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I believe that's a reference to the northern vowel shift.[1] Your family might have been too far west.

There is some "Warshington" out here in the PNW, but I never encountered that growing up in Michigan.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_Engli...

I grew up in Michigan. My 9th grade English teacher, who was very strict about grammar, nearly caused me to fall out of my chair one day when she said “warshed” instead of “washed”. It was very unusual both for our part of the country and for this woman who was such a stickler about our use of the language. (All 9th grade me could think is, “What a fucking hypocrite to constantly criticize us over such nitpicky things and she can’t even pronounce the word ‘washed’!”)

..big difference between grammar (definite rules) and pronunciation (born in the wrong place?). Being from the uk - i say 'bath', my sister 'barth'.

Grammar is far from a definite set of rules, and can be modeled just as descriptively as accent.

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