I'm trying to improve my Page 100 skills with an eye towards commissions. I'll take commissions now for a Page 100, price is negotiable depending on the complexity of the piece.

This piece is from "Northern Borders" By Howard Frank Moser. It's an engaging story of a small boy sent to live with his grandfather in rural Vermont. In case you're wondering, it's not a kid's book and it's not a "heartwarming tale". It's a complex story of a boy coming of age in a world that is subtle and interesting world.

I had to do some culling of the original narrative to adapt it to a single page. While I lost some nuances, I think captured a bit of the personality of the kid's (Austen Kitteridge III) grandfather (Austen Kitteridge); self-described as "The meanest old bastard in Kingdom County". Here's the original page 100:

"...into the apple orchard, shut it off and opened the hood. I handed him the ends of the wire, which he wrapped around the starter coil.
"Get inside and start her up, " he told me
Under my grandfather's supervision, I'd been driving his farm truck around the barnyard and fields for nearly a year. But, it was always a great thrill for me to slide in under the big rubber-coated steering wheel with the smooth wooden knob for a handle. I turned on the key and reached for the starter with my foot, stretching s far as I could. It ground twice and the engine coughed, turned over and caught. At the same instant, an immense detonation ripped into the spring afternoon. From the oxbow, chunks of ledge rose higher than the barn cupola and came raining out of the sky all over the blossoming orchard. Several hit the muddy lane near my grandfather who paid no more attention to them than to a summer hailstorm. Then I was out of the truck and running through the apple trees behind my grandfather.
Ahead of us, beneath a great cloud of smoke, the jam was moving. In a solid mass, it progressed about thirty feet - only to come to a stop in the lower curve of the bow, just above the millpond. Then in the cleared bend above hem, a great slab of limestone ledge where my grandfather had stood to place the dynamite charges suddenly toppled outward into the river, leaving a sheer rock wall plunging from the top of the bank down into the water.
"Yes, sir," my grandfather said, an expression which, in the Kingdom County of my youth, could signify anything from an amiable salutation to a sarcastic disclaimer to an acknowledgment of the bleak lot of all farmers and loggers everywhere.
I was astonished by the way that the huge chunk of rock had leisurely toppled over into the river. It must have weighed several tons, and it looked as if more of the ledge had been dislodged underwater, where we couldn't see it. But no matter. Just downstream the logs were packed tightly from bank to bank again, in a solid, interlocked immovable mass.
My grandfather got out the last stick of dynamite and tapped it thoughtfully against his palm. Then he stuck the dynamite stick in his back pocket and headed up the lane towards the barn."