**********but I’m in a fairly back woods part of Ontario where most of the folks would fit in well with the rural folk in flyover county.
Hmmmmmmm.....You and I or some family member of mine might be neighbours (neighbour with a u in it).
BTW.....I could have written that piece but with the places changed. Made the decision to close on a northern Michigan property on Nov 9, 2016.
You’re now a Yooper? Drove through once. My mother in law and her parents are buried on the far west of Manitoulin Island, a hop skip (and an island) away from the west end of the Upper peninsula.
I had ancestors in Michigan from the 1820’s to about the 1890’s, including one who was in on the founding of what became Hillsdale, but the most immediate ancestress from the area took off to Dakota territory in the 1880’s. Still, distant kin probably have interacted.
From my experiences rural Michigan and rural Ontario are tremendously alike.
We’ve had a fair number of students from the lower peninsula here and they fit in very well. For some reason the upstate New Yorkers aren’t as natural a fit, even though one can make upstate with a two hour drive and I think that it takes at least five to make Michigan. It may be that upstate New York is fundamentally tame, and we have wolves and bears that occasionally make it into town. One of my neighbours made a compelling case to me about the need to revive the spring bear hunt (there used to be two bear seasons, now there is only one). One good reason to get married in this neck of the woods is that you can get your wife to apply for a bear tag and try to fill that tag too. Bet the idiot in West Vancouver doesn’t operate in that sort of culture.