Hail the Queen: On Her Birthday Weekend, the Queen's Wish is my Command. I Bow and Scrape Like a Foot Servant.

Barbara and I recently celebrated her birthday, a big one, her cough-cough fifth. For an entire weekend, she ascended a queenly throne and I was her slave, bowing and scraping before her. Her every wish was my command.

She ordered me around like a foot servant and I obeyed like one, scurrying here and there with lowered head and clasped hands. All weekend, she said, “I want this” and “Do this” and I said, “Yes, dear, yes dear. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

On Saturday morning, we went for a walk around a nearby college. When I started to go one way, she said, “That's not the way I go.” I stopped in my tracks, smiled and said, “Your way is my way.” And we went her way.

It was a gorgeous fall day and she thought it would be a good day to go for a ride. “Anywhere you wish,” I said. “I'll drive, you sight-see.” She smiled. Barbara enjoys being driven. I would be the Queen's chauffeur.

We had already talked about a slow, backroads drive to Connecticut. I suggested that while in Connecticut we might visit my former wife Phyllis who had entered a rehab facility. She was dealing with serious health issues.

Now I was fully aware that I was suggesting something your average wife would do only at gunpoint, if then. I was fully prepared to have her say no, accept it, and leave it at that. After all, that would be perfectly reasonable and understandable.

But Barbara, speaking and acting like a true queen, said that visiting Phyllis would be fine with her. “I think it would lift her spirits,” she said.

She suggested that we could take our time and go the back roads and maybe stop for lunch at an out-of-the-way place. “You got it,” I said. She mentioned that there was a great place that she once ate at with her (and now my) daughter, Misha, but wasn't sure where it was. “We'll find it,” I said, “and if we get lost in the process, it might be fun.”

So I chauffeured the Queen up and down Connecticut back roads while she took in blazing autumn color and country homes. We stopped by my old house on Hidden Lake in Higginam, where we had gotten married overlooking the water. The new owner took our picture on the spot where we had exchanged vows.

In a leisurely way, we managed to end up at the restaurant that she loved so much, The Cooking Company. On a beautiful, sunny fall day, we ate outside and I have rarely seen Barbara enjoy a lunch so much.

But don't take my word for it. At the end of this post is a short video – under a minute – of Barbara having lunch at her special place. Lunch was topped off with coffee and scrumptious pastries. Now I hate to spend money. I rarely go to a restaurant or store without complaining about the prices.

However, the Queen saw no sour look and heard no exasperated word from me about prices. Stepping completely out of character, I threw paper money around like confetti.

After lunch, we meandered around Connecticut back roads in the general direction of Middletown where Phyllis was in rehab. There was no hurry; Phyllis said we could get there when we got there. There was no schedule to worry about.

Between nine grandkids, and keeping up with people, and running complicated lives, Barbara is normally like most of us -- juggling a schedule. But today the mighty, all-controlling schedule was, along with me, a craven servant of the Queen.

In keeping with the aimless spirit of the day, when we got to the rehab center, we were in no hurry to leave ... and Phyllis was in no hurry for us to leave. We chatted for a while in her room. Then I pushed her wheelchair down the hallway to a porch where she could look out upon a beautiful day.

We stayed nearly two hours. Mostly, Barbara and Phyllis, wife and former wife, chatted away like only two women can do, while I took it in with some amazement. Though on oxygen, though in a wheelchair, though deeply worried, Phyllis, the mother of my two sons Greg and Jon, clearly appreciated our visit. She was as talkative as I have ever seen her.

As I pushed her wheelchair back to the room, I couldn't help thinking back to when Phyllis and I were young, got married, and ran off together to a great adventure – three years teaching in Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. I remembered her courage in having a baby, Greg, in a little bush clinic in Kenya and then dealing with a toddler son surviving both malaria(Kenya) and dengue fever (Nigeria), deadly diseases that kill millions of Africans today.

I could never have imagined that some day we would both be old and that I would be pushing her wheelchair in a rehab center. Where did all the years go? Saying goodbye and kissing her on the cheek, I saw a picture in my mind's eye of the way she was all those many years ago.

By the time we left, it was late afternoon and the sun was still shining brightly. Normally, we share driving. But on this birthday weekend, I was the birthday girl's chauffeur. I meandered over country roads in the general direction of home. As I did, Barbara was a tourist, taking in the passing scene: old homes, farms, barns, country stores, people on bikes -- a moving, living, authentic New England panorama.

She was like a wide-eyed little girl, entranced, content, relishing being out and about on roads and in places she had never been before. She looked just like she did years ago when I took her on her first trip to Europe and my son Jon drove us through Germany, Austria, and other parts of Europe.

Normally, Barbara is the adult and I am the kid. She worries about everybody and everything, does whatever must be done, and does it to perfection. I wing it and, if I am lucky, muddle through. (A question I have never been able to answer is: What the hell is a perfectionist like Barbara doing with a flawed character like me?)

Her feelings are easily hurt. Mine aren't (though my sons disagree with this). Though great with the grandkids, Barbara likes to be with adults and do grown-up things. I could play with grandkids all the time.

Yet as I chauffeured her through the Connecticut countryside, we switched roles. She was the kid and I was the adult. She was a little girl looking like she didn't have a worry in the world, exactly what I was a striving for. I wanted this to be her best birthday ever.

I worried, again stepping out of character, that it wouldn't be. And that was the only worry I had on this weekend in this crazy, economy-crashing, warring, self-obsessed, trouble-plagued world. Barbara and her feelings were all that counted.

Sunday was the Birthday Party, with a luncheon and cake at high noon. I organized it, doing the calling, making it happen – and somehow it did. It was small with just family, with lots of kids, and a few friends. We ate, laughed, sang happy birthday,and presented Barbara with flowers, cards, and gifts.

She was happy, laughing and carrying on while I videotaped her. When I presented her my gift,a new digital camera, I told her that I fainted twice in the store -- I hate to shop -- but that "they revived me quickly." There were lots of kids, such as Liam and Bella, pictured here.


When the party was over, the celebrating was not. That night we went out and did Karaoke and a group of us sang for Barbara. She surprised everybody by going up there and singing with us and two good friends Larry and Dolores. A special moment for Barbara came when daughter Misha, son-in-law Ed, and their girls, Mia, 7, and Bella, 6, sang as a quartet.


We still weren't done. The next day, Monday and Barbara's actual birthday, was another masterpiece of a fall day. She said she would like to go for a ride. Another one. With me driving, of course. Her Highness likes having a chauffeur. I knew she liked being driven. I didn't realize she loved it.

I asked her where she would like to go. “I don't know,” she said. “Somewhere.”

“What if we just drive and see where we go?” I asked.

Totally not her usual plan-everything-to-the-tiniest detail self, she liked that idea. Where was my worry-wart, perfectionist wife?

After breakfast and a nice long, brisk walk, I steered our trusty old Corolla toward western Massachusetts. More countryside. More leisurely turns onto backroads that went who knows where. We sure didn't know. Nor did we care. Much of the time we were half lost.

But the Queen sat there watching the autumn leafy show go by as if she didn't have a care in the world ... which, for her, a total departure from her usual self. She didn't know where we were going to end up and didn't care. She was -- gasp-- winging it!

I had never seen her so childlike and irresponsible. Yes! Another kid for me to play with!

Oh, by the way, I, the supposed adult, didn't know where we were going, either. But, somehow, we ended up in Amherst, Mass. I made like I had planned it all along.

“Surprised,” I asked, “at how well I planned this?”

“Yes.”

Of course, she knew I didn't. We were in fantasyland, exactly where I hoped Barbara would be on this birthday weekend. No responsibilites. No serious thoughts. No fears. No expectations. We were leaves blowing in the autumn wind, except we were alive.

Really alive.

We walked around the center of Amherst, which was swarming with college students from UMass and Amherst College starting on a new school year. Barbara is shown here in Amherst looking -- and acting -- like a college student. There's something refreshing about milling on the streets and cafes with young college students.

Somehow the students pull you into their aura of youth, which is all about today and tomorrow. Even a brief visit into their world, where everything is exciting and everything is possible, makes you forget that you are ancient.

And wouldn't you know, but the perfect place for us to have something to eat called out to us. I pretended that I planned for us to eat there and Barbara pretended to believe me. It was aptly named “The Loose Goose.”

We ordered delicious fresh salads and sat outside watching the parade of college students chattering away, treating us to snippets of breathless conversation about romance, studies, parties, sports, petty conflicts.

Then we walked around Amherst center some more. And, you're not going to believe this, but the perfect place beckoned for us to have coffee and dessert. A table for two waited for us on the sidewalk. I snapped this picture of the table and two chairs before we occupied them.

“I had them save this spot for us,” I said.

“Good job.”

We lingered. We sipped coffee. We treated ourselves to scrumptious pastries, whose outrageous cost I accepted without a peep. We talked. We enjoyed the bright fall day and each other.

The drive home, with me the chauffeur and the Queen the rubbernecking VIP, was unhurried and mellow. I had done my best to make my Queen happy on her birthday weekend. Had I succeeded?

While I was writing this, I asked Barbara to rank her birthday weekend from one to ten with ten being the best. She gave it serious thought. “I don't usually give out tens,” she said. “How about a nine and a half?”

“I'll take it,” I said.

But she came back to me later and said, “You know, I think I have to give the weekend a ten. Thank you for a GREAT weekend!” Exclamation mark needed! Big emphasis on “great.”

It came with smile as big as her heart and a hug as genuine as she is. She meant it.

I may be just a kid, but I can tell when my wife means it and when she doesn't.

So long and keep moving.

65 Long Years Later: Five Former Foster Kids Meet Their Uncle William, Aunt Lillian, Cousin Diane,Cousin Ginny, and Cousin Cheryl.

65 years is a long time.

It is especially so when that's how long it has been since you were handed over to the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, shipped out to ever-changing foster homes, your family disappeared -- and you've been wondering why ever since.

For the five of us – Reggie, Victor, Marion, Ruby, and me – wondering recently gave way to answers. We suddenly learned that we have had family all those years. And, miracle of miracles, after all those years of longing, we got to talk with, hug, and laugh with members of our long-lost family.

And here are photos of them, live and kicking, proof that they are absolutely for real. Vic and Reggie sit on a couch swapping war stories with Uncle William. Ruby hugs Aunt Lillian with all her might. My niece Linda Halloran chats with Cousin Ginny.


















These joyful scenes didn't just happen. They happened because Vic decided to put flowers on our father's grave, and made a startling discovery in the cemetery: there were two George Pollocks buried there, a short distance from each other. Curiosity picqued, Vic embarked on a geneological investigation – and it led to our lost family.

The initial prod came from Vic's soulmate, Marianne. She bought flowers to put on her parents' graves for Memorial Day, which she does every year. But this year, because she knew Vic's family background, or lack of it, she bought extra flowers in case he wanted to put them on his father's grave. Since she had the flowers, Vic thought it would be a nice thing to do.

On Memorial Day, after placing flowers on the graves of Marianne's parents, the two of them went to Mount Hope Cemetery in Boston to do the same for Vic's father. When they asked a cemetery caretaker where the grave of George Pollock was, the caretaker came up with two George Pollocks.

Two? Yes, the caretaker said, he had internment cards for two George Pollocks. He led them to the first gravesite, that of our father, George Pollock. He is shown in the photo. Vic is a spitting image of him. Vic placed the flowers at the foot of the headstone. Then the caretaker carefully led them to where the second George Pollock was buried, some 50 yards away.


The caretaker stood on the spot, which was unmarked, and said, "here, along with two infants." Vic looked at Marianne. Marianne looked at Vic. Vic decided then and there to find out who this second George Pollock was, who the infants were, why the grave was unmarked, and what happened 65 years ago.

Vic and Marianne went to the Massachusetts Office of Vital Records. There they found that the unmarked grave was that of our grandfather, George Francis Pollock I. His death certificate said that his death in 1937 at 47 was a suicide, by "luminal poisoning." The certificate said that he had swallowed a fatal dose of some 100 tablets. His occupation was listed as "limousine driver."

The two infants with him were Clarence R. Pollock, one year, 11 months, buried November 8, 1924, and William H. Wilkins, one year, five months, buried on July 8, 1925. Clarence's parents, at least as of now, are unknown and William's parents were Aunt Pearl Pollock and Gerald Wilkins.

Our grandmother, Evelyn, who died in 1956 at the age of 64, was in the habit of having a child almost every year. Altogether, she had 17. Vic suspects, but cannot yet confirm, that she had one child before her marriage to George Francis Pollock I. Family rumor has it that the child was put up for adoption.

In 1916, after three girls, she had her first son, George Francis Pollock II, our father. Also according to family rumor, our dad had a twin named Patrick but Vic has not found documentation for this. He has documented that I am officially George Francis Pollock III.

As an official "the third," I felt like I got a big social promotion. I was no longer some common former ward of the state. I had three roman numerals after my name. I had pedigree. My body language said, a little respect, please.

However, this noblesse has a somber side. Of my two previous namesakes, one killed himself at 47. Why? The other, our father, died at 27 of a cerebral embolism brought on by rheumatic heart disease with mitral and aortic stenosis. At 71, I've lived almost as long as the two of them combined.

Here's the bottom line of Vic's research. Of all those children our grandmother Evelyn had, four are still alive. We have three aunts: Lucy, Lillian, and Barbara and one uncle, William. We have 51 first cousins. These are not distant relatives. They are close blood relatives.

Bingo! We have family!

Vic was blown away. Questions flew inside his head. What were these relatives like? What could they tell us about our father? What kind of person was he? What really happened way back in 1944 when the five of us were dropped into a black hole for 65 years?

His inner geneological sleuth now fully engaged, Vic went online. He researched ancestry.com. He came across the name of Diane Bowden and noticed that her family tree intersected with ours. She is the granddaughter of Mildred Esther Pollock, our father's sister. She passed away in 1997. Vic got in touch with Diane Bowen through Facebook. She is shown in the photo with Aunt Lillian.

She was surprised, to say the least, to learn from Vic that he was one of the five kids of her mother's long-deceased brother, George. An avid geneologist (talk about timely!), she quickly appreciated the enormity of the moment.

Recalling the initial E-mail from Vic, Diane wrote:

"I was so excited to get that email! I still have all of Victor’s early e-mails and I can remember reading them and at times having tears roll down my face when I learned of your early lives. YOUR email when you said something like – “for the first time in our lives we have what everyone else has – a family” – had me bawling like a baby. Family is so important to me and over the last two years, finding out all about my extended family has made it even more precious.

"The kinds of things that went through my head re: you 5 Pollocks? I just could not imagine not knowing where I came from; if I had family out there, etc. I wondered how you felt on occasions such as weddings, births, etc., - what went through your mind i.e., wishing that your parents were there to share it with you. I thought about you guys constantly and just wanted to do whatever I could to help you all find as much info as possible.... So, that, in a nutshell is what spurred me to help and do whatever I could. And besides – you’re family!!! Family helps family, right??"

When Vic asked Diane if she could set up a meeting with Aunt Lillian, she excitedly agreed – and promptly did so. And so Vic and Marianne trooped down to Whitman, Mass. to meet Aunt Lillian and Cousin Diane Bowen. Vic brought along a copy of my book, "State Kid," which has a photo of the five of us, and he flipped through it with her as they talked. Diane, now a full partner with Vic in geneological detective work, took pictures and videotaped their meeting.

In the video, Vic told his Aunt Lillian that she is "the first person I have ever met who was close enough to my father to touch him." He asked what kind of person her mother Evelyn, our grandmother, was. She said she was "great." It was clear, however, that the family lived in grinding poverty, with all those kids growing up on AFDC (Aid for Dependent Children). Yet somehow our grandmother "aways managed to put food on the table," Aunt Lillian said.

She said that sometimes neighbors would complain about the kids, "noise, smoking and drinking, nothing serious," and AFDC would hold up Evelyn's check. She would have to go down to the agency's office and stay there for hours begging for her check and being criticized, Aunt Lillian said.

The answer to why the grave of George Francis Pollock I was unmarked could not be more mundane. If Evelyn, left with a houseful of kids and no means of support, could barely put food on the table, she certainly could not afford a headstone on her departed husband's grave. She was as poor as a church mouse.

Vic is troubled that our grandfather's grave remains unmarked. Characteristically, he has volunteered to do something about it. He says he is going to "get it done soon" and keep the rest of us informed. We'll all chip in for a marker.

Vic asked Aunt Lillian what our father, George Francis Pollock II, was like. She lit up. She said he didn't drink, smoke, swear, or get in trouble and was just a "good guy." His death certificate listed his usual occupation as "none." He was apparently not healthy enough to hold a regular job, though he had mechanical ability and fixed radios at home. He was also "good-looking," Aunt Lillian said.

You can watch this video on my Facebook profile.

Vic asked Aunt Lillian if she would like to come to a family reunion to meet his four siblings. She was thrilled at the idea. Of Aunt Lillian, Vic said, "she was so warm I could hardly believe it. She just about hugged me to pieces."

When it was time to go, there were warm hugs all around. Vic, Aunt Lillian, Marianne, and Diane all agreed the visit had been all that they could have hoped for. Ruby was crying. Vic and Diane were on a roll.

Next, Uncle William.

William Henry Pollock is 78, a year older than Aunt Lillian, and our uncle. Yet he is only seven years older than I am. He was born in 1931. I was born in 1938. We are contemporaries. Aunt Lillian has a nephew older than she is. This is what can happen when there are a lot of children over a long period of time, which was the case with our family.

As our point man, Vic made the call to Uncle William. He quickly connected with "Uncle Willy." They have a lot in common. Vic spent 24 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He is shown below as a young marine. Uncle Willy served 22 years in the U.S. Navy. As they talked, ice melted away. Uncle Willy and Aunt Betty, his wife of nearly 50 years, agreed to receive Vic, Reggie, and me into their home in Dighton, Mass.

Determined to make the best possible impression, I wore an ultra patriotic hat which I felt sure would warm the heart of a military man. It had an American flag, an eagle, a big USA, and braid on the visor suggesting a high-ranking officer.

Walking down the driveway to Uncle Willy's home, Vic and Reggie designated me to say the first words to him. When Uncle Willy opened the door, tentatively and with the look of a man wondering what he was getting into, I said, "Uncle William, I'm your nephew George and these are my brothers Vic and Reggie."

He motioned us in and before he could say a word, I grabbed his hand and said, "I owe you an apology. I've been meaning to get in touch with you, meaning to get in touch with you, but before I knew it, it was 65 years. I'm sorry."

I got a crack of a smile. I thought it was funnier than that. Oh well, I thought, maybe it will get better. It did, much better. We sat at the kitchen table where Betty had set out homemade blueberry bread and cheeses, and we ended up staying for three hours. I did little comedy routines, getting a laugh here and there, and took pictures while Reggie and Vic swapped war stories with Uncle Willy. In this photo, Vic,Reggie, Uncle William, and Aunt Betty look over the family tree.

During the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, all three were in Caribbean waters aboard different warships. While the three of them were defending our country, I was in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts consorting with left-leaning academics.

My standing slipped even lower when Uncle Willy noticed that he, Vic, and Reggie had tatoos on their right arms, in the same place. Tatooless, I slunk in my seat. A lot of good my super patriotic military hat did me. I would have done better to have gone out and gotten a tatoo. In the picture, the three war heroes proudly display their tatoos.

Later, when I told my son Jonathan about this incident, he said, "Dad, face it. You are not military." I'm not and Uncle Willy saw right through me. It's a good thing Vic and Reggie are military, though. Their swapping war stories with Uncle Willy was just the right way to pull him into the family. How could the poor retired naval man resist?

By the time we said goodbyes, Aunt Betty was relaxed, chatting away, and laughing easily. Uncle Willy is quieter. But he, too, gradually warmed to the idea of five lost Pollocks coming into his life. We talked about an upcoming reunion. Two or three times, he volunteered that he would like to go.

By odd coincidence, it so happens that Uncle Willy and Aunt Betty live just six miles from my son Jonathan. Jon lives with his wife Laurie and two of my grandchildren in the next town over, Berkley.

It gets even odder. Practically around the corner from Jonathan lives a Matt Pollock, about the age of Jonathan (41). Vic and Diane say that there is a 99% chance that Matt Pollock is family.

OMG!

Now the main event: on a gorgeous late-summer day, a reunion at Ruby's lakeside cottage in Oxford, Mass. The photo is of a lakeside scene.

With three roman numerals after my name now and a certified member of the genteel class, I arrived appropriately late. "Here's George," Vic said for everybody to hear, "late again." Reggie growled, "Where you been?"

Roman numeral-bereft commoners, I thought.

Before I could condescend, Aunt Vivian was in my arms. We wrapped ourselves around each other. I held her close and tight. She hugged me back, her head nuzzled into my shoulder.

Holding this little white-haired lady in my arms, I felt all those 65 years of pent-up emotions rushing to the surface. I took her head in my two hands, looked into her beaming face, and kissed her on the forehead. I felt complete.

Composing myself, I took her hands in mine and said in all seriousness, "Aunt Lillian, for 65 years I have been waiting for you to call. I keep asking, 'Did Aunt Lillian call? Did Aunt Lillian call?" and now, finally, you are here."

Then I made a big show of leading her away. "We have a lot to talk about," I said for everybody to hear."Let's go somewhere where we can be alone."

She giggled. This is a buoyant, beautiful lady with a sense of humor.

Aunt Lillian's daughter Virginia, whose nickname is Ginny, was there, eyes filling, taking it all in with her teen daughter, Kristen. The photo shows the three of them. Aunt Ginny had driven her Mom to the reunion. She was finding it hard to believe that all she was seeing was really happening.

Cousin Ginny, seeing how her Mom hit it off with her new family members, and especially with Ruby, said that she has never seen her mother so happy. "I've never seen her like this," she said. "Since she found out about you guys, she's so happy she's like a totally different person." Cousin Ginny said she was willing to "drive my mom anywhere so she can be with her new family."

Later, on my Facebook page, Cousin Ginny wrote: "I'm still amazed that we have all found new family after all this time. I am so happy that you all have come into my mom's life and our family."

I met Vic's partner in all of this, who was so instrumental in making this reunion possible, Diane Bowen. She's an RN who loves geneology, computers, and her young daughter Lilla who was there. She also likes her privacy. She tried to get a little with Ruby, Lillian, and Ruby's son Glen.

But a snoopy photographer (me) climbed up on a balcony and took this photo. That hand gesture she gave me means, "I love you," right? That's what I thought. Hey, that's what family is all about.

Diane: We will never forget everything you have done to make the Pollock family finally whole. You are family now. (That means you can never get rid of us.) I love you, too.

Ruby was all but overcome with what was happening. When I greeted her with a hug, she had obviously been crying. I don't think I have ever seen Ruby so happy or so emotional. She cried at the beginning of the day. She cried when the day was over.

Throughout the day, Aunt Lillian and Ruby gravitated to each other, hungrily piecing together family history, laughing, hugging, making plans. They decided to go to Aruba together on May 14 for a week at Aunt Lillian's time share, which she has had for 24 years.

Usually, Aunt Lillian goes to Aruba with a daughter (she has three daughters and a son) and the daughter's husband. She lost her own husband in 2004 and soon after the restaurant/bar they had owned and operated for many years was sold.

Since then, Lillian has often felt "like a third wheel," she said. Ruby and Aunt Lillian decided that now that they have found each other, neither one of them has to be a "third wheel" ever again.

They also talked about Aunt Lillian spending a week at Ruby's home in Oxford. They would hang out together and visit with Ruby's kids, Glen and Linda, and grandkids who live nearby. (Speaking of grandkids, as you can see in this photo, they had a ball swimming in the lake.) Ruby said that she also lives alone and that she "has plenty of room for company."

No one could have guessed that Aunt Lillian had come to the Pollock reunion under a dark shadow. Her daughter, Susan, 58, was in the hospital, a large mass having been discovered in her hip. Susan has a history of breast and liver cancer. Leaving the reunion, Aunt Lillian and Ginny went straight to the hospital.

We all expressed amazement that Aunt Lillian was able to muster up the willpower to make it to the reunion. Ginny said that her Mom "just couldn't not come. She just couldn't." Aunt Lillian, you are one courageous and determined women. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Susan is now home from the hospital but is still in pain and is undergoing cancer treatment.

Uncle William did not make it, but not because he did not want to. He was too nervous about driving so far in Labor Day traffic and getting there without getting lost. Cousin Ginny said that she would have picked him up if she had known. She said she would certainly do so for the next get-together. It is already being planned, including transportation for Uncle William.

Cheryl Chamberlain, a cousin we had met a few week's before at Vic's place in Sturbridge, Mass. could not make it. Cheryl, you were certainly missed. I'll never forget that you were the very first of our lost family that I met.

Cheryl's grandmother (Mildred Pollock) was our father's sister. Which means her mother (Theresa June Adams) - now Chamberlain - is a first cousin and Cheryl is our second cousin. Her father's name is William Henry Chamberlain Jr. Her brother is a III and he has three sons -- one of whom is a IV!!!!!

So let me get this straight. Immediately after learning that I am a III, I find out that there is a IV in the family. My "the third" crown is barely on my head when a "the fourth" rises from the unwashed ancestral masses.

And now I hear Vic and Reggie chortling, "a contender for the pretender ... a contender for the pretender..." Very funny, little brothers. By the way, in these parts, it's pronounced "contenda" and "pretenda." My goodness, does sibling jealousy of a legitimate birthright have no bounds?

Thanks for opening up this can of worms, Cheryl. But, since you are now family, I have to forgive you, don't I? So I do. The truth is, Cheryl is a sweetie. In fact, she describes herself this way: "I am a bit like an M&M; I have a tough shell on the outside but am a softie on the inside."

Of the five Pollock siblings, one has not yet been mentioned. That is Marion. Conventionally speaking, as in being able to see her, she was not there. But just because she was not there in this sense does not mean that she was not there.

She was, very much so.

She may have chosen to spend the weekend at her beloved camp in New Hampshire with her son Jimmy -- the last weekend they could be there together – but she was also very much with us at Ruby's. We have photos of four of us each hugging Aunt Lillian. But I also see Marion hugging Aunt Lillian.


In the group photos of four of us with Aunt Lillian, I see five Pollock siblings. Marion is there with us. Look at the photo of Marion below. Now look the group photo. Do you see Marion? No? I do. Look harder. See her?

Like many of us, me for example, Marion has her own way of thinking and going about things. She will go about meeting Uncle William, Aunt Lillian, Cousin Ginny, and Cousin Diane in her own way and on her own schedule.

She does so with all our love.

The next day, Ruby and I sat at the cottage looking out at the lake and talking about the reunion. Both of us wanting to share the day's wonderful happenings with Marion, Ruby called her and put her on speaker phone so the three of us could talk. Marion was hungry to hear it all and we did our best to describe the indescribable.

Marion said that she and her son Jimmy are planning to visit Aunt Lillian at her home in Whitman, Mass. But as she talked about actually meeting Aunt Lillian after all these years, and of being reunited with her lost family, her voice began to break. She choked up. "I'm sorry, " she said, beginning to sob, "I can't talk any more."

As for the great journey into our past that Vic has been on, he said that he has "finally been able to look out the window and see the past that is MINE." He says that he feels good about clearing up "issues that we all have been carrying around for too many years." As for the future, Vic sees us maintaining contact with Aunt Lillian, Uncle Willy, and Cousins Diane, Ginny, Cheryl and other family members yet to be met.

In other words: We lost our family once. We're not going to lose it again.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. Two Puppies Steal the Show! In my mind, I was da man, the George Francis Pollock III, the family patriarch, and finally getting the attention I deserved. Then, suddenly, all eyes were on something infinitely more interesting: two puppies, Lucy and Mia. Their affection for each other and their determination to be together completely upstaged me. Me! With my three roman numerals! My niece, Linda Halloran, captured it on video. Cheryl, as an animal lover, this will resonate with you. Enjoy!

P.P.S. Neither puppy was hurt.

A Family Saga: From Childhoods in Foster Care, Five Siblings Find Their Way in the World -- and Each Other.

There are five of us. Count them from left to right: Reggie, Marion,George, Victor, and Ruby. I'm George, the oldest. On November 19, 1943, our father, George Francis Pollock died of a cerebral embolism at age 27 in Boston, Mass.

In the summer of 1944, our mother, poor and unable to cope with five little kids and with no one else able or willing to take them, handed us over to the Department of Social Services in Boston. At the time, I had just turned six and Reggie, the youngest, was a baby; he was just three months old.

Then our mother disappeared from our lives. So did whatever family we might have had.

With adoption out because our mother would not give up parental rights and with no family willing to take in five foster kids, the state did the only thing it could do: it split us up like puppies. Marion and Ruby shared some foster homes and so did Reggie, Victor and I. But for the most part, we all grew up in separate, ever-changing foster homes.

We all spent our entire childhoods wondering why other kids had a family and we did not; always asking what we had done to be so utterly abandoned and unloved; fantasizing about how wonderful it must be to have a mother and a father; feeling an awful emotional void trying to pull us even lower into the muck of life; struggling with the daily invisibility and rejection that comes with being a resident alien.

Recently, Marion did something that I had never seen her do. At Ruby's lakeside cottage in Oxford, Mass., she talked openly to Ruby and me about what her life in foster care was like. When I asked her what one particular foster parent was like, she instantly replied, “She was a witch.” And she proceeded to give examples of emotional and physical abuse that brought all three of us to tears.


Listening to Marion and Ruby talk about their lives in foster care, it's clear that they had it even harder than their three brothers. I asked them both, “How in God's name did you survive?” The question stopped Marion. She said she found it impossible to answer now because for so long the real question was "whether I would survive or not."

Ruby, after days of reflection, put her reply on paper. She wrote:

“The first reason is that until I was fifteen, I lived with my sister Marion who was two years older and she was family. She protected me as much as she could. I remember me getting a beating by my foster mother and Marion crying, 'Leave her alone!' The foster mother shouted, 'Shut up or you'll be next'!”

“I remember being in a different home where the foster parents had a 19-year-old biological son who was retarded. He was so big that I was afraid of him and he chased me around the cellar. I told Marion that I did not feel safe. Marion said that we could make a pact that we would never leave each other alone. I remember Marion canceling her first date because I would have been alone in the house. Marion and I have maintained this strong bond throughout our entire lives.

“However, when I had just turned 16, Marion went to nursing school and I went to a new foster home. I felt so totally alone. Again, I was afraid because of the way the foster father looked at me. At one point, he tried to grab me. I began locking myself in the bathroom when the foster mother went out.

“Finally, I ran away. I called the state but refused to give them any reason for my running away other than I was unhappy. At that point, the state told me that no family wanted a 16-year-old and therefore I would have to go to reform school. I called a former foster parent who was ill and begged her to take me in, which she did. This home was a place where I was happy and I stayed there until I graduated. Marion visited me there on weekends or when she had time off from nursing school.”

Ruby also recalled the time when I drove around to each foster home and picked up four younger siblings and took them to Boston to see a movie. I had just turned 17 and had run away myself (or, more accurately, “walked away.” I didn't think anybody would come for me and I was right; one less foster kid for the state to support.) I had a job, an apartment, my own car, and money in my pocket. I happily plunked down cash for the movie, popcorn and candy, and ice cream afterwards.

Of that day, Ruby wrote, “I remember praying that the day would never end. I knew that my brothers and I had a bond and that we were a family. I vowed that day that we would be together again.”

One motivation for Ruby had to do with our mother. “I had often been told that my mother was no good and that I would also be no good. This made me angry enough that I directed myself to be good so this prediction could never come true.”

Another savior was her love of reading. “I read two or three books a week,” she wrote, “often late into the night. Books became an escape from reality.” I relate to that. Left alone for long periods, as we all were, I also became a reader. I was rarely supervised and could always come and go as I pleased.

The same was true of Reggie and Vic. Much of the supervision Reggie got was from his older brother, me, when we were in the same foster home for several years. Just as Marion protected Ruby, I tried to look after Reggie. When I was nine and he was only three, I took him to a nearby public pool and taught him to swim. I was responsible for getting him there safely, making sure he didn't drown, and getting him back safely.

At one time in Stoneham, Mass., the five of us were as close to being together as we ever were. Reggie and I were in one home (with the Foleys). The next street over, Ruby was with one family (the Mullins) and Marion was with another (the McLaughlins). Across town, Vic was with yet another family (the Kenneys). Talk about weird!

Meanwhile, shortly after I walked away from the Foley's, Vic departed from the Kenney's in spectacular fashion – by heaving a brick through the kitchen window. But he didn't have to live in the streets or in the woods. Vic said, “The state told me that there was a vacancy at the Foley's and they were willing to take me in.”

Vic agreed and thus began a brotherly bond between Vic and Reggie, with Vic just a year older than Reggie, that continues to this day. They like nothing better than spending a day together fishing on Walker Pond at Vic's place. They became family and protectors for each other just as Marion and Ruby did.

Of my four younger siblings, whom did I bond with? I like to think that I bonded with them all. But my guess is that all four would probably describe me as a kind of odd man out – which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Nearly seven years ago when Vic was ripping up his whole life in Oklahoma plus facing a health crisis -- an intestinal failure arising from grenade wounds in Vietnam -- Reggie and I flew out there. The three of us drove Vic's pick-up truck, pulling his mobile home behind it, from Oklahoma to Massachusetts where he would stay with Ruby until he got his own place.

Early on, while I was driving, I hit and severely damaged a small car while pulling out of a shopping center parking lot. Not realizing what I had done, I just kept going. We found out what I had done only because a driver flagged us down and told us. He also said the police were looking for us.

Well, they never caught up to us, but Reggie and Vic made fun of my driving all the way to Massachusetts. And no matter what the issue, from driving to politics, it was always two against one. Vic and Reggie pretty much think the same about most things. I think differently from the two of them on most things. But, and this is what is important, we are brothers and family and that never changes.

However, Vic and Reg, I must ask you both a little question: Have you ever had a street named after you? No? Well, not to rub it in, but I think that this photo of me at the intersection of George Street and Pollock Street speaks for itself.

Marion read the above about how she and Ruby had a special bond and Reggie and Vic had a special bond and how I, the oldest, was the odd man out -- and demurred. She called me and said, "Yes, you are the one who is alone but it is because you are at the top of the pyramid. You are at the pinnacle and by definition there is only room for one there. You have always been the one that we looked up to. You are the father of our family."

"How can I write that?" I asked her.

"If you are a writer, you can write it."

So, there, I wrote it.

Separated in early childhood, unwanted and unloved, emotionally abused, depending entirely on ourselves and each other, the odds against the five of us were impossible. We were marked for failure and misery. Instead, all of us not only survived but thrived.

Marion went to nursing school because, as she is the first to admit, it offered a place to live. To pay for tuition, she got scholarships, took out loans, and worked part-time. After that, she went to Salem State and got a B.A Degree in nursing. She didn't stop there. She went to Boston University and received a Master's Degree in nursing.

Marion eventually became Director of Nursing at a major hospital. Today, turning 70 in January, she still works part time as a nurse seeing elderly patients and helping them with such things as prescriptions.

Ruby left her foster home at 18 and immediately got a job at an insurance company in Boston. Her strategy was "working harder than other employees." Her goal was to "reunite my family." To save on rent, she took an apartment with another young women. She worked, saved, and went to college. She eventually earned a Master's Degree in Social Work from Worcester State College and today is responsible for the care of residents at a large and respected rest home.

Vic, Reggie, and I all ran off into the military. Vic and Reggie joined the U.S. Marine Corp. I went into the U.S. Army. See how different we are? They do the same thing; I do something different. Vic made a career of the U.S. Marines, rising to the highest enlisted rank and serving as a Drill Instructor. He also took college courses over many years, earning a Master's in Public Administration.

Reggie left the U.S. Marine Corps after serving four years. Unlike the rest of us, he has no academic gene. Instead, he started out as a welder and went up from there, eventually earning a good living in New Hampshire as an expert metal craftsman. If it's metal, Reggie can make it do anything. He built a beautiful metal bench for me, for example.

Unlike Vic and Reggie, I was a lousy soldier. At a Nike missile site in California, I scanned a radar screen for Russian aircraft. This was at the height of the cold war, 1956-58. I didn't like how an arrogant, Napoleon-like battalion commander talked to me during a barracks inspection, and told him so.

I immediately got busted from Specialist Third Class to private and barely escaped being court-martialed. The only reason I wasn't was because I was a short-timer, with only a few weeks to go. As soon as I got out of the army, I applied to college having no idea how I was going to pay the tuition or living expenses.

But good fortune smiled on me. I made the Merrimack College varsity hockey team as a freshman and got an athletic scholarship. That took care of tuition. Thanks to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, I got loans that, along with working part-time in a supermarket, covered living expenses. I paid back every cent over 10 years.

After graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass, I went to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts where I received a Master's of Arts Degree. I became a teacher for three years in Africa, first in Kenya and then in Nigeria. I spent the rest of my career in publishing as a writer and editor of classroom learning materials.

Today, the five of us have each other, our own homes, families, and full lives surrounded by what we all dreamed of as foster kids – family. Just look at this picture of the Pollock gang at a recent family reunion. How far away is that from where the five of us started?

So long and keep moving.



P.S. Next time: Vic, a fellow with a curious mind, investigates our father's family and makes some remarkable discoveries. He finds that our father was one of 15 children, that we have three living aunts and one living uncle, and that we have 51 first cousins. And, wonder of wonders, we just had a joyous reunion with Aunt Lillian, Uncle William and long-lost cousins. Thus do the Pollocks come full circle, from no family to a large loving one opening our hearts and homes to long-lost family members. It is all that we have ever dreamed of -- and far, far more. Next time, Aunt Lillian and Uncle Willy.

Surging E-Books: The Beginning of the End of the Paper and Printed Book?

Around the corner from me, Tatnuck Bookseller closed about two years ago after more than 20 years and I still haven't gotten over it. Every time I drive by the cookie-cutter casual restaurant that has opened on the spot, I recall how much I used to enjoy going to Tatnuck Bookseller to browse, check out new books, and hang out.

There is nothing like wall-to-wall books. They fire up the brain. All that knowledge! All that adventure! They feed the soul. Any number of books beckoning to satisfy your deepest yearnings!

My wife Barbara, shown here reading, is a dedicated book reader. When a new book comes out that she wants to read, she gets it from the Worcester Public Library – free. She and millions like her expect her beloved books and the public library to go on as always. But, sorry dear, they may not – as we shall see.

While I read more newspapers, magazines, and online blogs than books, I occasionally ask Barbara to pick up a new book for me from the library. I'm too cheap to pay $27.50 for a new hardcover. At Tatnuck Bookseller, I used to dip into lots of different books and go away satisfied for the cost of a cup of coffee and The New York Times. Maybe if I and others like me were more willing to spring for $27.50 books, Tatnuck Bookseller would still be in business.

But the fact is that Tatnuck Bookseller is no more in my neighborhood (though it still has a struggling store in Westboro, MA.) and it's fate is shared by more and more booksellers across the country. The book industry is under pressure as never before.

Book publishers, though still pushing big-name authors (Dan Brown of the blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code”) and ghost-written, news-pegged books (by Joe the Plumber, by the mistress of Bernie Madoff) and $100 textbooks (in every college bookstore), are in a monumental struggle for survival.

Why? Price resistance for sure, in these hard times. Yet the high cost of books is no new problem. What is new is the recent, rapid rise of formidable new competition: Electronic Books.

After years of promise and little more, sales of E-books are soaring. They hit a record $24 million in June, a 136.2 percent increase from a year earlier. Sales of E-books are the fastest growing segment of book publishing, increasing 68.4% since 2007. These figures are from the Association of American Publishers.

The sharpest increases came early in 2008 just after the release of Amazon.com's Kindle. The Kindle is an electronic device that emulates a book and whose reading experience, in the words of Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos, makes the device “disappear.” The first two Kindle releases sold out quickly. In the first quarter of this year, Forester Research estimates that more than 900,000 Kindles were sold. (Amazon does not disclose Kindle sales.)

The Kindle -- thin, book size, 10.2 ounces, able to hold 200 full-length books – offers free wireless connection almost anywhere via Sprint 3G network. E-ink technology gives text a print-like appearance. It has a keyboard. It includes a Web browser. You can browse the Web, send and receive e-mail, and play games.

When you're reading a traditional book and come across an unfamiliar word, it's a pain to pause and flip through a 5-pound paper dictionary – if one happens to be at hand. The Kindle has a built-in dictionary. You just click on an unfamiliar word and its definition pops up. A built-in vocabulary-builder. Text too big or too small? You can adjust it.

With Kindle, an E-book from Amazon's vast digital library is available almost instantly, any time, from anywhere. No ten-ton printing presses. No “dead-tree” paper. No warehouse. No shipping and distribution. No big price. Just $9.99, even for bestsellers.

Yes, the Kindle is one hot 21st century digital communication tool. Oprah Winfrey told millions of her adoring fans that it is her “favorite new gadget.” No wonder the book industry is in a state of panic. It should be.

The Aug 3 issue of The New Yorker has a great article on the Kindle by Nicholson Baker. In the story, Baker describes how the Wall Street Journal cultural critic, Steven Johnson, was alone in an Austin, Texas restaurant with a Kindle 2 when he was “seized by the urge to read a novel.” Within minutes, thanks to Kindle's 3G hookup with Sprint wireless – called Whispernet – Johnson was reading “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith. The experience convinced Johnson that “writing and publishing would never be the same.”

Jacob Weisberg, the editor-in-chief of the Slate Group confided to Newsweek that for weeks he had been doing all his recreational reading on the Kindle 2. To him, the Kindle 2 offered a “fundamentally better experience” than did a paper and ink book. Weisberg said that he believed that Jeff Bezos had built a machine to make a cultural revolution.

For a still-young (45) former geek and Princeton graduate, this would be Jeff Bezos' second making of a revolution. The first was creating Amazon.com to sell books online, which made him a multibillionaire (along with his lucky parents who put up almost everything they had). And now, with the Kindle, he is out to revolutionize the book itself.

Bezos praises the traditional book as an admirable “perfection” that deserves to have thrived for centuries.Yet -- there is no polite way to say this -- his Kindle is out to kill the book as we know it. With the Kindle (along with new competitors -- read on) he is well on his way to doing so.

Jacob Weisberg has pronounced the book, after 500 years, to be on its deathbed. He said, “Printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence.”

In an article in Slate entitled “How Kindle Will Change the World,” Weisberg wrote:
“The notion that physical books are ending their life cycle is upsetting to people who hold them to be synonymous with literature and terrifying to those who make their living within the existing structures of publishing. As an editor and lover of books, I sympathize. But why should a civilization that reads electronically be any less literate than one that harvests trees to do so? And why should a transition away from the printed page lessen our appreciation and love for printed books? Hardbacks these days are disposable vessels, printed on ever crappier paper with bindings that skew and crack. In a world where we do most of our serious reading on screens, books may again thrive as expressions of craft and design. Their decline as useful objects may allow them to flourish as design objects.”

Weisberg is less optimistic as to the fate of book publishers and, by extension, book sellers. He wrote:
“Amazon, which is selling most new books at a loss to get everyone hooked on the Kindle, will eventually want to make money on them. The publishers will be squeezed at best and disintermediated at worst. Amazon is already publishing Stephen King. In the future, it could become the only publisher a best-selling author needs. In a world without the high fixed costs of printing and distribution, as the distance between writers and their audiences shrink, what essential service will Random House and Simon & Schuster provide?”

E-books? Don't be surprised.

Amazon may be the first out of the gate in the race to capture the lion's share of the E-book market, but powerful competitors have quickly jumped in. Sony Electronics just introduced two new electronic reading devices to compete with Amazon's Kindle, Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition. The new devices replace earlier and more expensive versions of the Sony Reader. They will sell for $199 and $299 respectively and will go on sale later this month.

Sony's devices are available in retail outlets like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, but their sales have lagged those of Amazon's Kindle, which is sold only online. To compete with Sony, Amazon recently reduced the price of the Kindle from $359 to $299. For its part, Sony has met Amazon's e-book price of $9.99.

Sony's new devices and price cuts may not be enough to help it catch up to Amazon. Unlike the Kindle, Sony's electronic readers cannot connect wirelessly to an E-book store. Owners of Sony readers must plug their devices into a computer to buy and download e-books. Sony has also not yet developed a version of its software for other devices like the iPhone.

Barnes & Noble, the country's largest bookstore chain measured by revenue, has also jumped into the nascent E-book market. Seeing the writing on the wall in the form of declining book sales and rising E-book sales, Barnes & Noble has announced that it will launch its own e-bookstore. It will sell bestsellers for $9.99, in line with Amazon.

Barnes & Noble says it will offer more than 700,000 titles (including 500,000 public domain books from Google Inc.), and expects to offer more than one million E-book titles within a year. Amazon.com's Kindle store currently sells about 300,000 E-books. Sony's E-book store sells about 300,000 E-books, while offering free access to about 500,000 out-of-copyright books collected by Google.

What Barnes & Noble has done is make the most of its greatest assets: physical stores and a strong national presence. It has integrated its physical stores and E-book store, primarily through the iPhone. At the moment, Kindle E-books cannot be read on iPhone and other electronic readers but soon will be.

If the paper and printed book is indeed on its last legs, that does not necessarily mean that Barnes & Noble is. It is a powerful national bookseller. If it can no longer sell books, it will sell E-books. It is either that or go the way of Tatnuck Booksellers around the corner from me.

Perhaps the single greatest force behind the seeming inevitability of eventual E-book supremacy are our young people. In their readiness to accept and adapt to new technology, they seem wired differently than earlier generations. Many of today's 12-year-olds have their own cell phones and routinely chat up their friends on Facebook and tweet them on Twitter. The internet to them is as natural as breathing.

Books? For many young people, books are stodgy throwbacks to their parents' school days, soooooo last century. The young woman shown here reading a Kindle on the beach is more normal. What voluntary reading they do is online.

They read old-fashioned books when they have to, when old teachers (pushing 30!) say they have to if they want to pass. They transition seamlessly from the paper book to the E-book.

Educators who have always revered the book and assumed that it was both essential in learning and would last forever, watch their young student texting and surfing the web on cell phones and other mobile devices – and see their world of books being turned upside down. Like Barnes & Noble, they must do a major transition from traditional school books to E-books or kiss professional lives goodbye.

Except for some veteran educators resisting the trend toward E-books (dead-enders?), education is moving headlong into an E-book future. In this not-too-distant future, high school students will carry in their backpacks not books but a laptop and an electronic reading device. They will be walking virtual libraries connected to electronic reading 24/7.

At Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, MA., that future is here. There 16-year-old Tia M. Alliy, who aspires to become a doctor or an engineer, is getting ready to begin her junior year. Like most of her friends, she does most of her school research online with her laptop. The laptop is a school requirement.

She rarely cracks open an actual book. Ditto her classmates, many of whom have never used a library card catalogue or checked a book out of a library. And now the library at Cushing Academy is a mirror image of them. This summer the library underwent extensive renovation to reflect this wholesale transformation in student reading and studying habits – away from paper and print and toward digital reading and learning.

The library at this independent, coed boarding school has been transformed into a cybercafe and coffee shop, with a faculty lounge for more interaction between teachers and students. The library's 20,000 traditional volumes are being replaced by electronic texts, and E-readers – such as the Kindle. The books are being donated to other area schools and charities. Soon the library at Cushing Academy will be virtually bookless.

Headmaster James Tracy, an avowed book lover, finds a bookless library exciting. He says that the library is “going from 20,000 books to millions.” He says he loves the idea of “carrying in the palm of my hand the entire Library of Congress. As a lifelong learner, there is nothing more exciting.”

At the college level, the $100 and even $200 textbook is common. For decades, publishers and authors of college textbooks have fed on a largely captive market. If a $200 textbook is required for a course, the student has had no choice but to buy that book. Professors routinely assigned their own books and colleges have traditionally looked the other way.

Serving what economists call a “non-elastic” market in which customers have no choice but to buy, textbook prices have risen much faster than inflation. Financially, it has been sweet for textbook publishers and authors but decidedly bitter for college students and their families struggling to pay for college.

But now, with a surge in E-textbook sales, traditional textbook publishers are rushing to defend their lucrative turf in college bookstores. Pearson Publishing, the largest textbook publisher in the U.S., is in the forefront. Wendy Spiegel, a Pearson spokesperson, said, “We believe the world is going digital, but the jury's still out on how this will evolve. We're agnostic, so we'll provide digital, we'll provide print, and we's see what our customers want.”

Much will depend on California and Texas, which together dominate the nation's textbook market. As these states go, so do most other states. This summer California has announced an initiative that would replace some science and math texts with free “open source” digital versions. California hopes to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year – money that big publishers like Pearson will not be getting.

“In five years, I think the majority of students will be using digital textbooks, “said William M. Habermehl, superintendent of the 500,000-students Orange County, Calif. Schools. “They can be better that traditional textbooks.”

Eyes squarely on the rich textbook market, Amazon.com this June came out with a bigger machine, the Kindle DX. There are new pilot programs at several universities, including Jeff Bezo's almer mater, Princeton, testing the Kindle DX's potential as a replacement for textbooks.

Bezos also sees the Kindle DX as the new digital platform for struggling newspapers, such as The New York Times. I read The New York Times every day and have done so for a half century. Am I addicted? I guess.

But I am tired of paying its price, which has gone up faster than even college textbooks. Six bucks for the Sunday Times is too rich for my blood. It was $3.50 two years ago. I can subscribe to the Times on the Kindle DX for $13.99 a month.

Meanwhile, the big general-interest book publishers are taking a deep breath and diving into the E-book waters. After dithering for weeks, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group just announced that it was going to release Dan Brown's new book, “The Lost Symbol”(a follow-up of his blockbuster novel “The Da Vinci Code”) as an E-book “simultaneously with the hardcover on September 15.”

I don't have a Kindle ... yet. I can't bring myself to pay $299 ... yet. It's not easy being an old tightwad. But, just as Tatnuck Bookseller had to sell books or die, I have to read or die.

There is no question that it is only a matter of time before I dig painfully in my pocket and give in to the inevitable and buy a Kindle – and read E-books and my beloved New York Times on an electronic reading device that I carry everywhere and can't live without.

So long and keep moving.


P.S. On a personal note, my novel, “State Kid: Hero of Literacy,” is now available at Amazon.com's Kindle Store for $9.99. The hardcover version is a 407-page coffee table tome costing $89. When you read my novel on your Kindle, you save $79! What a deal! Order today! (The previous link takes you to a sales pitch for the Kindle. Jeff Bezos knows how to sell! Search for "State Kid: Hero of Literacy." The book title and cover will come up. Click on the title and you get a summary of the book. You have to have a Kindle to read E-books in the Kindle E-Book store.)

P.P.S. Hey, I gotta live, don't I? That reminds me of a story. Years ago when I was an editor at an educational publishing company, I was begging my boss for a raise. “I got a wife and kids, a mortgage, bills,” I whined. “I gotta live, don't I?” He paused, leaned forward, and said evenly, “not necessarily.”

Transgenders: Either You're a Boy or a Girl, Right? If Only It Were Always That Simple.

Having just played a tough, grunt-punctuated game of singles tennis, I stand in the men's locker room stretching in front of a full-length mirror. I'm soaked with sweat. I straighten, tighten the abs, and pull my shoulders back. In the mirror, I see something startling popping out of my wet top – a couple of nipples.

I immediately go over to Jim Kane, minutes before my enemy on the court but now my post-combat friend. “Look at this,” I said, rearing my shoulders back. “I'm growing breasts.”

“I see them,” he said with a big smile and chuckling.

“But you can't feel them; you can only look.”

We both have a hearty laugh.

Notwithstanding my flaunting my nips in a locker room, there is no doubt that, with my bald head and grey goatee and deep voice, and despite the pink water bottle I carry (with a breast cancer symbol on it), I belong in the men's locker room and not the women's. More to the point, I have no doubt that I belong there.

Pink water bottle? Breast cancer symbol? Well, the truth is I have a feminine side that's all about feelings, nurturing, personal relationships, and support for women. I have women friends in which it is all friendship and zero sexuality. When I'm with them, it's like a couple of women talking.

This is not to say that I do not have a sexual interest in women. In this respect, I'm a normal dirty old man. As such, it is easy for me to joke about breasts. At doubles tennis the other day, one of the guys brought a squishy, flesh-colored ball with a nipple on it. We all had fun squeezing it and generally carrying on like like teen-age boys copping their first feel.

But, beneath the hilarity, I have to be honest: When I saw those nipples in the mirror, I didn't much like it. After showering and putting on a dry tee-shirt, I struck the same pose in front of the mirror. No nipples. Good. Still all guy. And it had been good for a laugh in the men's locker room.

Transgenders and their families would find nothing amusing in my little locker room routine. To them, a guy growing breasts or a gal just as fervently wanting to get rid of them is a deadly serious determinant of personal identity and, indeed, survival.

Ethan St. Pierre, 47, of Haverhill, MA, was once a woman but transitioned herself into a man. As she began to look more and more like a he, St. Pierre said it cost him his job at the security company where he worked.

He was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “Once they saw the changes that my body was making, they decided that I could no longer do my job. They started taking my responsibilities away from me one at a time until they finally told me that I was no longer welcome.”

Lorelei McLaughlin is a transgender person from Northhampton, MA who can't get a job. She says she is constantly rejected for positions because of her sexual identity. McLaughin, 36, was born as a male but always felt female. For the past three years, she has been living full-time as a woman.

McLaughlin recently testified before the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts Statehouse on H.1828, the Transgender Bill. Supporters of transgender rights say the bill will provide people like St. Pierre legal protections at work, in public accommodations, and in housing. The bill would make “gender identity or expression” an additional category in the state's civil rights and hate-crime laws.

Also testifying in favor of the bill was Enoch E. Page, 58, an associate professor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was born a female but has always felt like a heterosexual male. He had sex reassignment surgery in 1997 in San Francisco.

Opposition to the bill is fierce. Critics say that people like St. Pierre suffer from Gender Identity Disorder and other neuroses and what they need is help, not a new law imposing their problems on everybody else. The Transgender Bill, according to these critics, would lead to a breakdown of privacy in restrooms, locker rooms, and other single-gender facilities. They say that women's bathrooms would be opened to sexual predators.

Kristian M. Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute in Woburn, MA said “This is a far-reaching piece of legislation that will disrupt the privacy of bathrooms, showers and exercise facilities including those in public schools. This bill opens the barn door to everybody. There is no way to know who of the opposite biological sex is using the facility for right purposes.”

Another critic is Chanel Prunier of Shrewsbury, Mass., who is executive director of the Coalition for Marriage and Family. She cites a case in Bangor, Maine -- where a law similar to the proposed Massachusetts Transgender Bill has passed. The parents of a 10-year-old boy in the 5th grade successfully petitioned for his/her access to the girls' bathroom because of his “identifying” as a girl. The School Department had previously accommodated the boy with his own bathroom in an attempt to respect the privacy of pre-pubescent girls and also to protect the boy from harassment.

Ms. Prunier says that we should not have to “indulge” a 10-year-old boy just because he “feels” that he is really a girl. In an op-ed letter, she wrote: “Transgendered is self-defined by the claimant, and is based solely on one's conception of oneself on that particular day. There's no requirement of a doctor's proclamation, surgery, or hormone therapy.”

A particularly harsh critic is Peter Shultz of Assumption College in Worcester, MA. In a letter to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, he wrote: “Perhaps we can find ... appropriate closets where these human beings can go so they will not threaten the moral fabric of our society.”

My wife Barbara has problems with the bill. She said, “I'm sorry, I don't want a man who thinks he is a woman to be able to walk into the women's restroom where I am. I'm just not comfortable with that.” A former second-grade teacher, she also thinks that one 10-year-old should not be accommodated at the expense of all the other students.

She made this analogy: “Just because one student has a peanut butter allergy, do you deny peanut butter to all?” But she is quick to add that in every individual case in schools involving gender, accommodations can and should be made for the student. She says that someone coming into the women's restroom dressed as a woman and “going through the process” would be acceptable to her.

Sponsors of the Transgender Bill say it is a needed expansion of the state's civil rights protections and characterizing it as a “bathroom bill”is a gross distortion. Calling it a threat to public safety from sexual predators, they say, is a scare tactic plain and simple.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Carl Sciortino, Democrat of Medford, said: “What it allows for is that every person, including transgender people, can use facilities that are consistent with their gender identity in a safe and private manner. Anyone that uses a facility to commit a crime or does something indecent can be prosecuted under current laws and this bill does nothing to change that.”

(Of this comment, my wife Barbara said, “It would be a little late after a crime has been committed, wouldn't it?”)

Governor Deval Patrick supports the Transgender Bill, calling it “a very straightforward question of human and civil rights.” He dismissed concerns about privacy in restrooms. “Somehow or other, we manage at home with bathrooms that don't have men and women signs on them. I think we can probably figure that out in public spaces, too.”

A dozen states already prohibit discrimination against transgenders, though New Hampshire recently defeated a bill similar to the Massachusetts bill. Of that defeat, Chanel Prunier wrote: “Outraged mothers recently led a fight to defeat a similar bill in New Hampshire, citing the potential for abuse by predators, and the dangerous ambiguity of who is legally transgendered and who is not... Peeping Toms are certainly a worthwhile concern for women here in Massachusetts.”

On the national level, lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their-kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees. The guidelines are considered a breakthrough by transgender advocates. Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said that President Obama is “making a very clear statement that transgender people won't be discriminated against.”

Focus on the Family, a conservative evangelical group, said the guidelines were “unnecessary political action to appease a special interest group.” The group criticized the new guidelines as “government affirmation” of behavior it defined as “one of the many sexual sins that is outside God's created intent and desire for us.”

The battle over transgenders is joined. The issue is primal. It brings us all the way back to that first question that is asked of every newborn baby: Is it a boy or a girl?

It forces us to go to the heart of just what it is to be a man or a woman. It requires us to try to understand the men and boys living in the shadows among us who feel that they really are women and girls, and for whom breasts are a passionate dream.

We must look into the hearts of women and girls who hate their breasts, are repulsed by the very thought of them, and want passionately to live as males with hair on their chests, not to mention on their faces and legs.

Others are in gender nowhere land. Not sure if they are male or female, they don't know whether they want full breasts or a thatch of hair on their chests. For them, discovering their true gender identity is the driving force of their lives and the source of endless torment.

What we know for sure is that not all guys born male are necessarily standard-issue heterosexuals like me. Nor are all gals born female standard-issue heterosexuals. Ethan St. Pierre is one example out of a female-to-male transgender and Loreli McLaughlin is one example of a male-to female transgender.

Because so many live in the shadows, no one knows how many transgenders, and transgenders-in process, and transgenders wannabes there are in the U.S. The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that between ¼ and 1% of the population is transsexual.

That is not a lot but, counting growing numbers of straight transgender advocates, it is enough to bring about new state transgender legislation and federal anti-discrimination guidelines. Surprising to me -- and one reason I am writing this -- is that the reality of transgenders among us has walked into my little life, and hit me over the head.

I have known Tim, not his real name, almost all his life. As a little boy, he was quiet, friendly, with an easy smile. I saw a boy no different from my own sons, except he wasn't into sports the way they were.

When he was about 20, he decided that he was really a woman and that he wanted to transition himself into one. Now 24 and living with his parents and undergoing hormone treatments, he still dresses as a man but is taking hormones and is slowly transitioning into a female. His breasts are developing.

His parents, friends of mine for many years, have gone from initial shock, to disbelief, to bewilderment, to acceptance. While never wavering in their love for their only son, they do struggle to understand why this is happening and how best to deal with it.

Tim's father wishes that Tim would talk to him more about what he is going through so he can understand and be better able to help. But Tim has not been able to discuss his gender change openly with his father. Tim, if you ever read this, just let me say that your mom and dad and other people who love you are there for you in any way they can. That I know.

Speaking for myself, I see you are changing from a man into a woman, and I know it has to be hell on earth. But, to me, you're still the same old Tim that I have known forever. Say the word, and I will be happy to strangle a demon or two for you.

You are transitioning to a new gender, new identity, and new life. What could be more intense, daunting, and frightening? But if you gather up all the love and support you can get, over time, your being a woman becomes the new normal.


Meanwhile, the subject remains raw, painful, and replete with ambiguities and emotional traps. Will the present path, avoidance and letting things take their course, work? It may keep the pain manageable in the short run, but what about the long term?

I don't know. But I sure am pulling for my friend Tim. As I said to his dad, “I'm looking for the day when we can all joke about this, but right now it just isn't funny.”

This past summer, Barbara and I were visiting a longtime dear woman friend, Elaine, at her lakeside camp in Connecticut. It was a beautiful late summer day and Elaine was in a mood to talk to Barbara. Normally when the two get to yakking, I get restless after a while.

This day I didn't. I somehow sensed that it was important that the two talk without me trying to cut it short. I told them to talk all they want – all afternoon if they felt like it – and I went for a hike around the lake.

They did talk all afternoon. They talked about all the good and bad times they had shared over 29 years of friendship. During all that time, Elaine rarely talked about her brother, but today she did – at length.

Among many other things, Elaine talked about how her brother had abruptly decided late in life that he was a woman. After a long marriage and with three grown children and grandchildren and just a few months after the death of his wife, he morphed from a man to a woman. He went from pants to dresses, from short hair to long hair, from aftershave to perfume and earrings.

Elaine spoke feelingly of the intense anger and confusion that this metamorphosis caused throughout the family. At 70 years of age, dad, gramps, uncle, brother was now a woman and everybody could hardly believe it much less accept it. Elaine asked him to please not visit in woman's clothing. She died a few months later still troubled and not being able to fully accept her brother as a sister.

You know what? My “comedy” routine that I started out with may have gotten laughs, but now I don't think it's appropriate or funny. In the light of what I have just written, I probably should go back and cut it out.

On the other hand, maybe my men's locker room skit should stay as an example of humor that no transgender person would find funny. It can be a reminder to myself and others that while we may be secure in being a boy or a girl, there are fellow human beings among us who are not – and who want that more than anything else in the world.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. To learn more about transgender issues, read Matt Kailey's tranifesto.com. Matt spent the first 42 years of his life as a female. He is now a transsexual male. He is the author of Just Add Hormones.

The Last Cobbler? Mike Vallee Should Be History. So Why Is He Still Fixing Shoes?

As a cobbler, Mike Vallee, who operates a cobbler shop in Bristol, CT, is supposed to be extinct. In our throw-away society, we don't get our shoes repaired; we just buy a new pair at a giant shoe store. Right?

How come Mike doesn't know that? Shouldn't somebody tell him? I don't think so – and neither do his many clients, such as this smiling regular getting his tight shoes "blown out."

Mike Vallee is a cobbler, for God's sakes. God and his cobbler father put him on earth to heal, with deft and loving hands, wounded shoes. Using ancient skills handed down from the dawn of humanity, he saves shoes from the dumpster. Even shoes near fall-apart death, he restores to a healthy vigor and sheen.

Mike performs miracles with shoes and shoe-lovers. He says walk again and they do. For both, he heels. For both, he saves soles. (Sorry ... couldn't resist.)In a city with some rough edges, even a drive-by shooting can't stop him from doing his thing. That's a bullet hole you see in his sign.


We are the only animals that wear shoes. I spent a lot of time in Africa and saw all kinds of animals in the wild. I never saw an animal wearing shoes. Mike Vallee will surely attest that no antelope has ever came into his shop for a shoe fix. (What must horses think of those iron “horse shoes” that we force them to wear?)

However, all manner of humankind in Bristol and regions beyond troop into Mike Vallee's cobbler shop with tales of shoe woes. The mayor of Bristol, Art Ward, is a regular, as have been mayors before him. “I do Artie's shoes,” Mike said. City councilors also come in. They may be skilled politicians with talented tongues, but none can sweet-talk their shoes back into service.

Only Mike Vallee can do that and everybody in town, from the mayor to ordinary folk, knows it. They come humbly, hat in hand, spilling out with no little emotion their shoe issues. They know that Mike the cobbler is always in for them.


When they come in, their shoes are tired. They're tight. They squeak. The heel is worn. There is a hole in the sole. Any one of these can be like a dagger in the heart of someone who has worn a pair of shoes for years, loves them, and can't bear the thought of being without them.

For many of Mike Vallee's regulars, God forbid, buying a new pair in a shoe store is not an option. It's an emotional thing: the huge stores see shoes as just shoes; they insult shoes and shoe-lovers by their mass display and mass merchandising; shoes are like people, each pair unique and with its own personality; the shoe-store chains don't understand how important shoes are to people the way Mike Vallee does.

He knows that people identify with their shoes and that their style, brand, designer, price, and condition all proclaim who they are. Our shoes are us. If our shoes are not right, neither are we. And sometimes, as Mike Vallee sees day in and day out, people need to talk about their shoes.

In Mike Vallee's little cobbler shop, people can let out all their shoe troubles and hopes. They can't do that in a giant shoe store while being waited on by a bored, part-timer whose heart and mind are elsewhere. Mike is fully there. Having grown up with many of his customers, he knows them and their shoes, intimately. He's a trusted friend to both.

Sometimes people come in with a shoe emergency in which time is critical. A wedding is coming up and a mother wants to dance with her groom son wearing pumps that match her joy. A businessman has a big meeting with a potential client and wants to make sure that a delicate deal won't be done in by his shoes; they must reflect his ability to fulfill the contract. A factory worker -- Bristol has many -- must have shoes that enable him to be on his feet for long hours so that he will be able to support his family.
In Mike Vallee, such varied shoe needs find a sympathetic ear. He is decidedly NOT tough as shoe leather. He's also a bit of a dramatist who likes acting out with customers. He's like the cobbler in the famous Norman Rockwell cover (pictured here)fixing a doll's shoes for little girl. You can just see him doing exactly the same.

While chatting and exchanging stories, he tells people what has to be done. Sometimes, if it's a small job and the customer doesn't mind taking a seat, he does the fix then and there. While I was there, a regular came in complaining that his shoes were tight. Mike immediately “blew them out” while engaging in multiple ongoing conversations.

Within minutes, the customer was out the door wearing his now comfy shoes with a smile on his face and with a newly confident step. A steady stream of customers ask for and get this kind of quick, efficient shoe fix. They walk out in comfort, pride, and with a fresh new outlook on life.

Really? Really – as I would find out myself when I presented Mike Vallee my own shoe problem.

Mike's father started Vallee's Shoe Service in 1947. Mike got his start lugging a shoeshine kit around Brockton Plaza where he and a Greek kid hotly competed for customers. He learned early on that you can get a pretty good shine with a brush, but to get the lustre, you have to “pop the rag.”

When he was 10, he started working in his dad's cobbler shop, and he has been there ever since. Mike Vallee Sr. retired at 55 because of heart trouble. He had a major heart attack and underwent “five or six” bypasses, Mike says. Still, largely because of a female cardiologist from India, a “maestro in the field,” he lived another 20 years before passing away at 75 in 2000.

Mike Vallee has two brothers, one younger and one older. Both are cobblers. His older brother Joe runs Gulfgate Shoe Repair in Sarasota, Fla. Dave operates Dave's Shoe Repair in Rockville, CT. Both tried working in other fields, but always came back to the cobbler life.

Mike has a son and two daughters. His son Mike, 29, years ago “did some stitching” in the shop, but has shown little interest in carrying on the family cobbler tradition. He is an athlete who went to college on an athletic scholarship where he studied economics and political science.

“I didn't do sports,” Mike Vallee Sr. said. “I was always working.”

His two daughters have shown no interest in becoming cobblers. Mike completely understands. Cobbling is not a field that the female gender would naturally gravitate to. His younger daughter is a student at Central Connecticut College. His older daughter has just received a master's degree in education.

But for Mike Vallee, cobbling is all he knows and he has no desire to do anything else. He loves the work. He loves having all his old friends coming in to get their shoes fixed and, especially, the comaraderie that goes with it. In Mike's shop, it's all first names and nicknames and never-ending stories and joshing. He is shown here with shoe forms.

But what if work dries up in a trade that is widely seen as dying? What will he do then? Mike does not seem the least bit worried. Asked if business is good enough for him to pay the bills and keep going, he will only say, “I make a living.”

But judging from the stream of customers I saw and a little research into the state of the cobbler business today, I would venture to say that Mike Vallee is in no danger of going out of business. His business is probably healthier today than it has been in recent years.

Jim McFarland, owner of a cobbler shop in Lakeland, Fla, and a spokesman for the Shoe Service Institure of America, says cobbler shops are seeing a surge in business. He is a third-generation cobbler. He says that since November, many shoe-repair shops have seen a 25% to 30% growth in business.

In a depression like this – excuse me, recession – it makes sense. Instead of buying new shoes, more people are getting their shoes repaired to save money. McFarland says that where the typical shoe-repair customer has been age 50 and up, recent new customers have been much younger.

“We're starting to see some younger people, 20 or 30-year-olds, coming into the stores,” McFarland said. “Before this recession started, we didn't see younger people.” Indeed, the little hall of his small shoe-repair shop is piled high with reheeled stilettos, resoled boots, and polished Oxfords.

While the shoe-repair business is up, the sales of new shoes are down 3.2% in the 12 months that ended in November, according to NPD Group, Inc., a market research firm. This does not mean that the shoe-repair has become a new growth industry. At one time there were 120,000 shoe-repair shops in the U.S. Today, there are about 7,000. As with Mike Vallee, the children of cobblers are little inclined to learn the trade from their fathers or to take it up themselves.

Another reason the ranks of cobblers have thinned is that this is not a trade that is learned overnight. It can take up to four years to learn the trade. Few young people are willing to put that much time into getting qualified. On top of that, is the need to invest in pricey equipment. A finishing machine with trimmers, sanding belts, and buffers can cost more than $20,000.

In the meantime, like everybody else who comes to Mike Vallee's cobbler shop, I arrive with a shoe problem. “Mike, as a friend of a friend,” I said to him, “could you fix these loafers? They're Eccos, the best shoes I ever had in my whole life. I paid over a hundred bucks for them at a Bostonian store six years ago and look at them. The braid is pulling apart. Something is going on with the sole. They're all scuffed up. My wife thinks I need new shoes.”

He asked me to take off my shoes. I did so. Placing them on the counter, I said, “Now I suppose you are going to look at my shoes and be able to tell my whole life history.”

He took one of the shoes and studied it. “Not quite,” he said. “But I can tell that you are a man who likes his comfort and these shoes are dry. They have never met polish.”

“That's it?,” I said, relieved.

“Well, let me ask the shoe.” He put one shoe to his ear and, periodically nodding, made out like he was getting an earful.

“I don't think everybody needs to hear what a bad person I have been. Can you help me?,” I asked.

“I can't do much with the hole in the sole because it is rubber. But let me see what I can do.”

Then, while chatting up old-friend customers sitting in the shop and coming and going through the door, he restitched my shoes right on the counter. The photo shows him doing the restitching by hand. Then he applied leather treatment and polish. He put my shoes to a buffing machine. It took him about 15 minutes.

He handed the shoes to me. “I gave the sole a quick fix, a patch job,” he said. “Can't really do anything more with rubber soles.”

“They look like new,” I said. The new stitches blended in perfectly. Gone was the dried-up, tired, scuffed-up look. It was replaced by a soft leathery sheen that made my old shoes seem reborn. “How did you do that?”

He smiled.

I put my 6-year-old shoes on. They felt heavenly. “How much do I owe you?”

“On the house.”

I walked out of Mike Vallee's cobbler shop happy. My “new” shoes made me feel like a new man. Now I know what Mike Vallee's regulars know. There's nothing like having a personal shoe makeover by a guy who knows exactly what it takes to make your shoes –- and you -- happy.

Here is one happy customer, me, showing off his "new" shoes with Mike Vallee, cobbler artiste. Mike: I thank you. My shoes thank you.
So long and keep moving

Nantucket Snapshot: An Innocent Off-Islander Snoops Around a Storied Island.

The message to me was unmistakeable: disappear.

It came from my wife Barbara and her sister Janet who was visiting for several days. They wanted to do what two women want to do. A guy – in this case, me -- is simply in the way.

So I disappeared – to Nantucket. Here I'm on the boat approaching Nantucket. Between you and me, I went willingly. I'm not wild about being redundant. And it was okay with me if I missed out on such things as shopping and four-hour conversations.

On the storied island, I filled gaps: about Nantucket; about a longtime friend, Bill Murray, who lives on the island year-round and with whom I hung out; and, a little surprising, about myself. Bill is also known as Surfer Bill, a story in itself, and henceforth referred to as such for reasons that will become clear.

I had been to Nantucket several times before, but this time was different. Now I didn't troop mindlessly around gawking and snapping the usual pictures. I wanted to understand better what makes modern Nantucket, located 30 miles off Cape Cod, so one-of-a-kind.

The island is shown here in a NASA satellite image. Nantucket means “faraway island” in the language of early Indian residents. It is surely that, at least in my infantile measurement of distance. But what else, exactly, is Nantucket?

It apparently is John Luttman, shown here. Surfer Bill and I met him one morning in the Bean, a downtown expresso coffee shop and hangout. He was sitting there in a corner playing a word game and we struck up a conversation.

“I never saw a guy with two ponytails, one in front and one in back,” I said.

He stroked his front ponytail. “It works. Did you hear the one about ....?” And he proceeded to tell a joke too bad to repeat, one of several he reeled off. After chatting a while, we left. I came back about about 3:30 and found him still there in the same spot, this time playing his word game with a young man.

“Shouldn't you be working?” I asked.

John had told us earlier that he was a handyman who did “everything.” Surfer Bill said that he sees him all the time around the island painting houses.

“Who says I have to work?” he said, without looking up from the game board. “Hey, I have a joke for you, but I have to tell you outside. It's too dirty for in here.”

I begged off.

Outside, I asked Surfer Bill if it was okay with the owners for somebody to sit there all day playing games. “I guess so. I see him in here all the time and nobody ever bothers him.” Pretty easygoing owners, I would say. But then again, John Luttman certainly adds color to the place.

Now my friend Surfer Bill. He's 63 and started coming to Nantucket summers as a teen with his Connecticut parents, who rented a place. He embraced the Nantucket summer lifestyle, especially the surfing. At 17, he tooled around the island in a extended 1950 Cadillac ambulance. And when he was sure there were no police around, he used the ambulance siren to clear the road. Outta the way for Surfer Bill!

Today Surfer Bill is a year-round resident and homeowner on Nantucket. He lives with his wife Tracy and two young-adult children, Margaret and Tyler. He's a maker of fine furniture and an all-around skilled craftsman. He did much of the extensive renovation on his home.

I've known Surfer Bill for well over 20 years, ever since his wife Tracy, with whom I worked at a publishing company in Middletown, CT, introduced us. “You know,” she said to me one day, “I think you and my husband would hit it off. You have a similar sense of humor.” By that she meant, I'm sure, humor that is offbeat and not always appreciated in genteel company.

Anyway, Tracy deftly palmed me off on her poor husband. For many years now, Surfer Bill and I have been co-conspiritors in staving off full adulthood. He is a closet beach bum. I am ... well, this is not about me. He was and is a dedicated surfer. He recently returned from a Panama surfing vacation with Margaret.

What I did not know was that he was famous for his surfing – well known enough around the island to earn the nickname Surfer Bill. This was news to me. He has always been just plain Bill to me. I found out the truth purely by accident.

We were at the Whaling Museum when he ran into an admirer from 1963. “Surfer Bill,” the man exclaimed excitedly. While the two talked old times, I took in some of Nantucket's whaling past.

Afterwards, I said, “I didn't know they called you Surfer Bill.” I implied that he has not been fully honest with me about his past. So to remind him of the cover-up, I now call him “Surfer Bill.”

At the Whaling Museum, we got a great look at Nantucket's glorious past as the world's whaling titan of the seas in the 1840's. In the main hall is the skeleton of a 46-foot sperm whale along with a whaling boat with harpoons and gear used in hunting down these giants of the sea.

Nantucket had some 80 rigs sailing the far seas, sometimes for years at a time, hunting sperm whales for their oil and spermacetti (head matter used in the making of candles). The whalers brought back oil enough to jumpstart Nantucket from an isolated sheep-farming nowhere into a dazzingly prosperous island with worldwide economic power.


As Herman Melville wrote in Moby Dick:

“And thus have these naked Nantucketers, issuing from their antihill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders.” Melville wrote that Nantucketers ruled “two-thirds of this terraqueous globe,” and that “the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires.”

At the Whaling Museum, which was originally a candle factory, Surfer Bill and I heard a narrator tell the bleak story of the Essex. It was a Nantucket whaling ship that was repeatedly rammmed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale that the whalers had harpooned. After 94 days drifting in three small boats, after unspeakable suffering and horrors – including cannibalism -- there were only a few survivors. One of them told the Essex's story to Herman Melville and it became the inspiration for his classic novel, Moby Dick.

The storyteller told us afterwards that he has lived on Nantucket for 27 years, but was not a native. “I'm a wash-ashore,” he said. In the Nantucket heritage hierarchy, native-borns are the highest. Next highest are year-round wash-ashores. Then come summer resident wash-ashores. At the bottom are off-islanders like me. I remind Surfer Bill that, though a member of the permanent residentiariat, he is still “only” a wash-ashore.

At the height of Nantucket's whaling supremacy, the island boomed. The torrents of money that flowed into Nantucket, mostly from England, spawned island merchants. Soon the island had five wharves, dozens of candle factories, bustling shipyards, and shops catering to the lastest decorating and fashion whims of prominent island ladies.

Fortunes were made. Grand homes rose along the the cobbled streets of Nantucket town. Many of these stately homes still stand and number about 800, according to the Nantucket Historical Association. A walk around Nantucket town is to stroll through history, with home after home displaying names and stories of original owners.

But Nantucket's whole economy was built on one thing: whaling. With the invention of kerosene and the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, demand for whale oil and candle power dried up almost overnight. On top of that, came the Great fire of 1846, which destroyed a third of the town. Then the California Gold rush siphoned off hordes of young men, as did the Civil War.

By 1870, Nantucket barely cast a shadow of its former self. As people fled the island, the population plunged to a third of what it was. There were lots of widows and fatherless children. Grand homes sunk into disrepair and sank in value. With income cut to near nothing, no taxes could be collected. Nantucket sank into debt. The decline was swift and thorough. This photo from 1870 captured a Nantucket street scene when the island was at a low point.

It was not until the 1880's that a replacement for the whaling industry began to emerge: tourism. Tourism is to Nantucket today what whaling was in its heyday. The population of Nantucket is about 10,000, or about that of a small town. But during the summer tourist season, the population swells to up to 50,000.

The fine shops are back, but this time instead of catering to the ladies of whaling fortunes, they cater to the new elite: free-spending women tourists. The photo shows the wares offered at a typical Centre Street shop, not exactly appealing to the male of the species.

I said to Surfer Bill, “You know, walking down Centre Street, I see nothing but shop after shop catering to women. As a man, I definitely feel underappreciated. Is this my imagination?”

His reply was of classic simplicity: “They're the ones spending the money.”

I did a little research. I found out that Centre Street used to be called “Petticoat Row” because of the many women who owned and operated the shops that lined the street. In other words, today's Centre Street has simply reverted back to what it was in the old days: run by and for women.

Nantucket is a feminine paradise. A good case could be made that it is also a feminist one. According to the official 2009 Nantucket Official Guide, “women traditionally ran the town of Nantucket, as their husbands traveled the seas for years at a time.” It seem that they still do.

I went up to a women sweeping the sidewalk in one of the Centre Street Shops. “Hi. I'm writing about Nantucket. Is it my imagination or is my masculinity at risk on this street. Every shop is about women.”

She giggled. “Well, I can't speak for your masculinity, but I will tell you that these three shops are all owned by men.”

“Really?”

She paused. “And they're not gay. They're straight.”

In other words, according to her, it may look like women are in charge, but men call the shots behind the scenes.

You can spend a fortune eating in Nantucket and not get much for your money. But I ate well in Nantucket, really well, mostly at Surfer Bill's. One night he prepared out-of-this-world Nantucket cod. Yummy. Another night, Tracy, after working all day, came home and whipped up a delicious Mexican meal.

For lunch, we went to “the best place to eat in town,” according to Surfer Bill: The Centre Street Bistro. For breakfast, we went to the “best bakery in town” to read The New York Times and munch on fresh-baked scones: Daily Bread. Prices at both are very reasonable.

Nantucket's history and traditions are rigorously protected. The entire island has been declared a National Historic Landmark. Building and zoning restrictions are among the nation's strictest. Though he believes the restrictions are necessary, Surfer Bill rolls his eyes when he recounts all the time-consuming hurdles he had to jump in renovating his home.

There was a recent hue and cry about the bricks being placed in some downtown area. They weren't completely faithful to traditional Nantucket bricks. And construction on a downtown open public area has been halted because the Zoning Commission was not competely happy with some of the materials being used. Here the right kind of bricks are being laid.

Lately, with the recession and fewer tourists, Nantucket shops are feeling it. Mitchell's Book Corner which has been a Main Street fixture for decades would have closed except for a financial savior stepping up. It was Wendy Schmidt, wife of the co-founder of Google. The Schmidts have a home on Nantucket. Thanks to Google money, a refurbished Mitchell's Book Corner has recently reopened for business.(Mitchell's honors the memory of Maria Mitchell, a native of Nantucket and America's first female professional astronomer. She discovered a comet and was a professor of astronomy at Vassar.)


There are no fast-food joints, not a single one. The only brand-name chain is a Stop&Shop supermarket. I did notice, however, that the name “Murray” appeared several times around Nantucket town. There was a Murray's clothing store, a Murray's liquor store and a Murray's sign, shown here, that may be wine-related.


Pointing this out to Surfer Bill, I said, “What's this? First I find out that your real name is Surfer Bill. Now are you going to tell me that you are also a closet mogul?”

“The stores were named after me.”

When that instantly bombed, he said, “Actually, it's a Portuguese family that owns all those places. They changed their name to Murray.” They apparently thought Murray would have more appeal than a Portuguese name.

Nantucket has a dress code. Tourists are told in no uncertain terms that appropriate dress is required downtown. They are instructed to reserve swimwear and flip-flops to “the beach where they belong.”

If you live on Nantucket, you don't spend much time in a car. Distances are short. Bill gets to wherever he has to go within minutes. His wife Tracy often rides her bike to her job at the Whaling Museum. Except for during the tourist season, there is no sitting in traffic in your car. And you don't have to lock your car. No one's going to break into it or steal it. How do you get a stolen car off the island?

For a tiny island, 14 miles long and 3.5 miles wide, Nantucket has an awful lot of open space. People here do not live on top of each other and this is true not just with the estates but throughout the island. There are no high-risers, period.

Within minutes of leaving downtown Nantucket, you are in the country. Fully 45% of Nantucket is preserved in its natural state where indiginous plants and animals thrive. It has vast open spaces, hidden forests, 55 miles of beaches, miles of hiking and biking trails. This is truly a little island with a great outdoors.


We went out to Bartlett's Farm, Nantucket's oldest and largest family farm, pictured here.The Bartlett family has been farming the same land for nearly 200 years, from the early 1800's. All it's fruits and vegetables are home-grown. The farm is especially known for its corn and tomatoes. Eighty percent of the farm's energy needs come from wind power.
One evening just before dusk, Surfer Bill, Tracy, Tyler, and I went out to Steps Beach to see if we could see the famous Nantucket Green Flash. This is the instantaneous explosion of green created at the moment the setting sun meets the water.

We waited. We waited. The sun descended. It descended. It met the water. “I saw it,” Tracy said excitedly. “I saw it.”

“I didn't see anything,” Surfer Bill said.


"I didn't see anything,” Tyler said.

“I didn't see anything,” I said.

“I saw it,” Tracy repeated.

That's the thing about the Nantucket Green Flash. Some see it and some do not. This time, Tracy was the annointed one.

Finally, something else I found out about the slippery Surfer Bill. We decided that I would join him for his 6 a.m.swim at the Nantucket High School pool. I've always been a strong swimmer. I toyed with the idea of challenging him to a race. My thought was that he should experience getting beat by a septuagenarian. And of course, I would be gracious in victory.

At the last minute, being a good guy, I decided not to humiliate him. We would just have a casual, friendly swim at our own pace. But as soon as we dove in, it was clear that something was terribly wrong. He began churning through the water like a human speedboat.

Thump! Thump! Thump! His arms slammed into the water like propellers and, as I did a very respectable breast-stroke, he left me in his wake. In no time at all, he was at the other end and back and was passing me like I was treading water!

What the hell is this? I knew Surfer Bill was a swimmer. We used to swim together in his pond at his Killingworth, CT home, but we did so like a couple of normal human beings. But this .. this was extreme swimming.

He kept this furious pace up for fifty minutes. He did 80 laps without letting up. You read that right, 80 laps. I did 15 or 20 and, having had enough, I stopped after 25 minutes. I took this photo of Surfer Bill right after he finished his extreme swim.

Then we went to the best bakery in town, Daily Bread, and Surfer Bill proceeded to complete The New York Times puzzle. As he was doing it, he asked me questions and I didn't know a single answer. He finally did it entirely on his own.

First the physical(swimming);then the mental (NYT puzzle); and I come in a poor second in both. “I'm not taking this sitting down, Surfer Bill,” I told him.

So long and keep moving.

For more on everyday Nantucket life, check out Nantucket Washashore Journal. http://nantucketwashashorejournal.blogspot.com/

P.S. Surfer Bill: I must have made quite an impression in Nantucket. A boat has been named after me. Don't believe it? Have a look.

How long have you lived in Nantucket without having a boat named for you?