Uncle Bill Installment #19
I feel like the first 18 installments belong to “PART ONE”. I’m giving you a bit of a palette cleanser here…two installments, #19 & #20. These two pieces are a glance into the original protagonists of this story. Two people we still know little about, Donald Diehl and Uncle Bill. After these, I CAN TELL […]
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 #12
From Nassau, I phoned Bob and we exchanged our usual topics of conversation … the daily junk that old married folk talk about when they’re apart: His golf score. The latest neighborhood news. The size, color, regularity and consistency of our dog’s poop. The mail – there’s a small package from my cousin, Kate. Years […]
Uncle Bill Installment #11
Our final evening on Sal Salvador island arrived. We were to meet Juanita Vernecia at the tip of the island. Juanita’s son owns Dis Da One, a grocery store in North Victoria Hill. When we arrived, we were met with a friendly “Hello!” Garnell (Juanita’s daughter) is a lovely wisp of a thing. Dressed […]
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 #7
Taking Uncle Bill’s cameras to the place he was last known to have been (San Salvador Island in the Bahamas) was, at first, just a little spark of an idea. Learning more about my Uncle Bill over the past few months brought a significant shift in my thoughts, moving this photo project from the recesses […]