a pirates field trip by ray rebmann (bill gates book recommendations txt) 📕

and diamonds and rubies and all that kind of jewelry stuff.

After all the experts, the coin guys and historians and the scientists and the archeolgists

and all the other “ists” go over and over and over it, they decide it’s ours.

But what are we gonna do with old coins and such?

So after talking it over with mom and asking Mr J who I’m convinced knows something

about everything, we decide to take the big reward the museum people offered us in exchange

for donating what we found.

Enough to set up college scholarships for me and a permanent future bail fund for

Huey…I’m kidding. He has a scholarship fund too. Now if there was only a college dumb

enough to take him.

Best of all, there’s enough left over for mom to pay off the mortgage and quit the hash

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slinging job. No more flying plates full of mashed potatoes clobbering unsuspecting customers.

She’s keeping the other job but she’s going back to school to study nursing so instead of

having to clean up messes after old people fall apart all over her, she’ll be the one who knows

what to do to keep them in one piece.

My father keeps trying to get back in my life. I know it’s because of the money but I talk

to him. He even took me to a Phillies game.

He’s working but it’s nothing steady. He keeps bouncing from job to job and place to

place.

My kid’s idea of a dad, that ideal dad who plays ball with you and knows

everything…that dad’s dead…like the war hero dad of my kid legend.

I’m polite to this guy. Because he’s my father, I have to deal with him. A judge says so.

So I listen to him and learn. Boy, do I learn.

* * *


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There’s more treasure out there. I know it. Mr. J and I talk about the treasure and lots of

other things whenever I go over to visit.

We even talk about my dad.

“Just like parents can’t demand that their kids be what they’re not, kids learn that they’re

parents aren’t always going to be what they want.”

A good parent is what a kid needs, he always says. It sounds so obvious how come so

many people don’t get it. Even good people. Sometimes a parent can mean well but hurt their kid

as much as the one who’s a natural born louse. I guess the worst thing a parent can do is know

his kid’s weakness and use that to hurt him.

He keeps giving me old books to read and I do. Fat books by a guy named Dickens who

must have lived to be 300 years old to write all the stuff he wrote and some by Mark Twain that I

like because they’re about kids like me even though they’re not like me.

And by the way, there’s no monster in J’s attic either although Mr. J swears me to

secrecy on that one since the kid legend about the monster keeps guys like my brother Huey

from pestering the J’s at Halloween and pretty much any other time of the year.

In fact, after he tells me his son’s not a monster living in his attic, Mr. J tells me his son

actually lives all the way on the other side of the world, working for a computer soft ware

company. I’m surprised when he tells me he hasn’t had any contact with his son for a few years

after they had a big fight and decided they couldn’t communicate with one another.

That’s just a grown up way of saying two people are just too stubborn to try to work out

their differences.

So I get to do something nice for him. I teach him how to use e-mail. Then I sit there

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beside him in front of the computer and pester him until he sends an email to his son.

What do ya know. The kid wrote back. That leads to a few more and e-mails back and

forth and then a phone call or two and guess what?

Mr. J’s son is coming home to visit next October.

“He’ll be here for Halloween. He says he can’t wait to sleep in his old bedroom up in the

attic.” Mr. J says with a sinister laugh. “Let’s invite your brother and all the rest of the kids from

school to come for trick or treat.”

Mr. J looks younger these days. By about a hundred years. He’s still ancient but now we

laugh about how old he is. We laugh about Angela Kravitz too. She’s always hanging around,

pestering me to sit with her at lunch or come to her house to do homework. Sometimes, I get

mad and tell her to buzz off. Most of the time I don’t. I kinda like having her around.

Especially because it annoys Huey. He teases me about my girlfriend and always makes

noises and faces when she calls or comes over to the house. But it doesn’t bother Angela which

is pretty cool. And it doesn’t bother me because I know Huey’s secret.

He’s jealous.

He’d like to have a girlfriend too. But he won’t have time. Since he’s grounded at home

for the rest of his life and at school he has detention until he’s about forty. By then he’ll be so old

no girl will want him and he’ll need mom’s help to keep his decrepit body from falling apart.

I stop imagining creative ways for Huey to die. I feel sorry for him sort of He’ll destroy

himself with his meanness

Mr. J still gives me his famous pop quizzes.

On one, he keeps asking me where I think the treasure is and I try to tell him places but

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he just shakes his noggin no, then points to his head and tells me to think some more.

Then one day I think I get it. I stop digging holes in the back yard and looking under

rocks and behind trees and in every dark corner of wherever I go.

I can tell you the longitudes and latitudes on that map Huey got from the blind vendor but

that doesn’t begin to tell you where that treasure is hidden. The map itself is worthless for that

And you can’t figure out how to look for it from the secret directions the villains set up

along the way throughout the museum that led to our battle on the pirate ship.

To learn the location of the treasure, first you have to go inside Mr. J’s mind and learn all

that he knows, all the stories, all the kid legends. Then, you have to go through his pouch.

Pick a card, any card.

Then, you have to open up your own mind.

And let your imagination do the rest.

I guarantee you’ll find the treasure.


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“Epilogue:
A youthful understanding of TREASURE ISLAND”


A boy’s father goes away. That’s how it starts. He goes away and leaves his son to face

the world and a shipload of bloodthirsty pirates all by himself.

His mom can’t help. She’s too busy running a hotel to drop everything and look for pirate

treasure. Besides she can’t read a treasure map and doesn’t believe in such things anyway.

But she’s a swell mom and she understands why a boy has to drop everything and run off on a

treasure hunt.

So young Jim Hawkins finds some grown ups and shows them the map. And just like all

grown ups, they take over the treasure hunt and push him aside. Oh sure they promise him a “fair

share” but in the meantime they make him work as their cabin boy on their great sea adventure.

Also just like grown ups they screw up the plans by trying to do the job cheap and save

money. Instead of hiring a crew of trustworthy sailors they hire a gang of pirates headed by a

one legged man who’s the meanest and most dangerous pirate of all.

That’s Long John Silver.

He’s most dangerous because he’d kill you while he smiled at you. He’ll do anything, say

anything, be anything just to get the money.

Typical grown up

But he’s worse. He’s smart. He knows how to talk to a kid, what to say and how to act to

get a kid to trust him

Silver and Jim Hawkins start out as pals. Naturally the rest of Jim’s grown up friends are

clueless, always drinking rum and wine and figuring out how they’ll spend the treasure when

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they find it.

So it’s up to Jim to discover the pirates secret plan to take over the ship.

The rest of the story is about the fight between the pirates and the good guys. The good

guys keep winning because the pirates are rough and tough but pretty stupid. They can’t read or

write and they don’t trust one another so there’s no team work like with the good guys.

And they don’t have a secret weapon. A kid who’s smart as paint.

Every time it looks bad for the good guys, Jim saves the day. He rescues the ship. He

finds a guy who was marooned. Marooned means he left on Treasure Island to die. This guy

knows where the treasure is, so the good guys get it and hide it in a cave.

The pirates never do find it. So, they turn against one another. Even Long John, who

keeps switching sides to whichever seems to be winning, even he ends up against the pirates, his

own pals.

That’s how he saves his skin.

But at the end, after the pirates are beaten, Silver still can’t be trusted. He steals some of

the money and sails away to live happily ever after on the Spanish main.

The rest go back to Merry Old England rich with doubloons and pieces of eight and Jim

goes to college and becomes a doctor like his mom wants.

* * *


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Treasure Island is one of the books Mr. J found in the pouch when he discovered it

hanging from the giant chestnut tree, years and years ago.

This is the very first book report he ever wrote. The whole report pops up, on like a small

computer screen when you rub the special Barnacle Bill card he carries in that pouch of his.

His son set up that neat little gizmo for him when he came out