A Farmboy's Upper Peninsula Memoirs: Thirty days after the Great War ended, Clifton Nixon was born. It was a time of migration as people were taking advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862. An amalgamation of Protestant and Catholics-Irish, Scotch, French, Polish, and Italian-crossed the St. Mary's River from Canada answering the cry: "Free Land!" Clifton's grandparents made their way to the remote valley of Munuscong to the tiny town of Pickford, Michigan, where they worked brief growing seasons and endured icy winters to raise cattle and hay and fulfill their American Dream.
Steam engines, threshing machines, and Tin Lizzies were beginning to transform the lifestyle of rural America, but the settlers in the UP were reliant on few modern conveniences. One-room schoolhouses were placed two miles apart and became the central hub of each community for those first-generation pioneer immigrants.
In Frogpond, Clifton recalls with rich detail the muddy streets of Pickford; the quirky merchants, draft horses, neighborhood friends; and the beloved little red one-room schoolhouse. The stories provide an optimistic outlook that belied the era of hardships of his growing-up years. His rare enthusiasm for life provided him the ability to transform ordinary life into technicolor with his words and stories. Clifton's practical imageries of people and events in the little town of Pickford will forever live on in these memoirs as a reminder of a unique time in our history.
Davis, Rebecca Nixon: - After his retirement in the mountains of North Carolina, Clifton Nixon put his boyhood stories to paper and chronicled his life on the farm in Pickford, Michigan, a tiny town on the Upper Peninsula. Following his military service, he became an ordained minister where from the pulpit, he captivated his audience with farm life illustrations. He wove descriptions of a loving family, hard work, and exceedingly hard times of The Great Depression into his sermons to illustrate his passion for his Christian heritage. These pages portray a farm boy's unique childhood in the frozen north and paint a seldom seen picture of dog sleds, horse drawn cutters, merchants along Main Street and a one room schoolhouse called Frogpond. Clifton's practical imageries of people and events in the little town of Pickford, will forever live-on in these memoirs as a reminder of a unique time in our history.
Nixon, Clifton: - At the urging of his family, Clifton put his boyhood stories to paper and chronicled his life on the farm in Pickford, Michigan, a tiny town on the Upper Peninsula. No amount of lie soap, elbow grease, or scrub boards could wash away the farm-boy that lived in this man. After his military service he answered a higher calling and became an ordained Minister of The Gospel in the Nazarene Church. From the pulpit, he was a teller of stories, stories that would captivate his audience with illustrations applicable to the lives of every person. He wove descriptions about a loving family, hard work and hard times into his sermons to illustrate his passion for the Kingdom of God. In his retirement he built a cabin in the Smokey Mountains where his family, with their families, gathered on holidays to sit spellbound around the fireplace to hear Clifton's tales. His recall was sharp. He never lost his gifted ability to transform ordinary life into technicolor with his words and stories.
