Only because we must begin somewhere.

Down by the beach, before I was born, my father built our first house. It was not the first of others he would build, but it was the first of those that he and my mom would own outright. Until then, my parents had owned no such thing. Nor had many other adults in the USA.

But then came 1946. My dad was thirty, my mom was twenty-six, and my brother was three years old. Together, they were living on the second floor, just above Mrs. McGathlin, the widow who owned the house herself. In the fall of that year, my folks purchased from my grandfather’s neighbor, Ray Grindell, a small plot of sandy land on Cape Cod just inland from the shoreline of Dennisport. For “consideration paid,” they took possession of eight one-hundredths of an acre of property which they could call their very own.

The following spring in 1947, my dad cleared their land of scrub oak and black pines, staked out a hole that he could dig by hand, and set down a cinderblock foundation that measured twenty-five feet across the front and twenty-three feet along the sides. Freehand, my mom had drawn up their plan upon a single page. And on the back of that, my dad recorded every expenditure they were making. He would measure and cut every single board, hold and pound each and every nail, and carefully realize their very first house.

Throughout that spring and summer, as well as into the fall, the house took shape during the time that my dad was not working for the electric company. My mom was helping wherever she could, but she had my brother to attend to. And I was there, too.

Let me be a bit coy at this point and spring ahead to March of that next year, 1948. Barely escaping a Leap Year Day’s birth, I was born in a blizzard that raged into the first of March. Family lore is that my dad wanted to name me “Bill,” because I came at the first of the month. True or not, that story told often throughout my life is typical of the spirit that reigned over our household, and it is part and parcel of what made their house our home. To this day, I still enjoying telling people that my parents amused me as a child. (There, I said it again.) Let me repeat that. My parents amused me as a child.

The point of this particular diversion is that something must have happened between my mom and my dad about nine months before 1 March 1948. Only someone with too much time on his or her hands would bother to count back the months on your fingers and discover that the date would be about 1 June 1947, which is also damn close to Memorial Day weekend. So much for being coy. That’s all I can figure, and we are left to our imaginations.

So, as my dad built our house, my mom helped as much as she could and took care of my older brother . . . and me: an aboriginal wharf rat, born in a sign of water, and destined to come of age on Snatch Alley.