Island Idylls, Question of the Month, Being Thankful

Island Idylls: Or, stories of growing up in the U. S. Virgin Islands.

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A Fishy Handshake 

I'd say by the time I was six I was fishing off the rocks with a hand line, smashing whelks for bait. But it wasn't until about age eight that I learned to fish with a rod and reel. That's when we got our little boat, the F. D. O., which stood for Father's Day Off.

In 1958, Dad was working as head of maintenance at Caneel Bay, Laurance Rockefeller's  private resort hotel. One of the benefits of working there was that housing was provided for the staff. We lived in a tiny house we called the Bee Hive, with the best view on the place. At least that's what Adlai Stevenson told my mother when he and his wife happened to wander through our yard.

Because the F. D. O. was small, neat, and clean, we were allowed to keep her pulled up on the main beach. She fit under a large Sea Grape tree where we could keep her tied up and out of the way and.


Picture, in your mind, the Caneel Bay of the 1950s. There was a concrete pier where guests and their luggage were loaded and unloaded from the resorts private ferry. The pier turned into a concrete walk-way which led right into the lobby. To the right of the lobby was a comfortable airy lounge with couches, chairs, and tables. To the left was the main dining room. Realize that all of this is open air, basically a roof, supported by pillars covering tile a floor. (All tastefully elegant) Just fifteen or twenty feet away from the lobby and dining room is the beach where guests can swim and sunbathe. No matter the time of day one could see guests walking around in anything from silk, linen, and mink to swim-suits and sandy bare feet.

So there we were. I had just gone on my first solo fishing trip. Just me and Dad. We had each caught a fish, but mine was bigger.  He got a Blue Runner and I got a Bonito. While Dad got ready to transport the motor, gas can, fishing gear, and boat cushions, I had the fish, one in each hand, and carried them by their tails through the lobby to the parking lot where the jeep was parked. There I was to unload the fish and return to help Dad carry cushions and fishing gear.

As I passed by the reception and check-in desk a large man stopped me and introduced himself as Allston Boyer. He asked me about the fish. I explained I'd been out fishing with my father and that I'd caught the big one. He asked me several other questions before saying, "There's someone I'd like you to meet." He disappeared into a room and returned moments later with a tall handsome man.

"This is John Denham's daughter, Bish, " he said to the tall handsome man. "Bish, I'd like you to meet Laurance Rockefeller." Having been taught to be polite, I slapped the fish in my right hand into my left and stuck it out. Mr. Rockefeller, having been taught to be polite, shook my fishy hand.

It was just about then that Dad walked up. Further pleasantries were exchanged, employer to employee and vise versa. Then we went our separate ways.

At eight years old I didn't realize I'd just shaken hands with one of the wealthiest people in the world, the man who owned Caneel Bay, the man who had bought up three quarters of the island of St. John and donated it to the National Park.

As for Allston Boyer, he was a contract lawyer, for LR with a gift for remembering faces and names. Although he had never met me, he had met my father, and it didn't take him but a second or two to figure out who the little girl carrying the fish belonged to.

So it was that my fishy handshake became one of our favorite family stories.

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I decided to join this monthly bloghop because answering thoughtful/challenging questions is one way to expand one's mind. Hosted by Michael D'Agostino at A Life Examined ,  the question this month is: What's the best job you've ever had?

Hmmm, I've had a lot of jobs in my life, from pumping gas at my parent's gas station, to glazing ceramics. However, the absolute best job was working for 23 years with abused, neglected, and emotionally disturbed kids. Their resiliency and will to survive was/is humbling and awe inspiring.

And now, all these years later, many of those kids have made it a point to tell me that I made a difference in their lives. And my girl A. (the one who is dying and has guest posted here and here) gave me the greatest gift ever by saying, "Thank you for teaching me how to live before I die."

What could be better than that?

Being Thankful

Today I'm thankful for the Texas spiny lizard. 

Can you spot him/her?

What are you thankful for? What's the best job you ever had? Ever get to meet a "famous" person had shake his/her hand? 

Up a Tree

Trees have figured prominently in my life.

This is the earliest picture of me taken by one. I'm standing in front of a small genip tree, circa 1956 Cruz Bay, St. John. Even though I’m wearing a little dress, the sash isn't tied and I am barefoot. It's a portent of things to come

The genip, (with a hard g) bears small round fruit between the size of a nickel and a quarter. It grows in bunches something like grapes. The fruit is covered by a leathery green skin which surrounds pinkish flesh. The pinkish flesh surrounds a large seed. The fruit is tart/sweet and ripens right around the time school begins and was always a favorite among the kids. Like spitting watermelon seeds, there were contests to see who could spit their genip skins the farthest.

It's faded, but I'm there, like a chameleon. This picture, taken around 1958, shows me in my favorite genip tree that grew by the house we lived in at Caneel Bay. 

The way my left hand is casually resting on the trunk of the tree, it looks like I’m standing in a doorway or next to a pillar.

I wasn't using the trunk to support myself, or to keep my balance on the branch. I simply had my hand on it like someone resting a hand on a doorjamb. I was totally unafraid of heights. (Not so any more.)

I loved that tree. I knew exactly where my hands and feet had to go to get me to my favorite branch.

My mother couldn't keep me out it, or any other climbable tree. She used to tell me, kidding of course, "You fall out of that tree and break your arm, I'll break the other one."

I never fell out of a tree and never broke bone. Well, I did break a small wrist bone, but I was in my early 30s and it happened roller skating.


Here I am at about 11 or 12 trying to climb a coconut palm. I was never successful getting more than a few feet up. There is a way to shimmy up them, but the technique eluded me.

I was a senior in high school when this picture was taken for the yearbook. The tree is a mango. I was wearing a ratty pair of jeans and an old blue denim shirt. I was NOT a prom queen/cheerleader type of girl. The Hat has a story all it's own which I blogged about HERE.

And it doesn't end there. My sweetie and I were married under a cedar elm.

We visited it on our 20th anniversary. All of us were still alive and well.

Were you a tree climber? Do you have a special tree memory? Did you ever have a tree house? Ever fallout of a tree?

The Cantaloupe

In the 1950s, 60s and even into the 70s, we didn't get a lot of fresh state-side fruit that tasted good. By the time it got to the islands it had seen better days. Apples were usually bruised and mushy, same with pears. Watermelons tended to be over-ripe with that slightly sour/sweet flavor they get when they're starting to rot and honeydews tasted like a weak glass of water with a smidgen of sugar stirred in. Grapes were often green and sour. Cherries (a mouth-watering favorite of my sister and I) were often starting to get soft and grow that white mold they grow when they've been in the fridge to long. Forget about peaches and berries.

We had better luck with citrus, but even oranges and tangerines could be dried out and juiceless. And when in came to cantaloupes they were always picked so green that if they became edible they had little or no flavor.

One day while we were living at Caneel Bay, back around 1958 or 59, my father came home and announced he'd made a discovery at the hotel dump. It was a place where mostly plant and vegetable matter (both from the kitchen and the grounds) was tossed.

What could it be? He took Mom, Erva and I and showed us. There amidst the garbage was a cantaloupe vine, and on it, apparently quite happy with its environment, was one small cantaloupe. Obviously seeds from the kitchen had gotten tossed and one seed and managed to sprout and was endeavoring to produce some fruit.

Well, we were all excited and Dad promised to keep an eye on it, to protect it from predators, from having more stuff thrown on it, to occasionally give it some water, but most particularly to keep it hidden from other humans. We wanted that cantaloupe all to ourselves.

Erva and I must have asked him every day if it was ready to pick. But no, it wasn't, we had to wait. Eventually the day came when he brought it home, a large round cantaloupe that smelled.... oh yum, like heaven! Up to this point I had no memory of ever eating a cantaloupe that was any good.

Mom put it in the refrigerator and as the next day was Saturday, promised we would have it with a breakfast of pancakes and waffles.

There was anticipation as she brought it to the table. Anticipation as she cut it in half releasing a wonderful aroma. She carefully scraped out the seeds and cut the halves into quarters. We each got a whole quarter! Spoons in hand, we all dug in, put the fruit into our mouths and moaned...

...in utter delight. Never before had we had such a juicy sweet aromatic cantaloupe. And to this day, no cantaloupe as ever tasted as wonderful as the one grown in secret at the dump at Caneel Bay.

Out of garbage good things can come.

Do you have a fruit story? Ever grown one, or stolen one, that had particularly good flavor?

My First Bicycle - Part Two

Like I said last Monday, I was an immediate expert bicyclist. 
In this picture you can see the Beehive up the hill behind our jeep, The Yellow Dragon. Left to right, Erva, Me, Dad, Nana (Dad's Mom) and Mom. 

From where we parked the jeep, the driveway was pretty steep and rutted as you can sort of see in this picture. The building to the right was a workshop. (It would be to the left in the above picture.) Dad had his ham radio station there and his tools and it's where we kept our bikes. It's also where I "went to school" because Mom was home schooling me at the time.














About a week or so after I learned to ride I coasted down off that gravelly driveway, and merged onto a flat stretch of dirt road that merged onto a paved road.

I was going too fast. There was a lip where the pavement met the dirt road. I was afraid if I hit that lip too fast I'd loose control of the bike. I slammed on the handle-bar brakes, not realizing what would happen.

Bike came to a sudden stop, Bish went flying. I hit the ground so hard the wind got knocked out of me. When I could finally breathe I started screaming...and Mom didn't call me "one of God's screechers" for nothing. Somehow, from all the way up at the house, she heard me and came running.

I'd landed on my hands and knees. My palms were scraped and my right knee was a mess. It was gouged and full of dirt and tiny bits of rock. Mom took one look at it and realized her ministrations might not be enough.  She loaded me in the jeep and we went to tell Dad we were going to the clinic in Cruz Bay and have Dr. Peterson take a looked at it. It might need stitches at the worst. But it definitely needed a professional cleaning.

I, of course was sobbing from pain, from fear, from surprise at how easily I could be thrown from the bike. Plus I was upset that I was going to have a scar on my knee.

And Dad says, "Don't worry, you can wear stockings when you grow up and it won't show."

Already a tomboy, the idea of wearing stockings meant that I couldn't run around barefooted. Wearing stockings was, to me, a kind of punishment for being a girl. I wailed even louder, "But I don't want to wear stockings!"

Oh...I laugh now, but it wasn't funny then! As it turned out, I didn't need stitches, just some good irrigating, stinging Mercurochrome and a bandage.  However, it did leave a scar I still have, though it's faded. And as for stockings, I never have worn them except for very special occasions.


How about you, any bicycle scars? Are you a stockings or barefoot kind of person person?

My First Bicycle - Part One

Between about 1955 and 1959 my father was the head of maintenance at Caneel Bay, which was at that time Laurence Rockefeller's private resort hotel.  For about two of those years we lived at Caneel as housing was provided for many of the employees.

Somehow we got the best house on the place. It was the farthest away from everything and perched on the side of a hill, thus giving us the grandest view of the resort and the ocean. But it was small, with three closet bedrooms, a microscopic bath, a tiny kitchen, and a living room about 12 by 15 feet. We called it the Beehive.

On my eighth birthday Dad presented me with a bicycle, a real one with handle-bar brakes and everything. He proudly explained that he had built it from the salvaged parts of three wrecks. It looked perfect, all shiny and freshly painted blue. I should have been thrilled because a bike was what I wanted. But inside (I kept my disappointment to myself) I was not happy. I wanted a "new" bike, like the Raleigh my sister had been given. Of course the memory of that bike now has a great deal more meaning for me. My dad made it. Nothing could be more precious than that. But at the time, well, I was eight, I couldn't appreciate the significance of the gift.

My disappointment was momentary. Below is a picture of a kapok tree that I took with my red brownie camera. Behind the tree you can see a road going right to left (it disappears to the left of the tree) with another one joining it coming down from the right. It was on the long lower road that Erva taught me how to to ride.






















You can see in the picture, the slight rise and fall of the road. I remember the dips and rises as being huge. Of course I fell the first time I got on the bike, but the second time... I coasted down the first little hill, down into the dip. It was a terrifying thrill. Oh the speed! The wind in my face! And then Erva was yelling at me to peddle as I went up the rise. So I peddled furiously, up and up until I came to the crest then, down the second dip, flying, flying.

I was hooked. And I was an immediate expert bicyclist.

Come back next Monday to learn the truth.

Do you remember your first bike and learning how to ride it?

Happy - Part Three

And we're back again with a few more Happy stories.

Among his other great dislikes, Happy hated having his paws messed with. It had not always been that way. Before a certain traumatic experience he had allowed us easy access to the places between his toes so we could pick off ticks. But afterwards he got very touchy. Again, if only one of us worked with him he tolerated our ministrations.

When it was time to check his paws I'd get down on the floor with him and the conversation would go something like this.

"Okay, Happy, I'm going to look for ticks." Because he already knew what was coming he'd growl. "Okay, Happy, I'm going to look at your paw." And while I inspected a paw he's raise a lip and growl some more. "Good boy." There's be more rumblings as each paw was inspected and the ever present ticks were removed.

What caused him to become touchy about his paws was this. It happened when he was a year or two old. We had moved from Gifft Hill to Caneel Bay. It must have been the week-end because I remember both Erva and I were home with Mom when Happy appeared at the kitchen door bleeding profusely from a front paw. And I mean profusely. He'd cut an artery because every time his heart beat there was a spurt of blood. Somehow he'd sliced open the bottom of his paw between the large back pad and his toes.

Of course we were all frantic and trying to help him and because there were three of us he was being most ornery about it and fighting us. Finally Mom shooed Erva and me away and she managed to wrap his foot up with clean rags that the two of us rushed around the house to find. But he would have nothing to do with the binding. Every time Mom got the blood to stop spurting and his foot bound up he'd rip off the bandages which of course caused him to start bleeding again.

It wasn't until he got weak from loss of blood that we were finally able to keep his foot bound. He got so weak he could barely raise a lip to growl. Even though he knew we were trying to help him he remained true to his personality. We nearly lost him. And no, there was no veterinarian near-by we could take him to. We were on our own. I think it was about three days before he could raise his head enough to eat something proper. He got pretty thin.

Somehow he survived and from that day on he was very touchy about his paws. Here we are with Himself on Christmas Day perhaps only 5 or 6 months after his near-death experience.

Other things he didn't like: Being carried, going on a boat, having his ears messed with. Now that I've thoroughly convinced you he was a mean, ornery cur, I will in future posts, relate stories of some of his better qualities.

The Ones That Didn't Get Away - A Fishy Handshake

It wasn't long after I caught my first fish that I got to go on my first solo, that is, it was just me and Dad. Erva, being older had already been out with him several times. Now it was my turn. If I recall she was a bit jealous, but as with most things in our lives, it didn't last long.

Dad and I had a great time and we each caught a fish, but mine was bigger. He got a Blue Runner and I got a Bonito.

As you might recall, Dad was working at Caneel Bay, Laurence Rockefeller's (LR for short) private resort hotel. One of the benefits of working there was that housing was provided for the staff. It may have been small, in fact we called it the Bee Hive, but the house we lived in had the best view on the place.

Anyway, because Dad was the head of maintenance and because the F. D. O. was small, neat, and clean, we were allowed to keep her pulled up on the main beach. She fit under a large Sea Grape tree where she was out of the way and we could keep her tied.

One has to try to picture the main beach, which is Caneel Bay. There was a concrete pier where guests and their luggage were loaded and unloaded. The pier turned into a concrete walk-way which lead right into the lobby where guests signed in and checked out. To one side of the lobby was a comfortable airy lounge with couches, chairs and tables where guests could...lounge. To the other side of the lobby was the main dining room. Realize that all of this is open to the air. Fifteen, twenty feet away from the lobby and dining room is the beach where guests can swim and sunbathe. Despite the fact it is a luxury hotel (or maybe because it is) one could see guests walking around in anything from silk and mink coats to swim-suits and sandy bare feet.

So there we were. Dad and I had pulled the boat up and tied her securely to the tree. While Dad got ready to transport the motor, gas can, fishing gear, and boat cushions, I had the fish, one in each hand, carrying them by their tails. I headed through the lobby on my way to the parking lot where I would unload the fish and return to help Dad carry cushions and fishing gear.

As I passed by the reception and check-in desk a large man stopped me. He asked me about the fish. I explained I'd been out fishing with my father and that I'd caught the big one. "Are you John Denham's daughter?" he asked. I answered that I was. "What is your name?" I told him. "I'm Mr. Boyer," he said. "There's someone I'd like you to meet." He disappeared into a room and returned moments later with a tall handsome man.

"This is John Denham's daughter, Bish, " he said to the tall handsome man. "She caught the big fish. Bish, I'd like you to meet Laurence Rockefeller." Having been taught to be polite, I slapped the one fish into my left hand and stuck out my right. Mr. Rockefeller, having been taught to be polite, shook my fishy hand.

It was just about then that Dad walked up. Further pleasantries were exchanged, employer to employee and vise versa. Then we went our separate ways.

At eight years old I didn't realize I'd just shaken hands with one of the wealthiest people in the world, the man who owned Caneel Bay, the man who had bought up three quarters of the island of St. John and donated it to the National Park. So it was my fishy handshake became one of those famous family stories.

As for Mr. Boyer, he was LR's lawyer. He had this gift for remembering faces and names. Although he had never met me, he had met my father, so it didn't take him but a second or two to figure out who the little girl carrying the fish belonged to.

Tales of Brave Ulysses - The F. D. O.

We almost always had a boat of one kind or another.

Our first was a West Indian built (probably in Tortola) wooden monster. It was about 14 feet long. It weighed so much we named it 16 Tons after the song written by Merle Travis and made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955. We didn’t keep her for long.

The second was a little fiberglass run-about with an 18 horse Johnson named The F. D. O.

The third was an aluminum boat we never really named but that we sometimes referred to as the Tin Can.

And our fourth was an 18 foot Swedish double-ender we called the Squarehead.

We will concern ourselves, for right now, with boat number two.

The F. D. O. had originally been the “dinghy” for Laurence Rockefeller’s private yacht. (We will refer to him from this point on as LR) Dad worked at Caneel Bay (LR’s private luxury resort hotel) as the maintenance manager. Anything that was even remotely mechanical and/or electrical Dad was in charge of keeping in good working order. So Dad was in a good position to buy the “dinghy” when LR decided he wanted something new, or something different, or something bigger, or maybe something more flashy. Who knows why the wealthy do what they do. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the little run-about and it was perfect for us.

F. D. O. stands for Father’s Day Off. And, for the next unknown number of blogs, I will be relating tales of our brave Ulysses and our many Odysseys in the F. D. O.

Below are the first pictures of the F. D. O. If they weren’t taken on “launch day,” they should have been.

Here she is, ready to go, on the Sears trailer, which is being pulled by our faithful Yellow Dragon.

Here we are untying her at Number Seven. Number Seven was the name of one of the beaches at Caneel Bay. I don’t know if it’s still called that or not. Number Seven was also the name of one of the cottages where the likes of Richard Nixon – while still president – stayed. Can you tell who’s who? I’m the little one on the left. Erva’s in the middle and Mom’s on the right. What was nice about the F. D. O is that two of us, say me and Dad, could haul her up onto the beach by ourselves, it was that light.

Ta-da! Launched.