Inflating the Stone

MONEY is a thing, an abstraction, and a symbol. According to general semantics, which is concerned with use of symbols, we can describe as any of the above, depending on our purpose. This story involves a curious practice in my family. In certain circumstances, our money was the stone. When was a boy, we moved from Massachusetts to the Bahamas. sailed among the islands and built a home on wild and remote windblown scrub beside the sea. To help provide materials, my brothers and carried large stones from the ocean beach up a sand dune to the building In burning sun and sweltering humidity, hauling heavy stones was hard and sweaty toil. The dune was steep, we sank to our ankles in sand, and sometimes slid down a step for each step up. worked with enthusiasm, as we vied for who could carry the heaviest stone. Arriving at the top of the ridge, gasping with exertion, tired but gratified, we threw down our stones and faced the ocean to savor the cooling breeze. Then we ran down the dune for another load. Later, our labor done, we hacked open green coconuts, collapsed in the shade of a palm tree and drank the sweet coconut juice. Overhead, palm fronds click-click-clicked in the wind. came to dread what had been fun. also enjoyed spasms of hate for the source of our misery--our father. The joy of hating was compromised by guilt. An ardent artist who reveled in his genius for eccentric inventions, my father devised a unique form of punishment for boys who defied his paternal authority: the stone can't recall what crime led to this newfangled form of retribution or who committed it. Perhaps it was a minor mutiny by my teenage brother Bill. As eldest, he often bore the brunt of my father's efforts to discipline his unruly crew. The short drama probably went like this: Father: Do what say. Son: Do it yourself. Father: That's a one-stone fine. Son (incredulously): What? Father (sternly): Go to the ocean beach and carry one of those big stones up to the house site. Son (stubbornly): I won't. Father (with satisfaction): You're fined another two stones! My father seemed pleased with his brainchild. imagine it appealed to his appetite for getting something for nothing. He needed stones for building our house. On this isolated island, materials and labor were hard to get. As he studied our reactions, his wild hair was splayed out liked seaweed in a hurricane, and a foxy smile lurked behind his graying beard. None of us anticipated the tortuous consequences of my father's magisterial decree. My father loved to boast, We live on a desert island. Even after grew up, took exception to this assertion. Our island wasn't absolutely deserted. Near us lived the lighthouse family, although there was no one else for miles. The island also had several faraway settlements, one of which we sailed to for food, supplies, and mail. Admittedly, we lived on a neck of land called Little Harbour that was separated from the nearest habitation by almost impenetrable jungle and mangrove swamp, and it took nearly a day to sail to the village where we obtained basic necessities. However, craved verbal certainty. knew my father was bending the truth. A sculptor of the romantic persuasion, my father created his life as if he were sculpting his own personal work of art. He lived, for the most part happily, in a world of his own, perhaps a useful strategy when you consider the negative worlds some want us to embrace. However, the consequences of his choices sometimes upset wife and children, especially when his artistic renderings approached the surreal. My father grew up in the early 1900s in the city of Toronto and in the wilds of Midwestern Canada. His father homesteaded land in Alberta that had never seen the plow. The winters were bitterly cold. …

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