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something.”
    “Okay, okay,” said Tom Sr., raising his hands
in surrender. “I was just trying. And a pitcher of Coke to go with
that?”
    “Sounds good,” said Bortnicker, “and could I
get a wedge of lemon in mine?”
    “Done.”
    A harried waitress came over, and Mr. Jackson
put in the order for their large pie, well done. “And could you
bring some breadsticks while we wait?” he added. “These two are
about to start eating the napkins.”
    “No problem, sir.” She smiled, hurrying
off.
    “Okay, guys,” said Tom Sr., “so tell me the
basic info you learned in that big old packet they sent you. Let me
see if there’s any stuff I didn’t know already.”
    “Well,” said Bortnicker, snatching a sesame
breadstick the second the waitress put the basket on their table,
“we only really got through the part about Bermuda itself. There’s
still all the pirate history to go over.”
    “Fair enough. T.J.?”
    “For starters, Dad, Bermuda’s not an island,
really. It’s a group of like 120 smaller pieces of land covering 20
or so square miles, and it’s kind of shaped like a fishhook.”
    “Yup, it sure is,” said the elder Jackson,
fondly remembering Bermuda’s distinctive shape as seen from the air
on his many visits.
    “What’s cool,” said Bortnicker, “is that what
Bermuda really is, is the exposed tip of an extinct volcano with a
layer of limestone over it. That’s what kinda creates the pink sand
on its beaches that everyone raves about.”
    “And it really is pink,” said Tom Sr.,
munching a breadstick. “Wait till you see it. People come just to
see the sand!”
    “Besides the beaches,” said T.J., pouring
himself some soda, “it has a pretty fair climate because of where
it’s located, 500 or so miles east of North Carolina, in the Gulf
Stream. When we get there it should be in the low 80s.”
    “Heavenly,” sighed Bortnicker.
    “The temperature?” asked T.J.
    “No, that eggplant parmigiana platter the
next table over. Check it out.”
    “Could you focus, please? Anyway, Dad, what
the write-up didn’t explain is why the place is so expensive, like
you’re always saying. What’s up with that?”
    “Well, after World War II the population of
the place really started growing. Now it’s well over double what it
was. So, the government’s put the brakes on people establishing
residences there—”
    “It’s British, right?” asked Bortnicker.
    “Oh, yeah, though white Anglo Saxons are in
the minority. They’re a lot more proper than we are here, though
that’s seemed to break down a little in my most recent visits. Time
was, you couldn’t walk around Hamilton, that’s the capital, wearing
a tank top or skimpy shorts. You’d get looks or even maybe a
comment. But now, with cruise ships crowding in and flights around
the clock, the place is flooded with tourists in the warmer months,
and a lot of them—especially us Americans, I’m afraid—think they’re
just at the Jersey Shore or something and don’t respect Bermudian
culture. You kids are going to make sure you behave, TV show or
no.
    “Anyway, by the 80s, when your mom and I went
on our honeymoon, Bermuda had ceased to export anything— ”
    “Even Bermuda onions?” questioned
Bortnicker.
    “Even Bermuda onions. What little produce
that comes out of their small farms is bought up by the locals and
the restaurants. Now, everything is shipped into Bermuda, a lot of
it from the States. That’s why you’ll pay four bucks for a bag of
chips, or why this seafood pie they just took out of the oven would
run you double or triple what we’re paying at good old Pizza
Palace.
    “What’s a shame is that, getting back to the
80s, Bermuda had something like 99% employment. Everybody had a
job, so everybody was relatively happy. And most of those jobs,
even today, revolve around the tourist trade. But that fell off in
the 90s, and today you might even see some beggars around Hamilton
or St. George’s, which was