Bonefish On the Brain

Here I am with another apology for failure to keep up my posting.  After all, what is a blog for?  I have observed too many blogs that lapse into inactivity and I am determined to be more regular in my posting during the upcoming year.  But now I am off to the Bahamas with my family.   It's been a long time since I have published a post, and it's been a long time since I have gone bonefishing.  My mind is filled with the wisdom of Lefty Kreh, Dick Brown, Stanley Babson, Randall Kaufmann, Chico Fernandez, and Tom McGuane.   I have bonefish on the brain as I prepare to leave today for the Turks and Caicos, but I'll be back.

A Word From Our Sponsor...

It's been far too long since I have composed another posting for my blog. But now I am back and I must begin with a reminder of what prompted me to begin this blog in the first place. It was the publication of my ebook, Safe On Third, and my desire to promote it that led to the creation of this blog.  Safe was published in July of this year, and now, to reward those of you who have been kind enough to read this blog, I would like to offer a half-price coupon for the purchase of my book at smashwords.com.  Simply use the following code, SH84W (not case sensitive), which you enter prior to completing checkout. As a result, you will only have to pay $5.00 for Safe On Third.  At Smashwords, you have a choice of formats for downloading the book.  They are set out below.

Available Ebook reading formats:

When you purchase the full book, you gain access to all formats. 

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Giants Win and Fox Sports Loses: A Geography Lesson

In recent posts I have described myself as “exhausted.”  That is not the case today.  This morning I am in a celebratory mood, still enjoying the Monday night victory of the San Francisco Giants in the World Series.  Yes, I am still savoring the pitching of Tim Lincecum in the fifth and final game against the Texas Rangers, along with Aubrey Huff’s sacrifice bunt, Brian Wilson’s ninth inning finish, and the wonderful home run hit by Edgar Renteria that won the Series for the Giants.  

Unfortunately, I had no choice but to watch the fifth and final game on Fox Sports, burdened with the painful commentary of Buck and McCarver, but even that did not spoil my enjoyment of the action on the field, and I remain amused, too, by the Fox graphic, shown during one of the later innings, which was about the year 1954, when the Giants last won the World Series.  According to this Fox Sports graphic, a gallon of gas was 21 cents that year. The U.S. President was Eisenhower.  I Love Lucy was the #1 TV show, and there were “NO MLB TEAMS WEST OF MISSISSIPPI.”    

Talk about Eastern Bias or maybe myopia.  When I saw this graphic, I almost fell out of my chair.  My geography may not be very good, but I grew up in St. Louis as a Cardinals fan and I always thought the city was west of the ”Big Muddy.”  Of course, that was a long time ago, and I may be confused, although I remember a big river on the east side of the city that is the home of the baseball team that has won more World Series Championships than any other NL team.  Yes, difficult as it might be to believe, the midwestern city of St. Louis is the home of the team that first won the World Series in 1926, defeating the East Coast's New York Yankees.  I wonder, too, where the lowly St. Louis Browns of the American League played before they went to Baltimore after the 1953 season.  Maybe Sportsman’s Park was really in East St. Louis.  That would explain everything.  But what do I know, anyway?  After all, I was just a kid growing up in the suburbs.

The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant!

No, it's not 1951, although Russ Hodges's famous call of Bobby Thomson's pennant winning home run comes to mind. But with a called third strike on Ryan Howard, the 2010 Giants have won the pennant after a series of very tense, dramatic play-off games with a superior team, the Phillies, and I am exhausted. As a result, I have let things slip here and, with the World Series starting in San Francisco tomorrow, I don't know how soon I will be back on track. I will not grow a beard and dye it black. Nor will I wear a rally thong, but I have caught Giants Fever.  I am in a state of delirium that makes it difficult to concentrate on anything other than baseball, and so Bobo Newsom and Safe On Third will have to be put aside for now, while I follow the exploits of Posey, Lincecum, Cain, Lopez, Wilson, Sanchez (Freddie and Jonathan), Bumgarner, Uribe, Torres, Burrell, Huff, and Cody Ross.

More Baseball In A Purple Haze

Baseball is still very much on my mind, and I had intended to provide a few anecdotes about Bobo Newsom in my post today, but my plan was sidetracked after I went to see Robin Williams perform his stand-up act live last night before a sold-out crowd at the Berkeley Repertory Theater.  It was an exhausting experience for I spent two hours laughing, and it's hard to even remember all the topics that were covered because Robin Williams's mind is so quick, his wit so sharp, and his energy seemingly unlimited, as he keeps moving quickly from one subject to the next.  I do recall, however, that he did describe in wonderful detail what it must have been like for the late Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates, when he pitched a no-hitter while hallucinating on LSD.  Intrigued by this story, I decided to save Bobo Newsom for another day. I did a little research and found that, indeed, it was on June 12, 1970, that Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. While high on LSD. Ellis walked eight batters and hit one during this game. In a 2008 interview that was excerpted on the Public Radio Program, Weekend America, Ellis explained in great detail what he actually had experienced in his "purple haze." He said that he took Benzedrine to try to even things out right before he warmed up, that sometimes he saw his catcher. Jerry May, and sometimes he didn't, that the ball kept changing in size and weight, that for much of the game he had no idea what the score was, and that he had no interest in holding runners on base. For more about this see  Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s  by Dan Epstein, published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press, LLC. Also check out a wonderful animated short made by James Blagden,"Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No." This film uses parts of the soundtrack of the Ellis interview of 2008.  The URL is www.dockshort.com/dockshort/.

Go Giants!!!

Baseball is very much on my mind these days, because the San Francisco Giants are up, two games to one, in their division playoff series with the Atlanta Braves.  It's an exciting time for Giants fans like myself, hoping that the team's fine pitching by Lincecum, Cain, and Sanchez, will lead them to the National League Championship Series against the Phillies and, perhaps, beyond to the World Series.

Of course, in my novel, Safe On Third, baseball also plays an important part.  Percy, one of the central characters is a sportswriter who covered the New York Giants of the Polo Grounds and John McGraw for many years, and several scenes are actually set at ballgames in 1940, including a spring training game and an opening day game at Griffith Stadium, with President Roosevelt in attendance along with the main fictional characters in the book, as the Senators play the Red Sox.

Yes, I like baseball very much, and in an earlier, unedited version of Safe On Third, I indulged myself by following closely the American League pennant race in 1940 on a parallel track with the presidential campaign.  That 1940 race was quite exciting.  The Yankees were favorites.  They had won four straight pennants and four consecutive World Series titles.  Cleveland and Detroit traded the lead back and forth with the Yankees right behind them, and finally the Tigers, who had finished fifth the year before, won the American League championship. Thanks to the hitting of Hank Greenberg and Rudy York, along with the pitching of Bobo Newsom, Tommy Bridges, and Schoolboy Rowe, Detroit won the pennant and went on to face the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series.

There are still references to Newsom in Safe On Third, but in earlier versions of the novel, Bobo Newsom played a larger role, actually appearing in several chapters. He was an interesting “character,” and he comes to mind now, because we are once again in the midst of exciting October Baseball, and I am reminded that October 8th was the 70th anniversary of the Detroit Tigers' 2-1 loss to the Cincinnati Reds in the seventh game of the 1940 World Series.  Bobo was the losing pitcher that day, starting on only one day of rest, after winning the first and fifth games for the Tigers. (After his first Series victory, Newsom's father died that same night, and Bobo went on to win the fifth game, a shutout for his dad, before losing game seven.)

Allow me to explain that Louis Norman "Bobo" Newsom was a big, burly, undisciplined righthander from Hartsville, South Carolina, who won twenty games three times and led the league in losses four times over the course of his 20-year major league career. Newsom was an eccentric, flamboyant, superstitious, and boastful workhorse, not always friendly, not gifted or eloquent, who changed teams sixteen times. Newsom liked to talk about himself in the third person. He addressed everyone as "Bobo," and adopted that as his own nickname. His best season was 1940, when his record was 21-5, and his ERA was 2.83, the second lowest in the American League that year.

I have more to add about Bobo Newsom.  I would like to share some anecdotes and background information about him that I had to remove from Safe On Third, and I shall do so in my next post.   

Go Giants!!!

Too Much History?

I began this blog in conjunction with the publication of my “historical” thriller, Safe On Third, as a Smashwords ebook, and at the time I submitted the manuscript to Kirkus Discoveries, which reviews works by self-published and independent authors.  It’s been several weeks since I received my Kirkus review.  It contains a number of positive comments, but I have been stewing over it, and because I want to discuss it, I am now presenting it here, in its entirety:

            Zorensky’s debut is a meticulous historical novel set during the 1940 U.S. presidential campaign.

           As Franklin Roosevelt begins his run for an unprecedented third term and Nazi agents prepare schemes to sway the electorate, British-American sportswriter Percy Brown finds himself caught up in a dangerous spy game. A recent recruit of British intelligence, Percy serves as liaison between the beautiful Elsa—a German-American double agent keeping tabs on dour Nazi spy Karl Mueller—and impatiently irascible SIS operative Nigel Dunderdale. But as Elsa gets closer to discovering the extent of Karl’s ties to a ring of German saboteurs, Percy gets increasingly in over his head. The care with which Zorensky painstakingly recreates the physical, cultural and political world of 1940 is plainly evident; his characters drive on the same roads, walk the same streets and visit the same sites (including a downtown Manhattan gun shop) that flesh-and-blood people of the period would have. Zorensky makes good use of historical cameos, too, peppering the text with visits from the likes of Charles Lindbergh, labor leader John L. Lewis and a few dozen professional baseball figures. Indeed, if Zorensky errs in any direction with regard to historical accuracy, it would be in making the work almost slavishly adherent to it; his plot and characters often feel yoked to the chain of factual events—including the New York World’s fair bombing and an explosion at a New Jersey powder factory—and are given too few chances to breathe on their own. Zorensky’s passion for sharing interesting details—both historical and drawn from his character’s rich back stories—is sometimes too apparent, and often results in unfortunate digressions of exposition that stop the plot cold, as characters spend whole chapters telling each other things they already know rather than cutting to the chase. A fun, melodramatic and authentic spy thriller is contained in the text, but is yet to be carved out by a final, brutal edit.

           A mighty swing, but out at home.

“A mighty swing, but out at home.”  Ouch!  I thought the Kirkus reviewer must have enjoyed that last line, that it was a predictable play on the title, too easy, too clever by half, and certainly unnecessary.  But more troubling to me was the reviewer’s specific, underlying objection to “making the work almost slavishly adherent” to history.  After all, the book is an “historical” novel.  It is not an alternative history; the fictional characters are acting within the framework of actual events in 1940.  I regard this as a positive element of the book, and I make no apology for being passionate about the historical details, which make Safe On Third more than a simple thriller.

     
Still, the review suggests that all this history stops the plot cold, and that while “(a) fun, melodramatic and authentic spy thriller is contained in the text, Safe On Third needs a “final, brutal edit.”  I am not sure how to react to this, because the book already has received such an edit from an independent, “consulting editor,” Alan Rinzler, an extremely intelligent and experienced individual, who for many years was an acquisitions and developmental editor at major publishing houses and has edited many New York Times Best Sellers, including thrillers by Clive Cussler and Robert Ludlum.  With Alan’s capable guidance, I streamlined the manuscript, reducing it in size by half and eliminating many historical elements, including a subplot that followed the American League pennant race of the Detroit Tigers on a parallel track with the presidential campaign. 

      
Perhaps it is just a matter of taste.  Is there too much history in Safe On Third? We know what a Kirkus reviewer thinks, so be forewarned.  But I leave the final decision to each reader.

On The Road Again

Yes, it's been a long time, and my children are upset with me for failing to keep up my posts. Since the beginning of the month, however, I have been on the road.  I have just returned to California from Nantucket after a quick trip down to Washington, D.C., and then a 3200-mile drive across country from Nantucket with only a Labrador Retriever accompanying me. Driving six or seven hundred miles a day with a black Lab sleeping in the backseat, I was not in the proper frame of mind to blog about anything when I finally stopped for the night, and I’m afraid my mind is still mush.  I still feel a bit disoriented and unsettled after so much time behind the wheel, so much inedible road food, and so many uncomfortable beds, although I can't really complain for my trip was certainly much easier than that of the first intrepid drivers to go from coast to coast.

As I learned by chance several weeks ago in D.C., when I visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the first coast-to-coast trip by automobile was made in this country back in 1903 by Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall Crocker, who drove from San Francisco to New York City with a bulldog named Bud. They rode in an open two-seater touring car made by the Winton Motor Carriage Company in Cleveland, Ohio, with a two-cylinder, 20-horsepower engine beneath the driver’s seat that had a top speed of 30 miles per hour. Their trip took them 63 days, and at the time there were only 150 miles of paved roads in the entire country. There were no gas stations, either. They purchased fuel used for farm machinery from local general stores. Ken Burns has made a film for PBS about this cross-country journey, called “Horatio’s Drive: America's First Road Trip," and the car that was used is now on exhibit at the Smithsonian, where I saw it along with the goggles that were worn by Bud, the bulldog, who rode up in front and whose eyes were irritated by the dust rising around the open touring car.  

Of course,  Jackson, Crocker, and Bud never got stuck in rush hour traffic or found themselves boxed in by two eighteen wheelers, but I never had to drive on the tracks of a railroad trestle to cross a river, and I never got stuck in any buffalo wallows.  I don't even know what a wallow is.  Nor did I have to provide goggles for my dog, but, as I say, she was in the backseat, and she never complained.  

The Center of the World's Stage

After some truly miserable weather earlier in the week, the sun has reappeared and the prevailing wind has gone back to the southwest.  There are even parking spaces in town.  The water has cooled, and the fish are back.  All's right with the world, at least for those fortunate enough to find themselves vacationing on Nantucket at the end of the summer. But this has tested my self-discipline over the past few days, for I needed to get some work done, specifically, some historical research about German submarine attacks on allied shipping near Nantucket during the First World War.

You see, one day early in October, 1916, a German U-boat sunk six ships a short distance from the Nantucket lightship moored 43 miles southeast of the island.  Afterwards, there was some conjecture that the Germans had established a submarine base in the shoals and sand banks just south of the island, an ideal place for a "mother" ship of light draft to bring out fuel and supplies.  That unproven proposition is the basis of a new book I am writing with the tentative title, "Dead In The Water."

As a result, for the past few days, I have found myself not on the beach, but settled in at the Nantucket Historical Society Research Library, where I spent hours looking at microfilm of the 1916 edition of the Nantucket weekly newspaper, "The Inquirer and Mirror," which has been the island's newspaper since 1821.  I had no difficulty finding what I needed; however, while I tried to focus on the U-boat attacks, I was distracted by many other items in the Nantucket paper.  One of the big stories, with extensive coverage of all the testimony, was a two-week trial in New Bedford, where a jury sustained the validity of one Horace Starbuck's will and found that Mr. Starbuck of Nantucket was of sound mind and was not influenced by his niece, Florence Hill, who received the bulk of his estate.  Other items of interest to me included the news that during the summer of that year this island finally was connected by an underwater telephone cable to the mainland, and that, while mail boats ran regularly back and forth to Woods Hole, a proposed "aerial mail service" for Nantucket was set back a year because aviators did not submit bids in response to U.S. Postal Service advertisements.

The United States had not yet entered the war in Europe, and in 1916 that global conflict received little coverage in the local newspaper other than in the aftermath of the German submarine activity offshore, which made Nantucket, according to the paper's headline, "The Center of the World's Stage." Indeed, The Starbuck trial received much more coverage that the war in Europe, and a local writer for the paper noted that there would have been more concern about the German attacks on shipping, if the vessels involved had been carrying laths and shingles, valued items on this island.  But, certainly, world events never have been the focus for a weekly local paper like the "Inky Mirror," as it is called, Nantucket's "newspaper of record" now for 190 years, and the paper's coverage of the war in 1916 was such that in a column called "Newsy Bits" on page three, I found the following item which I have quoted in its entirety: "The glorious British army has again extricated itself from danger by surrendering to the Turks."

Of course, the world war would come again to Nantucket; however, except for the German U-boat attacks, it still seemed very far away in 1916, when this island was much more isolated than it is today.  But enough said; it's time to go fishing. 

Nantucket Twenties

Yes, August is rapidly coming to a close, and it's time for another posting.  Past time, really. But I have little to report. The fish have been few, the seals, many, and the weather, beautiful as ever, at least until this morning.  It's a gloomy Sunday here, and as I sit here staring at my computer screen one item comes to mind that I have failed to note.  This summer I have encountered ATMs on this charmed island that dispense fifty dollar bills in place of twenties.  I was surprised the first time this happened, but the rationale  for this was immediately obvious to me; everything just costs more here.  Indeed, it's fair to say that a mainland fifty goes only as far as a twenty on Nantucket.  Here, on this magical isle, a fifty is the new twenty; a Ulysses S. Grant greenback is only worth an Andrew Jackson.

Skunked

Friday morning I went fishing early out at the Bonito Bar and got skunked.  My friend, Rick Blair, who was fishing with me, had an early hookup with a bluefish, but that was it for the day.  I had several follows and saw a few splashes from interested bluefish but no takes, nada, zip, nothing for me on the scoreboard.  It certainly was good to be out on the water, on a clear, crisp, beautiful day, but the fly fishing was tough.  We did not see much bait in the water at all, and casting was difficult with a very strong wind blowing from the east and northeast against the incoming tide.  Following the birds and fishing the rips along the way, we went up to Tuckernuck and Muskeget, too, but we had no luck for four hours on the water.  Windblown and tired, I went home and told myself that I should be posting a blog about something else other than fishing, about Safe On Third, perhaps, because my book, after all,  is what started this exercise.

And, as for my book, I do have something I have wanted to say about a new work of non-fiction that came out recently, not a work about fly fishing in salt water, but a book entitled Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World's Fair on the Brink of War, by James Mauro.  Mauro's book is a narative history of the the World's Fair of 1939-40, and I am eager to read this book because it describes in detail an event that is dramatized in Chapter 15 of Safe On Third,  the explosion of a time-bomb at the World's Fair on July 4th, 1940.  The bomb was found in the British Pavilion and two courageous New York City bomb squad detectives, Joe Lynch and Freddy Socha, were tragically killed when they tried to defuse it.

Mauro shows in his book how dangerous New York City was in the pre-war days described in Safe On Third, when there were many bomb treats and explosions, and a comparison with the post 9/11 world that we live in now immediately comes to mind, although I must admit that I wrote Chapter 15 long before the events of September 9th, 2001.

Nantucket Fishin'

Sunday was beautiful here on Nantucket, and I was out fishing at an early hour.  Actually, foraging would be a better word, for I was out at seven in the morning looking for food at the local markets.  On Nantucket this is always a challenge for someone spoiled by the organic food and fresh produce that is taken for granted in Northern California.  On Sunday it was even more of a challenge because we have arrived at the busiest time of the summer here, and the island's actual population of just over 11,000 has probably doubled or tripled with August visitors, who were all out shopping with me.

My first stop was the local Stop and Shop supermarket, open 24 hours, where many other people had gotten up early to beat the rush. Saturday is the change over day for many renters on island, and it was apparent that all of them had gotten up early on Sunday to go marketing. The place was packed, and  I cast about in dangerous shoals, trying to make my way down narrow, crowded aisles while dodging around the many shopping carts, particularly those with a red plastic truck cab attached to the front to accommodate younger children, who are packed inside and pushed around the market while their parents shop and dump their catches in the wire cart baskets above their offspring.

It is quite painful to be hit in the shins or ankle by one of these red cabs, and they are difficult to avoid. Still, undaunted, I waded into the fray, circumnavigating treacherous waters with my market list in hand. Unfortunately, everything on my list always seems to sell out quite quickly here, particularly in August.  On Sunday half the items I wanted already were gone, and I left the market to forage elsewhere, having more luck at a place called Moor's End Farm and at a butcher shop know as "Cowboys."

Of course, Cowboys did not have the chicken thighs I wanted.  I settled for breasts and swapped some real fishing stories with the butcher, who was eager to tell me about his recent efforts at surfcasting and the Striped Bass he had caught several evenings earlier, his first keeper of the season.

"Yeah, the bass are still around,” he said.  "I was down on the South Shore. By the golf course.  You know, Miacomet, and eighteen pounds it was.  Eighteen pounds.  Caught it on a Pearl Bomber, with a teaser around eight o'clock.  Yeah, no Slug-gos for me, always a good, old Bomber with a teaser."

He added that he can't fish in the middle of the night anymore, just until after sunset, until eight or nine in the evening.  I can't seem to fish late any more, either, I told him.  But I did get up the next day at five to fish the rising tide, not at the Stop and Shop, but at the Bonito Bar, off Madaket.  I had no luck with the Bonito; however, I did catch some Bluefish on the fly further out with my dear wife, good sport that she is, who had agreed to come with me.  (I always catch fish when my wife fishes, too.)  Maybe, when the tide is right, I'll head down to the South Shore, by the golf course, at dusk, and try a Pearl Bomber.  If I'm lucky, I might get my wife to join me.

Front-Wheel Drive

O.K.  I get it.  If you're going to start a blog, you have to keep blogging, even when you're on vacation.  The problem is that the weather on Nantucket has been unusually good.  I need a bad day and a downpour to get me back in front of my computer for more than a check of my email, fishing reports, the tide charts, and the detailed seven-day weather forecast for "Nantucket County, MA," provided by the National Weather Service.  But this morning it has rained already, and the chances are it will rain again.  And, yes, as I always do, I also have checked the radar images at the National Weather Service website.  You see, like so many others here on island, I regularly watch the composite reflectivity loop from Boston radar, and as I sit here now gazing at the brightly colored rain clouds moving towards the island, I find myself almost mesmerized.  Although most of rain appears to be passing north of Nantucket,  I am determined to sit here and blog, no matter what the weather.

But where to begin?  A brief fishing report is in order.  Both off shore and on, the Bonito fishing has been slow.  A trip to Great Point produced a few blue fish, but it is disappointing, indeed, to find yourself with only the large head of a fish after a large seal has devoured the body of your catch.  Today, I had planned to go back to the Bonito Bar with a friend to fish the rising tide at midday, but our trip has been cancelled because of the weather. We have rescheduled for Monday morning at 6:oo am, and I am afraid that leaves me with no excuse as to posting a blog today.

With so much time on my hands and such lousy weather, I can sit here and share an experience I had a few days ago, when I drove down to the South Shore to meet my family at the beach.  It was another bright, sunny day on this beautiful island, all blue sky with no clouds, and that reminds me of something I heard the wonderful comedian, Lewis Black, say at the Nantucket Comedy Festival last weekend.  Commenting on the beauty of this place and using the "F" word for appropriate emphasis, he said he did not understand how anyone could get anything done here or would even try.   Maybe that's my problem.

But back to my story.   My family had gone to the beach earlier in the day.  They had driven there in our Toyota Highlander, a sturdy car with four-wheel drive, equipped with a tow rope and shovel, etc.   They were not driving on the beach but on unpaved dirt roads, sandy, heavily rutted paths that lead down to the South Shore beaches in the Madequecham Valley. These roads are bumpy but manageable in almost any vehicle.

I had not gone with my family because I had errands to do in town, but the plan was that I would join them afterwards. I was left with my son's car, a low-slung Acura sedan, and after completing my errands I headed directly to the beach.  Leaving the State highway, aka the "Milestone Road," I headed south on an unpaved road called Russell's Way. I was in a hurry, eager to join my family for lunch, and I made good time on the winding, dusty dirt roads that led down to the beach.  However, when I finally turned off onto the trail leading to the beach parking area, I suddenly found myself in deep sand.  I was only 500 yards from the cars parked above the beach, but I had gone around a blind corner too quickly and the result was that my front wheels were stuck in the sand.  I got out of the car to appraise the situation and saw that my back wheels were still on firm ground.   No problem, I thought.  I got back in the car and put it in reverse.  Then I stepped on the gas and buried the car deeper in the sand.  The car would not budge, and I suddenly realized that I had made a terribly stupid mistake, for I had forgotten that my son's car has front-wheel drive.

I can't remember where, but I recall reading somewhere that front-wheel drive is like bad sex.  That thought came back to me then,  and I felt quite embarrassed as I sat there in my son's car.  I got out and call him on my cell phone, asking him to drive down to help me with the Highlander.  Then, while I stood there, waiting for him, next to his Acura, several cars passed and the occupants offered to help me, but I waved them on. I knew that with my son's help we could get the car out quickly, but I was, as I say, embarrassed.

I have been coming here long enough and driven enough on the sand to know better.   The last time I got stuck was out at Great Point when the four-wheel drive in an old Ford Explorer gave out.  With help from a friendly fisherman, I was pulled back out of deep sand and then drove in reverse back to Wauwinet and terra firma, staying in the deep tire tracks in the sand all the way back.   I've also been stuck in a my old Jeep Cherokee out on Coatue in very deep sand when I was fishing, but I always was able to dig myself out.

Never had I been stuck in a black sedan on a dirt path, only a short distance from a beach parking area.

Well, my son arrived, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.  But he was eager to help me, and after letting a little air out of the tires, quickly digging out the front end of the car, and hooking up the tow rope, we managed to get the car out of the sand in only a few minutes. Then, carefully avoiding any deep sand, I drove around to a different trail leading to the beach and joined my family with my tail between my legs.

But there is more to this story than a humility lesson for me.  Later in the day, I drove my son's car into town to get it washed and remove some of the sand from the undercarriage.   I also put more air in the tires, and as I reached for the hose at the air pump, a man pulled up next to me in a big red Suburban, covered with dust, and rigged out with rod holders and coolers.  He got out and shook his head.  "Wow!" he said to me.  "You drive that car on the beach?  That's incredible."

"Only on the South Shore,"  I replied, nodding as I spoke.  "Only on the South Shore."

An Historical But Momentary Diversion On The Way To The Bonito Bar

This past Sunday the first reports came in of Bonito being caught here, on Nantucket, out at the “Bonito Bar” at the west end of the island. The arrival of these speedy little fish is something I look forward to every summer, and I immediately began checking the weather and the tides to plan a trip.  My efforts were interrupted, however, by a question posed by a friend of mine in the midst of my preparations.  He had seen my description of Safe On Third at the iBookstore for the iPad, and wondered why I referred to my book as "an historical novel" and not "a historical novel." "A" and not "an" before the word "historical," that was the question, and it started nagging at me.  Instead of cleaning my line and deciding which flies I was going to use at the Bonito Bar, I found myself asking which indefinite article was correct. It was only a momentary diversion, but I could not come up immediately with a good answer for my choice of words.  The ancient rules I finally dredged up from my childhood are that "a" precedes words that begin with a consonant, except for words that begin with an unsounded "h," and that "an" precedes words that begin with a vowel.  Simple enough, right?  But that did not explain my choice because the "h" in historical is sounded. Then I turned to the internet and found that there are "old school" individuals who argue that if the initial syllable of a word beginning with "h" is unstressed, as it is in "historical," then one uses "an." (A number of sources stated that this was once the preferred English usage, although even Fowler called such usage "pedantic.")  I also learned that most American dictionaries call for "a," but some recognize both articles with "historical,” and it seems finally that it all comes down to what sounds better to each of us. To my ear, "an" is the right choice, and so I will stick with it, pedantic affectation or not. Yes, call me "old school," then, for Safe On Third is an historical novel. It's an historical thriller, too. I'll stick with that and get back to thinking about the Bonito Bar, Clousers, and Deceivers.

Call me Ishmael

Several weeks ago, I published my novel, Safe On Third, as an ebook at Smashwords, and now my children are pushing me further into the digital age, insisting that I begin a blog and create a Facebook page to promote my book and share my observations with anyone who is interested.  And so, here I am, watching the "watery world" and the Tour de France time trial from my crow's nest as I ice a new left knee and vacation on Nantucket with my family.