Travels with My Family

Travels with My Family — page 7 — ONE In Maine we are nearly flattened by Hurricane Bob We had been hearing about Hurricane Bob on the radio all week long After a while I got pretty tired of it How can you take a hurricane seriously when its name is Bob No offense to people named Bob but it’s just not a very scary name If I was in charge of naming hurricanes I would call them Hurricane Hulk or Demon or Destroyer Now that would scare people We had rented a cottage right by the ocean We were so close to the water that you could sit on the front porch and spit watermelon seeds into the Atlantic Or almost And there were blueberry bushes too with tiny fruit

Travels with My Family — page 8 — the size of a baby’s fingernail My brother and I picked the berries right off the bushes for breakfast The other fun things you could eat were the sea urchins that lived in the water They were brown prickly animals with poisonous spines You smashed them open with a hatchet and there was an orange part inside that supposedly tasted really good like the ocean Or so my father said I tried one and that was enough My brother pretended to throw up just looking at them Our cat Miro loved Maine It was a lot better than being in a boiling-hot car He had never been to the sea before Every evening he went down to the pebbly beach to chase the little green crabs that lived there When he caught one or should I say when one caught him by pinching his nose he wished he hadn’t because crabs never let go But Miro never learned He caught furry brown wood mice too and left them on the porch in front of the door My mother would scream every time she stepped on one in her bare feet first thing in the morning Miro always looked miffed when she did that After all he was giving her a present It’s funny because my mother usually loves surprises and presents When my brother gives her a bunch of dandelions for example even if they’re half crushed she always looks so pleased I guess

Travels with My Family — page 9 — dead mice aren’t at the top of her list of favorite things The radio told us that Hurricane Bob was moving up the eastern shore of the United States First he was going to hit Florida Then Bob changed his mind and decided to go for North Carolina No not there Why not try a little farther up the coast Like Maine No hurricanes ever went there He’d have the place to himself Hurricanes like it hot my father told us He was always explaining useful bits of knowledge to us They’re tropical storms The water here is too cold for them Nobody even swims in this water It was true The water in Maine was so cold you couldn’t put both feet in at the same time A minute in this water and your skin would turn blue My brother was the only one who didn’t feel the cold Maybe he’d been a polar

Travels with My Family — page 10 — bear in another life But the radio says the hurricane’s coming here my mother said The radio is just trying to scare us my father told her He was always telling us that we shouldn’t believe everything we heard on the TV and the radio But if it’ll make you feel safer we’ll go into town for some supplies I’d feel safer if you paid attention to the radio once in a while she answered smiling Now let’s go There was an enormous crowd in front of the Blue Hill General Store and Hardware The parking lot was full of pick-up trucks with lobster traps in the back Men in lumberjack shirts were leaving the store carrying big sheets of plywood Their wives were carrying huge cardboard boxes Everybody was looking anxiously up at the sky Are those men going to build a house my brother asked Not exactly I told him The wood is for covering the windows and doors when the hurricane comes Oh he said Then he peered anxiously at the sky too A moment later he asked What do you think those

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