Michigan's Upper Peninsula is blessed with a treasure trove of storytellers, poets, and historians, all seeking to capture a sense of Yooper Life from settler's days to the far-flung future. Since 2017, theU.P. Reader offers a rich collection of their voices that embraces the U.P.'s natural beauty and way of life, along with a few surprises. The forty-one short works in this 6th annual volume take readers on U.P. road and boat trips from the Keweenaw to the Soo. Every page is rich with descriptions of the characters and culture that make the Upper Peninsula worth living in and writing about. U.P. writers span genres from humor to history and from science fiction to poetry. This issue also includes imaginative fiction from the Dandelion Cottage Short Story Award winners, honoring the amazing young writers enrolled in all of the U.P.'s schools. Featuring the words of Phil Bellfy, T. Marie Bertineau, Don Bodey, Sharon Brunner, Larry Buege, Mikel Classen, Tricia Carr, Deborah K. Frontiera, Elizabeth Fust, Brad Gischia, Sienna Goodney, Paige Griffin, J.L. Hagen, Heidi Helppi, Mack Hassler, John Haeussler, Richard Hill, Douglas Hoover, Sharon M. Kennedy, Chris Kent, Kathleen Carlton Johnson, Tamara Lauder, Ellen Lord, Raymond Luczak, Robert McEvilla, Beck Ross Michael, Nikki Mitchell, Cyndi Perkins, Lauryn Ramme, Christine Saari, T. Kilgore Splake, Bill Sproule, David Swindell, Ninie Gaspariani Syarikin, Brandy Thomas, Tyler Tichelaar, Edd Tury, Victor Volkman, Cheyenne Welsh, and Donna Winters. 'Funny, wise, or speculative, the essays, memoirs, and poems found in the pages of these profusely illustrated annuals are windows to the history, soul, and spirit of both the exceptional land and people found in Michigan's remarkable U.P. If you seek some great writing about the northernmost of the state's two peninsulas look around for copies of theU.P. Reader. --Tom Powers, Michigan in Books 'U.P. Reader offers a wonderful mix of storytelling, poetry, and Yooper culture. Here's to many future volumes!' --Sonny Longtine, author ofMurder in Michigan's Upper Peninsula 'As readers embark upon this storied landscape, they learn that the people of Michigan's Upper Peninsula offer a unique voice, a tribute to a timeless place too long silent.' --Sue Harrison, international bestselling author ofMother Earth Father Sky TheU.P. Reader is sponsored by the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association (UPPAA) a non-profit corporation. A portion of proceeds from each copy sold will be donated to the UPPAA for its educational programming.
Up In Michigan
by Edd Tury
“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
—Ernest Hemingway
When my grandfather put a bullet in his head it stayed there. Not like Hemingway, who Grandpa greatly admired. No big mess for some poor soul to clean up. Cranial vault intact, but just as dead. He always liked precision. Grandpa, not Hemingway. Well, Hemingway too, at least in his prose. So, when Grandpa decided it was time to check out, he simply put his special cartridge in his deer rifle, sucked the barrel, and pushed the trigger. Clean and dead.
Grandpa sometimes talked about a special cartridge, but I never knew what he meant. Whenever I asked, he’d just say—you know, like I load for deer. A special round for a special job—and I’d say what job and he’d say—you’ll find out one day. It’s not important now. Remember what I told you about the right tool for the job? A bullet is just a tool. You wouldn’t shoot a deer with an elephant gun, now, would you? And I’d just scratch my head and say the deer would sure be dead and Grandpa would say—yeah, but you’d ruin half the meat.
Ever since I was a kid, I had been fascinated by the things my grandpa did and the way he did them. Early on, I knew Grandpa loved deer hunting, deer camp, guns, and some writer named Ernest Hemingway. When I got older, and actually read some Hemingway, I wasn’t too impressed; Grandpa and I had some heated discussions about what was good writing and what wasn’t.
Grandpa asked, “What was your English teacher’s name?”
“What teacher?”
“The one that read the first line of some Hemingway story and made fun of it, telling you what a bunch of dull, macho crap it was.” He had me there. It was my eleventh-grade Advanced Lit teacher.
“Mr. Hall. How’d you know?”
“I just know. I had a high school English teacher who called Carl SandburgCarl Sandhog and made fun of every one of his famous poems. He’d read ‘the fog comes on little cat feet’ in the most smarmy voice and the whole class would laugh. As if we knew what we were laughing at. I hated Sandburg for years until I decided to reread him. For a laugh you know. I found I liked a lot of it. Had I gotten stupider? Or maybe just a little more open minded, a little more willing to trust my instincts and not care what someone else thinks.”
So, of course, I went back and reread Hemingway, trying hard to keep an open mind. Except now I had my grandfather’s bias to contend with. I guess my old prejudices and the new influence sort of canceled because I found myself reading the stories with the feeling that I was reading them for the first time. I liked much of it; some I loved; some I thought missed the mark. All seemed extremely well crafted and the short, declarative sentences, so maligned by my eleventh-grade teacher, revealed their clarity to my newly unblinded eyes. Grandpa never even said ‘I told you so’ when we had our first Hemingway discussion after my rereads. He was cool.
I remember one of the first discussions we had was about “The Short Happy Life of Francis McComber.” I think it was Grandpa’s favorite Hemingway short story, though he never said it. I told him that it wa
