Published: 6 May 2019

Bert said he’d go over with us as there was a book he wanted to get and after dinner the two 9-year-olds went through the DVDs to see if there was anything they had missed watching and just couldn’t live without seeing and I was going through the three books I had checked out to see if I wanted to hold on to the two I hadn’t finished yet (one could go back, the other I would try to renew, and the third I had finished).

After breakfast and the clean up after, we met Jim at the cottage as he was saying his goodbyes to Rusty and Glenn as they left for work and with Bert we left for the library. Several people out working on cleaning up after the storm asked Bert how things were going, and he said that his new sons had taken care of everything while he and Dan were in DC taking care of his mother’s estate, and the burnt tree was scheduled to be removed from the front lawn next week and then the front of the house could be repainted.

We dropped off our returns at the front desk at the library, and while there Bert had them issue us three guys new library cards now that he and Dan had custody of Jake and me, and Jim was now in a stable home with two guardians. I felt really good about this, the library was an entity that accepted the fact that Jake and I were now legally residents of Key West and under the care of these two men who were acting like caring parents (or guardians) should toward us.

The guy at the desk, Michael, even congratulated us guys for having gotten great sets of parents and told us to come to him if we had any problems at all in the library. We thanked him and then I took the two 9-year-olds into the children’s room as Bert went to find the book he wanted in the adult room. It didn’t take the two kids long to find a couple of movies and a book or two each, but I was dithering between a few movies and finally realized I could check out both, now that I had a library card of my own, so I took both of them and went to find one book, as I had one back in my room already. By the time we all got checked out and walked back to the house Dan had finished what he had been doing in their home office, which was trying to line up a painter to repaint the front of the house after the tree removal next week.

Dan and Bert were really lucky that the city had declared the tree a public hazard because otherwise they would have had to wait possibly months before a tree service would be able to schedule the removal, but because of the huge size of the tree, and the fact that other homes, or pedestrians on the sidewalk, or vehicles passing on the street could be hit by the tree if it did fall during a storm or a strong wind, not to mention the damage a direct hit would cause to their house. One of the other things Dan had to deal with that morning was the electric company who was now claiming that the tree actually caused the transformer to blow during the storm.

Dan knew different, I had described everything from the moment I had woke from sleep that night in great detail, and Glenn even had photos of the sparking transformer and a record of the phone call he had made to the emergency crew at the electric company that morning and details of how many other officials at the city’s Emergency Management Center he had to talk to or send video of the inflamed Banyan to be able to get that phone number in the first place. He had finally gotten a hold of a vice president of the electric company and convinced the man of the proper sequence of events that early morning. He told me that he had threatened a big lawsuit for not only the loss of the tree, but for the repairs to the house and damages for the danger his sons had been put in trying to save the house. Hearing him say that last part made me feel like Jake and I were really lucky we had run into Bert and Dan that day in the resale shop.

We had settled into a routine at the house. Once or twice a week we three kids would go to the library and get new materials to watch or read and sometimes to partake in the crafts workshops they offered, some days we spent around the pool, sometimes Bert and Dan joined us there, sometimes we cooked out, and other times Rusty and Glenn joined us there after they got out of work. Every couple of weeks us three boys would take care of the yard and really spruce it up, even the new grass where the Banyan and all its feeder shoots had been. Dan wasn’t a big fisherman or anything, but he did arrange for us guys to all go out on a fishing boat every so often. One day in late June he even hired a catamaran for the day, and we all went to the Dry Tortugas to Fort Jefferson where we had a private tour of the old fort. That was a fun trip, and on the way back, while Glenn and Rusty were talking to Jim, Dan and Bert sat with Jake and me and asked if we wanted to be adopted by them.

I think I wimped out at that, because I got all choked up and the tears were running down my face and all I could do was nod up and down at them. Jake had handled it a bit better and he was hugging the two men as he got a bit weepy himself. Bert shifted to sit right beside me, and he hugged me close, whispering that they had grown to not only admire us, but to love us and they wanted us to be permanent members of a family together with them. Dan spoke up and said that he thought that since we were all in agreement that he and Bert would try to get it all taken care of as soon as they could.

We were going to belong in a family again, not the one we had grown up in with our Mom, but one with two parents, granted they were two men, but both Jake and I had been comfortable with them since day one and we didn’t care, we just knew that we liked them a lot and they had shown they trusted us, even before they knew our whole story. Jake wanted to go on the other side of the boat to tell Jim, but Rusty told him to hold off a bit, as the same discussion was going on over there between the three of them, Jim, Rusty, and Glenn. Although I had thought the trip was one of the coolest boat rides I had ever been on, that talk was one I would remember for the rest of my life.

During the next week Dan took the time to show us some listings for property in Western Mass. that he thought looked like places he and Bert would like to own, as well as the property here in Key West. He explained that they did usually go up to spend time with Bert’s mother while she was on vacation, and now that she had died and left them some money and other properties they thought they would sell, they could not only afford a vacation home for themselves out in the country, but still keep the Key West house for the school year, as long as Jake and I found we liked the schools here, and they would still have more than enough by the time her properties had been sold off to ensure our college educations if that was what we wanted to do at the time. I didn’t actually weep when he told me this, but I did hug the stuffing out of him and I told him no one had ever treated us so good before, with maybe the exception of our Mom, but she never had the money to take us anywhere on vacations, but she always tried to make sure we were happy.

Dan told me he thought she had done a wonderful job raising us and they were proud to be filling in for her. Then we went outside to join the others in the pool. Later that week, I think it was Thursday, Bert called Jake and me in from the yard where we had been playing with Jim, and he told Jim it would only take us five or ten minutes and we’d be right back, but if he wanted to come inside and sit at the kitchen table to wait for us he could. Jim bounded up the stairs and went to sit in the air conditioning in the kitchen with a glass of Iced tea Bert poured for him as Jake and I went into the home office to see Dan and Bert soon followed and we all sat on chairs as Dan had said he had some information for us.

He started by telling us that Derrick had been charged with several offenses and word had just come to Bert and Dan that to avoid a trial he had accepted a plea deal for fifteen years without parole. The estate of our mother was now all ours, Jake and mine. Bert spoke up and said that because of our ages the house and land would have to be either sold or rented out and the proceeds from this would be placed in trust for when we were older, most likely 21. He said that by selling off Derrick’s car they felt that might make up for some of the things he had done to us both, and those monies would be added to the trust funds. On another note an adoption hearing was now set up for the middle of July, and after that we were all going on a family vacation, of sorts, to New England, to the town he and I had looked at for farms for sale. He asked us not to say anything to Jim about our adoption hearing, or the vacation just yet, as he and his fathers would be having their own hearing right after ours and his fathers wanted to tell him about that themselves as soon as they got home from work. He said Glenn and Rusty would tell him about the vacation too, as they were all going with us.

I didn’t know what was more exciting, getting adopted, or the trip. Getting adopted meant that another round of home evaluations would be carried out by co-workers of Rusty, who had done the initial evaluation for the original emergency placement orders. But as much fun as that was (keeping our bedrooms really neat, I admit that Jake was better at it than me) and sitting through a bunch of interviews, the really exciting thing was the trip, because Jake and I had never flown before, and Dan had told us that it would be two separate flights each way to get us up to New England and back. First a smaller plane to get us from Key West to a bigger airport and then a big plane to get us from either Miami, FT. Lauderdale or Atlanta, GA to the airport in Connecticut closest to where we wanted to end up, Western Massachusetts.

The closer we got to the adoption hearings though, we started to get nervous. I asked Dan about these hearings and what could happen if the adoptions were not granted, would Jake and I, or Jim have to go to a group home or something? He told me that the guardianship papers they now had for us boys were for permanent placements and even if for some reason the adoptions were denied, we’d still be living with them.

I couldn’t believe some of the questions the judge asked me when we had our one to one meeting right before the hearing was started. It was really offensive, but Rusty had met with all three of us guys and explained that these types of questions were necessary to make sure some pervert wasn’t trying to get their hands on a live-in plaything. He had to explain this to the two 9-year-olds, but I knew what he was talking about and I understood, but it was still embarrassing to have to be asked these questions, like did either Dan or Bert ever touch my privates or try to get me to touch theirs? Of course, I knew that they hadn’t, and I was adamant that they hadn’t, and the judge seemed pleased to hear this. I told him that these two guys were the best thing to have happened to my brother and myself since our Mom had died. Without knowing it we had been denied the chance to have a real father in our lives and these two men were the best I had ever seen. They were caring, loving, respectful, and they treated us like equals to them. We were not told to do stuff, we were asked to, and always with an explanation. They discussed stuff with us, even while we were separated during the storm, but still they checked in with us every day and sometimes several times a day, even when the house phone went out. In the simplest terms I could come up with I told the judge, they cared. In my book that was important.

I guess the judge agreed with me as he only spent 5 minutes with Jake when it was his turn after me and within a half hour we were adopted. We now had a dad and a daddy. In about an hour our friend Jim did too. The cookout that night was a lot of fun as dads and daddies were answering to calls from all three of us new sons, and also letting other friends know they were now officially family men.

One week later saw all seven of us heading for Miami to catch our next flight to New England for a two-week shopping vacation. In the intervening months offers had been made on Bert’s mother’s properties and a lot of deals with moving companies and storage facilities had been worked out and a lot of consulting with all of us as purchase prices were ironed out and the Realtors posted to Bert the pictures of what furnishings were not included in the sales. Bert wanted to make sure that we all had a say in what they would have placed in storage for use in our new vacation home, which both families were buying together.

Once we landed in Connecticut Dan called the rental company he had reserved a van from and soon we were on their bus to their rental office on a side road of the airport and we loaded our luggage and then ourselves into the van for the hour and a half drive to the hotel in Holyoke we were going to be staying at for our vacation. The hotel was on the outskirts of the city, near a big mall and easy highway access. It had a great courtyard with an outdoor pool and an indoor one next to a gym. The two younger boys had a room of their own, as did I and each pair of our dads. Our four rooms were right next to each other on the second floor and my room had a view over the outdoor pool.

The next day we all piled in the van after breakfast and Dan drove us to the small town of Granby. For a small New England town, it sure had a lot going for it. The views alone were amazing. None of us kids had ever seen mountains across rolling fields before and we certainly hadn’t seen farms and pastures with cows in them, or horses for that matter. Our riding had been on flat island land and by the shore, but from what we could see you could ride for miles and miles out here. It was so lush and green, and Bert explained that in the fall the leaves on the trees turned all different reds and oranges with yellow for some of the trees and then as the temperatures turned cooler the leaves would fall. That didn’t happen on the islands we were from.

We actually toured three properties the adults had chosen on the internet to see. Each time an agent met us and showed us the house, then they would lead us through the out buildings. There was one place we kids really liked, but when we all trouped down into the basement there was a bad smell and Bert asked us kids to go back upstairs and the adults all followed real soon. It appeared that basement was a damp one and Bert was convinced there was mold down there and that property was taken off our list.

That late afternoon found us poolside at the hotel, and while I kept a watch on the two 9-year-olds the adults were near and they discussed how much the renovations would cost for the other two properties we had seen that afternoon. They didn’t think either would be worth it, so they were pinning their hopes on the next three we would all see the next day.

The first two we saw the next day were more of the same, really run-down buildings, unkempt fields, decaying orchards, small amounts of acreage and heavy road traffic as both parcels were off busy Route 202 running through town. But the third property was something else entirely. Jake, Jim and I had been getting pretty restless after the first two duds, but this third one was really good looking, nice trimmed lawn on each side of the drive into the property, the outbuildings looking fresh and no chipped or flaking paint anywhere, the pasture fences nice and white and not crumbling, but fully intact, and there were horses out in the pastures! This is what we three had come for!!

I guess we were a little early for this appointment. The last place had been so run down we really hadn’t spent much time there and there didn’t appear to be anyone here to meet us yet. Our dads were going over the listing sheet they had gotten off the internet as we sat in the air-conditioned van and we boys learned that this used to be a bed and breakfast farm, mostly used by the parents of students at the colleges over the mountain in Amherst, but people would come from the cities to see what it was like at a riding farm. Yeah, there were riding trails here; riding trails, a big swimming pool, two barns for the horses, forty-five acres of cultivated fields leased out to two local growers, two wranglers to tend to the horses and the barns, and a twenty room house just around the next bend in the well-kept drive. Bert gasped when the house came into view, as did I.

Dan told us all that the house was on its own five acre plot and there were actually two residences within the house itself, which had drawn their attention, so Rusty, Glenn and Jim could have their own family space. The property was too overdeveloped for the former owners to keep, they had gone bankrupt developing this place and only the two wranglers were still on staff, but at one time there had been up to thirty locals on staff. Once parked by the front of the big house we all exited the van and gazed up at the three-story house and looked over at the pool area off to the left, separating the house from the really big two story garage, which had living quarters for some staff on the second floor.

As we stood there looking around, we heard horses galloping toward us and soon from the left two guys on horseback came clattering up to us on the circular drive in front of the big house. These guys looked like they belonged on those horses. One of the fit young men asked if we were the party looking at the property today. Dan reached his hand up to him and introduced himself, his husband Bert, and his two children, Jake and me. Glenn then shook the young man’s hand and introduce his husband Rusty, and their son Jim.

The young man then introduce himself as Dennis Moore and his partner next to him as Tony Riley. They had dismounted during this exchange and they soon had the two horses tethered to an old hitching post to the right of the house on the lawn there where the horses began to graze as the men walked back to us. They seemed way pleased to have met us and began telling us all about the place, as we all walked toward the pool area. They told us they had worked here for the last three years and they handled about twenty horses, the two barns, and the basic lawn care after the property was foreclosed on. Dan asked if they were employed by the former owners or the bank, and they explained that they had been employed by the former owners, but after the foreclosure the bank paid them to try and maintain the property and the animals to make the showings more attractive to potential buyers.

They offered to show us their quarters when Bert explained we were about a half hour early for our appointment with the Realtor handling the place for the bank, so we trouped toward the garage building as Dennis and Tony were peppered with questions by the adults as we three guys were more interested in going for a swim. But we all went into the building and up a staircase to the second floor where the guys let us in to see their apartment. They explained they both shared one bedroom to give them the second bedroom to use as a study room, as both guys were still going to college and studying business and farm management at the big state University over in Amherst. They seemed really pleased that two gay couples and their children might be moving in the big house, and I’m sure our dads noticed that, I mean if I could they most definitely did, right?

Den and Tony took us around their whole apartment, which really was nice and big, and it even had a big kitchen and Tony offered us kids some homemade chocolate chip cookies and man they were delicious! He started to pour us a small glass of milk each when Dan reached over us and snagged a cookie from the plate, and the other adults all did the same. We enjoyed those cookies, and then we got a tour of the pool area and I could tell Bert and Rusty really liked that big space with plenty of patio around the whole pool, and a retractable structure that would allow almost year-round swimming.

While there we could hear another car drive up in front of the house, so we all moved back to the front to meet with the Realtor. It only took one look through the house and I could tell that all of us were in agreement, this was a fantastic house on a great property. The house as I said, had two separate living quarters, one with about seven rooms where the owners actually had lived with their family, the rest of it was where they conducted their B&B business. Several of the 20+ rooms in total, I think I counted seven, were stripped of their furnishings and or accessories, like TV’s and arm chairs in some rooms you’d expect those things to be in, but that really didn’t make much difference as Bert said there was plenty we could have shipped here from where he had stored all his mother’s furnishings when her properties had been sold. He said that in a whisper as Dan and Rusty and Glenn were off speaking with the Realtor in the kitchen area and we were standing in what the Realtor had called the Great Room, which Bert called the family room of the house with the huge kitchen connected to this really big sitting area, without furniture, that we kids were all standing in with Tony and Den (he had asked us all to call him that as only his mother called him Dennis). While Rusty and Bert and the Realtor were looking in the pantries and the laundry room Dan asked Tony and Den to take a short walk with him and they went back down to the home office and left us boys to explore the kitchen where we peeked into the cupboards we could reach. No cookies.

When the adults had had a chance to talk things over in one of the barns and the Realtor was showing us boys the horses there, the adults came up with a price to offer on the property that reflected what Dan had learned from Den and Tony and his computer research. At first the Realtor pulled a face, but true to her business side she wrote up the offer and our dads all signed it and then Dan wrote out a check for a deposit and she told them she would be in touch. She actually drove off while we were still getting into the van, but Dan stopped us as he said he had a call to make before we drove off, so we kids all ran back to the closest pasture where we were greeted by about eight horses at the fence and we spent some time rubbing and scratching them as the adults had somewhat of a pow wow around Dan and his mobile phone and when he shut the phone down they all shook hands and started congratulating each other.

They soon all walked over to us and told us they had just bought the property, that we didn’t have to wait for the Realtor to get back to them, the property was owned by the national chain of banks both sets of dads used and that Dan had a really good friend from his FBI days who worked in the bank’s corporate offices and their offer would be accepted by the end of the business day. That all sounded good, but us kids wanted to know something even more important, were the horses included? The adults all laughed, and Dan said that they were and that after the sale had closed, Den and Tony were going to stay on and take care of them for us, and be responsible for leasing out the forty plus plantable acres.

Den and Tony shook hands all around and then were off to collect their two horses from the side lawn of the house and we piled into the van to go swimming at the hotel. We had a bunch of important questions, like; Who got the bedroom with the balcony over the front door? When were we coming back? How long would we stay when we did? And the important one, how many times a year did we get to come back? The dads all laughed and said that they were still working on that, but that as soon as the papers for the house were all signed, maybe in a week, we would be moving into the house, as Bert was going to contact the storage facility and have the furniture in storage shipped up here and we would spend at least a couple of weeks here getting the house all set up furniture wise and then we would have to return home for the last week of August for us boys to be able to start the new school year.

We thought that was great news and so our pool time was a bit more enjoyable than it was going to be originally as the adults jumped in and we had a blast until it was time to get cleaned up for dinner. We all had a treat that night as Den and Tony had told our dads about a diner out on the main road through the town that served Maine lobster rolls and we all ordered one for our evening meal. They came with the usual sides, but they served the best fries, they were soft on the inside, but crispy on the outside and were the perfect side to the yummy lobster roll. These were even better than the few I’d had with Mom growing up. Those were made from Florida lobster and I thought those were great, but these Maine ones were fantastic.

We did do a lot of fun things over the next several days and on the fifth we kids went with our dads to sign the papers to buy the property we had all liked, the horse farm, the former B&B. Less than an hour after the papers were all signed and Bert had handed over the balance of the money, from what I heard a combined amount from all four of the men, and handshakes exchanged by all the adults in the room, the sets of keys were handed over and we were on the way to the old B&B.

Den and Tony were there talking to the drivers of the two moving vans waiting there and soon the house was opened up and things started happening. The crews from the moving company began to unload first one van and then the other. Bert and Rusty were directing the delivery guys here and there in the big house, some items going into the separate smaller unit of seven rooms where Jim and his dads would stay when they came up, and the rest Bert went about arranging where he wanted them in the big empty family room as well as the unfurnished bedrooms and filling in where there were missing pieces. Bedrooms were now fully furnished as were the other rooms and the gaps in the smaller unit. Any excess was put into one of the many storage rooms in the big house which was basically the third floor. That space actually looked good with some furnishings in it.

We all pitched in to get the rooms neatened up the way the dads wanted and then went to help get the separate unit ready for our three friends. We went back to the hotel for dinner and then we packed up and checked out, returning to spend the night in our new home in the country. It now seemed like a good thing that we had spent so much time getting the rooms set up this afternoon, as all we had to do now was to unpack our bags in our own rooms and get settled in for the next several days. Jake made short work of getting unpacked and went to help Jim do the same and I dawdled a bit, really liking this room the dads had let me pick.

It was a big room with a sitting area with a desk in it and I had a walk-in closet and my own big shower bath. This was a great room and I knew I was lucky to have it, hell, I was lucky to have been adopted by Bert and Dan in the first place. I was doubly lucky that Jake and I were together still and would be now for the rest of our childhood and joined even further throughout our lives by our two dads. Wow, that was something I never thought I’d be saying, my two dads, but it felt right to me and I know it did to Jake. Except for Rusty and Glenn I couldn’t think of two guys I admired more than dad or daddy and I felt lucky that they liked us enough to go through all the legal stuff to make us their sons. Rusty and Glenn came a close second, but I realized that I was growing to love Dan and Bert, and wished we had always had them as our fathers.

The next day was sure a lot of fun. After breakfast we all met at the first barn and met up with Tony and Den and we had a refresher course in preparing our horses for riding, and we all pitched in to outfit the two smaller mares that had been designated as Jake and Jim’s mounts. Tony led us out into the big pasture with Den following, making suggestions here and there to help us get used to riding again. We had a great time and after the pros were assured most of us had a good idea of how to handle our horses, Jim being the least experienced, we were off on a trail that just skirted the fields, so we all got to see the exact layout of the property.

As I said, we all had a great time and upon our return we groomed our rides and cleaned our tack so all would be ready for our next excursion. The rest of the day was spent around and in the pool.

That’s pretty much how the rest of our week went, with the exception of Dan contacting our old schools and getting our records transferred to the schools we’d be attending in Key West starting the last week of August, and Bert and Rusty taking us three kids shopping for new school clothes. That was a lot of fun, really. It was our first time in a big mall and Rusty and Bert made it all a lot of fun as they were even fussier than us when it came to choosing clothes for us. While we were out, they both spotted things they wanted for their living spaces and of course Dan and Glenn teased them about letting them go shopping together! As it got closer to our leaving for home there were more meetings with Tony and Den and the adults. They went over the expected revenues for the field rentals, and the proposal to open the trails on the property to the public, for a fee, and a horse rental if necessary. The upshot of all this would be to help the property to earn some money to be able to essentially pay for its own upkeep as much as possible.

There was a lot of discussion between all the adults about when visits up here would be and by looking online Dan was able to coordinate visits for us during our spring break from school, and for most of the summer next year. When Dan and Bert told us this, we were of course excited, but Jake asked if there would still be snow on the ground in April when our spring vacation was, and Bert said he didn’t think so. Jake asked what snow was like and both Dan and Bert told him it was cold and wet and might look nice in pictures, but it was slippery and cold and very uncomfortable to be in and during the winter months you could get a ton of it at a time and it would be so cold outside that it could last for months.

Of course we had only seen it on TV or in a movie and Jake told me later that he was a bit disappointed but he guessed it wasn’t really a big deal, and he’d miss his little horse when we were in Key West, I told him that a part time horse was better than no horse at all, and he finally saw what I meant and he stopped being sullen about the whole thing, but Dan did ask me what the problem was, as he had noticed Jake was a bit disappointed by the length of time until our next visit here.

I tried to explain about us not ever having seen, or been in, real snow before. Dan told me then that they were thinking of a quick trip back up here for Christmas, but that the two “working stiffs”, Rusty and Glenn, just couldn’t get the time off for another week off around the holidays, and after the new year they would be eligible through their jobs for more vacation time, so that was why the spring break trip was being made, it was the soonest that everyone could get away at the same time. I told Dan not to worry about it, that Jake did understand, that we had talked it through, but it took Jake a little time to process things, but he did understand the reasoning when the vacation times had been chosen.

Did I tell you about our swimming pool? Oh yeah, I guess I mentioned it a few times, but did I tell you why I liked it? Probably not, as I feel like I ought to tell someone, maybe my new dads, but I’m just not ready for that yet, maybe sometime soon. But the reason I liked it so much was because both Dennis (Den) and Tony looked so good in those tiny swimming tight little trunks they wore. I know, I know, that my dads’ would say that at my age it was too early for me to really know if I was gay or straight, but those two guys being almost naked around us was a real turn on to me.

I’d watch them tossing Jim and Jake around in the pool and I sometimes watched as my dads’ nudged each other once in a while, while they also watched, and once Rusty had grabbed Glenn’s arm and rushed him to their rooms after asking my dads’ to please watch Jim for them for just a little while and Bert telling them only if he and Dan could go off for a while when they got back. It dawned on me later what they had been doing, only after I had to excuse myself to use the bathroom in my room for about seven and a half minutes myself. I just knew after that wank, that I should have a talk with my dads’, but I was going to do it one night after Jake was in bed in his own room, or sleeping over at Jim’s, this was definitely one of those talks I didn’t want to have with my little brother hanging around.

Our trip back home was not the smoothest of back to back flights and all the adults were kind of pissed about the whole situation. On the big flight to Miami on our return the flight crew tried to split us all up, even more than we had to be on our flights up, and when Dan got in their faces and pulled out his FBI ID and Glenn pulled out his Detective’s badge and ID they backed off, but not before creating a big deal out of nothing, really. The same thing happened on our return flight, trying to separate the two-nine-year-olds from the rest of us, and the pilot had to come out of the cockpit with the co-pilot to see what the micromanaging stewardess was up to now. Eventually she was escorted off the plane and a replacement for her was soon found and an hour later we had landed, and we were apologized to up one side and down the other.

That didn’t sit well with Dan and before the next day was over, he had signed us up for an air charter jet service, saying he wouldn’t ever fly commercial flights again. Over the next couple of days, we boys were psyching ourselves up for school, Jake and I would be transfer students and new to all our classmates, with the exception for Jake, he knew Jim.

Our actual first days of the new school year were not bad, not bad at all. Jake and Jim were in the same fourth grade class as both would be ten in October, and I was a new eighth grader as my birthday was not until the spring. Jake and Jim had only the one classroom, but I had to move from class to class just as in my previous school year and so it wasn’t the same students in each classroom as the class before, but I soon noticed that there was a core of about seven of us that had the same schedule and the same class schedule. One of these core students was also new to the middle school and we began talking to each other as we negotiated the halls in between classes, and began to sit next to each other in those classes. His name is Simon, Simon Curry. Simon was from New England he told me, and when I told him I had just come back from there he asked where and I told him a small town in Massachusetts named Granby. He was totally awed, telling me his family had moved from Amherst, just on the other side of the mountain.

I was busy watching the big grin on his face and the way his green eyes sparkled as he told me that and I just knew somehow that we were going to be real friends. I asked if he had ever ridden horseback and he lit up again, telling me that his dads had both worked at UMass in Amherst and he had had riding lessons there for the last five years, ever since his dads had adopted him. I didn’t think he had meant to reveal so much, or so quickly, but as he had started to blush I told him that if it was OK with my dads’ I’d like him to come and ride with us sometime when we were all up North, as our vacation home there had lots of horses and we had lots of trails to ride.

We shared a table at lunch with a group from our classes and we had a chance to share some more information about ourselves, and boy did we have a lot in common. He too had been orphaned when his mother had died (in a car accident) and he had been taken in by a couple of guys he had known as friends of his mother and they adopted him soon after. They had grown tired of the winters up North so when they had both had been offered jobs at the junior college just over on Stock Island, they had taken them. They had found an apartment in a big old house just around the corner from us on Elizabeth Street and had moved in just last month, while we were away.

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