\u201cMan, I got to make a real brass candleholder,\u201d my brother\nsaid, plunging the little craft high into the air. \u201cIsn\u2019t it cool?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was tiny. If a mouse cared a lick about candlelight, he\nwould be hard-pressed to put this puny holder to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWait, is that from the place where you pay $5 to turn a\ncandlestick yourself?\u201d I said. \u201cYou actually spent money on that? Hahahaha! We\nsaw that and thought only suckers would go in there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were in Michigan to see my younger sister in the Michigan\nShakespeare festival. My daughter had traveled with me, and on this morning, we\nhad been talked into going to visit nearby Greenfield Village, created by Henry\nFord in the late 1920s as a re-created town to show off working technology from\nsawmills to living farms. It was my brother\u2019s idea, and he had already sold my\nfather on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now he just needed two more suckers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we went. And it was pretty fantastic, I have to admit. An\nold steam train running around the edge of the 80-acre village. Craftsmen and\nwomen showing you how to blow glass and, apparently, turn candlesticks.\nSmooth-running Model Ts that tour you around the little town. Historic houses\nand buildings moved there to create an old timey main street, agricultural lots\nand other districts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pretty cool! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But my daughter\u2019s and my idea of \u201cpretty cool\u201d diverges sharply\nfrom my brother\u2019s, and head to opposite ends of the spectrum. We like to walk, stroll,\ntake in sights and avoid anything with too many words. We walk up to park\nreenactors to ask important questions like, \u201cSo, what time does the popcorn\nmachine strike up?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My brother \u2013 a master tinkerer, hobbyist, professional\nornamental blacksmith and connoisseur of all things expensive, technical and unimaginably\nboring \u2013 likes to charge up to the engineer on the train and ask obscure\nquestions like, \u201cSo, are you using bituminous coal in the furnace?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We didn\u2019t spend a lot of time together at the village and quickly\nwent our separate ways. My dad and brother explored the Craftworks village with\nits machine shops and sawmills, while we took a hard left, waved \u201csee ya!\u201d and\nheaded in search of horses and pigs and cotton candy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My brother stared in disbelief. \u201cWhere are you going?!? The\ngood stuff with all the machines and detailed history is over here!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis was my life as a kid,\u201d I told my daughter. Summer\ntrips traipsing around the West with my dad and brother. Or ghost towns in\nCalifornia or mines in Colorado. My younger brother could spot an educational\ntourist trap like a vulture smells dead varmint. If it had rusting industrial machinery\nor old world craftsmanship, we had to go. I wandered along, ignoring his\nhistory lessons while admiring trees, mountains and hoping that a giant boulder\nmight fall on my head. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greenfield Village had transported me back in time \u2013 both to\nthe 1920s \u2026 and to my 1980s childhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We bumped into my dad and brother as they emerged from the\nmachine shop with the candlestick. My father said my brother \u2013 44-years-young \u2013\nactually did a Snoopy dance after creating it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYep, that\u2019s cool,\u201d I said. \u201cSo \u2026 we\u2019re going to go see the\ncovered bridge that looks like it was in the movie, \u2018Beetlejuice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teeth actually fell out of my brother\u2019s mouth. \u201cYou\u2019re \u2026\nyou\u2019re going to see WHAT?!?\u201d he said as a vein in his forehead started to\nbulge. I worried he might be having a stroke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For him, this just didn\u2019t compute. Here we were surrounded\nby history and innovation and pieces of mechanical genius, and the two of us\nwanted to walk across a bridge that wasn\u2019t even IN a movie!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t understand you,\u201d he finally said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And on that we certainly agreed. Then father and daughter trekked\noff in search of our \u201ccool\u201d bridge, and of course, the popcorn machine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMan, I got to make a real brass candleholder,\u201d my brother said, plunging the little craft high into the air. \u201cIsn\u2019t it cool?\u201d<\/p>\n
It was tiny. If a mouse cared a lick about candlelight, he would be hard-pressed to put this puny holder to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWait, is that from the place where you pay $5 to turn a candlestick yourself?\u201d I said. \u201cYou actually spent money on that? Hahahaha! We saw that and thought only suckers would go in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
We were in Michigan to see my younger sister in the Michigan Shakespeare festival. My daughter had traveled with me, and on this morning, we had been talked into going to visit nearby Greenfield Village, created by Henry Ford in the late 1920s as a re-created town to show off working technology from sawmills to living farms. It was my brother\u2019s idea, and he had already sold my father on it. <\/p>\n
Now he just needed two more suckers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,562,561,565],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-nutshells","category-childhood","category-family","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1962,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions\/1962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}