should be an open season) the object is for each pig to fill with tourists. If you were wondering, this explains why the North Shore has a summer-long procession of festivals dangled like a fisherman’s bait to lure the vacationer into spending range, where they can be hooked and gutted. (That’s another vivid and useful image, I believe.)

People living along the body-route of the snake learn to avoid the pig points at times of peak piggery. “Damn, I better buy milk and bread on Thursday this week or face the Friday melee of weekend festival-goers here to offer porcine homage to big fishcake day.” The bait events are near as regular in season as are the placement of gathering points along Highway 61. The tiny places celebrate this or that “day”; the larger venues bite off an entire weekend of income-making fun. Along my area of shore, it was the inexplicable Dragon Boats last weekend, and the biggest of them all, Fisherman’s Picnic, this week. The Picnic is such a big business deal that locals all but abandon the town to visitors—well, in terms of parking, that’s for sure. They park everywhere. If the space in front of the emergency room wasn’t so far a walk from the main events, the ER would look like it was having a sale.

When you’re not used to it, having to wait half an hour in line with milling visitors for a mere loaf of bread is an annoyance made more pointed by a normally friendly cashier looking ready to snap off heads being asked if they have any fresh Thai vegetables. (The answer is “NO, we never stocked fresh veggies from Asia, and the Dragon Boats were LAST weekend!”) I don’t fault clerks for being human. One week it’s ten checkouts per period and the next it’s 100. Who could cope? I frankly wonder how store owners manage stock for the population bubbles common to the pig in the anaconda pattern. I give them credit for preparing well enough to meet the demand. If it were me, I might be tempted to let shelves bare down to the point where those weird sardines no one has been buying will start to look attractive to someone. It would be good to be rid of them. But I don’t run a store (be happy) so there’s none of that and a lot less hit-and-miss than I’d supply.

With Dragon Boats and the Picnic done, we’re into the August end-run celebrations to get the stragglers. I’m OK with local events relating to area history and ways. The Fisherman’s Picnic was once a summer holiday for the commercial fishermen, and there was, of course, an important historic annual Rendezvous in Grand Portage. I’m not so keen on the Chinese trinkets attached to those celebrations these days, but there’s more hope there than I find in Cajun and jazz tourist events along the shore. Frankly, those things bother me. If in an alternate universe I were interested in Cajun or jazz things, I would not seek those things out where people are not known for doing them. Lake Superior is not Louisiana. It’s not even an easy mistake to make, is it? They don’t look or sound alike, so what’s the connection, other than the anaconda and pig deal? Is Cajun food any more unique than native fry bread? If I fancied lutefisk, I doubt I’d relish it more done Hawaiian or Asian style. Does anyone honestly think people living here practiced the jazz clarinet with chapped lips in wigwams or drafty fish houses in their few spare moments of scrapping out a living? Coming up with attention-getting events based on odd combinations isn’t the best recommendation. True, horseradish ice cream could be OK, but let Ben and Jerry try it first and get back to us. More seriously, I wonder why we dilute our culture with unworthy attractions. I’d feel less troubled if I knew the good citizens of Bangkok held an annual Beargrease Sled Dog Race. What are the odds? I’m thinking the odds are good as for finding a one-legged cat swimming the Pacific.

There’s a new wrinkle on the Highway 61 anaconda, too. I don’t know about what’s been done to the west, but east of Grand Marais the highway now has median rumble strips cut into its surface. I’ve tried to figure them out. In some places the rumble overlays double solid yellow lines. That makes sense. Then other places it lays atop the single dashed line or the solid and dashed combos. I’m still thinking about those because the logic could be a lot stronger going one direction than the other. Then there are the great teasers for which I have no clue. Why is there rumble strip for a long and fairly clear stretch of single dashed line where there’s a good shot at passing? Why is this not so along another seemingly identical stretch of road? Hmmm, are these rumble lines geared to telling drivers not to exceed the 55 mph limit? The law says go no faster than the limit, even to pass. We know how practical and respected that limit is. In effect it is a non-pass law aimed to delight those who drive a sedate 54 mph to be safe. Those people will be here in a few weeks in their Buicks to enjoy the colorful autumn colors. They need a festival, too. Maybe we could try Antonio Borgia Days and see what happens.