They spent the first chunk of their marriage running their business and renovating. They bought the house because it was zoned as a residential home while being on commercial property, which made it affordable. Those savings disappeared in short order once they were married and began renovating what Jenny calls their “junky old house,” a single-story built in the early 1960s. While Nathan was single, he saved up as much money as he could. “I’m sure if the clock repair goes bust he’ll find something to do.” “(Nate’s) really mechanically-minded,” she told her dad. “ always worked a Monday-through-Friday, nine-to-five job.” “My dad had always had a company job with benefits,” she explains. “My dad was concerned about me dating Nathan,” Jenny says – his primary concern was whether Nathan, being self-employed, would have a sufficient income. But then he started making his own, a whole new world of creative mechanical endeavor. Fixing old clocks was one thing – he found antique European clocks especially fascinating. They did he started working there as an apprentice, then eventually opened his own business. At the age of 18 or 19 he cold-called a local jewelry store and asked if they needed someone to help with clock repair. In his spare time, he had fixed an antique clock for his mother and become increasingly obsessed with mechanics in general and how things work. She found him intriguing – he’d been home-schooled, then taken a few college business classes without feeling the need to graduate from college. She and Nate met at a New Year’s Eve party in the winter of 2002-2003.
I had interviewed at a couple of surrounding districts, but by the time we thought about getting another car – we didn’t want to go into debt! – I thought ‘I’ll just wait a bit and work in my husband’s business.’” She liked it so well that she didn’t pursue teaching, despite her love of that work. Most of the teaching jobs that were available were in surrounding districts. That plan changed when she and Nathan married. To make college affordable (she paid for it as she went), Jenny did all her work through a “university center program,” basically a satellite campus, and graduated in 2004 with a BA in English Language and Literature and a minor in Elementary Education from Grand Valley State University she planned to become an elementary school teacher. She went to public schools, other than a couple years at private school between moves, and graduated from Traverse City Central High School in 1998 before attending college. She has lived in a few towns since then, mainly between Kalkaska and Traverse City, where she and Nathan live today. When Jenny was about 6, her family moved to Michigan’s west coast. “I grew up around older people because she specialized in those old-lady hairdos with the hair sets.” Jenny has one brother, Jerry, who is two years younger. “I never could explain it to my friends.” Her mother was a cosmetologist who worked at salons and also did hair for friends in their house. The hot-stamp tool was essentially a branding iron. Her father is a retired chemist whom she describes as “very scientific, a super-perfectionist.” He worked at a paper company when she was little, then created new formulas for a company that made hot-stamp ribbons for products, such as the sell-by date on a bread bag. Both sides of her family are from the same town. Jenny was born in Alpena, Mich., in 1980 and has deep roots in the area. “Which is the real Jenny Bower?” you may ask.
She peppers her posts with hashtags such as #workwithyourhands, a bit of encouragement to others based on how she and her husband, Nathan, earn their livings, as an engraver and clockmaker respectively. But along with the glamour, a pervasive wholesomeness animates her posts – expressions of gratitude for family, friends and good work visits to military veterans and vintage car enthusiasts hand-crafting some of the most elaborate Halloween costumes you’re ever likely to see, only to lament the early onset of winter, which requires covering up all that hard work with a full-length coat cooking around a fire pit with her daughter late-summer cannonballs in a bathing suit off a dock into Lake Michigan’s chilly waters – the essence of down-to-earth pleasures. A glamorous beauty with flawless hair and makeup, she usually appears in the kind of clothes most woodworkers only dream about – form-fitting sheaths, or retro mid-century dresses with poofy skirts when she’s renovating the interior of a vintage camper she purchased in 2020. Photo by Justin Mabie.Ī quick look at Jenny Bower’s Instagram page will leave anyone who hasn’t met her in person wondering just who this woman is.
0 kommentar(er)
