This is Mooon Yooonit and the Lyme Lounge at the Tahq Lower Falls campground two years ago. The GG was there. I was not. I can handle outhouses but I need showers. Not available in the winter.
So I posted this pic on facebook and said something about how I was on The Planet Ann Arbor with a nice shower and flushy terlet. Ya nevah know who yer gonna get on facebook so I was surprised when a, ah, hmmm, how do I describe this childhood acquaintance, uh, friended me. I accepted his request and then he responded with something a bit unintelligible about how “you will get that down there”. Modern plumbing in Ann Arbor, I guess. We interacted a wee bit but after a month or so, he disappeared.
This kid was in my grade and he and his quite large family lived down the street from us in a big ramshackle house. The Commander was not a fan of the family. In part because she thought they stole my little brother’s bike. I’m not sure I was ever told who actually stole the bike but The Comm managed to recover it. South Side Sault Ste. Siberia could be “rough” if you were a kid but the parents of whoever stole the bike knew who The Comm “belonged” to and I’m sure they decided it was best to surrender it. And no, we were not the mafia. Not even the Scot-Irish mafia🤣
I went through school with this kid. One of The Comm’s memories about him was that when he was very young, he once came into our living room. I mean he knocked and was welcomed in. He looked around and said, “Finnelsons* is rich!” The Comm, standing in our shabby little living room, was a bit flabbergasted.
I have a few memories of him but one I didn’t personally witness happened in the high school swimming pool. By high school, he had lost an eye. BB gun accident? I can’t remember. So he had a glass eye. In that slithy little pool, the boys swam naked so I was definitely not there when this happened but I have heard it from many male classmates over the years. He lost his eye. His glass eye. “Coach” ordered all the boys to get out of the pool and sit on the edge and look for the eye. After I dunno how long, somebody said, “There it is!” Coach said, “Go get it!”
So during my short facebook connection with him, I asked my cousin The Grinch if he knew this person. The Grinch did not grow up in Sault Ste. Siberia. His dad (Uncle Dkuc) was a career Air Force pilot so they moved fairly often. But after his dad retired, my cousin helped his parents build a chalet on the moominbeach and he ended up living there and launching a construction career. So he actually knows and employs a lot of the people *I* grew up with. Whenever I encounter one of them, I ask if he knows them. His reply is always, “How in the *heck* do you know *him*?” Oh, grade school, or his brother was my high school boyfriend. Etc. Snort!
Just because I have lived my adult life on The Planet Ann Arbor (an ivory tower to some folks) doesn’t mean I have left my scrappy old South Side Siberia childhood behind. So yeah, Grinchy, I know some of your friends.
* “Finnelson” was how a lot of folks in Sault Ste. Siberia pronounce my family name (Finlayson). This bothered The Commander to no end, being a “properly” brought up person from the Detroit area with a college degree who married into the family. Did it bother me then? Maybe a little. Nowadays, the GG has encountered people in that area who *still* use that mis-pronunciation and I just crack up. Personally, I avoid telling people up there my last name at all costs.