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Locals,
by Kim Hoyum
Dressed
for the weather
You may not know Sue Johnson by name, but you probably know her by sight;
for the past ten years she has been Downtown Marquette’s parking
officer, or “meter maid.”
She can be found walking up and down city streets in sunshine, rain
or snow almost every day of the year.
No matter what the weather, she’ll be on her daily rounds.
“I’m a Yooper,”
she said, laughing. “I know how to dress in this stuff. When it’s
thirty below, wear everything you own. I always tell people I have so
many clothes on, if I fall down I won’t be getting up.”
Johnson appreciates the walking she does on the job for a good reason.
“I’m a Type 1 diabetic,” she said. “I have an insulin
pump. I go to work and it helps my health, because I’m walking
all day.”
Her lively personality and love of her job make what could be boring
workdays enjoyable for Johnson.
“Find a job you love, and you never have to go to work,” she
said.
Johnson often stops to say hello to downtown business owners, or to
provide directions to out-of-town visitors.
“A lot of my job is PR,” she said. “When I see someone
with out-of-state plates, I’ll go see if I can help them, tell
them some things to do.”
Her friendliness isn’t going to get anyone out of a parking ticket,
however.
“You have to be fair,” Johnson said. “I’ve written
my brothers tickets, my friends tickets.” Sometimes, she’ll
ticket the car of a business owner and then go into the store and tell
the owner about the ticket.
Johnson doesn’t have a quota for tickets, but usually finds plenty
of illegally parked cars downtown. She points out there is no good reason
for many of them.
“We have lots of parking downtown,” Johnson said. “You
never have to walk more than half a block.”
She also shared a parking tip; the meters at the Marquette Commons lot
and on Main Street are ten-hour meters. When parking downtown for more
than two hours, twenty-five cents an hour versus a $10 ticket is a pretty
clear choice, she said.
A native of Marquette, Johnson, whose maiden name is Lakenen, has lived
here for most of her life. At twenty-three, she married Wayne Johnson,
and they have been married for almost twenty-three years.
From 1980 to 1988, they lived in Colorado, where two children, Jake
and Amy, were born. Sue worked nights at the local school district so
that she and her husband could have opposite shifts and one of them
always could be with the children. But they moved back to Marquette
when the children were toddlers, although they didn’t have jobs
arranged yet.
“My husband said, ‘If you can sell the house, we’ll move
home,’” she said. “I sold our house in a week.”
Johnson said she missed Lake Superior, and thought Marquette was a better
place to raise children.
Both Johnson’s children graduated from Marquette Senior High School;
Jake in 2003 and Amy in 2004. Amy is now a college student, while Jake
is a Marine, based in California. He has spent two tours in Iraq, one
along the Syrian border and one around Fallujah.
Johnson still visits Colorado once a year to go elk hunting with her
husband and a cousin who lives there. They camp in a tent at 10,000
feet and sometimes get snow, although they go in late August, when bow
season opens for elk.
“When you’re bugling in a nine hundred pound animal that’s
coming in to fight you and you’ve just got a bow and arrow––it’s
pretty thrilling,” she said.
Johnson also hunts deer and birds with both bow and rifle here in the
Upper Peninsula. She spends the fall rifle season in a one-of-a-kind
hunting camp; Camp Tampon, an all-women’s camp. A group of ten
women, Johnson’s family and friends, started the tradition sixteen
years ago. Now, it includes Johnson’s daughter Amy, who has begun
hunting.
“We don’t hunt out of blinds or over bait,” Johnson said.
Every woman at the camp can read a compass and build a fire. The camp
has no power and no water.
“It takes confidence,” she said.
It is twenty miles from Marquette, so if any of the women have children
or work, it is only a short distance from home. Another factor in making
hunting season possible, since many of their husbands also hunt, is
the help of grandmothers, who often take care of children during deer
season.
Johnson’s brother and cousin built the camp as a place to take
their girlfriends.
“Little did they know their sisters and wives were going to take
it over for an all-female hunting camp,” Johnson said.
The rest of the year, it’s a family camp, but there is a sign with
the camp’s name, so everyone knows it’s not a men’s camp,
she said.
Hunting is only one of Johnson’s many outdoor interests. Others
include backpacking, both downhill and cross-country skiing, and backcountry
snowmobiling, “the kind where you step off your snowmobile and
you’re up to your waist in snow,” she said.
For Johnson, every season in the U.P. offers different enjoyments.
“[When] summer comes, I half live in my yard,” she said. “I
always start out with high hopes for my garden. I keep putting in flower
beds and then realizing, now I have to keep up with them.”
A true Yooper, Johnson also doesn’t mind spending most of her winter
outside.
“Even though I spend my days outdoors, there’s so much to
do in the winters,” Johnson said. “Winter flies by. I hear
people whine about the weather, but just get dressed for it and get
out in it.”
— Kim Hoyum
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