The being-a-kid part of the summer really got rolling with Hughie’s arrival. I could hear them calling to one another, and playing while I cranked the mulish water pump. It seems that moments of extreme frustration register more vividly in my memory. I confess to banging the gas tank with my fist that morning. I’d have picked up the whole assembly and thrown it in the river if I’d been as strong as the lumberjack folk hero, Paul Bunyan. It took no longer than usual to get the pump going and to raise the water pressure sufficiently, but it seemed like it took three times as long.
I remember hustling next door after finishing my chores to find five boys playing softball on the large flat between the two houses. Hughie said something like, “This is Tad. He lives in the ghost house next door. Let’s play.”
There was no formal introduction other than that. Hughie was the oldest and the leader of the pack. He directed me to right field, which put me last in the batting order. The left fielder turned out to be a cousin named Mickey Bliss. He and I were the same age, and Hughie was a year older. I was big for my age of fourteen and about the size of Hughie, who was bigger than his brothers and cousin. Hughie’s brothers included, John who was a year or two younger than Mickey and I. Eddie was next, and Steve was the youngest.
My recollection about the rules is vague, but from what I recall the guy up only got one out. However, if he made it safely to first base, he returned to the plate and batted again. The rules were immaterial. The challenge was to get that rare hit that sent the ball out-of-play onto the outcropping where the house was perched. The house was out of range, but the icehouse and bushes on either side up on the bank were co...
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... to collect our fishing gear, I remember Hughie informing me, “Our end of the island is known as Nemahbin Lodge.”
I was a teenager, and I’d heard a lot of the island lore before we ever arrived. I knew that there had been a cut between the two islands that was upgraded to a canal with a stone wall liner that followed each side up to the level of the flat. Apparently a dead body floated into the canal around 1890. Great Grandmother Clark was horrified by this development, and she demanded the canal be filled in immediately. A steel peg was driven into a stone at each end of where the canal had been to mark the property line. Hughie pointed out where the shallow cut between the islands had run. I looked where he pointed through an opening across the flat, and I saw the main channel. Next he showed me the iron peg near the boathouse, which marked the back channel end.
Hutch, the main character of The Big Field, has played baseball all of his life. He has always played shortstop, the same position that his father dreamed of playing as a professional. “Hutch, had always thought of himself as the captain of any infield he’d ever been a part of” (Lupica 1). Hutch finds himself being demoted to second base because there is another player, Darryl, on his new team that is expected to go pro and also plays shortstop. Hutch struggles because he does not want to play second base and his father does not support him because he does not want baseball to break Hutch’s dreams like it did his own. Hutch is betrayed by his father and Darryl when he finds them practicing together. Hutch has to learn to adjust and eventually becomes friends with Darryl, the up and coming shortstop. He understands that if he wants to win, then he needs to work together with Darryl. His father also comes around and finally gives Hutch his approval. Students should read this book in a high school English classroom because it demonstrates how relationships can be difficult, but teamwork can help to solve many issues.
The island is about 4 square miles and is today a place for tourism in the great lakes. Many thousands of years ago though this was a little piece of land with bluffs reaching high above its surroundings and was a merely a small piece of land surrounded by water. It was because of these bluffs the appearance of the island resembled a turtle and led to it being named “The Great Turtle” (Piljac, 1998). Currently the island reaches several hundred feet above the lake and it’s because of this geography that many nations saw this as a perfect military post and would be used over and over again throughout its history as such.
that had been taken to the island had gone. This left the path open to
In order for the reader to understand how colonization affected Ocean Island, the reader needs to understand the history of the Island. In Pearl Binder’s book, Treasure Islands: The Trials of the Banabans, she tells of what Ocean Island first looked like. Ocean Island, or Banaba, is one of the many islands in the Pacific. It is situated almost exactly on the equator. The whole island is three miles long and two and a half miles wide. The highest point of Banaba is 270 feet. The island was rocky but had quite a bit of land for growing crops. After living peacefully by themselves for a long time, the Banabans allowed travelers to enter their land, which changed their lives forever. Blackbirders, who are labor recruiters, came to Banaba in 1862 as a result of the Civil War happening in the U.S. (Binder). The need for cotton was in high demand so they needed workers to harvest it all. The blackbirders came and kidnapped strong young men from the villages to use them for working in Fiji, Honolulu, South America, and Queensland where enterprising planters had started cotton plantations. While slavery was ending in the U.S., it was just starting in the Pacific (Binder). At the end of the nineteenth century...
...ng up the pebble road so they went outside to see who or what was coming to the plantation. When they went outside no one or thing was there one of the office workers there at the plantation said that they heard something so they went to see what it was and they saw a group of rocking chairs rocking all at the same time. Another one of the workers there said that she saw multiple things move across the desk tops. One of the couple tour guides there was giving a tour when suddenly a candle stick flew across the room. Another one of the staff workers there reported hearing someone crying inside of the mansion. A staff worker Mitchell borne was working alone one night inside of the mansion when he felt someone touching his arm. One of the tour guides was walking around when they did not have a tour and saw a figure sitting upright in one of the beds. ("Ghosts tales”).
While Topsail is now plagued by torrents of tourists and vastly spiking in development, in its early history, the island had many uses ranging from a Native Indian hunting ground, a hideout for pirates, and the home to a secret missile project, showing that even in its earliest history the island was not used for human inhabitance. Although frequently visited in the 1700s and 1800s by Tuscarora Indians and roaming pirates in the coastal waters, no bridge existed between the mainland and the island until the United States created Camp Davis during World War II and seized the island for military maneuvers and anti-aircraft exercises. Between...
The island was called Gull Island by the Indians and Oyster Island by the Dutch. Later
In this story we see many strange things taking place at a house on Harley Street in a town called Bly. We meet Mrs. Grose a housekeeper who is taking care of the house while the master is out of town. The governess, also the narrator and unnamed in this story, has more credentials than the housekeeper and is mainly in charge of caring for the children. Flora and Miles, two young children who are left in the care of these women until their uncle returns. Throughout the story the governess explains to Mrs. Grose that she is seeing two people staring at her. At first Mrs. Grose thinks what she is saying is ridiculous, but after careful examination she begins to agree with the governess. The governess explains in full detail what these people looked like and Mrs. Grose tells her it's the ghosts of Peter Quint (the previous butler) and Miss. Jessel (a previous maid).
were all bunched up. You could not use the islands for much, seeing as that
The Sandlot is a classic sports film that shows how the role of friendship plays in children’s development. The story takes place in a small suburb outside of Los Angeles in the summer of 1962. The main character “Smalls”, just moved to the town with his mom and step dad. He doesn’t really know how to make friends but started watching a group of boys that walked to the ‘sandlot’. Smalls has always stuck to science projects, so baseball is a new subject to him. The step dad has a love of baseball so when Smalls goes into his office he has trophies and a baseball signed by Babe Ruth. Smalls wants to be able to connect with his step dad, so he tries to learn how to play baseball with the guys.
Gorinson, Stanley M., and Kevin P. Kane. “The Accidental Three Mile Island: The Role of
I encountered a “bump in the road” at a young age. I began playing softball at age six when Kylie, my elementary school friend, came to show and tell with her first place T-ball trophy. At the time, I had only played soccer, but the thought of swinging a bat as hard as I could and having people in the stands cheer for me, inspired me to ask my mother to register me for the local recreational league. Before I knew it, I was lacing up last year’s soccer cleats and stepping up to bat in my first coach-pitch softball game. My father, being the coach, stood on the mound and lobbed in the fattest meatball every hitter dreams of. With the ding of my second-hand garage sale bat, the ball sailed over the shortstop. Some may have called it beginner's luck, but I called it a sign.
The Red Room by HG Wells, The Black Cottage By Wilkie Collins, and Sikes and Nancy By Charles Dickens
In the summer, we would play at the pond behind the house. It looked more like
In 1,850 A.D. the population was decimated to mere 111 sick and starving islanders, and for some reason all of the trees were gone. It is believed that the Rapa Nui cut all the islands trees down to aid in the sculpting and production of the massive Moai statues. The declination of trees and overall island life is what escalated the islanders to start fighting each other. The inhabitants had spread out and made clans around the production of Moai, trying to make the largest possible statues they could to please the gods (Henriksen 1-2). Then the islands first documented discovery was made by the Dutch explorer Admiral Roggeveen on Easter Sunday in 1722, ergo the name Easter Island (Judd 2). The dis-covery of the island by the Europeans wasn’t a good thing this is where all of the horrible diseases came from, which made the already high death count rise even more, and as if that wasn’t enough this discovery helped Peruvian slave ships find the island and kidnap the inhabitants to sell into slave