Under the Electric Sky Read Online Free Page B

effects on a kid’s personality over the years. Jay Gatsby never had any children, but if he had, they would have been troubled souls: crazy on the punch and inevitably developing the quixotic illusion that life is something to be frittered away in pursuits of pleasure and entertainment, without ever asking why.
    Well, as kismet would have it, young William Palmer Lynch’s father was a lighthouse keeper and not a crooked millionaire. Although born in 1903 and living most of his young life on the hedonistic island, Master William had drilled in his head early a collection of fundamental Maritime values that included a hard work ethic, the true appreciation of a dollar’s value, loyalty, integrity and an inherent compassion for his fellow man.
    With these essentials firmly entrenched, ten-year-old William Lynch took a summer job driving a horse and wagon in Halifax for the princely sum of three dollars a week. It was good work and correlated conveniently with a few of those intrinsic principles. Not a glamorous job, but it was a hard earned buck and work to take a bit of pride in. On those hot, dusty summer days of driving team, thoughts of the island crept into Lynch’s imagination and lingered like smoke from a fantastic firework display on a still night. It was hard to concentrate on a menial job when there was excitement and magic out in the harbour, devoured by a thirsty crowd, all of them escaping the eternal pits of boredom for at least a few hours. There seemed to be no escape for Lynch on some of those tedious afternoons.
    So he quit the dull routine life and took a job at Findlay’s Pleasure Grounds racking balls for one of the games and offering his assistance on the old Merry-Go-Round when the opportunity presented itself. Gladys, too, took a job working the canteen on the island. The Lynch kids knew there was more to life than settling for a day-to-day existence and that fun didn’t necessarily mean the lack of hard work.
    The Halifax Explosion of 1917 changed things forever. The real world came roaring back to this newly fashioned Neverland in a large flash. Lynch found work in one of the local machine shops that were operating full-tilt after the disaster. He quit school around then, after finishing the tenth grade, and settled down to hard work and everyday realities with everyone else. Those afternoon revellers started to take things seriously as well, forced to stay home and put their lives back together after the explosion, rather than sneaking out for thrills. Things went like this for a couple of years, until the old twitches started to itch their way up Lynch’s skin.
    During the winter of 1919-20, Lynch escaped the humdrum life again, this time sneaking out in the evenings to play the banjo with a local orchestra. He had seen musicians years before on the island and figured that would at least break up the monotony he had thus far avoided with great care. Musical talent is a tangible thing, however, and an intelligent man possessed with none can usually figure it out quickly. And so Lynch did, after comparing himself to a few experienced musicians the orchestra had recently hired. He was a man blessed with unshakable determination, but he wasn’t blind with pride, either. So he left the orchestra and again found his way back to that enchanted little island that was never far away in his thoughts.
    The island had changed after the explosion and the crowds were not showing up in the same magnitude they had before. But Lynch knew he wanted to be in the amusement business for himself and in the spring of 1920, he bought the Merry-Go-Round for $800 with money he had saved from working at the machine shop. He operated it on McNab’s until the end of the 1924 season, at which time he was forced to face the reality that there just weren’t enough people coming to the island to make it profitable. Those magical nights he remembered as a child were over.
    If the people