{"id":22971,"date":"2015-09-23T00:01:31","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T07:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=22971"},"modified":"2015-09-23T00:01:31","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T07:01:31","slug":"mason-county-michigan-my-one-woman-road-trip-takes-me-to-falconer-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/mason-county-michigan-my-one-woman-road-trip-takes-me-to-falconer-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Mason County, Michigan — My One-Woman Road Trip Takes Me to Falconer Country"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Windmills
Mason county, Michigan, farmland with one of the recently installed windmills. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

The Poet of Mason County<\/h5>\n

My father\u00a0was a bit of a poet during his college years. The flyleaves of his undergraduate textbooks are riddled with his farm boy syntax and off-kilter meter.<\/p>\n

Money was tight for families working the\u00a0sandy soil of Mason county in the 1930s. But that didn’t stop my father from going off to Michigan State College — now Michigan State University — to study dairy science. He took odd jobs to put himself\u00a0through college. Washing dishes in a sorority house\u00a0was one.<\/p>\n

I admired my father’s grit, which is why this poem is\u00a0my favorite of the lot:<\/p>\n

\n

My name is David Falconer<\/p>\n

And I own a bag of sand.<\/p>\n

I come from Mason county<\/p>\n

And I don’t give a damn.<\/p>\n

— D.B. Falconer<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The One-Woman Road Trip Continues<\/h5>\n

Naturally, a visit to Mason county was a must-do stop on my one-woman road trip up and down and across Michigan. I set aside a day to revisit\u00a0the towns of Ludington and Scottville. Also the sandy, gently rolling countryside . . . OK, the barely\u00a0rolling countryside.<\/p>\n

The Ludington library<\/a> invited me to speak and read from “Wrestling with God” while I was in town. There are no Falconers left in Mason\u00a0county, but a Falconer\u00a0cousin (our\u00a0grandfathers were brothers) drove all the way up from southern Michigan for the book talk and to show me around the\u00a0old family farms.<\/p>\n

More stories of my one-woman road trip at “Wrestling with God on \u00a0the Shores of Lake Michigan.”<\/a><\/p>\n

\"An
The now-unused barn built by my cousin’s grandfather outside Scottville. Its silhouette foundation blocks were made of local sand. \u00a0Photo by Barbara Newhall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Red
Our great-grandfather’s nephew did the brick work on our great-grandfather’s farmhouse in Mason county. The Falconer family came from Scotland around 1880. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The Ludington library as my father knew it. Its formal facade faces the city’s main street. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The sleek new rear entrance to the Ludington library is the one most people see today. It faces the parking lot. Photo by Barbara Newhall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The Scottville Methodist church attended by my father, his mother and his grandmother. Photo by Barbara Newhall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The tombstone of my Falconer great-grandparents, Andrew and Janet, born in Scotland in the 1840s. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Windmills<\/a><\/p>\n

A visit to Falconer country — Mason county — was a must-do stop on my one-woman road trip up and down and across Michigan. A cousin showed me around the old family farms. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[887,34,1284,1554,1557,214,55,536,53],"class_list":["post-22971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","tag-churches","tag-dont-miss","tag-falconers","tag-libraries","tag-ludington","tag-michigan","tag-family-stories","tag-scottville","tag-wrestling-with-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}