“He isn’t my little boy anymore!”
As if this wasn’t enough to bring tears to his eyes, his beloved Jeanne began crying, too. Somehow father Curwood held up even though there were tugs at his heart strings. As his youngest child climbed onto the buckboard he calmly walked up to him and shook his hand as two men would do and asked him to take good care of himself.
After a great many fond farewells, embraces and goodbyes, Amy and Jim started on their way toward Michigan, the land that seemed so far away. In the middle of the road as Jimmy looked back after they were on their way, he saw his mother, father, brother Ed, Skinny, Jeanne and the Fishers all waving farewell. A great lump swelled up in his throat for he saw his dear old mother sobbing her heart out and leaning upon her husband’s shoulder. Jeanne, too, was crying, but his old pal Skinny was too hurt to weep. He wanted to, but somehow tears would just not come.
The last words Jim Curwood heard before the little buckboard was out of hearing distance was from Skinny who was standing in the middle of the hot, dusty road, shouting and waving.
“Goodbye, Slip. Gee, I’ll never see you again.”
It was a long, hard and exciting trip as Jimmy and Amy made their way in the buckboard drawn by two fine horses to the then small town of Owosso. The young lad was tingling with excitement at the prospects of seeing his home town again. The town in which he was born and where he had had some wonderful days playing along the river banks. But he still was constantly thinking of his father and mother as only a young boy of his age is capable of doing.
Jim had been away from Owosso for nearly seven years now, and as they drove past the city limits he hardly recognized it as the same place. It seemed to have grown a great deal and many new buildings had been erected. The bumpy old streets of old had been worked over and now were comparatively smooth.
Unable to wait until the following day to see his home town again, Jimmy persuaded Amy to take him around the day of their arrival.
One of the first things he noticed was that his old home had been transformed into a hotel. And the room in which he had been born was now a room for drummers and salesmen. There were no hickory trees growing in the streets, there were no fowls roaming about at will as they once did, and giant pines and willows which once had filled the great commons were replaced by stores and buildings.
Today the city of Owosso has 15,000 residents, and is more beautiful than it was in the days of old. Looking out of the studio windows of a wonderful writing castle which lies along the banks of the waters of the Shiawassee river, there can be seen one place that shall never be shed of the willows that wave so gently in the breeze. It is the little island in the very center of the river which flows through Owosso in a great sweeping bend. The willow trees on this small island bend their graceful boughs almost down to the water’s edge and sway back and forth continually in the cool morning and evening breezes.