Stephen Smith retired as an educator and enjoys DIY projects. He renovated his home in the woods and built a man shed that Tool Time devotees appreciate. A self-confessed cereal killer, Smith prefers his oatmeal topped in huckleberries plucked from shrubs in northern Michigan. Raspberries, bananas, apples also mix well with walnuts or pecan and a fine amber maple syrup from Wisconsin. Prior to retirement Smith ate a lot of high sugar cereals, a carry over from his childhood.
A former history teacher, with a doctorate in educational research, Smith has always been fascinated with his origins. In a recent podcast Smith is overheard confessing to the make-up artist: “I have a lot of DNA inside me that needs explanation. I have these moments when I want to toss a caber or down a Llangollen lager with Glamorgan sausage and a bit of Caerphilly cheese.”
Smith’s father, JD, spent a lifetime believing that his family descended from a Brit officer honored for his service in defeating Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo. The stories were vague and the evidence didn’t exist. And then Al Gore invented the internet… Right? Well the internet brought a vast library of information to Smith’s fingertips and he secluded himself in the aforementioned man cave. “He would come out to eat if we tossed a bit of beef on his desk top,” Smith’s wife lamented in a counseling session for the spouses of wannabe authors and starving artists.
Smith’s son once conducted an intervention when he found his father, Stephen, trying to refute a Smith family claim that they were descendants of George Washington. “Let it go dad. We know George didn’t have any kids, but if the kinfolk want to believe they descend from Washington, let them believe it. You aren’t going to convince them otherwise.”
That’s when Smith began assimilating file cabinets stocked with reams of information related to, not only his family tree, but his wife Claire’s as well. The effort resulted in two tomes: My Father’s Tree (read as a blog now, online) and Whit’s End, the Anthology (now a trilogy). Found among the litter of file folders and legal pads is a liter of Jameson. “Just a wee touch to get the heart going on a winter day, you know,” Smith whispered as he hoisted a dram to his lips during an early evening interview in July. A brook trout leaped from the shadows along the bank of the river that streams past Smith’s view of the world.
Hemingway once fished this stream and never wrote about it. He diverted everyone’s attention the Two Hearted River north of here.
