The Boy Boy and Me!

About the Book

"Blackface" is a very wise dog. He describes his world between 1930 and 1945 with his master, "Boy". The locale is Massachusetts: Maynard, Acton, Concord, Littleton, Boston, Brookline, Newton, Andover, Nantucket, and Cobleskill, NY and Sebago Lake, Maine. "Blackface" is the main character and the author who lived sixteen years. His often plain-spoken words are transcribed and commented-on by his master Eldon LaCroix. They grew up together in Episcopal rectories and the tale throws perceptive light on the ministry, love, divorce, fatherhood, and the whimsical foibles of a growing boy. It is obviously based on true events but has been altered and expanded to make it fiction. You the reader are left to sort out the truth.

Everything is seen from sixteen inches off the ground and related to a dog's needs, senses, and sense of importance. There is a running conversation between dog and master as the latter writes down what "Blackface" tells him. At the end, there is a summary of the extraordinary cultural and technological changes that occurred in Blackface's time.

Adults should enjoy the fun of recalling events in their own lives as seen by "Blackface". Children should find the same activities delightful, strange, and instructive – good material for back-and-forth talks with parents and grandparetns.

The book was "edited" by architect Eason Cross.

About the Author

"Editor" Eason Cross, Jr. is a practicing architect in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was schooled at Roosevelt Elementary School in Maynard, Longwood Day School in Brookline, Fessenden School in West Newton, Phillips Academy in Andover, Harvard College, and Harvard Graduate School of Design. He owes much of his opportunity to clerical scholarships given his father and the GI Bill. After washing out of the Navy V-12 at Harvard, he served as a quartermaster on a destroyer escort in the Atlantic. He returned to Cambridge a mature and chastened man. Blackface would have been pleased.

His writing credentials consist of articles for several architectural publications and a weekly column for a local newspaper. His architectural honors include national, regional, and local design awards, Fellowship in the AIA and the Noland Medal of the Virginia Society.

He founded and was president of the Purysburg Preservation foundation to restore interest and knowledge of that former town in South Carolina. That interest stemmed from curiosity derived from membership in the Georgia Salzburger Society, marking another 18th Century community across the Savannah River to which several of his Purysburg ancestors relocated.

His mother after leaving Boston spent a career in Tallahassee, Florida as an English Professor at Florida State University. She had two Fullbright assignments, one to Damascus and another to Saigon.

He has been married for 57 years to Diana, the mother of their four children who, under superb guidance from their mother, have blossomed into wonderful productive persons and friends. His a very fortunate man.