Merkin

I, too, remember that story Nigel--only bits and pieces, however, and sadly not enough to help you with your query. However maybe between the two of us we can jog someone else's memory. The additional detail I remember: the fugitive student is being hidden from an uncle in Africa who wants to take over the family lands and fortune after a dreadful slaughter of the new boy's family. The boy is the only survivor. Our main character befriends him and becomes his protector, a role enhanced by the main character's involvement with the school's cadet corps (? what is it called in England?) and and this leads later to identification of the new boy's pursuers while they are on a cadet training exercise. Later in the story both boys are at the main character's rather lavish family farm while the rest of the family are away, and they are forced to defend the holding from a team of assassins deployed to kill the new boy. I think there may also be a later scene set in Africa... it's all very hazy, and I'm somewhat led to believe I read it on a site like IOMfAtS. I hope that helps to add some pertinent detail to your query?

Alan, your take on the life of boys is always unique, and the results are stories that are unpredictable. I love it. Thanks for this one. James

Loved it, Camy. Especially the juicy dialect you've come up with to set the tone for a broken end time. The ending is masterful. A great flash.

Very interesting. This is not nuanced piano playing. How old is Olivier now? He's been subjected to the camera's eye for a good while--do I detect a little bit of push-back?

Thanks for the suggestion, Nigel. I'm reading it now, and enjoying what is for me an unfamiliar cultural perspective on familiar themes. It's quite complicated, isn't it?

Out of Stock Christmas comes but once a year— your credit card has nothing to fear for credit lines are infinitely long and pleas to buy are in every song. The debt piles up and threatens to sink household budgets and drive you to drink while lending mongers wave new offers designed to tie you to their coffers At least until another season of hyped-up giving exceeds all reason, and increases every obligation for the citizens of this sad nation, All of whom seem to have turned away from the real basis for this holiday: how can Peace on Earth still be sought when Amazon says it can’t be bought? --Merkin

Chris James has always been noted for his thorough fact-finding and authentic basis to his stories, and it's lovely to get this affirmation from you, Rutabaga. I always enjoyed my forays into Rehoboth Beach when I was a young D.C. dandy.

In the U.S. Navy, the coming (sill) of a passageway watertight door is very high and is known as a 'knee knocker'. It has led to many injuries to careless sailors passing through--as has the very low overhead.

John Williams made his mark on the Boston Pops decades ago but luckily the brahmins in charge at Symphony Hall and WCRB/WGBH still know which side their bread is buttered on and the classics prevail. The current camel nudging it’s nose under the tent at the Pops is Celtic music, somewhat strident at the present moment but I have great confidence that the baton will swing back as it always does in staid New England.

That review makes me want to read the book, so job accomplished, James K.

I quote from Alan's last paragraph: 'The entire family loved the Cape and the ocean. None of them ever left, living out their lives surrounded by family and love.' I love reading about the Cape, and I wish I could also claim that, once I had found it, I had never left. Thank you, Alan, for an inspiring story.

The title says it all. It's a wonder most of us manage to live through it.

Soon, R, you will be able to hang out your own shingle as a Private Eye.

Alan keeps adding new dimensions to this tale, and it has become much more complex.

This is my second up-all-night, can't-put-it-down reread of James's novel, and I stick by my initial comment. I sincerely believe this work should seek mainstream publication.

Just...amazing.

According to the latest U.S. Census data, this nation has an official resident population of 331,449,281 fellow Merkins as of April 1, 2020. Sadly, the figure is somewhat suspect, as are many of the important statistics released during the term of the last U.S. president. But wait! A more realistic estimate would include the resident populations of both North and South America: certainly all are fellow Merkins. That figure is approximately 1.002 billion.

Thank you for "Growing Pains", Cole. There's a lot of wisdom in this final chapter.

The cat may be irate because you haven't remembered to feed it, Camy.

Congratos to you Camy, for that massive accomplishment. When do we get to read it?

Epic photo. It inspired some fine stories, also: http://iomfats.org/storyshelf/contests/2018-fine-young-animals/

I hope all of you are feeling a little sheepish over this, and will change the subject.

This is a touching message. Not many of us get a chance at a do-over.

If you're going to read Cole Parker's writings you are going to have to get used to these expressions from the distant past. I don't think he's even aware that he's doing it. Thank goodness his spelling has improved and it no longer looks like Geoffrey Chaucer's.

I read this piece and I have a bad reaction to it. I’d be interested to know if anyone else did. I’m concerned, and more than a little pissed, that this dad seems to feel that it is all right for him to hang his son out for the world to oogle and giggle over (how cute, nine years old and he’s gay!). My impression is that it is not his son that this writer is all about, but himself. He appears to want everyone to know just how insightful and understanding he is about his son’s feelings and yearnings and reaching out, no matter how private or personal those feelings and yearnings are. The writer, full of himself, wants us to know how sensitive he is about this boy’s deepest feelings, and he is not at all reluctant to drag his son’s privacy into the limelight in order to brag on his own ‘insights’. I call him self-centered and clueless.