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[personal profile] jhetley
...personal connections division.

Okay, there's this internet site devoted to a particular subset of Victorian-era insane asylums (or  state hospitals, the polite term).  Which I found featured in one of my junk-mail architectural magazines.  And one of the asylums listed:

http://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/buildings/traversecity/

The personal connection -- my grandfather ran the place for about a decade, back around the turn of the previous century, and my mother was born there.  We have, downstairs, an inlaid walnut cribbage board and a "Petoskey Stone" napkin ring made by inmates as presents to the family...

Date: 2008-04-25 05:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com
Oh, geez, big world folded over a lot. For most of their lives, my paternal grandparents used to live just outside of Wellston, and we made regular trips to Traverse City for groceries and the like. I haven't been back up there since 1982, but the Czarina and I are making plans: I understand that Traverse City isn't even close to being the town it was back then, and I mean that as a high compliment.

Date: 2008-04-25 08:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jhetley.livejournal.com
I read "Wellston" and thought you'd typo'd "Pellston", because Wife studied at the Biological Station near there. Then I checked a map. Did they even widen the road at Wellston?

Traverse City has grown mightily since we last visited (1970, +/-), and I am probably no longer related to half the residents.

Date: 2008-04-25 08:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com
It's funny that you say that, because it got narrowed after GM and Chrysler laid off everyone in the Seventies. My grandfather's old grocery store, shut down over thirty years ago, literally marked where the highway went from four lanes to two. Again, I need to make the trip back up that way, if only for closure's sake.

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