Hello All,
I'm going into a new book... book two called Freedom and Animals, but first, to let you know what kind of a family I was from, my brother just sent me this email:

Jo
I wrote this to Dick Strong when he sent me a letter about a super tanker. Thaught you could ad it to your blog.
Jerry

Richard,
When I was an apprentice at GE Lynn Mass, I lived in a room in an old Hotel called the Anchorage at the end of Nahant about 5 miles out into Boston Harbor from Lynn. I had a 12 foot sailboat that I kept moored on a buoy off the shore. After work in the summer months I used to pack a sandwich supper and set sail into the harbor.
I was quite tired after a full days work and would often set the sails and tie the tiller off and sleep with my head hanging off the port side and my feet over the other side. One day while sailing I slept very soundly. I awoke in a dark space and heard strange language from men somewhere above.
When I looked up I could see above the dark roof above my head, was the side of a super Freighter and The noise was the crew yelling at me in some foreign language. They must have stopped the ship to avoid running me over and the huge hull of the ship seemed 20 stories above me.
I had to paddle the boat away with an oar, as I had no wind that close to the ship. One of the crew that could speak English finally started yelling and he was well versed in 4 letter English words.
Needless to say, That was the last time I ever went to sleep on a sailboat.
Jerry Lawrence