but they did end, and do in every life.


6:16 Saturday morning, July 21, looking south across StAndrewsBay, Shell Island in the background, BBC Chartering's vessel BBC Ganges 470LOAx76Beam just cleared Davis Point (not in the picture), passing 7H enroute to West Terminal with general cargo, about to pick up her first tug. This is the best and most peaceful place in the world to live. 

Grew up here and wouldn't change it for the world. Reading Salinger's Catcher in the Rye inside the mind of an adolescent boy growing up in the NYC area in the late 1930s or early 40s (easily dated because there's a LaSalle convertible, and GM's last model year for the LaSalle was 1940), and sure I'd not want to have lived and grown up there. At the moment in the story he's telling, or thinking, the boy is 17 recalling the December just before Christmas vacation when he was 16 and a prep school junior - - a time in life I also recall, being a junior at Bay High that December 1951, that was when Linda & Philip, and Mandeville & Eleanor, and Phyllis & I triple dated to the Christmas Ball. I'd have driven us in the Station Wagon, I was always the driver for these triple-dating couples, the composition of which had changed by the following year. Seems to me it was at the Armory, George Gore Trio playing for us, we never wanted any music but theirs. There's a photo around here somewhere of us three couples, and I'm the boy with enormous floppy ears and high black hair. Salinger's boy uses Vitalis, which I remember along with Brylcreem, a little dab'll do ya, Brylcreem, you'll look so debonair. Brylcreem, the gals'll all pursue ya, simply rub a little in your hair. 

Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end ...