Up North. PEOPLE | NATURE | ARTS | NOSTALGIA | BUZZ | WISDOM | CURIOSITIES
HOW YA LIKE THEM APPLE … CORES? by LYNDA WHEATLEY
photos by Allison Jarrell
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asiest way to win “Mom’s Favorite Child” status this Mother’s Day: Whisk her away on a road trip to Les Cheneaux that includes a spring shopping spree at Applecore General Store on M-134. Exactly as cute as its name and location suggest, Amy Polk’s gift shop is stocked with all the Michigan-made and state-celebrating goodies—art, jewelry, clothing, housewares, garden gear, specialty foods and much, much more—that a Yooper or Mitten momma could want. Sweeter still, all those goodies are lodged inside an equally gasp-worthy 120-year-old Craftsman-style farmhouse trimmed with green shutters, grand pillars and a wide porch. So, if you time your road trip right, you and Mom can enjoy a leisurely post-spree sitting spell on that porch, under the blooming boughs of an enormous old apple tree. Polk, a former news reporter who long wanted to be an entrepreneur, is living her dream through Applecore General Store—minus one thing: “I’m an English major, and I purposely misspell the store’s name, which really bugs me,” she laughs. “But that’s how Donald Applecore is spelled, all one word.” If you (like we, and even Polk, initially) don’t get the reference to Donald Applecore, that’s because it’s the name of an animated Walt Disney short from 1952. In it, Donald Duck stars as an apple farmer who goes to increasingly whacky lengths to keep rascal chipmunks, Chip and Dale, from devouring his orchard. While chowing down, the
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