First mate's log:

September 2, 1969

The Skipper agreed to not run the ferry on Labor Day, since a lot of places on Blenford would be closed anyway, and it's not like we don't go over there a bunch the rest of the week. Plus, I think he was almost as curious as I was about BITV, although I was the one who spent the whole day in front of the set. I couldn't talk him into a color TV, since he thinks black & white is good enough, but he grew up at a time when even movies were in black & white. Still, it's better than no TV, like we had here for five years.

Yesterday I got up early and watched the test pattern and then the weather and maritime report, even though we weren't heading out that day. Then I watched Ginger's talk-news morning show, with the Beebe Gallini interview pre-recorded. Ginger's as good on the little screen as she is on the big screen, very approachable but professional on that show.

Then there were a bunch of game shows and soap operas, most of them a year or more ago, but I didn't mind. And there's a brand-new soap opera starring Ginger! It's called Turn Towards Tomorrow and it's about a young widow who is trying to start her life over again by managing a hotel on a remote tropical island. It's filmed at the Balinkoff Castle, with a few outdoor shots. I'm already hooked and I wish I could watch it every weekday, but Mary Ann has promised to sum it up for me.

Then there were some reruns of old shows, like Westerns and sitcoms, mostly from the '50s. Ginger gave the evening news and then there were some reruns of more recent shows, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson at 11. Last was Ginger, dressed sort of like she was in my "vampire" dream, hosting a late-night horror movie from the '50s.

I didn't get much sleep of course, but it's not like I'll be doing this every night. Still, I can't wait to watch TV this weekend!


Carol Brady's diary:

September 3, 1969

The children went back to school yesterday, since they had Labor Day off. They of course wanted to sit in front of the TV all day, but Alice and I made sure that they got out and played for a few hours. I admit to tuning in to some of it myself, and Alice is already a fan of Ginger's soap opera, liking it even more than the ones she's been listening to on the radio for five or more years. Mike and I have agreed we'll have to limit the children's viewing, just like we're trying to limit their use of the phone, especially considering that, even with the population explosion on the island, none of their schoolmates live that far away and they can just go over to each other's houses.

There are now 125 students, with about ten students in kindergarten through senior year of high school. Yes, we have a "high school" now, well, a classroom of 10th- to 12th-graders anyway. Mr. Watkins, the only male teacher, teaches that class. I haven't met him or the other new teachers yet, but I do know that Miss O'Hara teaches the junior high class of 7th- to 9th-graders, including of course Greg and Marcia. Mrs. Whitfield now teaches just 4th to 6th, including Peter and Jan. Mrs. Engstrom has just the 1st- through 3rd-graders, including Bobby and Cindy. And Miss Brooks has just the kindergartners, but she also works as the cafeteria lady, serving lunch to the other students after her students go home at noon.

Alice insists on packing lunches for our children of course, and the two of us handing the bags to the kids as they head out for a school day is part of our morning routine. We're both doing more grocery shopping on the island, now that there's a butcher shop and so on, rather than trying to get what we can at Garst's. I think we'll still go over on the ferry as needed, but not every week. I suppose I could steer Mike's boat, since I've had the Skipper's training, but I'm still a little nervous about taking it too far out of the lagoon. And there's no point in us getting a second, more manageable boat, not when Mike is still paying off the first boat. But maybe when the children are older.


September 8, 1969

Alice has a boyfriend! When we were first shipwrecked, I thought she liked the Skipper, but he has always just seen her as a friend. He loves her cooking of course, but when it comes to romance, he likes glamorous women, like Ginger and Mrs. Smith, although they usually don't like him in that way. Anyway, Alice didn't really have any other options. The Professor thinks Mary Ann is sweet and pretty (and she was his choice for Miss Castaway), but the only woman he ever really has paid attention to is Ginger. And I'm too young for Alice, and she treats me like a favorite nephew, which is perfect.

(Yeah, Mr. Brady was single most of the time we were marooned, but he's Alice's boss and even Mrs. Howell couldn't find anything inappropriate about them living in the same hut. Mr. Brady and Alice respect each other, but Mrs. Brady was always the one he was interested after his mourning for his first wife ended.)

Even when more people started moving to the island last year, there weren't that many single guys near Alice's age. But now she's seeing Sam Franklin, the butcher who moved here this summer. Yeah, it's weird to have a butcher shop, in some ways even more than all the other businesses. I'm not a vegetarian, but I always felt funny about eating meat on this island, because I knew so many of the animals, like Everett/Emily the duck. I never liked killing any animals, even the wild boar we barbecued, so I would try to leave that for the Skipper as much as I could.

The thing is, I still loved and love hot dogs and hamburgers and other kinds of meat. Sam orders all sorts of meat from Hawaii and then it gets flown in to Blenford, and then he picks it up on his boat.

Obviously, with a household of nine people (counting herself) to feed, Alice has to make a lot of trips to the butcher shop and Mary Ann says that Alice told her that she and Sam hit it off right away. Sam isn't handsome or anything but he is nice and he has a good sense of humor. And Friday we took Alice and Sam over to Blenford on the ferry so they could go to the new bowling alley. (Alice didn't want to go on the butcher boat, and I can't really blame her.)

I'm happy for Alice, and Sam, but I feel jealous that these two middle-aged people hit it off and got together so fast, while I just can't seem to get anywhere with Mary Ann after five years. I'd ask her to go bowling, but the Skipper would probably want to tag along.


September 9, 1969

Not only does Alice have a boyfriend (Sam the butcher), but Greg has a crush! This evening, Alice read a love poem to me and Mike. We naturally assumed it was written by Sam, but she said, "Sam's idea of romance is two pounds of liver, heart shaped." She told us that the poem fell out of Greg's math book and is addressed to a girl named Linda. I don't remember any Lindas on the island, but I haven't met all the new families that arrived this summer. I think there are five girls in Greg's class, although I guess Linda could be a little younger, or older.

I had noticed Greg mooning around, just staring off into space and being generally distracted. Mike told me about Greg getting a 48 on a quiz in Math, which is usually one of Greg's best subjects. So we are concerned, especially since it's the first serious crush any of our kids have had. Mike says he'll have a talk with Greg about it tomorrow. Alice and I have agreed that we'll subtly ask the other children if they know any girls named Linda.


September 10, 1969

Bobby is probably the Brady kid I'm closest to. (Mary Ann teases it's because I'm still like a little boy in some ways.) But thirteen-year-old Greg confided in me that he has a crush, on his teacher! I've seen Miss O'Hara, the new junior high teacher, and I don't blame him. She has red hair, a sweet smile, and a nice figure. It's just weird to me that Greg has grown up enough to notice girls, when he wasn't much older than Bobby is now when I met him.

I didn't really have any advice of course, and I think he knows me well enough to know I wouldn't have any. He just wanted someone to talk to who isn't a classmate or family. His mom knows he's not quite himself but not why, so she kept taking his temperature. He did ask Marcia what kind of men that women like, but she mentioned a bunch of different celebrities with nothing in common with him or each other, and then she said mustaches are really in. Hm, I wonder how I would look in a mustache.


September 11, 1969

Well, I know who Linda is now. I mostly left interviewing the kids to Alice, but when I asked Bobby if he knows any Lindas, he said, "Yeah, Paul McCartney's wife," which I didn't expect from a seven-year-old.

Alice tried with Cindy, Peter, and Jan. According to Alice, Cindy doesn't want to name any of her stuffed animals Linda because she doesn't know any Lindas, and ditto for Peter and his soapbox car. As for Jan, when Alice asked her what she thought of the name Linda, the nine-year-old jumped to the conclusion that I'm having a baby! So I had to spend five minutes explaining that I'm not pregnant.

And I was going to try to ask Marcia more directly, since it occurred to me that she's in Greg's class, although not grade, so she'd know the approximately fourteen other girls in the junior high. Then she came home with three girls, two of whom I'd met before (Randy Peterson and Hope Chang). The third was named Linda!

She's a pretty brunette with big blue eyes and she moved to our island from Seattle. I was sure she was Greg's crush, because how many girls named Linda could there be at that tiny school? After some gentle interrogation (having sent Marcia upstairs with her other two friends), I got Linda to admit that she doesn't have any boyfriends but there is one boy she likes.

Then Greg came home and seemed utterly indifferent to her! I was baffled, until Mike got back from a meeting with Mr. Howell and others involved in the next phase of the construction project. He brought in the mail, including a letter from Greg's teacher, asking Mike for a parent-teacher meeting tomorrow afternoon to discuss Greg's schoolwork. It was signed "Linda O'Hara"!

I want to go with him, since I am Greg's stepmother, but Mike has asked me not to talk to Miss O'Hara, or Greg, until after the meeting. Knowing that Greg has a crush on his teacher is sort of a relief, since it's something almost everyone goes through, but I do worry about how he's going to survive a miniature junior high with such a distraction. I'm sure it's just a phase that he'll grow out of, but it'll be rough, on all of us. And I feel bad for Marcia, since Miss O'Hara is her teacher, too, which must be awkward if she suspects Greg's crush. Alice thinks it'll all work out, but it will take time.


September 12, 1969

Wow, Wes Parker is on our island! I remember listening to the World Series on the radio when he played in '65 and '66. It turns out that he's engaged to Miss O'Hara and is visiting her this weekend (staying with the Howells). Greg told me he's disappointed about Miss O'Hara's engagement but he was excited to meet a baseball star. Mr. Parker told him that if he gets at least a B average this year, he, his brothers, and his dad can get in free to a Dodgers game next time they're in L.A.

Greg has decided to pay more attention to school, although he is also starting to notice girls his age. He says Marcia's friend Randy Peterson is pretty cute.

I think I'll start growing my mustache this weekend. And maybe a beard.


September 13, 1969

Mike said that the parent-teacher conference went well. Miss O'Hara is in fact engaged, to baseball player Wes Parker, and is only going to teach this school year and marry next summer. Hopefully, Greg can last through June.

Gilligan is looking a little scruffy lately. He's always been such a cleancut boy, but he seems to be getting lax about shaving on weekends. I guess in these more casual times, even someone who's been in the Navy might let himself go, although I'm sure the Skipper will put his foot down about it if Gilligan gets too "hippie-looking."