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Scrapbook:
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************* or anywhere else in the stream, for that matter. Hell, get off your horse and float along, see where it takes you.
************* "In for a penny, in for a pound."
************* but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore." Vincent van Gogh
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![]() ![]() The men I knew, my fishing mates, were of a different breed than what most folks are used to. The last group -- the Moss Halibut Gang -- were off the grid in every sense. It was refreshing to deal with such people. Petty pretensions and artificial attitudes had a short lifespan. Out in the Aleutians, our main stomping ground, you seldom run into another boat, so their skills, resourcefulness, and casual self-reliance always made for a reassuring atmosphere, especially when the shit was hitting the fan. We were pirates in truth and did what we had to do in order to survive. I haven't seen them for many years now; I miss their company and I miss that life. But mostly, I miss that sense of largeness and freedom that went with the territory. The main thing I remember about that whole period of time which I try to hold onto is: You knew who you were, unblinkingly, and no one and nothing could ever ever cause you to doubt yourself. It was that clean.
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We got the gear baited, iced up the next morning and headed out. It took us twenty-four hours to get there at our top speed -- 12 knots. We decided to first try the east side of Saint George island. That side is a sheer cliff -- called officially: the High Bluffs -- with hundreds of birds nesting in it. So many we had to yell to hear ourselves talk. I tied all the gear together on deck -- ordinarily you tie skates together as you go, or rather it goes, including the buoy and anchor set-ups -- and put it out myself while Brian ran the boat at full bore.
Later on, a storm came up while we were playing chess. A heavy roll rounded the bend into our anchorage and knocked a piece over. Secure as we were, hiding behind the island, we nonetheless decided to pull anchor and move farther west around the corner, so to speak. Our chess games were important to us; we took them very seriously; it's how we kept our heads. Chess, coffee, cigarettes; it's all we needed. And some fresh halibut to eat didn't hurt either.
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In the winter, walking up the harbor road I would be mesmerized by the distant mountains north, usually topped by smears of oily grey clouds, the combo radiating an ominous presence. Mean to the core, they silently gave testament to their rugged uniqueness, resisting easy classification. Jagged and sharp-hewed in appearance, they articulate an implacable resolve, an adamant refusal to give an inch.
A friend I worked with on the High Tides Seafood's expedition once pointed out how they seem to demand that a person go out to them. They draw you out, unlike softer-edged and eroded mountains elsewhere. He was right. Whenever I see a picture of PWS mountains -- The Chugach -- in a magazine, I recognize them instantly. I've seen pictures of the Himalayas; they're similar in morphology and character, but also unmistakably themselves.
I went out on one trip with a local and made enough to fly to Kodiak, the hub of longlining and the largest fishing community in Alaska. Glouchester is, or was, its only competitor when it came to sheer production. I bought a oneway ticket; my friends saw me off at the airport. On my arrival I rented a room at the Shelikoff Lodge and then went straightaway to a bar I preferred when here two years before. Ostensibly, I was looking for work, but I still had about a thousand dollars left, so, being the way I am, there didn't seem to be any hurry to commit. I remember lying on a loading dock, half drunk, soaking up the 70 degree sun after the long winter. In those days I was totally occupied with living my life, immersed; every moment was the first and the last.
My friend, Dennis, had come here from Port Townsend for his first, and only, as it turned out, halibut trip. So through them, some time during the next few hazy days, I met the rest of the crew. They were anxious to leave so I ended up doing
As I methodically went through the gear, I watched the next show shakily try to gather steam. But the entire crew was leaving. Brian wanted to head out to Akutan, a small native village, on Akun Island in the Aleutians. Out west there's about half a dozen summer halibut openers of varying lengths. The boat, at that time, was a mess. He'd dragged it off a beach for salvage, and one whole side was corrugated in; you needed to pump the bilge every half-hour. All the windows were covered with plywood except for one narrow sliver of plastic glass in front of the hydraulic steering toggle. It was like being on the Merrimac.
The night we pulled out of Kodiak for the 800 mile trip, the kid was still attaching the running lights. The radio and radar worked but that was it; no autopilot so we had to steer by hand the whole way. Not having time to hook-up headlights, we were running blind, relying completely on the radar which was rather old and indistinct, scratchy. It gave me all the confidence of an etch-and-sketch.
It was a definite fixer-upper and that was the idea. Her outward appearance to the contrary, however, I was to learn she had the guts of a stout, tough, ocean-going vessel. But, at this time, she didn't exactly inspire confidence.
We arrived at Akun Pass late for slack tide, about one or two in the morning; it couldn't be darker for that time of year. It's an extremely narrow passage. When the tide's running, ten-foot breakers roar through, bracketing and setting the channel. That's a lot of current changing hands between the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Akun Pass connects them; Akutan Bay is to the left if approaching from the ocean.
Brian was at the wheel, chart on his lap. Did I mention we had no headlights? The tire salesman and his son sat at
Our first trip was little more than a training exercise. I showed Brian's friend and his son how to put gear out and bring it in, etcetera. We didn't catch much. The next opener wasn't for a couple of weeks so I became familiar with the one and only bar in the village. At that time, Akutan had a population of 90; wooden boardwalks ran through the few buildings and along the beach front. The bar had two pool tables and a great jukebox, rattan ceilings and a friendly atmosphere, relaxed and down-to earth.
I stood there taking it all in, detaching my mind from everything that had gone before, right up to my present circumstances. I am here, I said quietly to myself and let my body completely identify with the surroundings, feeling the wildness and energy of the sights and sounds and play of nature's forces.
Stew and I worked well together. We could put out miles of gear without having to say a word to one another, just the occasional finger point or nod. Smooth as glass it was, working with someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Also, he volunteered to do most of the cooking. His halibut stew over Thai rice was to die for; I could eat it all day long. He would also fry up hand-size halibut cakes and pile them on a plate on the cabin table. During the course of a day, you'd grab one as you went by; they were impossible to resist and a great energy boost. I prefer fish to beef any day, but that never stopped me from devouring a mandatory cheese burger as soon as I got back to port.
What I got out of being in the Aleutians was the experience of brand new country, haphazardly rumpled and unruly country, formed by volcanoes and severe tectonic shifts. On the jagged edge of the Bering Plate, hanging over the Pacific Basin, is where the Aleutians lie -- part of the Aleutian Arc along the Ring of Fire. It's beautiful and evocative; austere and demanding. The last place, of a few remaining, where a person could truly live wild and free without feeling he was breaking some taboo. A serious no-nonsense land inspiring of other worlds and times long gone.
Imagine how tough and enormously self-reliant and courageous these people had to be, must have been. This village, and it's not the only one in the area, was built with lumber brought in by ship from who knows where, possibly the Alaskan peninsula; I don't think Kamchatka, although if they came from there, it's quite possible. All their supplies, stores of food, oil for lanterns, clothing, bedding, furniture -- everything had to be brought in and there was no sign of a dock. And this happened way before electronic communications or radio by which they could call for help or assistance. And no Coast Guard, nothing. They were totally on their own, cutoff. But maybe they liked it that way. Probably, supply ships would call on some kind of schedule, but, nonetheless, the winters are cruel and harsh and life threatening. And, except for their homes and the firewood needed for heat in a terrain devoid of trees, there's no protection from the elements.
The Community Center, which doubled as the school, had a phone which I used to call my mother in Philadelphia, just for the experience. I had trouble trying to explain where I was, but then I wasn't too sure of it myself. The few roads were dirt,
On our way down the Chain we passed a herd of reindeer resting on a beach, perhaps a hundred or more, laying on their sides, young ones strolling about. They glanced our way as we cruised by but otherwise remained aloof and completely
We were considerably closer to Kamchatka Peninsula that to mainland Alaska, a fact that tempted us. Something happens to a person when he gets far away from what's considered conventional society and enters an area consigned to the wilderness exclusively. Nobody else was out there at the time; we were completely on our own; it felt great, truly. The Aleutians -- strips you down to bedrock.
Of the four seasons we spent out there, the first was the best. Ironically, we caught more halibut and made more money when the boat was a wreck. There's a lesson to be learned by that, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.
We finally pulled out and headed up the Inside Passage, stopping briefly in Juneau to get a halibut landing permit. However, luck was not on our side. Brian had accidentally installed the new alternator with the wires crossed. So, by the time we got to Cape Spenser, 500 miles from Kodiak, our electronics went out, except for the VHF radio. By electronics I mean the old radar, the single sideband radio and the loran. GPS's were not a common feature in those days, hardly anyone had one; Loran-C was the navigation device, at least it would give your present position.
So there we were, sitting at the edge of the Gulf, debating whether to go for it or not. All we had, besides the VHF, was a
bubble compass. We were still steering by hydraulic toggle and still had no headlights. I insisted we go, what choice did we have? The rest of the crew were busy in Kodiak baiting all the gear Brian had left there. They were expecting us and
Our second day out we found ourselves in the middle of the Gulf, we believed, just going by approximate speed and general direction. The day was clear and far off to the north we spotted a cruise ship. Brian got on the radio and requested
As it stood we could've landed anywhere from Seward to the south end of Kodiak island. At the end of the third day we spotted land, and an opening, a channel. By sheer guess, Brian, unsure of exactly where we were, headed into it. We subsequently came across another fishing boat and requested position. As it turned out, fortunately, Marmot island was directly to our south, which is just above the channel leading to Kodiak. Pure luck, nothing more. Even though Brian had lived in the area for twenty odd years, our angle confused him.
For Brian and me, it amounted to a voyage of about 2,000 miles of running, running, running, from Port Angeles to Akutan. It was a mad rush from start to finish, but, par for the course in those days.
Formerly, we used to spend a lot of hours on top of the cabin, on the bow and partway up the mast scouting for orange buoys bobbing and occasionally hiding just below the surface. With the GPS, however, we almost ran over them; in fact, I did the first time, not expecting it to be that sure. We could also plot waypoints from one position to the next which the auto-pilot would dutifully follow, steering the boat to each precise location. Compared to the boat's condition in the beginning, it was like running the starship Enterprise. Another genuine miracle, to be sure.
I remember one time running a boat called the Alki heading for College Fjord and having a humpback whale come out of the water and dive, tail at full sail, right in front of us. It was a magical place, and I traveled everywhere in it. The whales were amongst the first residents to move out after the spill. The news spread quickly, shocking everyone as it spelled the end to the fishing season. The Sound was a haven for all manner of marine wildlife. Birds of all kinds and sea otters, mainly, suffered from the first. The beaches were fouled and the heavy sludge not only sank to the bottom, ruining the bottom fishery and ground habitat, but also remained suspended in the water column. It didn't take long for the town to fill up with outsiders, seemingly from all over the world.
I arrived at night on the ferry from Cordova, hitched a ride in the back of a pick-up from the ferry dock to the harbor, and had no trouble spotting the Alki through the huge picture window at a harborside bar, a proper place to land in a strange town. A habit I developed more and more as years went by. Although it was night, it was also the end of June and so I had my first experience of light at night. I could see perfectly well as though it was the middle of the day.
The trick with the Delta was this: No charts existed for it at the time. Kindly donated by a local fisherman, what we had were rough pencil drawings of the approximate locations of the underwater sand bars. They shifted with the currents so there was little use in trying to fix their positions with a legitimate chart. The bars carved channels into the Delta proper from the ocean. What we had to do was determine these channels by sight, by reading the water, how it moved. Our first time out there went well, surprisingly to all concerned. We ran together, so between the lot of us we'd figured it out, mainly by watching gillnetters coming and going.
But the second time, Donovan, the skipper, and I started late for one reason or another. By the time we arrived on the ocean out front, Mary Catherine was already in place. The sea was not happy that day, choppy and turbulent, coming
Actually, we'd made two mistakes: We should've contacted the Mary Catherine first, but, we underestimated the dangers of the Delta. Lessons to be learned about that neighborhood. In fact, the keynote was the steep learning curve everyone was going through, and this was just the beginning of ours. Rule of thumb: If you're the least bit uncertain about what to do or where to go on the water, contact a running partner or make a general radio announcement, giving your location and asking for assistance. One time in Columbia Bay a crewman got seriously ill suddenly and we requested help. In minutes, half a dozen boats appeared out of nowhere. It's how it is on the water. Inside we were confronted by the beach not fifty yards away. We found ourselves in the middle of a small puddle, horseshoed by sand. As it happened, the flat spot had been an illusion caused by the very momentary dampening of wavefronts, peaks and troughs cancelling one another. That flat spot was now a series of ten-foot waves [my perspective] crashing towards the beach, with us in the middle. We had to get out, back on the ocean.
The Alki was built solid, like a giant oak log, and had more heart than one would expect from its size. Donavan held it steady, straight ahead, no broaching allowed. After a couple of seconds, she crashed -- oozed would be a better word -- through and we were out, out on the unpleasant sea. We then called the Catherine who informed us we were about two miles west of their position. Eventually, we got in safely and tied up. We told our story and everybody laughed, not derisively but that way of wild men who were very much aware of our general naivete concerning the lay of the sea. And their joking, of course, was not intended to embarrass us but to dispel whatever residual tension we may've been still feeling. They nodded and shrugged, knowing that more such experiences were apt to befall us all as we learned our way around the neighborhood.
When we finally got into buying in the Sound, everyone was continuously awed and astounded by its beauty and size. I can't think of grand enough adjectives to adequately describe it or encompass the overwhelming character of its presence. Every point of view showed another facet, a different world. You could put twenty Puget Sounds inside Prince William, it's that humongous.
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When in the western part of PWS, several times we had recourse to tie-up at Whittier. Thirst drove us, mainly.
Coming out of Valdez, you pass through narrow Valdez Arm to enter the expanse of the Sound. Just beyond, off to the right, you pass Columbia Bay and its resident glacier. Back then, almost thirty years ago, its face wasn't very far into the Bay; we traveled through it a number of times for the experience. Now, I'm sure it's shrunk quite a bit. But back then, we had to be aware of the tides when coming and going. An ebb tide brought icebergs out onto the Sound directly in our path, some much larger than our boats. It would be nice to leave Valdez just as the tide is changing so as to not only run with it but also to get a maximum clear highway. Unfortunately, given the constraints of time, that's not always possible; when an opener is called for, you have to go, and sometimes that means now, regardless of the tide.
I recall one night -- later on in the season when the nights were actually dark -- I was at the wheel coming out of the Arm. The radar picked up multiple bergs in the way. I spotted another boat in the distance and no sooner had I that it
One thing, though, that we damn well had nailed down from the start was the exact whereabouts of Bligh Reef, a definite no-go zone.
So, getting back to the Exxon Valdez; what happened to it? Coming out of the Arm the Sound expands rapidly, there's plenty of room to maneuver. How they managed to run aground on the reef is up to conjecture. Everybody was
Disgusted, I decided , at first, not to take part in the mess, and instead joined a minimal crew on an 80-foot power-scowl heading for Togiak to go herring tendering. Togiak is in the northwestern part of Bristol Bay, itself in the eastern arm of the Bering Sea. The crew had jumped ship for the bigger bucks and safer duty the oil spill provided. Never one to pass up an opportunity for adventure during that period in my life, I went for it.
Later on, when we finally returned to Cordova, I too jumped ship -- wasn't making much and the skipper was a drunken asshole -- and got into the spill. I helped a guy run a small boat tendering a skimmer in the southwest of the Sound, near Latouche Island and Kings Passage. It was crazy, truly. Never had I seen so much money get burned up and wasted, all for the media. I remember an Exxon rep coming around telling people to look busy even if they had to make it up because a crew from Channel-5 from Seattle was coming that day. It was disgusting and degrading. Even though I was making several hundred a day doing practically nothing, I finally quit after only a month. Our job included, for the most part, tying up to the Cape Douglas, a 120-foot power scow that was being used as a holding tank for the sludge, and watch movies with the skipper. The Great Clean-Up -- the only thing that got laundered was the money that went into it.
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We got ready and we also spent a lot of time onshore. My favorite haunt was Kenai Joes. Situated on a bluff above the river, it had sawdust on the floor, pool tables and a great jukebox. My drink of choice in those days was Wild Turkey and coke on the rocks.
Midnight of the 31st we were on the ocean near Seal Rocks, miles below the opening to Prince William Sound. The ground line was in tubs that, with bait and ice, weighed about 40 pounds each. It went out over a metal chute strapped securely to the
First the buoy and its line, then an anchor, then the gear, followed by an anchor and buoy-line, symmetric-like. The anchors weighed 50 pounds. I don't recall exactly how many strings we put out, but each string was ten tubs, and each tub was a full-skate long, 150 hooks using 18-inch gangions each separated by two-thirds of a fathom for blackcod [for halibut you use much longer gangions, or leaders. Where tied to the groundline, any pair are separated by more than the distance between their combined lengths, for the obvious reason].
While the gear soaked we busied ourselves baiting up more -- it never ends. We used fresh herring. It was the first day; none of us had worked together before and so our efforts went towards establishing an efficient routine. We'd put the gear out without a hitch, but the hard part was to come -- pulling it back in. I won't go into the gory details of our set-up
We ran an RSW system -- Recycled Sea Water -- which kept the fish below 32 degrees fahrenheit without freezing them. When pulling gear you're always sideways in the trough so the boat rocks side to side. On a deck that's usually wet from rocking [water comes through the scuppers], you use that motion to move things -- like an almost full tote of fish. You might need to move one several times during a pull -- if you're lucky -- in order to put a fresh empty in its place at the bottom of the slide. One man can push a tub containing hundreds of pounds by going with the roll. Trying to do otherwise is hopeless and demonstrates to all that you are not only a greenhorn but are also out of touch with your surroundings -- the sea.
At 6:00 AM we were on deck, on site and doing things. No wandering around sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette trying to wake up. Nope. We worked from six to midnight, every day. Ran into Kenai on friday night, delivered, cleaned the boat up -- what hadn't been cleaned on the way in -- and crashed heavily. The weekends were dedicated to repairing gear and whatever else needed doing -- groceries, making weights out of chain, going to the marine store to get new hooks or gaffs or whatever. But, saturday and sunday felt like days off, only twelve hours of work each; then, it was to the bars.
I checked the radar then turned to go down the steps to the galley for more coffee. Behind me on the wall were the trouble lights, several of them. Those alarms were turned off at night but the red lights were still active. I glanced at the board as I went by and one was blinking -- the light for the forward bilge pump. I woke the engineer to have him check while I went back to the bridge. It was about 50 feet of deck from there to the forecastle, so he took a sleepy few seconds to get there. But no sooner had he stepped across the threshold to the forward compartment, he came running back and up the steps to wake the skipper. The forward compartment was flooded and filling fast.
Despite being in good shape by this time in the season -- coiling hundreds of fathoms of buoy line per set, if nothing else, will do that for you -- we nonetheless could only do a few at a time. Five gallons of water hoisted as far over your head as you can reach as fast as you can wears you out in a hurry, especially when you're exhausted to begin with. An empty would be dropped down as you did this.
Despite our efforts, as fast as the four of us were going, we could see we were losing the battle. We needed a pump, quickly. The engineer, Stryder [that name fit him], had an interesting history and was my stateroom mate. He'd been in the CIA during the
We headed northwest to Pigot Bay which has a shallow slope to the beach. Not all power scows are flat-bottomed, some have a bit of a keel, but not too deep; they're built to carry wight. The Lady Simpson, however, is flat-bottomed, fortunately, so we ran up onto the beach a little ways, not too much; we didn't want to get stuck at low tide. The engineer was also a diver and had his gear with him. He dove down and replaced the fitting. Afterwards we ate and rested a bit while the skipper ran back to our gear on the grounds; we picked-up where we'd left off, literally, with little sleep and adrenaline in short supply. So it went. During those two years on the Lady Simpson, we also visited Seward (for repairs), Homer (for R&R) and Kodiak (closest at the time). I spent quality hours of my life in every bar in those cities; it was all part of the tour.
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The third year I fished on the
Sometimes we'd go into Westport or Neah Bay, but our home port was La Push. In those days we had long seasons so if most of the members of our group -- the Freak Fleet -- were in port at the same time, invariably there'd be a beach party, a huge bonfire of driftwood with plenty of drinking and herb. Or, we'd drive into Forks to do laundry and buy liquor and beer, sometimes champaigne to celebrate an especially good trip. Life was good but it was destined to end.
In '80 I fished on the Nomad II with Dave Goodenau, a tuna fisherman, mainly. We spent a few weeks coming out of Newport. It was a terrific boat, a 47-foot Skookum hull, a sailboat. We were in a lot of heavy seas that would've forced the Alki to head for port, but the Nomad II had little problem.
After this I went up to Alaska in '82, but not for fishing. A good friend was going to do a concrete job in Juneau, outside of town past the airport, building support walls for an office building. I went along as the labor pool. It was hard work but I loved being there. We had a house on the other side of Gastineau Channel on the beach. I was making a thousand bucks a week. When the job ended, Donavan, my old trolling partner, asked me to come to Valdez to help him with the High Tides Seafood affair. I lied and told him I was still working and how much money I was making, so he offered me an extra penny a pound. That was enough.
I flew to Prince William Sound and fell in love with Alaska. Still am.
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Fortunately, the deck was covered by a sturdy metal enclosure. It not only made for a safer working space, but also kept us out of the rain, which never let up. The trip lasted six days all together, if I recollect correctly, and three days of that were spent traveling to and from the grounds.
Many a time we had to jog next to our gear-buoy not thirty feet away waiting for a window of relative calm before attempting to pull it.
Living here now, near Port Townsend, I have access to the water. Occasionally I'll drive out to a point, sometimes sit on a beach log, and reminisce over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It's not the same, of course, but it helps; the sound of the waves lapping over and over again. I'll close my eyes and remember how it all felt, a shadow of it anyway, and the people I knew and shared a lifetime with, my mates.
I have lots of Alaska stories and not all are about fishing. Two in particular come to mind. They're exemplary of the kind of people who lived there then, friendly, easy-going people. I don't know about now; in fact, it seemed to be changing for the worse even as I left. I'm not sure what causes that. People get squeezed; the adventure goes out of life. I don't know.
Another time -- you'll love this -- I needed to get away for a couple of days, three days, actually, as it turned out. The skipper had gone to Anchorage to deal with his crazy wife. I was pissed. Right in the middle of the best blackcod season in ten years and this jerk decides to go fight with his wife. As we were all ready to go fishing -- nothing needed to be done -- the rest of the crew asked me what they should do. I told them I didn't care what they did, I was leaving.
The bar was about two-thirds full; people were playing pool and the jukebox was roaring along, when suddenly, everybody in the bar walked out the side door leading to the alley/driveway. Alone, I asked the barmaid what the hell was going on. She smiled and said simply, "You better get out there," nodding towards the door. Hesitant but nonetheless supremely curious I did as she suggested.
At the doorway, I first looked down to the street-end -- no one -- then up towards the backyard. There they were, the whole bar, standing around in little groups, moving and mingling, smoking pot, which, in those days, was legal in Alaska.
That was Homer in the late 80's, one of the friendliest cities in Alaska. I spent a few months there later that year, in the fall, staying at a friend's house. I'd say it was Alaska's art colony, most of whom fished. In an atmosphere like Alaska, social circumstances are trumped by the physical, allowing your personality to grow, but not smoothly. Personalities grow bumps and protrusions -- eccentricities, I believe they're called -- because it's necessary to be as real as you can be. It's the natural state of humankind, I'm convinced, once given the room and the primitive demands of your environment. Extensions show themselves in disproportionate amounts. It compares to Cordova.
Homer was then bohemian-free-spirit fishermen, and Cordova was more working-class-roughneck fishermen. Homer is much larger, spread out and flat with an access road to the interior through Kenai and Anchorage, whereas Cordova is extremely hilly, like Juneau, and at the end of its only road out of town you'll find the Copper River, Child's Glacier and the Million Dollar bridge, from which you can drop large rocks on passing icebergs -- somethin' to do in the spring.
In the summer, we'd go out to the glacier area and camp-out for a few days, bringing all we needed: sleeping bags, firewood for camp fires, some food -- not much -- and plenty to drink. We'd also take weapons: a rifle and my favorite -- a 12-gauge short-barrel pump. I'd fire it at the glacier across the river over and over at the same spot using slugs and eventually it would calve, magnificently. I imagined I caused it, but, I was pretty stoned most of the time out there, so, who knows.
So, it's about even, Homer and Cordova each have their advantages and disadvantages. They're sister cities, as is Kodiak, in fact. If you're a Cordova fisherman, you can cash a check in Kodiak, could then anyway -- the brotherhood runs deep.
I remember once, coming back from Atka, Brian and Ronny were attempting to replace a hydraulic set-up on deck, right outside the cabin door. We were heading into a confused sea of a three- to five-foot chop coming from several directions at once. The boat was being steered by a greenhorn, name of Hub who was kind of along for the ride, and thrashing all over the place when Brian came in and asked me to take the wheel.
You'd be surprised how many experienced seamen don't understand that the water is not moving, except to oscillate, it's the wave that's moving. A cork bobbing in the open sea will make a complete circle due to the wave action passing underneath. So, what's happening up there is pretty much going to be happening when you get there, so set-up for it, like a surfer. It was a skill, I suppose you'd call it, that came to me early on.
I've been up and down the Inside Passage several times; worked Lynn Canal -- Haines and Skagway; stopped at Pelican a couple of times, and I've traveled all the waterways between Cape Spencer and Dutch Harbor. But the ocean holds a special place in my heart. I'll always love it.
Oftentimes, when at sea, I've felt a kinship with the brotherhood, an eight thousand year old brotherhood, coursing through my veins. And I've sensed the aliveness of the sea. I'm not referring to the creatures that live in it; I mean the ocean itself. It has that presence.
I'm old now and it's unlikely I'll ever be on it again. But, some nights, with the help of a bottle of wine, I can revisit times, places, events and the men and women I've known with whom I shared incredible experiences at sea. We risked our lives together; that's not something to be taken lightly.
May they live long and prosper. At least, may they never forget.
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I don't anymore and haven't for some time. Screw 'em. I take people at face value. Nobody grows up entirely unscathed. Everybody has dysfunctional problems to deal with and get over. Understanding for children, yes, but after a certain age, that's it.
If someone decides, for whatever reason, rational or irrational, to crap all over my life and what I care about, to attempt to ruin and spoil my joy of it for no better reason than jealousy or simply because it gives that person pleasure to do so, then the hell with him.
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Bio ![]() ![]() The neighborhood was about half black and half white of which were mostly Irish and German. Two other side streets to the east, Conestoga and Yewdell, had corner grocery stores. We didn't have front yards -- there was just the street -- and the backyards were tiny, ours big enough for my grandmother to hang wash.
My grandmother made the best iced tea I've ever tasted. We were in and out of the house all night, the screen door
In the winter we had monstrous snowfalls back then -- in the 50's -- blizzards. We'd walk through drifts on our way to school -- Our Lady of Victory at 54th and Vine -- our galoshes covered when we got there. I recall the sound of the radiators steaming and the smell of the rubber snow-gear drying in the long closets at the back of the classroom. Not much in the way of synthetics in those days.
Around the date of the Epiphany -- January 6th -- a strange ritual would take place. At the bottom of our street was a vast dirt lot, it was called the Mill lot. For a week or so prior to the DAY, people would gather Christmas trees, dry Christams trees and stack them in a massive pile on the Mill lot, hundreds of trees. Then, on the night of January 6th, the whole neighborhood would surround it and set it on fire. I'll never forget the sound of dry Christmas trees burning, the heat and smell, the intense flames roaring, watching the adults, drinking and laughing, the sight of their faces in the light of the flames, me, a child less than ten years old. Talk about a pagan ritual. The cops never showed up that I remember.
When we moved away, I was 12, I waved to my friends sitting on the front steps of my house, smiling. I was too young to realize what it meant, moving out from the place where I grew up. Nothing afterwards could even begin to compare to my experiences there. Different worlds entirely.
My neighborhood. It's funny, now, at the age of 60, I find myself thinking about it from time to time. Images pop into my head while doing the strangest things. There was something about it that I now also feel, I don't know. I recall playing in
I feel like I've gone full circle, back to the beginning with my feelings and thoughts and imaginings. For that reason, I feel like I don't have much longer to live. But it doesn't worry me, really. I walked away from the Catholic Church when I was a teenager. I had problems, fears, and my religion proved to be of little help in assuaging them. So, I quit. I don't believe in heaven and hell or an afterlife. But, if it does turn out that after we die we reunite with those we love and with whom we've shared incredible experiences, it would be wonderful. If only it were true.
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