We’re taking a toad trip to learn about the past. Not mine this time, but of my friend Krista’s father’s genealogy. It’s one of my most favorite things to do - research. What is it about history that intrigues me more than what’s happening now? Maybe it's the certainty of it. As answers to mysteries become revealed and you hopefully discover new things, there's stll no change to the past - only changes to your perception. Unveiling that truth fascinates me. Revealing why people are who they are and ultimately why I am who I am.
This picture is of my great, great grandma Emily Hamilton Newman. If you look closely, you can see her inside the stand. She and her husband George Newman lived in Glenn, Michigan on this fruit farm off rural highway M-11 in Ganges Township. Emily’s produce stand was named “Aunt M-11” and she sold freshly baked bread, pies, cookies, whatever fruit was in season, and soda pop for a nickel. My great grandfather Myron took shelter from a storm under the eaves of Aunt M-11 one hot summer day. Of all the Newman girls, he picked the shortest sister of the four, who at 4’8” he appropriately nicknamed “Shorty”. Shorty was my great grandmother Violet. At 5’ 4”, he wasn’t much taller. At 5’2”, neither am I.
I drove down M-11 seventy years after this picture was taken to find that there was nothing left. The farm had been completely replaced by forest and I was shocked to discover how fast nature could cover over human existence. I truly was expecting to see a dilapidated house, an old barn, a foundation, the stump of the old oak tree – anything more substantial than the headstones in the Plummerville cemetery to show me these lives existed. But nothing was left. There had been stories of Grandpa Newman collecting Potowatomi arrowheads from the fields when he cleared the trees. Standing in front of the green curtain of leaves, trunks and twigs, that lifetime suddenly became more real to me than my great, great grandmother’s fruit stand.