My father got a dollar a day to run that roadside stand at Cape Cod, good money for a kid during the Depression. He squirreled away his income and they lived almost entirely off the bounty of the sea.

In his memoir my father writes: "We had clams, quahogs, oysters, scup, bay scallops, flounder and, of course eels, at all times,trapped in pots just 30 feet from the cottage. Grandpa would clean and skin the eels, cut them into six inch pieces and put them on ice in the refrigerator. Fresh pan fried eel is delicious, but grandmother found it took at least 24 hours on ice before the eel’s nervous system calmed down enough to prevent them from flipping themselves out of the frying pan when heated."

I inherited the family frugality and can live on fumes, a critical skill for any full-time writer. I carry no credit card debt, don’t drive a car, and have an aversion for "stuff" with the exception of my books and my computer. I did not, however, inherit a taste for eel.

When my father wasn’t building model planes, he read everything he could get his hands on. He read magazines and manuals. He read the classics and comics, science fiction and science fact. His unpublished memoir, a rich and detailed 20 chapters, reads like fine literature. Although he spent his life repairing telephones, my father is a born storyteller. So was my Grampa Jake whose yarns, true or false, were never dull. Stories flow between the generations like blood.

The bare-ribbed skeleton of the second Comet Zipper still hangs above my father’s cellar workbench, its paper skin still missing. His model-making days are fading – hands a bit too shaky for the pinpoint detail work, he says. But at 85 he is still building cellar shelves, digging out the artesian well, fiddling with electronics and reading science fiction.

And what of the first Comet Zipper built by the teen soon to become a Marine? I’ll let my father finish the story, as he told it to me the other day:

"Most people were into free flight models in those days, not gasoline engines that were noisy and dangerous. To fly the Comet Zipper, you set it to go in a circle and never on a windy day. You only put in 20 seconds worth of fuel. That was important because there was no radio control to guide it back. It would climb 150 feet, circle around, and land right back at your feet. I flew that a hundred times on its wheels, on skis in the winter, and on pontoons in the water."

"Well, your Uncle Henry had a really good camera that I wanted, and I had the Zipper, so one day we traded. He filled the engine with fuel, forgot to cock the tail, and let her go. The plane took off, flew over the tops of the trees, and disappeared. We never saw it again. Henry had that plane for a very short time. It’s been another 70 years or so since he let that airplane go. I used that camera all through the war and when you kids were growing up. Now Henry’s gone too -- but I still have his camera."

This story is for you, dad. Thanks for showing me how to dig clams, build models, spin yarns, save dollars, and always barter to win.

Copyright © 2008 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved. Robinson is the owner of the popular wed site SeacoastNH.com. His latest book is Strawbery Banke: A Seacoast Museum 400 Years in the Making.