Probably the biggest thing that surprises people is that I am obsessed with hockey. I grew up in the Boston area so I am obsessed with hockey since I was a little kid.
Was the crew well? Was I not? I had profited in many ways by the voyage. I had even gained flesh, and actually weighed a pound more than when I sailed from Boston.
My ship was also in better condition than when she sailed from Boston on her long voyage. She was still as sound as a nut, and as tight as the best ship afloat. She did not leak a drop - not one drop!
I'd like to think that the nature of the two teams - Boston being a championship team over the years and the Lakers, same thing - was a lot bigger than Larry Bird or Magic Johnson.
They played Boston. They played at the Boston Tea Party and through an amazing chain of events I got to hang out with them backstage even though I was underage.
Our situation here, without any exaggeration, is beyond description almost; it is such as eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it ever entered into the heart of men to conceive Boston ever to arrive at.
I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.
So my father grew up in an orphanage in Boston. He was then adopted by an elderly childless couple from Maine, who gave him the name of Mitchell. He moved to Maine, and there he met my mother and was married.
My father was the orphaned son of immigrants to the United States from Ireland. My father never knew his parents. His mother died - we're not sure - either at or shortly after his birth, and he and all of his siblings were placed in orphanages in the Boston area.
