My grandmother whose folks were born in Alajärvi and Haapavesi, Finland was born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula the day Hemingway turned 17, the same summer Ernest traveled with a friend and partway solo to complete his annual travels to Walloon Lake. Sixty-four years later to the day I celebrated my 17th birthday with this same grandmother journeying by bus from Maryland to the U.P., and along the way stopping overnight in Chicago to catch up with a former neighborhood friend from Urbana.

Among siblings the 17th was my year to summer at the Michigan homestead. I was still in touch with a guy from school and received letters from him. A year older, he was headed to freshman year at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, son of (vaguely recalling) someone prominent in the Department of Education of Montgomery County.

None of his letters on my end survive. From what I recall, before Maryland he also was in Urbana-Champaign. Plus Africa. Smart guy with stellar SAT scores. I googled him in the late 1990s from a commune in the Ozarks on whatever search engine it was back then. Found him 100 miles from Piggott on faculty in Memphis. Re-googling today years, and decades, later, I find him still engaged in the good work of the world: policy, political voice, and social power for children, especially those experiencing poverty. He still looks tall.

The younger version I knew was serious about writing and admired Hemingway. He wrote on yellow legal notepads, much of it about childhood in Africa. While we were acquainted from cross country, we connected through an elective workshop-style writing class. He had a blue VW Bug with sunroof and a Sunfish he taught me to sail.

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