PROLOGUE

Jesse Cornelius Edwards (although he preferred to be called Jess, I think he thought Jesse sounded to feminine) was born somewhere in Connecticut two weeks before Christmas 1909, to Martha (nee Marsh) and Hillary Edwards. His mother was a migrant factory worker, and his father, when not drunk and abusive, was a painter and wallpaper hanger. Little did Jesse know that the father he would come to despise, was not unlike the husband and father that he would become. Later another son, Elmer, and then a daughter, Inez, were born to Martha and Hillary. They too were destined to become alcoholics and blights on their families, Inez ultimately abandoning her husband and children. 

Now with three children, an elder daughter having passed on at an early age, Martha divorced Hillary and married a man named Jim, whom Jesse would always consider to be his only real father. Life was never easy for Martha and the children, as they moved from one New England mill town to the next, and borderline poverty was a constant companion. Jesse having to fight for respect as he transferred from one school to another, his clothes so tattered that he was called the “raggedy assed cadet!”

After Jim died Martha remarried Hillary, and at the age of sixteen Jesse left the family fold, such as it was, and rented a room. For a year he bounced from one odd job to another, until he landed a job sweeping floors for The Louttit Laundry Company, a mammoth five story building running the length of one block on Broad Street in Providence, Rhode Island. It was one of four related companies owned by brothers Easton and Robley Louttit of Barrington, Rhode Island. By the age of twenty-one Jesse had become supervisor of the shirt pressing unit, just the beginning of his rise within the firm, which would eventually take him to the vice presidency of the entire Louttit empire.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hope Inez Streeter was born in Warwick, Rhode Island, on April 18, 1912, to Lois P.H. (nee Dean) and Freeman W. Streeter, the couple’s first child. She was followed by a sister, Lois, then a brother, Lawrence (‘Bud‘), who at an early age narrowly survive a bout of meningitis which left him somewhat retarded. Hope’s mother was the sweetest and most loving person one could ever know, and her father the typically stern, strait-laced New Englander hiding a heart of gold under his cold exterior. As a child Hope was ahead of her time, and unlike her female peers, when she was approaching the driving age she was anxious to learn. Although the family did not own a car at the time, Freeman was employed as a delivery man and taught his daughter how to drive the delivery truck . . . a laundry truck . . . a Louttit Laundry truck. Kismet!

At the age of eighteen Hope graduated from Larchwood High School in Warwick, and shortly thereafter started working for Louttit Laundry as a “shirt girl”. Jesse was her supervisor. At the time he was quite debonair, he still had hair . . . and a wife. This did not deter his attraction to Hope, and he pursued her relentlessly. She wouldn’t have anything to do with a married man, but that didn’t stop Jesse. One day he said to Freeman, “I really like your daughter.” As Freeman sputtered in search of a response, Jesse added, “I think I might marry her!” “You’ll marry no daughter of mine!” Freeman protested.

As time went on Jesse got a divorce and then, despite Freeman’s objections, Hope and Jesse started dating. It wasn’t long before he proposed and they started to make plans for a wedding, but hadn’t decided on a date. Then when invited to the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of Jesse’s Aunt Frances (his mother’s sister) and her husband, Uncle Art, the only relatives from his family with whom he was close, they decided to get married at their party, and in twenty-five years the two couples could celebrate their respective fiftieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries together (which they did). So on April 6, 1933, Hope and Jesse were married.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the time Jesse was promoted to General Manager of Louttit Laundry, Hope had stopped working. In the meantime, Freeman had left the company and took a lease on a gas station in the Conimicut section of Warwick, which included a double-story bungalow, as well as an ice house that Bud was able to run, and an oil truck with which Freeman delivered heating oil as a side-line. Freeman, Lois, and Bud left the double-story house in Norwood which they owned, and moved four miles away to the bungalow in Conimicut. Jesse and Hope then rented the Streeter house in Norwood. Life went well for the young couple. They were very active, avid hunters (Hope was a good shot), enjoyed boating, and raised English Bull dogs. Yet there was no sign of a child on the horizon, at least not until the end of 1941.

When Hope discovered that she was pregnant, Jesse was not pleased. He didn’t want their wonderful life to be changed, and he told Hope that he knew where the problem could be eliminated. Hope wanted no part of that and on August 28, 1942, their first son was born – Jesse Cornelius Edwards, Jr, who would always be known as Jay. He was about the quietest, best behaved baby a couple could ask for. They took him everywhere; he’d sleep peacefully anywhere never making a fuss, and for the most part their lives continued unaffected.

Early 1945 Hope became pregnant again and Jesse, not wanting to push their luck, tried to convince her that one was enough. Again she wanted no part of his scheme. On November 20, 1945, Lance Streeter Edwards came screaming into their world, and he didn‘t shut up for a year. Because of his colic, he and his mother moved from his parent’s second floor bedroom, down to a first floor room so that his brother and father could sleep. Their lives, thus disrupted, would never be the same.

Chapter 1: A LITTLE FAIRY (1945 to 1953)

The trouble began at Providence Lying-In Hospital where I was born November 20, 1945, when the room rate was ten dollars per day. The second child of Hope and Jesse Edwards, they summarily saddled me with the moniker Lance Streeter Edwards, ‘Streeter’ being my mother‘s maiden name. Lance!!! What could my parents having been thinking? They might just as well have tattooed a bull’s eye on my forehead. Although years later I came to appreciate my name – not having to turn my head whenever I heard someone call Billy, Bobby or Sam – as a child it proved to be a burden, especially for a child that would have other differences with which to cope.  At the time of my birth my elder brother, Jay, was three. 

       

My first six years we lived in a late 1800s double-story house, 190 Pawtuxet Avenue (ADDRESS #1) in the Norwood section of Warwick, Rhode Island, owned by my maternal 

grandparents who lived four miles away in Conimicut. My earliest memories are simply wisps and pieces, faint recollections here and there. Curling my grandmother’s hair around my fingers, fastening the curls with bobby pins. Riding with my grandfather to the ominous sea of mountain high oil tanks along Allens Avenue and Narragansett Bay, where he filled his oil truck. Delivering the oil, one stop a very poor family living in a rundown tarpapered house on the edge of a dump. The children in ratty tattered clothes clinging to their mother, looking at me as though I were the devil incarnate. A question about payment, Grandpa extending credit once again.

At age three a new house was being built next door and my mother told me that the family had a little girl my age. They did. Juanita Woolhouse was ten months older, and her arrival was the beginning of my first real friendship. When we had a fight our penance would be each of us punching ourselves in the belly, no doubt the harder we hit ourselves the more sincere our apology. Whenever I got a splinter it was to Mrs. Woolhouse that I ran, she having a special knack for painless extraction, or maybe I was just braver in front of her than my own mother. Soon there was more excitement afoot; construction of an addition to our house had begun.

When my grandfather lost the lease on his gas station, an ‘L’ was added to the first floor of 190, which would house a master bedroom for my parents, as well as a small hallway, closet, and bathroom. The bathroom, however, not becoming a bathroom until we moved next door – while we lived there it was a bunkroom for my brother and me. My grandparents and Uncle Bud moved into the four room apartment upstairs, and we still used that bathroom. A big Bakelite mug kept behind the door in our kitchen was a pee pot for us boys.

Next to our house was a big field, three house lots that extended to the corner. Naturally it was a playground for all of the kids, despite the fact that it was dangerous at times. Reckless drivers would speed diagonally across the lot rather than making the turn at the corner. One such driver almost clipped my brother and me, just as my father was pulling up in front. He chased after the guy and finally caught him. At the very least Dad gave the fellow a good scolding and, knowing my father, probably a smack or two. He told the fellow that he owned the property, and never to cross it again. The next day he went to city hall to find out who did own the lots, contacted the owner and bought them. Planning for his dream house began, which he would build himself. He had already single-handedly built our spacious summer home in 1941 on the beach in Jerusalem, Narragansett, Rhode Island, a small peninsula fishing village cum summer enclave, so he knew his way around a hammer and saw.

More memorable was what seemed like a recurring nightmare. Yelling and screaming. Banging and crashing. Shouting and crying. Often too frightening to comprehend. Sometimes sirens and police lights flashing in front of the house. First one police car, then two, three. My father on the front porch a drunken mad man, flinging policemen off one after the other. Finally overpowered by three officers, cuffed and dragged to the awaiting cruiser. My mother’s tears. Her bruises and wounds. Her shame.

Early images of battered wife syndrome, something I would not recognize or acknowledge until many years after becoming an adult, and after being a battered spouse myself. Dad would come home, all repentant, and life returned to normal; until the next binge. He was an enigma. Always a good provider, but one minute a loving father and husband, kind and generous, and the next a raging maniac. Those ‘nightmares’ continued throughout my childhood, but I was never asleep. As my brother grew older he would try and protect our mother, as I did later, thus making ourselves victims of the same uncontrollable violence.

From an early age I was always at my mother’s vanity when she put on her makeup to go out and, fascinated by the nail polish in particular, I begged to try some and she obliged. From that moment on I always put on nail polish when my mother did, until one day we were visiting friends in Central Falls. Me a little boy from the suburbs, now outside with the ‘city kids’ in an old mill town of factories and three tenement houses. My nail polish did not go over well – this many decades before Kiss and Marilyn Mason, perhaps I was just ahead of my time. Nonetheless, it was my first remembered experience being the victim of derision and harassment, called ‘sissy’ and ‘girlie’ and more. Despite not really knowing what it was all about, it was the last of the nail polish for me.

The next momentous event was my visit to Santa Claus at The Shepard Company Christmas of 1949, it was the first time that I clearly knew what I wanted. Eagerly I went up to Santa’s throne, settled my four-year-old butt on his lap, and asked for a dollhouse. Santa exclaimed, “What are you, a little fairy?” Those were his exact words, and I was as dumbfounded as a child my age could be. We had the colorful and beautifully illustrated A Day in Fairy Land, and I had spent hours looking through that book. I knew what a fairy was. A fairy was a tiny tiny little girl with wings wearing a tutu. Why was Santa calling me a fairy? I wasn’t a girl, I didn’t have wings, and I wasn’t wearing a tutu. No doubt it was my befuddlement that etched this event in my memory.

Whatever I was thinking at the time, some instinct kept me from mentioning this to anyone, not even my mother. The seeds of concealment planted. As Christmas came closer the excitement grew, and then that faithful morning arrived when my older brother and I crept into the living room to see what Santa had left under the tree. And there it was sitting proudly, in full glory for everyone to see, a big metal two-story doll house complete with all the furniture, a gift for a four-year-old boy. Despite his unenlightened comment, Santa had come through. 

It was many years later, of course, before I realized the true essence of the gift that my parents, my 1949 parents, had given me. Probably never before or afterward had they expressed their love and support so completely (well, at least my father hadn't) and to this day I remain in awe. Especially in awe of my father, that he would consent to buck social mores and give his son such an unconventional gift. Despite the trauma that his drinking and violence brought to our lives on a more or less regular basis over the years, this gesture superseded his addiction and spoke to the core of a good man and an unconditionally loving father. (Sadly he wasn't so unconditionally loving 14 years later when I came out, more on that event later).

Television and I pretty much grew up together, because we got our first in 1949, a RCA. It was the first in our neighbourhood and, as we soon found out, the only one for a few neighbourhoods around. Although there were just a few hours of broadcast a day, we would be glued to the set after dinner to watch Milton Berle (aka Uncle Milty) – who frequently dressing up like a woman – Ed Sullivan, and the few others. Before long word got out, and a crowd of neighbour kids started congregating on our front porch, peering through the bay window. My father invited them all in. Then other kids, strangers from other neighbourhoods, joined the audience. My memory includes pictures of our living room with twenty to thirty kids packed in all gazing intently, transfixed by that 10” screen.

Despite being a ‘sissy’ or a ‘fairy’ I was a feisty little fellow, and a force to be reckoned with. I didn’t take crap from anyone, and once my dander was up I never backed down. One of the earlier evidences of this trait occurred when my father started building the house on the three lots. The foundation had been poured, the concrete cured, and the forms removed. This left a series of metal spikes about a foot long protruding from the concrete, which we kids were constantly bending and breaking off. Enter the neighbourhood bully, Al LaBeau. A big kid about two years older than my brother, and a foster child living with the Harringtons across the street.

One day Al was picking on my brother who was eight, and I went at him like a mad man. The metal spike was in my hand, and I viciously plunged it into his calf. He ran home crying. Pick on my brother will you! After that the kids were all taunting me, “Al LaBeau is looking for you.” “He’s going to get you.” “You’d better watch out.” Sooner or later Al’s path and mine did cross. It wasn‘t the Okay Corral but it was a showdown, and the kids were on the side-lines ready to pick up my pieces. Despite being half his age and half his size, I walked right up to him undaunted. With my five-year-old head held high, looking up into his eyes I said, “Hey, LaBeau, I hear you’re lookin’ for me.” As I recall his look was incredulous, as though he was thinking, “Is this kid crazy or what?” He didn’t lay a hand on me, and that was the end of that. Crazy is sometimes a good deterrent to violence.

In 1941 my father had built our summer house right on the beach on Succotash Road in Jerusalem, Narragansett, Rhode Island (ADDRESS #2), although my first summer there would not be until be1946.

 The western boundary of our beach property was also the dividing line between Jerusalem in the Town of Narragansett, and East Matunuck in the Town of South Kingstown. During the years leading up to the 1954 hurricane, the half mile stretch of beach west of our property was a privately owned beach open to the public for a fee. It contained the sprawling concession building called Sea Ranch with facilities, showers, lockers and dressing rooms for women on one end, and for men on the other. There was a large parking lot and, on the opposite side of the road on the sand flats, there was a mass of rudimentary one and two bedroom cabins for weekly rental, all squeezed together like tenements in an overcrowded city.

I hated the Sea Ranch as well as its owner, Dinky O’Conner, a notorious mobster. Not a big deal in Rhode Island, where having some connection to the Mafia – be it first-hand, third, or fifth – was as common as having a celebrity connection when living in Los Angeles. Even if it’s the cousin of your hairdresser’s ex-husband’s third cousin’s brother-in-law‘s sister, there‘s a connection. During my years in business in Rhode Island even I had a few connections, some first-hand. Maybe it was a childish death wish, but it wasn’t just ten year olds that I stood up to. Whenever I saw Dinky I’d taunt him relentlessly, and I always called him “Stinky! “ Nonetheless, the Sea Ranch beach was a good source of income, and once the patrons started leaving each day I’d scour the sand for empty pop bottles and get the refunds.

The hearing loss that I experience today was first diagnosed when I was twenty-nine, and it does seem to keep getting worse as predicted, but I think that I was probably born with it. For example, as a child I always thought that the Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer song ended with, “and he’ll go down and hit the ree.” Not “in history.” I didn’t know what a “ree” was, but I was certain that Rudolf was going to hit it. Also, early on I had a speech impediment, and hearing loss could have been the culprit. Words beginning in ‘P’ and ‘T’ were pronounced with an ‘F’ (‘truck’ was ‘fruck’ which was misinterpreted at times) and on words beginning with an ‘L’ it was ignored all together. My name was ‘Ance’ and I liked ‘ollypops!’

Our property at the beach was titled under an old deed so – unlike the newer deeds for seaside homes which have the ocean boundary designated as “the high water mark” – ours was bounded on the south by the Atlantic Ocean. At low tide we had more land than at high tide, wherever the water was we owned right up to it. Weekends the Sea Ranch beach next door got pretty crowded, and sometimes folks would wander over and plunk their beach chairs, blankets, umbrellas, coolers, etc., on the beach right in front of our house, despite our fence.

Even at five years of age I was pretty territorial, and I’d be down there shooing them away, “This is Frivate Froperty! Get off my Frivate Froperty!” I’d yell. When that resulted in more laughter than retreat, I’d organize a gang of beach urchins to run down to the water right through their little encampment, knocking over chairs and umbrellas, stomping on blankets, kicking sand all over everything. As I said, don’t mess with me, and stay off of my “Frivate Froperty!”

An early hobby of mine was shoplifting; I just couldn’t resist all the little treasures that were there for the taking. Greed was my downfall. One day at the ‘5 & 10’ I really made a killing, and then was so brazen that I actually stole a handful of little brown paper bags. At home I put a sign on the bunkroom door that read “DO NOT DISTURB” and then proceeded to sort all of my loot into the bags. Yeah … do not disturb … that worked. My parents were in my room like a shot and caught me red handed. My father dragged me back to the store, where I returned everything and apologized to the manager, in front of all the people who were there at the time. That was the end of my career in crime.

September 1951 I entered the first grade, a little early as I was still five and on the borderline of starting then or a year later. It was in first grade that I started to be picked on because of my name, “Lancie pancie, pickle pancie.” and the like. This went on for a while, and then one day I returned home crying. When I told my mother what was wrong, she made up some rhymes making fun of my name, that were all much more clever than anything the first graders had created.

“Lancie pancie lost his pants in the fight for France.” “Lancie pancie lost his pants at the high school dance.” That took the wind out of their sails; it was not so much fun when I could do a better job of ridiculing my own name than they did. Of course my mother, Hope, was the one to know. As a child she’d heard more than her fair share of, “Hope, Hope she’s dope.“ “Hope, Hope uses no soap.“ One harassment averted, there were many more to come, and I continued to be a victim of bullying on a regular basis.

Those days we always went home for lunch, even though it was a half mile walk each way. A sandwich, glass of milk, and cookies were the norm. Then one day my mother gave me spaghetti for lunch. Well, that wasn’t lunch that was supper. You don’t go back to school after eating supper, and I wasn‘t going. My mother had different plans. Try as she may I wouldn’t budge, so she grabbed my arm and started pulling me. She pulled me out the door, across the porch, down the stairs, onto the street, and all the way to the school. She dragged me the entire half mile; I dug my heels in the whole way . . . not giving up the fight. Losing, but not giving up.

By the time she dragged me up the stairs and into the old schoolhouse (the one that she and her father and her grandfather had attended) I was in hysterics, and my brother heard the screaming from his second floor classroom. He recognized the tenor, so wasn’t surprised when he was summoned to help calm me down. In the meantime my father had come home, and asked my grandmother where Hope was. She replied, “The last time I saw her, she had Lance by the arm and was dragging him in the direction of the school.” Years later I was to relive that incident, but from the other end of the dragging, when a little boy under my care didn’t want to go to school. What goes around comes around, that story later.

Our new house was finished before the end of 1951, in time for us to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas there that year. When we moved into 184 Pawtuxet Avenue (ADDRESS #3) my mother pinned a note to my shirt with the new address for the teacher.

What excitement! The house was truly awesome, for a six-year-old anyhow. At the time it was the nicest and biggest new house in the neighbourhood, but by today’s standards simply a modest two bedroom ranch. The dining room, which we used as a den, and eat-in kitchen were all knotty pine, and a breezeway connected the oversized two car garage, complete with loft. The large living room with fireplace ran the full width of the house, and had big picture windows at each end. Two thirds of the basement was a recreation room, finished in knotty cedar. It too had a fireplace, a giant checkerboard on the floor complete with dinner-plate-sized checkers, and a fully stocked bar at one end. Of course!

Punctuality has been second nature to me as an adult, almost an obsession, yet that was not always the case during my school days. My second grade teacher got so frustrated with my tardiness that she assigned Billy McClellan, who lived about a block from us, to pick me up every morning and get me to school on time. He was a fast walker, and always got to school early. From that day on it was a team effort to get me to school. First Juanita would come over and tie my shoes while I was eating my breakfast, then Billy arrived, and I‘d jog along behind him doing my best to keep up. In the end I became a rather fast walker myself.

One year at Easter time Mr. Woolhouse took Juanita and me to Lakewood Hay and Grain, and bought us each a pair of chicks. Mine turned out to be roosters, which was okay with me. Uncle Bud said he’d feed and water them while we were at the beach for the summer. One night though we had fried chicken for dinner, during which my father and brother could hardly contain themselves. My mother kept giving them reproachful looks. When I took my last bite, before I barely had time to swallow, they burst into laughter as I was informed that I had just eaten my pets. There was no end. No wonder I developed a thick skin, a warped sense of humour, and later spent five years in psychotherapy.

As life and torment went on so did my tenacity. Johnson’s Hummocks was on Allens Avenue in Providence, a narrow three story brick building that looked like an old factory. It sat alone on a block in the middle of this expansive industrial area surrounded by refineries and huge oil tanks. An unlikely location for a restaurant to say the least, but it was the best.

At the street level was a wonderful old tavern all finished in dark wood panelled walls, with deep set booths and plush leather seats (we often went there for shrimp cocktails and lobster salad rolls). The next level up was an art deco delight in aqua and peach, a long and narrow dining room with rows of big booths on each side, all divided by glass panels with etched deco designs. The main dining room was on the third level, and it was elegance personified. Tufted velvet chairs, linen table cloths and napkins, cut glass vases with fresh flowers, and a strolling violinist.

We loved going to the Hummocks, and never knew in which venue we would be dining. This evening of my memory we were in the formal dining room. After order-ing and while munching on bread – with gobs of real butter, we only had margarine at home – I motioned to the violinist as I wanted to make a request. While waiting for him to finish his piece and arrive at our table, the teasing began.

“Do you have money?” “You make a request; you have to give a tip.” “How much of a tip are you going to give him?” “How much money do you have?” Suffice it to say that by the time the poor fellow got to our table I was pissed, and when he asked, “Yes, young man, what would you like me to play?” I shot back in a loud angry voice, “FAR FAR AWAY!” That fixed them! My mother was embarrassed almost to tears. Apologizing, Dad gave the fellow a fiver and told him to play whatever he liked.

Now take that obstinate little personality to the carnival and stick it in a Dodge ‘Em aka Bumper Car and see what you get. Well, you get a happy kid who loved the bumper cars . . . until he gets bumped one time too many. The night in question I went on once and begged to stay on for another round, and another. By then this other kid had singled me out, and a couple of others joined in. They were banging and bumping me mercilessly from every direction. Finally I had had enough.

What to do? Please remain seated until all of the cars have stopped? Not bloody likely!. When I’m done, I’m done. I got out of my car and walked off in a huff across the oily metal floor, all of the cars swerving and braking to avoid hitting me. The operators were screaming at me, as were my parents and my brother, but I was out of there. They quickly shut the ride down until I had exited safely. Lance has left the premises, carry on. When I’m done, I’m done. Don’t mess with me, just stay out of my way.

Speaking of carnivals, before they were married and during my parents’ earlier years together my father was an avid motorcyclist, but when he became a father my mother convinced him to give it up. Over the years he would regale us with the stories of his motorcycle days, some spent riding with a carnival. He told us about the Whirl-of-Death aka Wall-of-Death that he used to ride, a motordrome which looked like the bottom section of a sawed off silo. In other words, a straight vertical cylinder about forty feet high, the same across, and slightly ramped around the bottom edge.

The spectators would be at the top of the cylinder and the motorcycles would start in the pit. They kept circling wider and wider, going faster and faster, until they gradually circled up the ramp and began circling on the vertical wall of the cylinder, the bikes and riders horizontal. “Yeah, Dad, sure, we really believe that you did that. Un-huh, yeah, yeah, we do, we really believe you.” We’d snicker.

In a burst of excitement my brother charged through the door one day, late for supper and all out of breath. A carnival had arrived at the fairground on Post Road, and they were setting up a Whirl-of-Death. Can we go? Can we go? Of course we could. We gobbled down our food and then piled into the car. As we approached the Whirl-of-Death this fellow comes walking up to my father in shocked surprise, shaking his hand and patting him on the back, “Jess Edwards, you old son-of-a-gun! Where have you been?” Yeah-yeah. This guy was supposedly an old riding buddy of my father’s, and he was running the motorcycle show. 

                                     

My brother and I conferred. Dad hadn’t been out of our sight one minute, when did he have the time to get to this guy and bribe him for a good story? We tried to think of every angle. Could Dad have known about the carnival ahead of time? Try as we may we couldn’t come up with a logical scenario that would refute the apparent validity of Dad‘s claims. We had nothing. We had to concede. On this story anyhow, guess the old man wasn’t full of it after all.

His old buddy tried to get him to give the Whirl a whirl for old times’ sake, but Dad begged off as it had been so many years. The buddy understood but gave us free admission, and said he’d give us a very special show. Not knowing what a mundane show would be like, it seemed as though he did. At one point there were four bikes riding around the motordrome at different heights in opposite directions. It was fantastic, well worth the price that my brother and I had to pay . . . eating crow!

Chapter 2: LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY (1953 to 1959)

During all of these years and through 1961 we spent our summers, as well as weekends late spring and early fall, at our summer house that my father had built in 1941. Located right on the beach in Jerusalem, Narragansett, Rhode Island, it was larger and fancier than the typical cottages of that time, in this fishing village cum summer enclave. What a childhood paradise! Although my father would upgrade to a bigger boat the following year, the summer of 1953 when I was seven he still had a fourteen foot lapstrake boat with outboard motor.

One day the two of us returned from boating, me donning my ubiquitous captain’s cap, and he landed the boat on the shore. Next he asked me to stand on the rear seat for weight, so he could pull the boat up farther. Did you notice that he didn’t ask me to sit on the seat? I didn’t. Being a fool I did as Dad had requested, and stood on the rear seat while he gave the boat a good yank. Guess what happened.

What happened was that I picked myself up from the knee deep water where I had landed flat on my back, grabbed my captain’s cap before it floated away, and then introduced my laughing father to a whole vocabulary that he never knew I possessed. As I strutted all the way home, soaking wet and swearing like a trouper, I passed a policeman who said, “Hey, little fellow, you better watch your mouth.” At which point I gave that officer an obscene tongue lashing that left him speechless.

In the third grade my mother told me that I could have a birthday party, it would be my eighth, and invite any of my classmates that I wanted. There were two third grade classes at the school, and I invited all the usual suspects from my class, and then one boy from the other class, Billy Pirraglia. My mother was very active in PTA and knew Billy’s mother, who called her and said that it was sweet of me to ask him, but that Billy didn’t know me. No, he didn’t, we had never even spoken. But I had had my eye on him for a couple months. He was a cutie pie; I was infatuated, and figured the party might be a way to make a connection. He did attend, but we never became friends. (Now he looks like one of the seven dwarfs, Doc, I saw his picture on classmates.com.)

The summer of 1954 my father launched his new Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, which he had spent the winter building. Christened the JALAHOJE by my mother, who enjoyed telling people it was an old “Indian” (“Native American” nowadays) word meaning “never a dull moment.“ In fact, it was an amalgam of the first two letters of each of our names: JAy, LAnce, HOpe, JEsse. On the morning of August 31st that year Hurricane Carol struck, proving to be one of the two most deadly and destructive hurricanes in the history of New England. We survived the storm, although it was a very close call (see Chapter 3: The Hurricane Years).

As reconstruction of the beach community commenced after Carol, my parents bought one of the cottages down the lane from us which had travelled in the storm and then, like many others, was returned to its original location. That was the priority the spring of 1955, getting that place ready for summer rental. From as early as weather permitted, we spent every weekend in Jerusalem, but for some reason this one weekend I didn’t join my parents.

My father had given me a small corner of the back yard to use as my own and I started building a clubhouse of sorts with scrap materials, which I called Fort Mess. When I found a big old picture frame with the glass intact, my fort got an addition with a picture window. Saturdays my Aunt Lois would always come by and pick up my grandmother and Uncle Bud to go shopping and, more often than not, my grandfather would join me later in the back yard. I always looked forward to his arrival. That Saturday though I had seen my grandfather climbing the back fence back into his yard, which was strange, and I thought sure he’d come over but he went right upstairs to their apartment.

For the next couple of hours I kept expecting him to show up but he never did. Finally the shoppers came home and the next thing I know I heard a siren and the rescue truck pulled up in front of their house. Other aunts and uncles and family arrived. My mother’s cousin, George Dean, told me that my grandfather had died, and that I had to be a strong little fellow for my grandmother. Immediately I went into our house to call my parents but, knowing that they’d be working at the rental cottage on Brecka Drive where there was no phone, rather than calling our beach house I called the Hartleys at Jim’s Dock, and asked them to get a message to my parents.

Sometime later one of the adult relatives called the Narragansett police, and they sent a squad car to find my parents but, thanks to the quick thinking of my nine-year-old brain (for which I was highly praised), they were already on their way home. While out in the yard that morning my grandfather had noticed a small fire in the farmyard in back, so he jumped over the fence to put it out, and when I saw him he was coming back. He didn’t feel right afterwards, and that’s why he went upstairs and never came back down. He had had a heart attack and died shortly after my grandmother had returned home. This was the first experience with death for both my brother and me, and I remember that night being huddled with my parents in our room, as they tried to help us make sense of it all.

Life in elementary school continued to be difficult, and in fourth grade I ended up sitting next to Montifix William Houghton the Third, AKA Monty, but I always referred to him by his full name. As a diversion during lessons he made a hobby out of grabbing my left arm, and repeatedly punching the upper arm with hard blows. It continually sported a series of black and blue bruises. This went on for quite a long time, although I never said anything to the teacher—I had enough problems, I couldn’t afford to be a squealer—and Monty never got caught.

One day though I got caught . . . by my father. He got a glimpse of my arm, and forced a confession out of me. Then told me that the next time Monty hit my arm, I was to hit him right back, and that if he saw any more bruises on my arm, he’d give me a few on my behind. As instructed, the next time Monty hit me I hauled off and clobbered him good. “Lance! Why are you hitting Monty? Go see the principle immediately!” Now the teacher notices! After weeks of being the victim, the one time I strike back I get busted. That was my first ever trip to the principle* and I was humiliated, but Monty never hit me again. (*It wasn't until I was in junior high shool that I learned that my mother and the principle, Olga Burke, were very good friends.)

My ninth summer, 1955, was spent in my new eight foot pram, rowing around the sprawling salt marshes -- a fantasy like maze of inlets, channels, and coves that snaked amongst the eelgrass and bulrushes. That November I turned ten, and for Christmas my gift was a three horsepower Evinrude outboard motor (a far cry from a dollhouse). In the spring my father tried it on my pram and, thinking that it was unstable, traded in the eight footer towards a twelve foot skiff, and I moved from the salt marshes to a dock in the harbor.

Now I had as my playground all of Salt Pond, a vast salt water lake almost two miles wide, that sprawls its way inland about four miles, and sports three inhabited islands, a scattering of diminutive ones, and an intricate shoreline scalloped with inlets and coves. That was also the summer that I went to Camp Legiontown for two weeks (see Chapter 4, Camp Legiontown).

The fifth grade found me selected as a Junior Police, whose main duty was to hold one of four red flags on poles, at the crosswalk by the school’s entrance. Each year there were six Junior Police selected, three boys and three girls, rotating flag patrol. The big event was the annual nationwide Junior Police Rally in Washington, DC. A boy and girl from each school were elected; at least that’s what I remember. What I also remember was wanting to be one of the chosen more than anything in my life (except maybe the dollhouse). It didn’t happen.

As a consolation my parents planned a trip for spring break that year, which was a special treat. Being that we always spent our summers, plus spring and fall weekends, at our beach house, we had only taken two trips: one to New York City but I was so young the only thing I remember is riding the giant tortoises at the Bronx Zoo; and another in 1953 along the Mohawk Trail in New Hampshire, where we saw the movie Those Redheads From Seattle and I became smitten with Teresa Brewer (my first and only time infatuated with a girl).

Our first stop was New York City where we went to Radio City Music Hall, saw The Rockettes, and took in all of the other tourist venues including a trip to the Statue of Liberty. There, running a little late and hoping to catch the next to the last ferry of the day, we all sprinted along the sidewalk to the pier. Still in awe of so many big tall buildings, I wasn’t looking where I was going, and turned to look straight ahead just in time to connect nose first with a thick unyielding metal sign post.

After being knocked back a few feet, the back of my head hit the concrete quite hard, it was amazing that I did not lose consciousness, although I did see stars. Looking back it also seems amazing that my parents didn’t seek medical attention; because once I was upright we continued on and took the last ferry to the Statue. Looking back, I could very well have had a concussion, and may very well have, because I have absolutely no memory of the visit to the Statue. Also, my next regular visit to the doctor revealed that I had a deviated septum.

From New York we travelled on to Philadelphia—I stuck my finger in the crack, didn‘t get it stuck—and then Washington, D.C., doing all the things that the Junior Police would have been doing. Our itinerary also included a trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains and a visit to the Luray Caverns. After which we returned to Rhode Island without further mishaps.

We had become very good friends with the couple that bought the beach cottages next door (the wife, Marion would become one of my mother's three best friends). They were younger than my parents and had a two-year-old son, Robby, and an infant girl, BJ, who was born in 1954, three months before Hurricane Carol. Actually her name was Barbara Jane, but my mother abhorred long names and especially double names, so when the girl was born my mom dubbed her “BJ” and so she is known to this day, seventy years later (and she is still my dearest friend). I adored the kids, and as they got older I took them everywhere with me, including many trips on my boat.

One summer I was selling greeting cards through a mail-order company. When my orders were completed, the goods delivered and the money collected, I had to send the company their share. One complication, I had no money. The interrogation began. Marion was quite intrigued and couldn’t wait to find out what I had done with the money. When they started applying the thumb screws I spilled my guts, and my mother gave Marion the accounting. Ice cream for Robby and BJ, $2. Hats for Robby and BJ, $5. Game for Robby, $3. Pinwheel for BJ, $3. The list went on. Every last cent I had spent on Robby and BJ.

As the last year of elementary school drew to an end, I started preparing for junior high school by telling the barber, “Leave the sideburns, I’m going to junior high school now.“ That faithful day in September of 1957 I walked the three-quarters of a mile, arrived at the entrance to the imposing three story brick edifice, and entered the hallowed halls of Aldrich Junior High School (formerly Aldrich High School). Here the student body was four times that of elementary school, as four schools merged into one, and here I become a victim of a whole new breed of harassment.

Gym class proved to be the worst, and an agony that I suffered two days a week -- but there were two classes, and I had the good fortune of being assigned to the one with the nice teacher. The other teacher was the feared Mr. Lambert, a real hard ass. One day in the locker room before class, some of the boys were giving Lambert a bad time. He got angry and said he’d take both classes that day, and planned to put us through the paces. Out on the field he had us running laps, but one boy from my class said he couldn’t do that. He had heart problems and had a medical certificate excusing from gym, but by an agreement between his parents and our teacher, he was allowed to participate to the limited degree that he could. In Mr. Lambert’s defence, he didn’t know this.

As the boy tried to explain Mr. Lambert harangued him and told him to get running. The boy did a lap as best he could and then tried to get Mr. Lambert to let him stop. He didn’t. We tried to speak up on the boy’s behalf, but Lambert told us to shut up or we’d be running till dark. The boy did another lap, and then collapsed at Lambert’s feet, where he kicked dirt and convulsed with arms flailing. Lambert, thinking he was faking, started kicking at the boy with his foot. The boy kept kicking and convulsing and flailing as we all circled around and watched. Then he stopped. The first time that I saw death in the happening. Our classmate, our friend, a twelve-year-old boy, had died in front of us covered in sweat and dirt, while a junior high school gym teacher kicked at him with his foot.

Nowadays whenever I hear about the death of a school age child, by whatever cause whether at school or not, it always impresses me the process that the other children are helped through. Memorials are placed, counselling and grief support are available, and memorial services are held to remember the lost classmate. In 1957 at Aldrich Junior High School, nothing was done. The grief and trauma of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen year old children, especially those who had witnessed the event, was completely ignored. There was no memorial service, no counselling, no acknowledgement whatsoever. Nothing about the tragedy was ever mentioned. And the parents never sued Lambert or the school.

With that event swept under the carpet, school life got back to normal, and some of the students -- needing something other than studies to occupy their feeble, demented, sadistic little minds -- started a club and recruited members from all three grades, boys and girls alike. It was called the LPL Club. That stood for “LET’S PANCE LANCE!” My life was hell. I was always late for classes because I would wait in the doorway of one class until the final bell had rung and the corridors were clear, then I’d run to my next class. I couldn’t be in the corridors with other students as someone was always trying to pull my pants down. More than once I was the victim of surprise attacks outside, abducted by a few students and dragged off into the woods. There I was stripped, brutalized and abused, and forced to do various and sundry unspeakable things to secure my freedom, the least of which was kissing and licking their shoes, including the soles.

To add to my humiliation, one day in the showers Leroy Ward pissed on me, and this became a popular sport with other boys as well. I stopped taking showers after gym. My school days were agonizing, and as I hear now of students taking a gun and terrorizing their school, I feel their pain. Just like those they injure or kill, they are victims as well. Bullying is a crime! And in addition to the perpetrator, the criminals are the negligent school authorities who do not protect all of their students equally, and do not ensure them a safe environment for education, which is their mandate. But in my day bullying wasn't even acknowledged, and there was no recourse for the victims. Yet no matter how devastating the bully was, the thought of taking a gun and shooting people never crossed my mind. That wasn't part of me or our culture then.

With the abuse that I was subjected to at school, and at home at the hands of my violent alcoholic father and rage-oholic older brother, I believe that I would not have survived had it not been for the friendship of John Harris, whom I had met at age 12 in the seventh grade. It was the first time that I knew I wasn't the only one, and we are best friends to this day, sixty-seven years later. His home became my sanctuary and his loving support of his parents became my surrogate parrents. They were Christian Scientists, a faith that has sustained me ever since.

In the midst of all this I did have a few joys, and one was the opportunity to earn my own money – by junior high my weekly allowance had reached a whopping seventy-five cents. My brother had a very big paper route in the neighbourhood adjacent to Aldrich, and he gave me one third of his route to handle as my own. We worked out of Pop Wilson’s news and variety store, one of the seven businesses in Norwood’s little retail hub. The original “Pop” was a nice old man, and when he died his son took over the store. He became the new “Pop”! He was very good to us kids, especially his paper boys, and he gave us two or three pennies more for each paper delivered than other newsstands gave their boys.

He watched over us too. Somewhere along the line I had discovered James Dean, and I simply had to have every movie magazine that had his picture; my favourite, one of James wearing nothing but briefs. One week when I was spending all of my weekly earnings on magazines, Pop asked if my mother knew how I spent my money. I put a couple back. In the end though it was all a fruitless passion . . . I learned that James Dean was dead.

During these years the greatest joy of all was doubtless The Seal, a glorious seventy-three foot (twenty-three feet longer than our house) motorsailer owned by The Louttit Corporation. It berthed at Onset, Cape Cod, during the summer and in Florida during the winter. Two years in a row (1956 and 1957) the Louttit’s gave my father the use of the yacht, complete with captain – Captain Hatch (which we thought was funny as “hatch” is a door on a boat) – for about a week each spring and fall. There had never been anything like it. My father’s distant cousin, Kesta, and her husband, Stuart, always joined us -- they were very close friends whom Jay and I loved very much. Kesta said that we were “kissing cousins” but I was never clear as to what that meant relationship wise.

The Seal was a classic vessel with captain’s quarters, mates’ quarters, galley, a large dining room and stateroom that accommodated up to eight. The adults stayed there, while Jay and I always had the separate aft cabin at the stern all to ourselves. The Seal had all natural teak decks, which Captain Hatch watched with an eagle eye. We were rarely allowed to have food or drink on deck, and anything oily like potato chips which could stain the teak was a capital offence. During our sojourns aboard there was only the captain, but for the Louttits or on a charter it was always the captain plus two mates. For that reason we never experienced The Seal under full sail, which must have been magnificent, as that required a full crew . . . but this hardly tainted our enjoyment.

What a spoiled Little Lord Fauntleroy I felt as we cruised around Vineyard Sound, Buzzards Bay, and Nantucket Sound; putting up at the swanky yacht clubs of Nantucket Island, as well as Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, and Vineyard Haven all on Martha’s Vineyard. Our fourth and last trip on The Seal was the fall of 1957. I was thrilled for him my fifteen-year-old brother who was at the helm, as we cruised the length of the Cape Cod Canal to Cape Cod Bay. There we joined the throngs of boats and yachts heralding the arrival of the Mayflower II, destined for Plymouth after its maiden voyage from England. Of the entire flotilla, The Seal was one of the most elegant crafts.

My father was always a bit of a braggart, but in his later years it became harder and harder for either of us to distinguish his realities from his fantasies. One of his favourite allegations was that he had had an affair of many years with his secretary at Louttit Laundry, Muriel Cormier, whom he referred to as his “office wife”. Whether or not that was true I have no idea, but I do know that my mother would always bristle at the mere mention of Muriel’s name. Then it really hit the fan. The summer of 1958 there was a week’s vacancy at the little house (the rental cottage at back of our beach house), and my father gave that week to Muriel. My mother was fit to be tied, and a pall settled over our household that lasted for weeks.

Muriel arrived with her son, Edward, who was seven months younger than me. Much to my mother’s chagrin, he and I hit it off well, and were buddies for most of that week . . . until the fight. Put two boys on a beach together and sooner or later someone is going to throw some sand, which I hated. Edward hit me with a face full while I had my mouth open, and I was on him in a rage. It wasn’t much of a fight really. In a flash I had that little bugger pinned down on his back, got my hands around his neck, and started choking him mercilessly. Then something snapped in my head, and I realized that I was going to kill him. That wasn’t a childhood fancy, it was fully my intention to choke him to death and I was well on the way . . . were it not for that snap.

After jumping off of him in horror, I made a vow to myself that I would never fight again. I never did, ever. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get beat up, my future was full of beatings, but I never fought back … physically anyhow. Reflecting on my lethal anger that day has always left me with a few wonderments. Was my anger fuelled by my mother’s distress and the tension in our household around this woman and her son? Nothing had ever been mentioned about Edward’s father, who and where was he? Why was this boy – who had to have been conceived while my mother was carrying me – named Edward? That’s the most curious of all, why Edward? Might the mistress of a man with the last name of Edwards name her bastard son Edward? It could very well have been more than a coincidence. Was he my half-brother? Doubtless I will never know, but my strongest suspicion is that he was.

By the end of 1958 my parents were talking about a trip to Florida. It was tentative at first but I was ever hopeful, and on the side of a small travel case that my mother had given me I pasted cut-out letters that said, "FLORIDA OR BUST!" Well, Florida it was and we went during spring break. My brother was sixteen and did a lot of the driving, which had me in the backseat the whole way wishing we were in our ol’ faithful, the roomy four-door ‘51 Buick. Despite how much I loved the flashy three-tone (black, red, white) ‘55 Buick, it was a two door and it wasn‘t long before I was feeling cramped; at times sitting on my travel case to give my legs more stretch room.

As I recall we did the trip in three days, spending just two nights in motels, and it was quite an eye-opener traveling through the 1959 south during that time before interstate highways and the civil rights movement. Segregation was still the law of the land. We saw chain gangs, and poverty like we had never imagined. When we got to Saint Augustine, Florida, we stopped to visit relatives that I had never heard of before. When leaving after an hour or two, the lady of the sweet elderly couple asked Jay and me, “Are you sure you don’t need to use the bathroom again? Speak now or forever hold your peace.“ We both heard it as “piss” and cracked up simultaneously, which was met with stern looks from parents and confused looks from the couple.

Later that day we landed in Fort Lauderdale, at the home of Barbara and Dick LaMarsh, daughter and son-in-law of dear kissing cousins from our voyages on The Seal, Kesta and Stuart. They had a son younger than me, which is all I remember about him. The house was a squat square cement block affair, which was nice enough but smelled musty, typical of the tropical climate, on a huge lot overrun with all sorts of exotic tropical vegetation, and some waterfront on part of the Intracoastal Waterway. We did all of the usual Florida things, yet for me three things in particular were most memorable.

The first . . . Miami Beach! Wow! Even though I didn’t know what Art Deco was at the time, this was an Art Deco extravaganza. The architecture and opulence of all the magnificent hotels was overwhelming, each one spectacular in its own right. The lights, the pools, the landscaping . . . it was a wonderland that I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams. Probably part of the reason that the movie Where The Boys Are had such an impact on me when it came out two years later, I saw it eight times. Although that may have had something to do with my mad crush on the character Ryder played by, I’m ashamed to admit now, George Hamilton.

Parrot Jungle was memorable for one reason in particular. All the kids who had been to Florida had pictures taken with five parrots on them -- one on the head, two on each arm. I was looking forward to that more than anything else, except maybe for buying red pants, which I didn’t do. I bought two pair of madras Bermuda shorts instead, ever the practical New Englander. Before the pictures though we had to tour the jungle to see all of the exotic birds, feed some, and then watch the show. Fascinated by a white cockatoo, I seemed to miss the sign that said “DO NOT FEED” and I stuck my right hand through the bars holding a sunflower seed.

That bloody bugger wasn’t interested in any ol’ seed, he wanted flesh and blood. He chomped down on my index finger at the first knuckle, leaving it looking like it was about to fall off. It wasn‘t as bad as it felt or looked, and a trip to the infirmary had me iodized and bandaged and sent on my way in no time, yet I still have a scar. Next we saw the show and then it was time for the pictures.

My brother went first, I tried next. But I was shaking so much that the birds kept putting their beaks down to balance, which I interpreted as their intention to bite me, and I shook all the more; a vicious circle. The handler removed the birds sans photo. Dad went next and then Mom, and then I braved it and tried again. This time was a go and I think one of my father’s proudest moments. Me with the five birds on me, bandaged finger and all – it was a big bandage – thanks to one of their nasty cronies.

All of it, however . . . Miami Beach, Parrot Jungle, almost losing a finger . . . all of it paled in comparison to the delights that I discovered at The Cypress Gardens. The venue was spectacular to say the least, the flora and fauna, the water, the boats, as well as the water skiing events and water acrobatics. All unbelievable, but what totally rocked my world was the male performers, a veritable feast for my pubertal eyes.

Even though a mere thirteen, I could barely contain myself. They were awesome! Truly awesome! Despite my secret stash of Charles Atlas magazines, I never imagined that so many good-looking young men with such beautiful bodies actually existed in the flesh (so to speak), yet here they all were parading around in skimpy tight bathing suits, with their curves and bulges in all the right places . . . if you know what I mean. Be still my heart! Although it seemed as though there was not enough film in my camera, I managed to capture a plethora of fine photographic fodder for many a night of voracious teenage imaginings.

Chapter 3: THE HURRICANE YEARS (1944 to 1961)

In 1941 (four years before my birth) my father built, with his own hands, our summer house right on the beach in Jerusalem, Narragansett, Rhode Island. Although larger and finer than the typical cottage of the time, just like the other cottages in this fishing village cum summer enclave, it was built on posts about two feet above the sand. After the house he built a garage, and three years later the 1944 hurricane hit (that was before they named them). Being on the most precarious part of the beach, the house was more damaged than most. Porches, stairs and boardwalks were gone, as was much of the detail work – decorative shutters, lattice, etc. – and the garage ended up about half a mile away.

As the story goes, my father went up into the attic – “cried like a baby” – and then came down, ordered a load of telephone poles, and hired a house moving company. The house was raised, the poles sunk deep, bolted to the original poles, and then the house was set down and bolted securely at about seven feet above the sand. Next the garage was brought back and my father built a one bedroom rental cottage.

It was the joke of the peninsula, everyone was laughing. They called it ‘Camp High’ which is funny because it was actually named ‘CAMP HIE’ using my mother’s initials; you know how holiday cottages were always named in those days. People would come from far and near to see the anomaly, the “house on stilts!” They kept on laughing right up until 1954’s Hurricane Carol blew through ten years later.

At the time I was eight and I remember it well. That was the summer that my father launched his new Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, which he had spent the winter building. Christened the JALAHOJE, it was named by my clever mother who enjoyed telling people that it was an old “Indian” (“Native American” nowadays) word meaning “never a dull moment!” It was in fact an amalgam of the first two letters of each of our names: JAy, LAnce, HOpe and JEsse.

No sooner was the boat in the water, than my brother and I started begging for an overnight cruise to Block Island. We could see the island from our beach house; it was fifteen miles off the coast. Dad promised we’d go when he was on vacation, and true to his word on the morning of August 30th (two days after Jay’s 12th birthday) my father called the Coast Guard for a weather update. He was told that everything was fine. Some moderate swells out the west gap of the expansive sea-walled harbor, lightly choppy out the east gap. What about the hurricane? No worries about that, it blew itself out in the Bahamas; hurricane tracking virtually non-existent in those days.

Excitement was in the air as we loaded the car with the provisions for our two day voyage, and joyfully headed for the dock. We couldn’t stop beaming as we traversed the inner waterways and entered the harbor. Once we passed through the west gap and left the protection of the massive jetty, we hit the “moderate” ground swells. They towered above our craft, and we were bobbing up and down like a toy boat in a bathtub. “GO BACK, DAD! PLEASE! I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BLOCK ISLAND. GO BACK! I DON’T WANT TO GO!” I clamored. “THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO DO, SON,” he said, “AS SOON AS I CAN STAY ON TOP OF ONE OF THESE XXXXERS LONG ENOUGH TO TURN AROUND.”

Once he maneuvered back into the safety of the harbor, we quickly renewed our resolve and proceeded undaunted to the east gap; the consolation a cruise down Narragansett Bay and an overnight at Jamestown Island. “Lightly choppy” turned out to be six foot high breakers, and as they crashed over the bow of the boat in rapid succession, I dove under a pile of life preservers in the cabin. Somehow dear ol’ Dad managed to execute another retreat, and if I wasn’t almost catatonic I might have enjoyed the thrill of riding those big rollers back to safety behind the jetty.

Not much was going to save the day, but Jay and I reluctantly settled for an afternoon on Salt Pond, a picnic on one of the islands, a drive-in movie that night, and a solemn promise that we’d make the trip to Block Island before the boat was pulled out for the winter; kind of lame, but what to do? Salt Pond (officially ‘Point Judith Pond’), Rhode Island’s largest tidal pond encompassing some 1530 acres, sports two inhabited islands, a scattering of diminutive ones, and an intricate shoreline scalloped with coves. Despite normally being this child’s paradise, that day it was scant substitute for Block Island.

Sullen or not we killed a few hours, no doubt did something special for dinner, and then went to a drive-in movie where I had a mini-crisis in the restroom. My bathing suit was still on under my pants, and while taking a wee-wee in the stall (I was extremely pee-shy even then) the cord from the waistband lassoed the head of my penis, and when I tried to pull it loose it tightened. Try though I may, I couldn’t get it undone. Ultimately my father came looking, and found me there in the stall, sitting on the toilet crying.

He tried to get the knot untied without success and then, much to my mortification, he opened the stall door to get more light, mumbling something about people thinking that he was a pervert. Frustrated, he pulled out his pocket knife as I shrieked in horror, “NO DAD! NO! DON’T CUT IT OFF!” While trying to convince me that he was not about to do a penis-ectomy, he struggled to keep me still while he delicately cut the cord, only the cord.

Crisis overcome it was back to the movie, but we could barely see the screen because it had begun raining desperately. Something was in the air; I was picking up on the vibes from the weather and my parents. Something just wasn’t right. Once home my brother fell asleep – he could sleep through anything, even a hurricane apparently – while I kept getting up and getting sent back to bed, until finally my parents let me stay with them.

They were huddled over the Zenith Trans-Oceanic radio, my father incessantly turning the dials, trying to find some news about the disturbing weather. Shortly after six in the morning he did. At that very moment, Hurricane Carol, which would prove to be one of the two most deadly and destructive hurricanes in the history of New England at the time, was approaching New York, fifty miles southwest of Long Island’s Montauk Point.

On a clear day we could see Montauk Point, as-the-seagull-flies it is less than 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem! Mom woke my brother and we started packing, while my father went out to the garage on the leeward side of the house, started the car and left it running. We stuffed in as many of our precious belongings as we could fit, filling the trunk and the back seat, leaving just enough room for my brother and me, the cat and canary, to squeeze in.

Once we were ready and anxious to go, there was no sign of my father. We found him in the bathroom, sitting on the throne with a cup of coffee! Come hell or high water, when that man had to go … he had to go! Finally, after answering nature’s call, he swung in behind the wheel and now we were on our way. Not a moment too soon, as the waves had started breaking on the front of our house.

While pulling out we saw a blurry figure on the other side of the road running towards us and waving. It was our neighbor, Mrs. Conti, her car wouldn’t start. She asked if we would take her parents-in-law and two children, saying that she‘d stay behind because we had no room. “No, you’re coming too, we’ll make room,” my father said, as he took her arm and gently but firmly pushed her into the front seat with her daughter and my mother.

Somehow the son and the grandparents squeezed into the back with Jay and me, and now we were ready . . . but no! Before the doors were closed the grandfather’s hat blew off and went sailing away (all the men still wore fedoras in those days). The boy jumped out and went running after it. We were all screaming for him to come back, forget the hat – we thought quite certainly that they would both be lost – but in the few minutes that seemed like hours, by some miracle he returned clutching the hat!

Once again we were on our way, the breakers now crashing over our front porch. With the surf washing across the road my father navigated cautiously, and we practically hydroplaned much of the half mile stretch that followed along the beach. There was a palpable sigh of relief as Dad skillfully negotiated the curve, and we proceeded away from the ocean towards the bridge, about three-quarters of a mile north.

Jerusalem is a small, broad ‘V’ shaped peninsula, each leg about 4000 feet long and, after discounting the marshy crotch, about 500 feet wide. For all intents and purposes it is an island, marginally attached to the mainland by a thin strip of sandbar, about 200 feet wide on the west end of the beach. The only egress was a two-lane road and a narrow wooden bridge, over what we called “the gut” (a canal connecting Potter’s Pond and Salt Pond), to which we were now headed; each of us silently praying that the bridge, our solitary link to survival, was still passable.

Just before the bridge my father stopped at the marina – such as it was in those days, two long narrow rickety docks that extended out into one of the larger inlets on Salt Pond – to secure his baby, his brand new Chris-Craft, with some extra rope. However, not far from the car the water was up to his knees, so he just blew the JALAHOJE a kiss goodbye, waded back, and we moved on.

The bridge was already moving as we inched our way over. Once safely across on higher ground, we stopped to see if anyone else would make an attempt, ready to offer help if it was needed. A few minutes later another car came across. Then we watched transfixed – twenty-two eyes (including cat and canary) peering through the foggy glass – as the bridge split in two and crashed into the channel below.

Our evacuation had begun with the packing sometime after six that morning, and we learned later that the eye of the storm had made landfall at 8:00 a.m. in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, 45 miles east, precisely at high tide. Where that fits into the timeframe of our escape I can only guesstimate, most likely it was about the time when the bridge collapsed. We then made our way slowly to the town of Wakefield seven miles away; the five Contis, the four of us, the cat and canary – all safely shoehorned into the four-door ’51 Buick. They don’t make cars like that anymore.

First, my father stopped at the telephone company. It took a while, but finally they were able to get a “batten-down-the-hatches” warning through to his company in Providence. Located 40 miles north at the terminus of Narragansett Bay, Providence is Rhode Island’s capital city, which was ultimately submerged under twelve feet of water.

Next we went to the Wakefield Branch, where many people had congregated to ride out the storm; the men taking turns hand cranking the gasoline pump to fill everyone’s tank. Once the worst of the deluge had passed, we ventured back to Jerusalem, only getting as far as the high ground from which we had previously watched the demise of the bridge.

From this vantage point we all peered through the foggy windows once again – except for the cat, he was eyeing the canary – scanning the peninsula, most of which was completely underwater. Our CAMP HIE, situated on the oceanfront’s most vulnerable site, was proudly hovering above the sea on its stilts, like a flagship that had lost its armada. No other houses were visible on the beach, except for the Hartley’s about two-hundred feet east. It is a substantial year-round, double-story Cape Cod style, set way back and tucked snugly into the leeward side of a massive sand dune.

With hanks of rope over their shoulders, my father led an expedition of men over a broken beam of the bridge that was relatively stable; to see what aid they could bring to those who were stranded. They only made it a few hundred feet before they were forced to return. The wind was so strong that they clung to large slabs of upturned asphalt to keep from blowing away, as they slowly crawled back to safety.

In the aftermath we discovered that our “little house” – the flat roofed rental cottage – had floated about half a mile away, and landed upside-down on the foundation of another house that had taken off on a longer voyage. It was strange to walk in and see the toilet on the ceiling, and discover that neither a cup nor plate nor glass had been broken. The house must have flipped over on the side where the shelves were and, despite its turbulent journey, everything just slid on the wall and settled on the bottoms of the upper shelves.

Despite being on the most exposed stretch of beach, by some miracle our house was virtually unharmed (a testament to Dad’s carpentry perhaps). The only damage was to a stairway and a broken window on the east side, water from which ruined our Monopoly and Parcheesi games. When we fled the waves were already crashing on the front of the house, yet even the very large waterfront windows withstood the force. The only thing we ever found of our garage, however, was a small triangle-bladed paint scrapper.

The two cottages next door to ours had floated across the street and, with hardly a foot to spare on each side, slid very neatly into a space between what remained of two cement block houses. The strange thing is that at some point while traveling across the narrow road, the larger waterfront cottage must have passed the smaller rear cottage, or went over it, or something, because somehow it had maneuvered into that tight space first, followed by the smaller one.

Nothing of the Conti’s cottage was ever seen again, except for the enclosed front porch which was intact and hadn’t moved. Another neighbor's house travelled about two miles away; the owners bought the lot where it landed, laid a foundation and stayed there. One of Jay’s friends, another twelve-year-old, managed extraordinarily to hang on to a chunk of free sailing roof and survived a harrowing two mile trip, while his sister and grandparents perished.

A dozen old fishermen, a gaggle of summer folk, and a case of whiskey rode out the storm in the Hartley’s basement. All of the people survived … the whiskey didn‘t. A young police officer had tried to convince them to evacuate, and they had tried to convince him to stay with them, because they knew that the opportunity for escape had passed. Sorrowfully, he didn’t heed their warnings and ventured back out. He only made it as far as the curve.

Once a makeshift bridge and rudimentary gravel road were completed, we made trips to Jerusalem every weekend. Wandering the beach and the salt flats that autumn was a surreal experience, like a moonscape scattered with the remnants of people lives rather than rocks. Kitchenware, pots and pans, broken dishes. Shattered picture frames, shreds of clothing, a child‘s toy. Sections of walls, roofs, partial shells of houses. Toilets and sinks. Refrigerators and stoves. Part of a sofa here, half of a chair there. The overturned police car.

On the bright side, sometime after the storm my mother noticed a couple of poles protruding above the trees, in a thickly wooded area about a 1000 feet inland of the marina. We stopped to check it out. Sure enough, they were the bamboo outriggers of the JALAHOJE which was gently nestled in the trees with nary a scratch. So much for Dad wanting to add a few extra lines … not a rope was broken! The boat was still tied to a twenty foot section of the dock. Needless to say, we never made it to Block Island that year, or ever actually now that I think of it. An opportunity lost.

Before winter the little house was flipped upright and returned to rest on its new foundation, securely bolted to deeply set telephone poles seven feet above the sand. The garage was never replaced, but sand was excavated from under one half of our house, making it deep enough to use as a tandem carport. Needless to say, there were no more jokes about CAMP HIE! Our little house wasn’t the only one to move up in the world. As houses were returned to their original locations, others rebuilt, and those lost built anew … everything was on stilts.

My parents bought one of the cottages on Brecka Drive, the gravel lane that led from the road at the back of our house to the salt marshes. It had been retrieved from wherever it had landed during Carol, and positioned on strange looking pylons made of 55 gallon drums welded on top of each other and then filled with concrete. No other work had been done, so we spent the spring getting that place ready for summer rental: building porches and stairs, making repairs, painting, cleaning and refurbishing the interior.

Hurricane Carol had been a learning experience for most, and was the genesis of the hurricane tracking system in place today. During the ensuing years we always paid close attention to weather reports, and when potentially troublesome storms were getting too close we’d yank the boats out (by then we had three: my father’s, my brother’s and mine) – always trying to do the JALAHOJE at high tide, so that the trailer would go far enough down the ramp into the water, that the boat would just float onto the cradle. Frequently this was a harried endeavor in the middle of the night.

One year neither time nor tide was on our side, and we were struggling with the JALAHOJE at midnight during a mean low tide and torrential rain. All attempts to get it berthed had failed, so they hitched up a web of ropes and proceeded to slide it onto the cradle using a block and tackle pulled by a truck. However, someone had lashed a crucial hawser to a rope guide rather than a securely bolted cleat, so once the truck pulled, the guide gave way, and the block and tackle came crashing through the back window of my mother’s 1955 Buick. Had anyone been in the backseat at that time, most likely they would have been killed … I had been there not five minutes earlier.

For Rhode Island and Connecticut there has yet to be another storm of Carol‘s magnitude, but whenever a small hurricane or fierce storm blew through and caused damage, the National Guard would cordon off Succotash Road at Route 1, the sole artery to Snug Harbor, East Matunuck, and Jerusalem. Then they would let cars in a few at a time, in an attempt to prevent looting.

One of those times my parents and I drove from Warwick to Jerusalem in the middle of the night, only to be stopped by guardsmen at the entrance to Succotash Road. The system had changed, and rather than just showing proof of property ownership – electric bill, tax bill, etc. – owners had to get a pass from the county clerk. Unlike Snug Harbor and East Matunuck, however, Jerusalem was not a part of South Kingstown. That little village on the crook of the peninsula belonged to Narragansett, the county on the other side of the harbor and, although only 200 feet away by water, it was over twenty miles round-trip by car.

My father argued vehemently, but in the end we could see that he had relented. Oh, wait; this is MY father that I’m talking about. He threw himself behind the steering wheel in a rage, told my mother and me to hunker down on the floor – in case there was shooting – and then as he made a good show of backing around to return to Route 1, he executed a quick surprise turn and went barreling through the blockade.

He was too clever for his own good. There was a second roadblock at the bridge, and the guardsmen were there waiting for him with rifles at the ready. Gratefully they didn’t shoot, or cart him off in handcuffs, and when we returned an hour later with the authorized pass they graciously let us through.

The summer of 1955 I was nine, and spent most of my time in my new eight foot pram (a blunt-nosed boat, also called a “dinghy”), rowing around Jerusalem’s sprawling salt marshes -- a fantasy like maze of inlets, channels, and coves that snaked amongst the sea grass and bulrushes. That Christmas my gift was a three horsepower Evinrude outboard. In the spring, however, my father thought that the motor made the pram unstable, so he traded it towards a new twelve foot skiff.

When he bought my pram in 1955, my father also bought my brother a sixteen foot speedboat in a vibrant blue, complete with windshield, steering wheel, and front seat controls. It was a beauty! By the spring of 1959 Jay was driving, and we made quite the caravan moving to the beach for the summer. My father in ol’ faithful, the ’51 Buick, towing the JALAHOJE; followed by my mother in her sporty ‘55 Buick Special (tri-tone black and red with a white roof), towing Jay’s speedboat; and Jay bringing up the rear in his ‘53 Chevy, towing my skiff. Those were the days.

The following summer, 1960, my brother left for basic training at the Coast Guard Academy in Cape May, New Jersey, and his speedboat passed on to me. My dog Scotty and I became the lords (well, lord and lady) of Salt Pond and its smaller sister, Potter Pond, which was accessible through “the gut” under that lifesaving bridge. For hours on end we were out on the water in that flashy craft, where I found a world of solace in the solitude that I never had at home, thanks to my father‘s violent drinking binges.

My last summer in Jerusalem was 1961, after which my parents sold the house on the beach along with the little house, in the process of raising money to buy a business in Connecticut. They kept the cottage on Brecka Drive, but it was never the same. My mother died four years later, and when my father retired he lived in that cottage until his death in 1982.

My last visit to Jerusalem was in 1999, seventeen years after selling the Brecka Drive cottage and moving to San Francisco. It was just a quick look but much had changed. The beach had eroded drastically. (As I can see now on Google satellite, at high tide the water is all the way under the oceanfront cottage to the east of ours, and about three feet under our former house, set back about 25 feet … which had been 150 feet from high tide in 1941. The road, graded to about two feet above the sand in 1955, was now a foot or so below and covered each year during winter storms.)

Sadly, the lessons learned from Hurricane Carol forty-five years earlier all seemed to have been for naught. New construction no longer incorporated the wisdom of stilts, and many of the cottages that had been raised were subsequently enclosed at the ground level creating more living space. The same with the McMansions that have been sprouting up. No longer were people leaving a passageway for a vicious sea to seethe harmlessly underneath their homes. How easily people forget.

At least I didn’t own the Brecka Drive cottage anymore. Oh, no! No more hurricanes for me. By then I owned a Victorian-ish house in San Francisco, high on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean … less than two miles from the San Andreas Fault, and ten from the Hayward Fault, the one responsible for “the big one” in 1906. Although bought just two months before the devastating and destructive 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake – which killed 63, injured 3757 and did about $13 billion (in 2023 dollars) worth of damage – fortunately, my house was unscathed.

2023 UPDATE: Last year I rejoined the Jerusalem Facebook group, which resulted in a couple of interesting connections. The first was hearing from Al Conti, who was squeezed into our '51 Buick along with his family as we rescued them in 1954. He was 14 then, now 83. Ultimately they had bought the Marina at Snug Harbor which is now operated by his grandchildren. The other was the niece-in-law of the boy who had survived the storm by traveling a couple of miles clinging to a roof.