The childhood part of summer really began with Hughie's arrival. I could hear them calling to each other and ringing as I started the water pump. It seems that moments of extreme frustration register most vividly in my memory. I confess I slammed my fist on the gas tank that morning. I would have gathered the entire assembly and thrown them into the river if I were as strong as the lumberjack folk hero, Paul Bunyan. It took no longer than usual to get the pump running and the water pressure up enough, but it seemed to take three times as long. I remember, after I finished my homework, I hurried next door and found five boys playing softball in the large apartment 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 leader of the pack. He routed 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 fourteenth year and about the same height as Hughie, who was bigger than his brothers and cousin. Hughie's brothers included John, who was a year or two younger than me and Mickey. Eddie was next, and Steve was the youngest. My memory of the rules is vague, but from what I remember the boy only managed one. However, if he made it safely to first base, he would return to the plate and bat again. The rules were irrelevant. The challenge was to get that rare shot that would knock the ball out of play on the outcropping the house was perched on. The house was out of reach, but the ice house and bushes on both sides of the bank were co... middle of paper ... to collect our fishing tackle, I remember Hughie informing me: "Our The end of the he island is known as Nemahbin Lodge. “I was a teenager and had heard many legends of the island before we arrived. I knew there had been a cut between the two islands that had been made into a canal with a stone wall following each side down to the apartment level. Apparently a corpse was floating in the canal around 1890. Great-grandmother Clark was horrified by this development and demanded that the canal be filled immediately. A steel peg was driven into a stone at each end of where the canal used to be to mark the property line. Hughie pointed to where the shallow groove had formed between the islands. I looked where it pointed through an opening across the apartment and saw the main channel. Then he showed me the iron peg near the dock, which marked the end of the back canal.