The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

2 OF COURSE, things rarely happen as we expect they will. I wasn’t demoted. Instead, Robby Haskins was elevated beyond Commodore, to the newly created rank of Commodore of the First Water. (I had, as I mentioned in my demotion speech, become a Commodore by accident, when Mr. Summers confused Robby Haskins’s sizes with mine and ordered a Commodore’s uniform to fit me. Haskins, a short, fat boy, cal...

1 ON THE NIGHT BEFORE the first official meeting of the Babbington Flotilla of the Young Tars, I paced the floor of my attic bedroom, certain that, the next day, as the first official piece of business at the first official meeting, I would be demoted from the rank of Commodore, probably all the way down to Swabby. The likelihood of my being demoted didn’t worry me half as much as the likelihood t...

Preface “Do you know what it is I dislike about  writing?—All the scratchings out and touchings up that are necessary . . . . It’s the power of revising that makes writing such a colorless affair . . . . That’s what seems to me so fine about life. It’s like fresco-painting—erasures aren’t allowed.” Lafcadio, in Andre Gide’s, Les Caves du Vatican ( Lafcadio’s Adventures ), translated by Dorothy Bus...

20 AND THEN, some four years ago, I was sitting in Corinne’s Fabulous Fruits of the Sea one night, talking to Porky White, complaining along familiar lines.     “It still isn’t enough, Porky,” I said. “Now that I’m Roger Drake, I ought to be satisfied, but I’m not. I still keep trying to write that big book about myself, that book as rich and various as a good clam chowder, loaded with useful and...

I GOT THE JOB advertised on the back of the clipping that Robert sent me, and for the last nine years I have been the only Roger Drake. Since the series had become dated in its topical references and in the props that the succession of earlier Roger Drakes had used, my first task was to revise all the earlier books, in sequence. Thereby, of course, I got the opportunity to bring the books more in...

19 NEARLY EIGHT YEARS LATER, I was earning my living as a writer: writing advertising copy, brochures, recipe booklets, press releases, answers to inquiries, and requests for brochures and recipe books. I was working for the Babbington Clam Council. It was, I told myself, an apprenticeship, and when asked about my work, I was quick to enumerate the many things I had learned from it. I tried not to...

18 ALMOST FOUR YEARS LATER, Albertine and I were sitting in Dudley Beaker’s living room one evening. We had come for dinner, and we had been having a wonderful time. The conversation had been lively, and Eliza had, I think, genuinely enjoyed our youthful volubility. Albertine and I were so full of ourselves and of each other just then that in conversation we never really confronted a subject direc...

17 ONE SUMMER NIGHT, when my struggles had only begun, Albertine and I were sitting on Big Grandfather’s front porch. We had been spending the summer with Grandfather, in his house. Grandmother had died during the year, and our presence in the house was supposed to cheer Grandfather up, to keep the place from echoing with sorrow and loneliness. We felt that we hadn’t succeeded, and we had become c...

16 MY ABILITY TO IMAGINE myself as Larry Peters improved with time, and I must admit that I used it now and then to get away. And I have continued to do so. I’m just old enough now—as I write these words I am forty years and thirty-eight days old—to be able to admit without embarrassment that I never really abandoned most of my childhood habits and interests, certainly not the pleasant pastime of...

15 AS TIME PASSED, the snapshot stayed in my mind. I could recover the picture of myself sitting on the dock whenever I wished, just by closing my eyes and willing it to appear. I assumed that it was a memory, but unlike most memories, the picture became clearer with time, more detailed, more precise. I could feel my sensations better, more clearly, as time passed. At the same time, however, much...

14 SOME EIGHT YEARS LATER, on a cold February afternoon during my sophomore year at Hargrove University, I sat in Cranston Library, trying to study for a mathematics examination. The library was overheated; I was sitting in an overstuffed leather wing chair, the type of chair that I have, ever since my days at Hargrove, thought of as the only type of chair proper for a library. Snow was falling ou...

13 GREAT-GRANDMOTHER LEROY was ill for months, but I didn’t realize how seriously ill she was until Grandfather moved her downstairs from her rooms in the attic. She moved into the room across the hall from what had been my father’s bedroom when he was a boy and was now the bedroom I used when I visited. She never left the bed. For several weeks before she died, she didn’t speak. Sometimes when I...

12 I THINK THAT MOST READERS of the Larry Peters books dreamed of being a friend of Larry’s, of being found washed up on Kittiwake Island one morning, carried to the big house on an improvised litter, nursed back to health by Marie and Mrs. Peters, and then adopted into the Peters circle. The attitude inspired in me by the Larry Peters books was fundamentally different. I didn’t want to be like La...

11 MARIE, THE PETERSES’ MAID, made my heart go pit-a-pat the moment she first appeared in one of the adventures, pushing the kitchen door open with a beautifully rounded hip, stepping into the dining room on those long and luscious legs, carrying a tray of blueberry pancakes, just as, I’m sure, she made the hearts of most of the boys who read the Larry Peters books beat faster whenever she appeare...

     “What was that?” whispered Larry.     “I didn’t hear anything,” said Lucinda.     “I think someone’s coming,” said Larry. “I’m sure I heard someone laugh out there in the dark.” He switched his flashlight off. He and Lucinda stood silently in the darkness.     “I don’t hear anything,” said Lucinda.     “I’m sure now,” said Larry. “I heard someone laugh, and I heard footsteps, the footsteps of...

10 LARRY’S SISTER, Lucinda, was as cute as a button and smart as a whip. She and Larry loved trading wisecracks; in fact, I realize, reflecting on the Peterses now and bringing to mind my feelings toward them when I was a boy, that the wisecracking and playful teasing among them was meant to serve as a sign of the love they felt for one another, something I didn’t understand at the time. To me the...

9 LARRY’S MOTHER was entirely occupied with domestic affairs, although she didn’t actually do much work. Marie did most of the cooking, though Mrs. Peters had several dishes for which she was famous: her chow-chow relish, piccalilli, one-eyed Egyptians, hoppin’ John, and pigs-in-blankets were family favorites. Marie made the beds, did the laundry, ordered supplies for delivery from Murky Bay, and...

     Mr. Peters cleared his throat. It often occurred to him that if it wasn’t one thing it was another; if a radiator wasn’t leaking, for example, the wisteria was dying. A little sigh escaped from Mrs. Peters. Hector whimpered and fell to the floor again, rolling over on his back so that Lucinda could scratch his flabby belly, but her attention had returned to the painting.     “It’s very—creati...

8 THE READER COULD BE SURE, at the beginning of any Larry Peters book, that Larry would soon be up to something interesting, for Larry shared his father’s ingenuity for creating amusing diversions, devising interesting endeavors. Often, these were obviously derivative: after his father suggested building a raft to chart the Gulf Stream, Larry suggested casting adrift bottles containing questionnai...

     Mr. Peters was inventive, a leader, a loving father, and more. He was something that most fathers of my acquaintance were not: a dignified man. One could see, too, that he bore as if he were a block of granite the cares that can fall on any family, taking the full weight, so that life should rest lightly on the shoulders of the others. The reader saw this quality at once, at first meeting, wh...

7 LARRY’S FATHER was everything a boy might hope for, a real pater­familias, who considered himself in control, who entertained few doubts about himself, who assumed that he was the true head of the Peters ménage. But beyond that, his work made him unusual as fathers go: he was an artist of sorts. His artistic impulses had two manifestations. One was the knickknack business, of course, and that co...

     Certainly Rocky impressed Larry and the reader with his strength, his predisposition to act, to do something about whatever situation arose, even if he did not often take the time to consider whether what he was doing was in every respect, in all its ramifications, right. More surprising, however, and, for me at least, more welcome, was the fact that Rocky was continually impressed by qualiti...

6 LARRY’S FRIEND, buddy, copain , comrade, Rocky King, was the perfect pal for someone like Larry—or for someone like me. He was big and strong, older, a young man more than a boy. He had a past about which we knew little, other than the fact that he had lost his parents at an early age and had had to shift for himself, a necessity that had toughened him. When he first appeared on the scene, in th...

5 LARRY WAS NEVER BORED. That is, he was never bored within the books. I knew from experience that everyone my age was bored for a significant amount of time every day. It may have been the absence of boredom that made me truly understand how much of Larry’s life was missing from the Adventures of Larry Peters, that made me begin to understand how distorted was the picture of Larry’s life that we,...

4 THE PETERS FAMILY seemed, to me, quite rich, rich in all the ways that I would have considered a family rich at that time. They owned a whole island, after all. They had a maid, about whom I will have more to say later. They owned three boats: a working boat, a barge really, that they used for carrying freight from the mainland, and, in The Missing Garage , used to transport an entire Esso gas s...