The Can't Hardly Lumber Company and Other Tales of Growing up in Northern Michigan

In the summer of 1960, four of us, students at Atlanta (Michigan) High School, embarked on a pulpwood cutting operation as a way to earn spending money for the coming school year. While scrounging around my dad’s sawmill shed for some tools to use in our enterprise, we found an old sign painted by one of his lumberjacks. It read, “CAN’T HARDLY LUMBER COMPANY.” Not then realizing how prophetic it would be, we took the sign for our pulpwood site.

Our experiences that summer, mostly humorous in hindsight, provided the grist for several of the stories and vignettes in this volume. Others chronicle Betty Powell’s 1942 joke on the sheriff, Doug King’s barn-raising bee, and the great porcupine hunt of 1956. All provide a glimpse into northern Michigan life as we experienced it back in the day.

After graduating from Atlanta (Michigan) High School in 1961, DAN STEVENS earned B.S. and M.A. degrees from The University of Michigan and a Juris Doctor from T.M. Cooley Law School. He returned to Montmorency County as a businessman and lawyer and represented northeastern Michigan in the Michigan House of Representatives for two terms. Later he served as a policy coordinator for the Florida Governor and was the County Attorney for Hendry County, Florida, over thirteen years. He and his wife Sarah now split their time between Atlanta, Michigan, and Tallahassee, Florida.