Travels with my Family Read Free

in his ear. He pinched his nose with his fingers and shouted, “Hurricane Bob! Hurricane Bob!” Then he chased me across the wet field.
    I guess a hurricane isn’t so bad, as long as the trees don’t fall on you. It helps to have good luck if you want to have adventures — that’s what I learned that night.

TWO My brother nearly drowns
off Tybee Island

    I liked Maine, Hurricane Bob and all, but there was only one problem. The water was so cold there were practically icebergs floating in it. We decided to drive south, where the water is as warm as a bathtub, and where we could go swimming every day.
    â€œI don’t think Miro could take the trip,” my father said. “Going to Maine was bad enough.”
    â€œHe can stay at your grandmother’s,” my mother told my brother and me. “You’ll see, he’ll love it there. He can chase the squirrels around the backyard.”
    So Miro would have his own vacation, without us. We drove him back to my grandmother’s house. We promised to send him lots of postcards, and my brother nearly hugged him to death. But when we left, Miro was already sniffing around my grandmother’s kitchen, with a smile on his face.
    I wondered what my parents were going to dream up for this trip. You have to admit, a front-row seat at a hurricane is pretty hard to beat. But when we left the land behind and started driving across the water, I knew we were in for something special.
    The road went on for miles and miles with nothing but the sea on all sides, and just a few lonely telephone poles stringing electrical wires over the water.
    â€œThis has got to be the longest bridge in the world!” my little brother said.
    â€œIt’s called a causeway,” my father told us.
    My brother crossed his arms and sat back on the seat. “It looks like a bridge to me.”
    â€œIt looks like a silver ribbon floating on the ocean,” my mother sighed happily. “It’s beautiful.”
    â€œIt’s a bridge,” said my brother, sticking his lower lip out.
    That’s the way we are in my family sometimes. Everybody has to be right.
    The sky was bright blue, and the water was as calm as Miro when he’s asleep. Then I remembered Hurricane Bob. If ever a few strong waves rose up, the road would disappear in no time.
    But that was the chance we had to take to get to the house we had rented on Tybee Island, in the state of Georgia. A wooden house that stood on stilts with a few palm trees around it, and miles and miles of beaches.
    It turned out to be a great summer for needlefish ice cream cones. They’re real easy to make. You need a sandy beach, and a lot of those tiny fish with sharp, pointy noses like miniature swordfish. You grab a fish by its tail, stick its nose into a mudball and — presto! — you have a needlefish ice-cream cone.
    Then, of course, you walk around and pretend to lick it. You should see the looks you get from grownups!
    And it doesn’t hurt the fish because they’re already dead, caught in the fishermen’s nets along with the mudballs.
    We also made jellyfish porcupines. You need one dead jellyfish lying on the beach, and a handful of sticks.
    We had lots of work that summer, my little brother and I, taking the needlefish out of the fishermen’s nets.
    â€œYou got them itty-bitty fingers,” the fishermen told us. “You kids can slip them fingers of yours right in between the loops of them nets and pull them critters right out.”
    My brother stared at the fishermen with their big blunt fingers and their sunburnt faces and their tattoos. He didn’t know what to think. But I did. I knew that a critter was an animal, and that we had just gotten ourselves a vacation job. We got paid a nickel a needlefish, and pretty soon my brother and I had enough to buy real ice cream