Uncle Bill Installment #18
Remember that last installment where I said this story was reminiscent of South Pacific The Musical? South Pacific actually had a message. One that had nothing to do with hair shampoo or cross dressing stage shows. South Pacific was about acceptance. It came about that Kendrea, Denise’s daughter, contacted her aunt, Denise’s sister. A sister […]
Uncle Bill Installment #16
I don’t know what my uncle’s relationship was with black coral – or if he even had one. I don’t know much about my uncle’s relationships with other-than-sea-creatures either. I can only speculate. Corals are composed of polyps, each having a ring of tractable tentacles surrounding a mouth. Similar to trees, coral form growth […]
Uncle Bill Installment #15
NOTES FROM A ROAD TRIP. When you live about as far west as you can get in the lower 48, any eastbound road trip consists of days and days of craggy buttes and plains. I used to get antsy going over what seemed like the same landscape every day. Anymore? I see the […]
Uncle Bill Installment #14
So, Mr. X called me. I hate calling him “Mr. X”. It sounds X Files or worse, porno. At 88 years old he sounds very sharp and robust. He didn’t know Uncle Bill well at all. He was Uncle Bill’s roommate at the time of his disappearance. He was on San Salvador Island for a […]
Uncle Bill Installment #13
A small thing happened while I was on San Salvador Island [it was a big thing]. “Marie” posted a comment to one of my blog installments. “My mother talks about this incident at the base. She was a young girl and worked in the mess hall, she remembers Bill very well, she can tell you […]
Uncle Bill Installment #10
Photo by Bill Scales. The following day broke with absolute brilliance over San Salvador Island. We got up early and headed toward the north end of the island for a hike along the coral cliff. During the hike, I shot photos using my uncle’s cameras, etc. while my mind picked over events of the […]
Uncle Bill Installment #9
Photo by Bill Scales. Introduction to Installment #9 : Installment #7 had a lot of hullabaloo (or should I say ballyhoo?) about my initial island impressions. I’d gone to San Salvador island to see where my uncle had disappeared, shoot with his film cameras and, possibly talk to someone who was of age during that […]
Uncle Bill Installment #8
I’d traveled to San Salvador Island in the Bahamas, not knowing much about my long lost uncle and not expecting to find out much. Driving around the Queen’s Highway (the road that rings the island) those first few days, I felt I knew more about the island than I did about my uncle. [I knew […]
Uncle Bill Installment #5
Coming out of the Covid time, I began to delve deeper into the contents of the Ancestry folder that cousin Kate had sent: Most items were dated June, 30 1958 and on into July and August of the same year. Between the time of the investigation and the presenting of the actual investigator’s […]
Uncle Bill: Installment #4
November, 2019. Southeast Michigan. With leftover crusty snow on the ground, some sun and outside temperatures in the 20’s – 30’s, the scene inside the house appeared more like a natural disaster than a home for sale. There had been a bungled estate sale and, in the intervening months, the home my parents’ raised us […]
Uncle Bill : Installment #2
My parents lived in the same house in southeast Michigan for almost 60 years. It was the house I grew up in. Over the course of the final 10 years they lived there, my visits increased as their needs increased. I live in western Washington. My sister was always there for them, but I’d […]
Uncle Bill : Installment #1
My Uncle Bill was always just some old, dead guy. He died 2 years before I was born, which made him not necessarily real to me. What held intrigue for us kids growing up was the fact that he disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. Is the Bermuda Triangle even a thing these days? My mom […]