f r e s h s t a r t

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

 

Da U.P.

I'm visiting my Grandma Nayback, who lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (the U.P.) for a few days. My cousin Ken is also visiting, along with his parents. Ken lives in Botswana and is back in the States for a few weeks, and I'm glad that timing allowed us to come up here together. We were walking around town last night, talking about summers we had spent in the U.P. with our grandparents. Starting when I was probably 10 or so, my parents sent me up here to spend a week with Grandma and Grandpa. By that time they had retired from farming, and lived in town. My week with them was one of leisure, almost to the point of boredom. I read a ton of books, swam in the pool over at the high school, and went on drives with my grandparents. Ken on the other hand, is eighteen years older than I am, and when he visited he was put to work on the farm. He said that he hated it at the time, but that it was probably good for him.

While there isn't any more farmwork to be done these days, Grandma is putting us to work. We've trimmed trees, cut the grass, swept out the garage, and killed weeds. Our greatest challenge was finding the proper tools for all of our jobs. Grandma wanted a flag pole holder hung on the outside of the garage, and we couldn't find a screwdriver. Pitchforks, hay hooks, and other farm implements we had, but a screwdriver was hard to come by.

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