Customer Reviews

Midland: The Way We Were (MI) (Images of America)

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Virginia Florey has a nice, even style, and she provides some funny captions to the selection of photographs that her friend, Leora Seamster has provided. When she says that, as a girl, she thought Rossini's "William Tell Overture" was written just for her, you have to smile. The nostalgia she conveys is as inviting as a stack of pancackes on a Sunday morning, and as warm as the hearts of Midlanders Up Main and Down Main.

Though I have never been to Michigan, I have some good friends who sent me this book for my birthday, knowing how I like books without a lot of unnecessary words in them. They must have picked it up at a fine book-store, for it is beautifully designed and printed. When I opened the package it came in, I muist confess that I frowned a little, because for a long time they have been trying to persuade me to leave what they consider to be a dangerous, immoral city (San Francisco) and to join them at Dow Chemical--headquartered in Midland. I remember protesting against Dow when it was revealed that they were marketers of napalm during the Viet Nam war, but that was before I saw how cute their factories are and according to the evidence in this book, the two rivers (the Chippewa, named after the Indian tribe, and the Tittabwassee, which I think means, "Good Country" in the Chippewa dialect) that border Midland are still filled with fresh trout so they can't be all that unhealthy, though very icy of course in winter.

Anyway I put aside my preconceptions about Midland, and had myself a good read looking at all the "vintage pictures" in the book, looking at a way of life that never really existed except in photographs and except, perhaps, in that little corner of Heaven its natives call Home--Midland, Michigan. My friends also put in an arrowhead they said they found while planting zinnias in their backyard. Could be Chippewa manufacture? Anyway it is a delightful souvenir of a fine reading experience, one which I have bookmarked heavily.