Soon after my wife and I purchased our camp in western Maine, we invited her parents to join us. It wasn’t long before this became routine. Her mother did the cooking for our little troupe, her father taking it upon himself to be caretaker of the camp. By midlife, Charlie Troop acquired many skills a young attorney from suburbia found foreign. He had a knack for coaxing a recalcitrant generator to sputter into life. Treating an ancient pump like a princess, he coaxed its mysterious levers to swe...