In a corner of my living room stands my Uncle Steve’s grandfather clock. I was dusting it the other day and remembered a song about a clock that was purchased “on the morn of the day he was born.” The song goes on to tell us that it was “too…
I remember as if yesterday the crowd that was gathered outside Wisp Smithers’ shack one July 4th when I was young. Wisp was an old fellow who lived a few miles from our place. We were coming home from the fireworks in town when Dad slowed the car, attempting to…
The summer hours of daylight last long into the evening and remind me of the days when we played softball until the mosquitoes got so thick we couldn’t see the bases. We were a motley group with no more batting, catching or outfielding ability than our dogs. What we did…
And the pain keeps coming. No matter how I move I can’t escape it. It burrows into my bones. It’s part of me. It’s a second animal within the first. I want to shake it off, to be free of it, but I must endure. This cannot last much longer….
I sat in the haymow and watched the sky gather black clouds until the rain came, and then I climbed down the ladder and ran barefoot through the fields of my father. The grass clung to my feet as I ran through buttercups and purple clover. I ran faster and…
Soft summer breezes dance through green trees. Leaves dip and bow. There’s no hurry now. In their movements time rents a generous space, fills it with your face. I loved you that summer of cloudless skies, unending wind, early morning mists melting time present into time past. I loved you…
The 9:02 a.m. ride to the 25th floor of the Penobscot Building in downtown Detroit goes slowly. I glance around and realize I’ve been spotted. The office bookkeeper nods a curt greeting while mentally noting my tardiness. Third time this week I’ve been late. I know she’ll make a note…
Rex fell in love with me the summer I was ten. His attention made Mum awful mad. Every evening after the milking was done and the cows put out to pasture Rex rode his bike down the road to our place. He’d take the front steps two at a time,…
A rusty old nail sticks out of a post Sticking out of the ground in Dad’s field. Its work is done, the cows are gone Yet it refuses to yield. Does it recall its younger days When it was tall and strong? And kept the cows from wondering Where they…
When I was sixteen, Mr. Buckley, my tenth grade English teacher—a portly, middle-aged bachelor who wore thick, black-rimmed glasses over his dark eyes, shabby shirts and jeans, and a black tam over his balding head—brought a grocery bag full of paperback books into our classroom and dumped them on his…
I close my eyes and see my future. Like a rubber band, miles of years stretch before me. I see horses hitched to plows turning over the rich earth. I see full seeders making the length of the fields and waves of ripe grain awaiting harvest. I see winter’s gentle…
The 1970s did me in. All my troubles began with the seventies and their strobe lights and burned draft cards and 99 cents a gallon gasoline and the relentless Viet Cong who didn’t know they were defeated but just kept coming and coming, garbed in twigs and mud, too stupid…
Hot August sun burns into my pores. I’m in the sandbox with my twin dolls, Molly and Polly. I finally got them to sleep. It wasn’t easy, what with little black ants crawling over them. I swished them away without hurting them. Except the leader. I always kill the leader….
Farm Life A kid on the farm with only her imagination as playmate gets up early on summer mornings, pokes her head out bedroom windows, checks to see if she’s beaten the cows. Nope! Silver’s leading the pack, clang, clang goes her bell. Daisy lost her bell last week so…
For many years Mom’s brother, who lived in Dafter with his wife and children, stopped by our place every Sunday afternoon. Steven was one year younger than my sister. Jerry was a year older than I was. Those visits weren’t particularly memorable with the exception of a few things. Steven…
Dad and our neighbor, Bill Sarley, are stripping the bark from logs that will be turned into slabs and buzzed up for our woodstove. In the 1950s, Dad didn’t own a chainsaw so he rigged up the buzzsaw to his tractor and somehow ran the logs through the saw to…
For a gal who was raised on a farm, there’s nothing quite as silent and nostalgic as an empty barnyard. The barn in these pictures, once so full of life, no longer exists. When I took these photos in the 1970s, the milk cows had been sold, but the barn…
Dad with grandkids Alan and Emily On this day (September 12) in 1983, Dad didn’t know he had one week left to live. He wouldn’t get a chance to give my daughter rides on his tractor as he had my brother’s children. He wouldn’t even be here for her first…
Every year after Labor Day Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 comes to mind because it signals the end of summer. Even the swings at Brimley State Park are silent as children return to their classrooms. Some are pleased to be back among friends. Others wish summer would never end. It does, of…
I was eight years old in 1955. I don’t remember much about the parade and festivities associated with the centennial celebration of the Soo Locks. What I do remember is men were encouraged to grow beards, something Dad would never do. Women got out their sewing machines and began making…
Every summer my aunts and uncles from downstate packed their cars and drove to the sideroad. Mom’s sister, Marie, pictured to the far left in the photo, always spent two weeks at the old homestead, the house across the road from where I live. Her brother, Pete, lived in Royal…
This Sunday, July 23, would have been my niece’s 56th birthday. There won’t be a celebration because Carol died twenty-one years ago when she didn’t see the point in going on. Like many other young people who have suffered a loss they cannot accept or who are just too tired…
These hands have served me well all the long years of my life. I think of the work they have done, the loved ones they have held, and the stories they have written. I think of the times when I wanted to quit but my hands clasped in prayer, telling…
Jude and Sharon When summer finally arrived in the Eastern Upper Peninsula, my sister and I looked forward to spending hours in the sunshine. We donned summer clothing that looked much the same as our winter wardrobe except our blouses had short sleeves and our overalls were thin and unlined…
In the 1970s, I lived in the Detroit area. When I came home for a visit, I always brought presents for my parents. Often they were silly ones such as a three-foot-long box of Sander’s candy. Mom had a ball with that box. As it emptied, she kept refilling it…
