Life in Northern Towns 1

The more I think about it, and the further away it gets, the stranger I think it was to have grown up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In many (mostly superficial) ways, it was like growing up in what I imagine the 1950s or 1960s might have been like - I've seen virtually none of the touchstone films of my generation, for instance. I think it might be entertaining to develop this point in a series of anecdotes - say, one each week for a while.

Anecdote the First:
My hometownest hometown, Hancock, Michigan, is notable because nobody of any import has ever really come from it, despite its having been a center of American capitalism from about 1880-1920 or currently being a hotbed for hockey. No entrepreneurs, no star players... The best we can do is claim that the photographer Edward Steichen is a native, but only barely: he lived there from age two (when his family moved to the U.S. from Luxembourg) to age ten (when they moved to Milwaukee). Since his photography career really only began after 1893 (thanks to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago), it's hard to argue that Hancock, then a copper-mining boomtown full of Slavs, Finns, and Italians, had much to do with his considerable artistic accomplishments, including his iconic picture of New York's Flatiron Building or his portrait for Life of Greta Garbo. He never took a photo of the Quincy Mine hoist, that's for sure. (Incidentally, a Steichen recently garnered the highest price ever paid at auction for a photograph.)