Can you tell that this woman is a half-year away from 90 years old? I can’t. Except that I know how old she is. She is in her beloved moomincabin on the shores of Gitchee Gumee. The Commander did not grow up in the Soo or the Yoop. She grew up in the Detroit area and, as a young college graduate in the early 1940s, she worked at the downtown Detroit Hudson’s store. She would meet her dad (a Detroit businessman) downtown for lunch there. She married my dad, Grandroobly, during WWII and the original plan after the war was that they would live in her parents’/grandparents’ farmhouse and he would finish his college degree. For whatever reason (southeast Michigan allergies or something) he decided he couldn’t live down there. He said something like, “I’m going back to the UP. Are you coming with me?” He must’ve known she would and she did and that’s where I grew up and now she is the oldest person on the beach that I grew up on…

She has a Thud Club apron on in the photooo. She earned that apron by falling into the water along the beach. It is very shallow water and my moom was sitting on her butt laughing, “Betty, I can’t get up”. Radical Betty recovered from her own laughter to help the Commander up and out of the water. Okay. That was many, many, many years ago, when yer favo-rite blahgger and her bro and Radical Betty’s kids were 20-somethings and we were doing whatever we were doing. We weren’t necessarily on the track of doctor, lawyer, rocket scientist, Indian Chief (well my bro’ was an engineer). The Commander and Radical Betty had been sitting in R.B.’s cabin drinking whine and talking about their kids (us) and I think that walking the beach seemed like a good idea at the time but it did lead to a Thud Club apron.

Although I know there are times that The Commander has missed her mom (who died in a traffic accident when The Comm was 15) and the old farmhouse she grew up in over in Garden City (there’s a Burger King there now), she managed to fit herself into the Yoop and my dad’s family and a lot of his friends and made her own friends too. And she is still there and I get up there when I can… Wish it was more often. And yes, I do have a Thud Club apron of my own.

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