First mate's log:

September 23, 1968

Now that everyone is here, the Skipper is running the ferry five times a week instead of just twice. It's every weekday, a later run each day. The Monday morning trip leaves the lagoon at nine, and we get to Blenford at 9:30. We stay for two hours, long enough for grocery shopping and other errands, and then we head back at 11:30. Mostly though, it's for the construction guys who spent the weekend on Blenford to come home.

The early afternoon run on Tuesdays leaves here at noon and returns at 3 p.m., so that's more of what the Skipper calls "the housewives' run," although Alice so far goes more than Mrs. Brady. The ladies can usually get home in time to greet the kids coming home from school. Not all of them go every week, since we can only fit 24 passengers on the ferry, but most of them could go if they wanted to.

Wednesday is the late afternoon run, 3 to 6 p.m., and that's more for the men who need to do paperwork and stuff on the big island, although we occasionally get kids and moms going after school.

Thursday is sort of the "couples' run," where we leave at six and return at nine, so it's enough to do dinner and dancing, or maybe a movie instead. The Blenford Cinema gets second-run movies and I go by myself every Thursday. (I saw The Odd Couple again last week, after seeing it with the Skipper after I got back from visiting my family.)

And Friday is when we take half of the construction guys over to the big island. We set out at nine and come home at midnight. In the summer, we'd bring them back on the return trip, but now most of them stay over for a three-day weekend, at the Blenford Inn.

Because it's five runs and 160 people on our island, we have most people book ahead, although we can usually squeeze on a few without reservations. A lot of people, like Mary Ann and most of the kids, don't even leave our island. There's enough here that we have the basics, and definitely more than we did six months ago.

Like I said, there's a police & fire station/post office, although it's mostly the post office that gets used, people writing to friends and family back home, and getting replies every once in awhile. Mr. Engstrom is the mailman and is married to Mrs. Engstrom, who teaches the younger kids, including their son Mark. Mr. Engstrom goes on the Monday through Wednesday runs with us and stops at the Blenford Post Office, which gets and sends mail to the mainland on the ship that goes once a week to and from Hawaii.

Mrs. Smith hopes to have an airstrip on the island in a year or two, and then there will be regular flights to the mainland, at least twice a week! Mr. Howell is tempted to do the same, but he'd probably have to use Mr. Feldman, and you know how that went before. Mrs. Howell thinks it would spoil Brady's Island's charm if it was that easy to get to and from. I worry that it would upset the birds and other animals if planes kept coming and going from our island. Besides, I figure if someone has moved out here, they shouldn't expect to go back to "civilization" all the time. I like the balance we have right now, where I have most of the things I missed when we were marooned, and most of the things I liked when it was just the sixteen of us here.

Anyway, we've got a doctor and a lawyer, and Ugundi is sort of an Indian chief (well, son of a native chief). There's a minister, Reverend Alden, who has a little nondenominational church, and two teachers for the little school. There's a laundry, a tailor's shop, and a shoemaker's, which is great after four years of wearing the same clothes and trying to keep them from turning into rags. (I bought some new clothes after we were rescued of course, even though my brother let me keep his shirt.)

There's a general store, where we can get everyday stuff, which is great after having to make and grow and find almost everything, or hope that it would wash ashore and not turn out to be radioactive or explosive. The Blenford Department Store and some of the other shops are where people, like Mrs. Howell or her servants, go for special items, beyond the basics.

There's a plumber and an electrician, so not only do we have indoor plumbing and electricity, set up by the construction crew, but we have men who can make sure they work. Mr. Howell promises phones in a year or two, but it's more urgent to be able to take a bath and turn on a light than to call people, I think.

There's even an undertaker now, although Mr. Brown prefers the term "mortician." No one has died yet, and he mostly makes furniture, but he'll build caskets and urns and bury and cremate people when he has to. Mr. Brady has had him make a tombstone for Barbara Brady, because he wants his sons to remember and honor their mother.

The Bradys and Martins seem to be getting along, mostly, but there are adjustments to them all living together in their new house, especially since I guess Mr. Dittmeyer's crew made some mistakes in trying to follow Mr. Brady's building plans while he was away getting married, like not putting a toilet in the kids' shared bathroom! Yeah, they're used to outhouses, especially Bobby and Cindy, but it's already leading to some fights, Alice tells me.

The Skipper and I get along better than we used to, although he still gets annoyed with me of course, only now it'll be things like that I have the lamp on while reading comics late at night, instead of not blowing out the candle while reading comics late at night. We like our little house by the lagoon, which is bigger than our hut but still small. We still share a bedroom, but now also a bathroom (yeah, we have a toilet) and a kitchenette. We don't eat at home much, since we eat on Blenford five times a week, and mostly at the diner otherwise.

I spend my free time on the island a lot like before, but the Skipper likes to build boats, both full-size and in a bottle, so sometimes I help him with that. And he's giving boating lessons to some of the men and a few of the women, because he knows that as the population grows, we're not going to be able to take everyone to and from Blenford and the other islands, even if we up ferry service to more than once a day. Plus, he's happy to share his knowledge, after so many years at sea.

The Mosquitoes (yeah, we've forgiven them) have written a song they call "The Ballad of Brady's Island," and part of it goes, "No phone, no lights, no motor cars, not a single luxury, like Robinson Crusoe, as primitive as can be." Now we have lights and we'll get phones, but I don't know about motor cars. The Howells' chauffeur (the poor guy who waited all day for them to come back from the three-hour tour) drives them around in my pedal-car but mostly people just walk, because the settled part, not counting the mansion and the lagoon, is just a few blocks long, and you can get around the rest of the island pretty easy. I've lost track of how many times I've walked all over it. Blenford does have cars and a mechanic and a salesman, but of course it's not like you can drive out of town or anything. Boats make more sense around here.

By the way, the Mosquitoes song, which is sort of their comeback and in a more modern, "psychedelic" style, calls me "brave and sure," when you know I'm neither.