First mate's log:
June 13, 1968
We've been back a month and we're still readjusting. Well, I left Honolulu for a couple weeks to go back to my hometown. My brother said it was OK if I didn't give him his shirt back, but otherwise my family acted like I'd been gone only a couple months, not the six years since I joined the Navy.
My childhood friends though loved hearing stories about my adventures on the island, although I left out the hugging and kissing from two pretty girls, because I knew they wouldn't believe me, especially because one of those girls is a movie star. Not that they believed all the craziness, but they figured I was exaggerating to make better stories. Skinny Mulligan thinks I should write a book, and Walter Stuckmeyer thinks I should try to get revenge on all the visitors who didn't rescue us, but I'm not a vengeful guy, or a writer.
Ginger says she might write a book, or get a ghostwriter to do her "autobiography," you know, "as told to." She's written to me twice and she's trying to revive her career in Hollywood, although mostly reporters want to interview her about her adventures on the island. I've done my best to avoid reporters and I let the Skipper do the talking for us.
Mary Ann and I are pen pals now, but, no, I haven't told her how I feel and I probably won't. Her home is in Kansas and her aunt and uncle need her to help on the farm, especially after she's been gone four years. Maybe I'll see her at reunions, but meanwhile we keep in touch and she tells me about life in Horner's Corners and I tell her about things like how I'm going to work for the Skipper again as soon as he gets his money from the insurance company. (There's a lot of paperwork, starting with him being declared not dead.)
The Professor writes to the Skipper more than to me, since they were always better friends, but I know he's looking for a teaching position for the Fall, and reading lots of scientific journals to see what developments he's missed, including in the space program. He also visits Stanford a lot, since he's staying in the Bay Area.
Mr. Brady is too busy to write but Alice says that he's renting a house and making plans for a house big enough for the combined family after the Christmas wedding, which the Skipper and I are invited to. Mrs. Martin mostly updates me on how her daughters are doing, including how she has to teach Cindy, and reteach Jan, basic things like how to tie shoes and look both ways before crossing the street. (Marcia mostly remembers how to be civilized, but she was seven when we were shipwrecked.)
We hadn't heard from the Howells much, but they just sent me and the Skipper an invitation to go to their mansion in Santa Barbara, to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the shipwreck, on the 26th. They'll pay for us and Mary Ann to fly from out of state, but all the Californians can drive there of course. I don't know if everyone will go, but the Skipper and I are excited about the trip. Yeah, it's weird for me to be traveling so much, after four years hardly ever leaving our island.
Carol Martin's diary:
June 14, 1968
Readjusting to life in America has been hard this first month. And of course, it's not as if we can settle back into our normal lives. Mike and I have tried to shelter our children from the press, but when we took them to Disneyland a week ago, we were mobbed as if we were celebrities! Now I'm not even sure I can send the girls to public school, but I'm not crazy about the idea of them in a private school, where their classmates would be the offspring of the rich and/or famous. And Mike makes good money as an architect, but we'll be middle-class with a large family.
Well, to be honest, he's not making any money at the moment. The world of architecture has changed so much that he's enrolled in summer school at UCLA to have a better chance in the modern job market. (The Professor is self-re-educating, and certainly there are gaps in his knowledge.) Mike hopes to rejoin his old firm. And he is designing a house for us all to live in after the wedding.
He and I have gone on some actual dates—dinners, movies, dancing— and it's been lovely. We're starting to get to know each other, not just kissing and touching but talking, in a way we never had privacy to do on the island. I love him more than ever, although I do see we don't agree on everything, including politics, where he's more conservative than I am. But we're able to discuss things respectfully.
Most of the Navy wives I knew have now been posted far from San Diego, but I did get in touch with some of my old college friends, and that was a disaster. They now have a wide range of political and other opinions and they all got into a vicious argument. I don't remember America as this angry when we left, although of course I understand that the nation and the world have been through a lot. But it hardly touched us on our island.
While I'm grateful to see my parents again and to do all the things I took for granted before, like taking a long hot bath when I need one, I have moments when I miss the island. Not the dangers we faced, but the people. I'm in touch with everyone, yet it's not the same. For instance, when Mary Ann asks my advice in a letter about her relationship with Herbert, a boy she had a couple dates with in high school but never considered a boyfriend then, although maybe now, it's not the same as her confiding in me in my hut while my girls were at the playground. I want to tell her that, no, she is not an old maid at 23, no matter what the standards are in Horner's Corners, and she shouldn't keep dating someone she's indifferent to, but it's harder to say those things in a letter.
I will hopefully get to talk to her in person soon though, because the Howells have invited all of us to their Santa Barbara mansion for the fourth anniversary of the shipwreck, on the 26th. I definitely want to go, although I am nervous about the girls' table manners in such a posh setting. Not that they, or the Brady boys, were growing up as savages, but their island manners were certainly more relaxed than I realized at the time. I think the Howells will understand, however.
I have invited everyone to the wedding, but that's still six months away, and if I already miss them this much after one month, I don't know how I'll last that long.
