From her seat Evie looked at Larry wondering what they were going to do.

'You want to play with us?'

'Yes.'

'You won't hog the dump truck?'

'No. I'll let you be the complete boss.'

'You will?'

'Yep.'

'Hooray, let's go play in the sand.'

The sand was actually the farmer's plowed field, which rectangled the farmhouse on three and a half sides. There,

winding in an intricate maze among the green explosions of cabbage, was a road system to put Robert Moses to

shame. For an hour I traveled in a 1963 pickup truck (Tonka, 00 h.p., .002 c.c. engine, needed new paint job) over

these roads. There was frequent criticism that I wrecked too many secondary roads while maneuvering my bulk down

tertiary roads, and that tunnels that had been standing for years through cyclones and hurricanes (three and a half days

through one brief shower) had collapsed under the weight of my one errant elbow. Otherwise the children enjoyed my

presence, and I enjoyed the earth and them. Children are really quite nice once you get to know them.

They're more than nice.

'Daddy,' Larry said to me later that day when we were lying in the sand watching the surf of the Atlantic come rolling

on to Westhampton Beach, 'why does the ocean make waves?'

I considered my knowledge of oceans, tides and such, and decided on `Wind.'

`But sometimes the wind doesn't blow, but the ocean always makes waves.'

`It's the god of the sea breathing.'

This time he considered.

`Breathing what?' he asked.

'Breathing water. In and out, in and out.'

'Where?'

'In the middle of the ocean.'

'How big is he?'

'One mile tall and as fat and muscley as Daddy.'

'Don't ships bump his head?'

'Sometimes. Then he makes hurricanes. That's what's called an "angry sea".'

'Daddy, why don't you play with us more?'