Preface
Nothing is miserable except when you think it so, and, vice versa, all luck is good luck to the man who bears it with equanimity. No one is so happy that he would not want to change his lot if he gives in to impatience. Such is the bittersweetness of human happiness. To him that enjoys it, it may seem full of delight, but he cannot prevent it slipping away when it will. It is evident, therefore, how miserable the happiness of human life is.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, (translated by V. E. Watts)
I FIRST TOLD THE STORY that you’re about to read to Porky White, the fast-food clam-bar mogul, one stormy spring afternoon while we were bailing a leaky clamboat in the middle of Bolotomy Bay, but one could say that the story was conceived in a conversation with Porky the evening before, when Al and Raskol and I dropped in at Corinne’s Fabulous Fruits of the Sea. A couple of months before that evening, Albertine had decided that she could attract more honeymooners, young lovers, and adulterers to our hotel on Small’s Island if she had a cozy cottage or two to offer them, set apart from the hotel itself, where they could feel quite sure that no one would blunder in on their moonlight trysting. Al found an appropriate cottage for sale on the mainland at a good price, and she and Raskolnikov worked out a plan for moving it to the island on a platform constructed atop four clamboats.
In the weeks that followed, Al was extremely busy. She negotiated for and purchased the cottage. She solicited bids on moving it to the island, and she chose an outfit called Three Jolly Tinkers to do the work. Their advertisement in the Babbington Reporter(“We’ll do anything to the best of our ability”) had caught Al’s eye, and their bid was by far the lowest. They were three former schoolteachers who distinguished themselves from other jolly tinkers and most other former schoolteachers by wearing derby hats on the job. Al took to them at once. They moved the cottage to Raskol’s boat yard and constructed the platform.
On the evening when we ran into Porky White at Corinne’s, the three of us were excited, even bubbly. The cottage was sitting on the platform, and the voyage to the island would begin the next morning.
Porky, however, was down in the dumps. He was sitting alone, wearing a long face. He had a platter of onion rings in front of him and a glass of beer in his hand.
“Porky!” cried Al. She threw her arms around his neck and gave him an extravagant kiss. “Why the long puss?” she asked.
Porky didn’t answer. He just frowned and shook his head and stuffed a couple of onion rings into his mouth.
Al sat down beside him and snuggled up to him. She turned his face toward her. “Tell me about it, Porky,” she said.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” and “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” the first six novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.
🎧 94: Nothing is miserable except . . .