By John Manderino

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, played Little League baseball, swam at the public pool, and made model airplanes, mostly fighter jets, sometimes sniffing the glue and floating all the way to Maine to live with my Uncle George, who regularly sent me letters along with postcards showing rocky coastlines and pine trees and moose and bears and grinning fishermen in yellow rain slickers holding up lobsters.

Uncle George said he lived in a lighthouse with a crusty old man named Eben who smoked a clay pipe and hardly ever spoke except to say, “Ayuh.” According to Uncle George, it snowed so much in Maine you needed a dogsled to get around. He said he loved his dogs an awful lot. Their names were Rascal, Queenie, Blackie, Happy, Jimjam, Toto, and Lassie.

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