CHAPTER SIX: A DIFFICULT REMEMBRANCE FROM MY YOUTH

PRIVACY VIOLATED

I don't remember this incident too well: perhaps it has been too many years since it took place, or perhaps I have tried to block it from conscious memory. Tried, but never succeeded. For while I have never really "thought about It,” I have certainly never forgotten it, either.

Neither have I been successful in understanding it. Why did it happen? What impact has it had on my life? Can I directly attribute any of my future actions to this incident? Many questions; no answers. After forty or more years, no answers.

My childhood and youth spent in Anchorage were nearly idyllic. As a child I loved life there: The snow, the cold, the beautiful "Northern Lights", the warm southern "Chinook" winds in mid-winter, the constant daylight in summer, the constant darkness in winter. This was an unusual locale that fired the childish imagination and gave birth to personal and intellectual freedom. Certainly we children growing up in Anchorage were less
constrained by custom than children growing up in similar sized cities in the "South 48".

Adults in Anchorage - or Alaska in general - were certainly spoilt by the friendly clannishness of our neighbors: It seemed that together we faced hardship in the weather and natural surroundings and as a consequence we were more compassionate with others. Perhaps compassionate is not the right word for this: Locking cars was unheard of; locking your house was only done if you were going away for an extended period of time; you always picked up hitchhikers because they were your neighbors; you never minded hitching a ride because these were your neighbors. The level of trust amongst friends and strangers alike was incredible. And was the topic of conversation by every visitor.

My several trips, as a child, to visit relatives in other states afforded me the opportunity to see what life was supposed to be like in the more "civilized" world. It certainly wasn't like what I was accustomed to in our "frontier" environment. And in my childish innocence I wouldn't have traded our way of living for any of my relatives' lifestyles.

But for me the compassion lost its comfort on a very dark, very cold, snowy winter night when I was eight or nine. I was a Cub Scout whose Den meeting was held at the home of my best friend, Darrell Bergt. The Bergts lived at that time very close to the elementary school perhaps a mile from our house. I walked the streets to and from school daily and knew the route well. In Anchorage in 1950 there were few street lights, so my daily trek to school was done in total darkness in the morning, and in semi-light each afternoon.

Sunrise in the winter happened just before noon, and we children would look forward to the pleasant interruption of our school day by the gradual lightening of the sky which heralded lunch. Sunset would occur before we left school for home in early afternoon.

So for me to attend Den meetings meant that I walked to Darrell's house after dinner and walked home again when the meeting was done. I rarely met anyone else walking the streets on those nights, and although moose frequently entered town and roamed the streets, they never made it to our neighborhood and I never met up with one when walking home from a Den meeting.

This particular night, when walking home, I was perhaps midway between Darrell's house and my own when a car pulled up beside me and a familiar-sounding male voice asked if I'd like a lift home. The night seemed especially cold and although I usually enjoyed the walk home in the snow and darkness I said "Sure" and got in the car.

I remember how very warm it felt; the heater fan was turned on high and was blowing nice hot air up into my face. I scrunched down a little bit to get as close to the heater as possible, so I wasn't watching where we were driving. As I try to recollect this event I cannot picture the face of the driver, but my sense of the moment is that I knew this person and knew that he knew where I lived. So I had no need to pay attention; I just enjoyed the heater.

It wasn't many minutes until he stopped the car, left the engine running, leaned over to me and said "Why don't I unzip your jacket and let the warm air in. You must be very cold." His hands worked the zipper and my overcoat came open. He opened the front of my coat and said, "Are you getting warm now?" One of his hands was on my leg, resting on my trouser.

Then it moved up my leg to my crotch and grabbed at me. I was petrified and sat still, hardly breathing. His own breathing was becoming more audible and I could see nothing but black outside and could hear nothing but his loud breathing. His hand slipped down inside the front of my trousers and touched my penis. I was too scared to move or say anything and didn't know what he was going to do.

Now I could hear him moving something with his other hand; moving something and breathing even more loudly. What was he doing? Why was he breathing so hard: Was he scared too? His hand in my pants was moving and squeezing me and his breathing was more like moaning.

Suddenly it stopped. His hand wasn't moving. His breathing was quiet.

And he put the car in gear and began driving again. It was only minutes, I'm sure, and he stopped the car again and told me to get out: He's taken me as far as he can. I opened the door, got out and ran down the street. He had brought me within several blocks of home and I didn't zip up my coat or anything; I just ran to home. I never told my parents what happened that night; maybe I was afraid I'd get into trouble, I don't know. And I never accepted another ride until I was a teenager. It was not too long after that incident that the Bergts moved to a new house many miles out of town and I quit Cub Scouts.

© 4/2/98 Gene Brown

MANNING THE PHONES: WHAT IT MEANT FOR ME

Many years ago, after first moving to the Pacific Northwest from our home in the San Francisco Bay Area, our family was involved in the campaign for a Rotary friend who was running for a municipal judgeship. His name was Tom Wynn - and he not only won his election, but won succeeding elections until he is now the presiding judge for the Snohomish County Court.

During that first involvement in the campaign process, my wife, Nina, our two teen aged children, Richard and Kristina, and I learned about silk screening yard signs, and canvassing neighborhoods to distribute fliers, and all the other myriad tasks that go into helping a person get elected.

With that background, we then worked on the campaign of a fellow Rotarian's wife's bid for a state senate seat. Again, as a family, we made signs, canvassed neighborhoods talking to people and handing out fliers. And as a family we attended the election night watch at campaign headquarters, to see our candidate lose her first bid for office.

We worked with other Rotarians on this and other projects of 'goodly deeds' - until we discovered that many of these 'good deed' folks were rotten to the core inside, and would sell you out without a second thought if it would further their personal goals.

So we exited the Rotary club, moved from the southern Snohomish County area and continued life without any involvement in the political scene.

Until now.

With those experiences now nearly thirty years past, I have volunteered to man the phones for the re-election of Senator Patty Murray.

First, I attended a rally in Bellevue on Saturday, the second, in which Senator Murray and several other local Democratic candidates spoke, mingled with the crowd and shook hands with the many who were familiar to them as volunteers - and with those of us who were volunteering for the first time.

And there, in the crowd, I bought into the vision that has propelled these men and women to face nearly intolerable scrutiny from the press and from society - a vision of equality in the application of our laws so all people in the state of Washington can have equal access to the benefits of their citizenship here.

With a feeling of rightness that I hadn't felt since those early campaign experiences, I signed up to help man the phones for Senator Murray's re-election.

Yesterday afternoon I drove to a building that was for lease, but was now the temporary headquarters for the Murray and DelBene campaigns in Renton, was given five pages of names - about one hundred in all - and began calling my neighbors. To tell them about the message of hope that the Democratic platform offers its voters, and to encourage them to look past the doom and gloom policies of the opposition, and vote for  continued progress.

When I was finished - it took nearly two full hours to make all the calls - I had a feeling of both exuberance and relief; I had reintegrated myself into the social fabric and had opted to help make a difference in the world.

Manning the phones had a made a real difference; and perhaps most especially in me.

g

THIS IS A COPY FROM: ADDICTINGINFO.ORG

You Might be a Republican If..........


By Bruce Linder

You Might be a Republican If..........

1) You believe George W. Bush's redistribution of middle-class tax cuts to the top 1% of tax-payers was good for America, but Obama's plan to return it to the middle class is 'socialism.'

2) You believe stem cells are living human beings, but thousands of Iraqi children are 'expendable collateral damage.'

3) You believe tax cuts for billionaires is a great idea, yet you wonder why the economy has stalled, your job just got outsourced to India, and oil company executives receive $400,000,000.00 retirement packages.

4) You believe the surge worked because the violence in Iraq is back to 2006 levels, which is only horrible, compared to what it was in 2007; intolerable. Besides, Brit Hume said so.

5) You think trial lawyers are harmful to America, yet you support prosecuting some guy in Muncie Indiana who burned his 99¢ American flag that was made in China by forced child labor.

6) You're all for the 'rule of law' when it's applied to Bill Clinton for lying about his infidelity, but not for prosecuting Karl Rove and Scooter Libby for committing treason.

7) You think George W. Bush is actually a really smart guy, but his folksy manner just makes him seem dumber than he really is.

8) You believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own, and that those who are born to poverty and never have opportunities for advancement, got what they deserved.

9) You believe Ronald Reagan was a great president who had complete control of all aspects of government, but the Iran-Contra Affair was an insignificant scandal that went on without his knowledge.

10) You believe Democrats tax and spend, but George W. Bush was a fiscal conservative.

11) You believe Oliver North, who was CONVICTED of perjury, obstruction of justice, destroying evidence and accepting bribes, is a patriot. But John Kerry, who saved a man's life while under enemy fire in Vietnam is a coward.

12) You believe George W. Bush kept us safe from terror, and the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks were Clinton's fault.

13) You actually believe Fox News is fair & balanced.

14) You still believe Saddam had truckloads of WMDs, and that he somehow managed to sneak them into Syria, right under our noses.

15) You believe Terri Schiavo was sentient all along, and Bill Frist had the ability to diagnose her condition by watching a 5 second video of her sleeping.

16) You're in favor of stronger prison sentences for drug users, yet your favorite radio personality is Rush Limbaugh.

17) You complain about having to press 1 for English, yet you hire undocumented workers to mow your lawn because they're cheaper than hiring the kid next door.

18) Homosexuality is abhorrent to you, except when a Republican senator, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and a planted White House journalist get caught having sexual affairs with gay men. Then you suddenly feel sorry for them.

19) The war in Iraq makes perfect sense to you, but any suggestion by Barack Obama that we target al Qaeda specifically is 'dangerous and reckless.'

20) You don't mind that president Bush tortured men who were never charged with a crime, yet you're horrified by the wrath of al Qaeda when they capture one of our guys.

21) You believe the 1/10 of 1% of scientists who claim global warming is a hoax, and reject the 99.9% who say it's real, because Sean Hannity and his friends in the oil industry have convinced you that science is a part of a greater liberal conspiracy.

22) You believe patriotism means you should support your government right or wrong ... unless a Democrat's in power, then it's your patriotic duty to call him a closet Muslim, challenge his birth certificate, expose his sex life and impeach him.

23) You're proud of your party's 'culture of life.' Yet you support the death penalty for minors, you believe 600,000 dead Iraqis is justified because one of them was Saddam Hussein, and you oppose confronting the genocide in Darfur because they don't have oil.

24) You support prayer in school, as long as your kids aren't subjected to Muslim prayers.

25) You think Darwin's theory of evolution is a loony fairy tale, and mankind actually began with two naked teenagers, a magic apple and a talking snake.

26) You think $35 billion spent on health care for children is a waste of taxpayer's money, but $1.7 trillion spent on a catastrophic war that has isolated us from our allies, decimated our economy and made us less safe was money well spent.

27) You believe embargoing communist Cuba is sound foreign policy, but trading with China is just good business.

28) You believe Bill Clinton was an immoral cad, but Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde were faithful husbands (and Larry Craig just has a wide stance).

29) You fervently defend the Constitution, but when president Bush got caught monitoring 300 million phones without a warrant, politicizing our justice system, hyping evidence for going to war and pardoning a convicted perjurer who just happened to be on his staff, then it's okay, because he was 'protecting America.'

30) You were outraged when a gallon of gasoline went from $1.29 to $1.40 during the two terms of the Clinton presidency, but you didn't seem to mind when prices tripled under George W. Bush, the "oil man."

31) You were furious when Bill Clinton pardoned international commodities trader Marc Rich, who was convicted of tax evasion, but applauded when George W. Bush exonerated Scooter Libby for obstructing justice to protect Dick Cheney from a treason indictment.

32) With no evidence whatsoever, you complained of 'voter fraud,' and demanded that thousands of blacks be scrubbed from voting lists during the 2004 election in Ohio, yet when Rush Limbaugh asked his audience to illegally claim to be Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton during the Ohio Primary in February to "stir up trouble," a FELONY, you were okay with that.

33) You believe Barack Obama should be held accountable for every sermon that Jeremiah Wright ever gave, but John McCain, who sought the endorsement of anti-Semitic, xenophobic, openly racist and homophobic pastors should be given a pass.

34) You believe Barack Obama is either a secret Muslim, was actually born in Kenya, and his parents forged a fake birth certificate when he was born - just in case he should ever run for president, or that his father's nationality disqualifies his son from being president, all because you read that on the Internet.

35) You believe the 8 consecutive years of prosperity and strong economic growth from 1993 - 2001 was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but today's recession is all Clinton's and Obama's fault.

36) You laugh at how much better Barack Obama speaks with a TelePrompTer than without one, yet you never mention the fact that even with a TelePrompTer, every time George Bush opened his mouth, gibberish tumbled out.

37) You still believe Barack Obama has somehow succeeded in fooling every government and independent examination with his "obviously Photoshopped" documents. Instead, you rely on Internet gossip, WorldNetDaily and Jerome Corsi as your sources for "truth."

38) Your conservative media spent more air time discussing Michelle Obama touching the queen of England's arm than on the economy, the environment, terrorism and health care combined.

39) You believe that we should get out of Afghanistan because Obama is "nation building," yet for eight straight years of Bush's bumbling incompetence there, you kept mum. Therefore, attacking Iraq makes sense, even though they never threatened us, but finishing off the job of finding Osama bin Laden; the terrorist who killed 3,000 Americans -- Bush's original task -- is a dumb idea.

40) You were furious that Barack Obama admitted in France that Americans have occasionally been "arrogant, dismissive and derisive," but you cheered them on when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were arrogant, dismissive and derisive.

41) You believe that Obama's $3.6 trillion budget is an outrage, but never once complained that George Bush turned Bill Clinton's $300 billion surplus into a $1.3 trillion deficit. And it never once occurred to you that Bush deliberately omitted the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from those statistics, which means Bush's TRUE deficit was $3.1 trillion.

42) You supported Gov. Sarah Palin, partly because you believed she kept a good Christian home. This, despite the fact that her seventeen year old unmarried daughter was knocked up, her son was accused of vandalizing 44 school buses (cutting the brake lines of school buses - HELLO!!?) and was given the choice of going to jail or join the military, and Palin herself was found guilty of abusing the power of her office. But Barack Obama can't possibly be a true Christian, because his father was a Muslim, and his middle name is Hussein. (Besides, he's black, and everybody knows that Jesus was a blond haired blue eyed white man.)

43) You believe the only solution to gun violence is to make sure everybody is armed to the teeth. That way, when some crazy person goes on a killing spree, right-thinking people will take out the killer, and tranquility will prevail throughout the land.

44) You believe the mainstream news anchors are crazy, biased and filled with hate, but Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are rational, accurate and informative.

45) You defend Rush Limbaugh's right to wish for Obama to fail, and therefore, the failure of our republic, yet you call Democrats the "blame America first crowd."

46) You claim that the economic crisis is the fault of the Democrats, but never mention that it was the Reagan administration that massively deregulated the banking industry in 1982, and it was Phil Gramm - McCain's choice for economic advisor - who completed the task for his pals in the banking industry in 1999.

47) You believe the failure of the US automobile industry is primarily the fault of the unions, and not because management of the three corporations insisted on producing vehicles that nobody wanted. And you're angry with the $28.00 per hour average wage of the work force, but you believe that the multimillion dollar salaries of the men who bankrupted the industry are perfectly reasonable.

48) You believe Barack Obama is a "narcissistic megalomaniac," because you heard Glenn Beck call him that once, but Beck himself is a humble man, concerned only for your welfare (brought to you by Goldline!).

49) You believe anybody who doesn't subscribe to Orly Taitz' birther movement is a RINO, and those who do, are carrying the torch of Reaganism.

50) You think this list is mean-spirited and biased, and even though you privately acknowledge to yourself that it's all true, you believe the Democrats are just as bad. Here's a bulletin: Nobody has ever been this bad.

New Comments Added After the Fact:

Thomas Behnke10/13/2010 11:03:41 PM

You might be a Republican if...

You feel perfectly justified demonizing the entire population of Muslims based on the radical fringe of that religion, while isolating and playing down the psychotic Christians who shoot doctors, bomb abortion clinics, bugger little children, and conspire to turn this country government into the same fascist theocracy in Afghanistan, except this time with the 'right' god.

Meg10/13/2010 9:59:16 PM

You might be a Republican if.............

You think a ball of cells has a right to life but not a woman. Also, if you think only the government should be allowed to control a woman's body and not herself.

L.M.10/13/2010 9:41:52 PM

You might be a Republican if.............

You think you are radical patriot protecting the American way of life, because you support the rights of corporations to control our political system.

Beau Brown10/13/2010 9:34:37 PM

Truth

You might be a Republican if - Sad that it's Truth. Every Democrat needs to vote. We need to deliver the coup de grace to this politically self serving and dying entity.

joe vig10/13/2010 8:47:11 PM

you might be illinformed

Someone wrote, "None of what you posted matters, the republicans will take the house and you have nobody to blame but the democrats!!" That's exactly why Republicans lost both houses! They were profoundly incompetent...just as the democrats are now! The cycle of abuse will always be here because of American Idiots! You'll always vote for a stupid republican or a stupid democrat! I say let those two parties die a slow agonizing death! Oh, wait! They are!!!!!

Pete Haines10/13/2010 8:31:42 PM

"You might be a idiot"

...if you say "You might be a idiot..." instead of "You might be an idiot..."

Jim Black is illiterate10/13/2010 7:30:42 PM

You might be an idiot if you say "you might be a idiot".

Gerrie Rousseau10/13/2010 6:56:40 PM

You might be a Republican...

...if you believe that ancient people rode dinosaurs.

Jim Black10/13/2010 6:37:04 PM

You might be a idiot if...

You think "None of what you posted matters, the republicans will take the house", even after hearing the facts and still support Republicans any way.

Dorita Gordon10/13/2010 5:14:09 PM

You Might Be a Republican If...

You claim to want smaller government and less government interference, but you want a law governing who you can marry.

Damon Musselman10/13/2010 5:13:35 PM

You might be a Republican if...

(51) You praise Reagan as your tax-cutting, anti-spending role model while conveniently forgetting that Reagan RAISED taxes in 1982, 1983,1984, and 1986 while spending more that all the Presidents before him COMBINED.

chuck finan10/13/2010 4:55:52 PM

You Might Be a Republican if.......

Your names is Carl Andrews???

T. Claiborne10/13/2010 4:49:59 PM

You might be if...

If you believe that "we cannot abandon Baghdad..." because its our God-given mission to "liberate Iraq", but its OK to leave the American citizens of New Orleans stranded on their rooftops, let to die in their own waste following hurricane Katrina because "there were a lot of bad people in New Orleans..."

The Christian Left10/13/2010 4:28:43 PM

We posted this on The Christian Left!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Christian-Left/109200595768753

Join us!

We also posted it on Reddit!

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/dquwn/you_might_be_a_republican_if/

Gloria Lynn10/13/2010 4:26:39 PM

You Might Be a Republican if........

You are staunchly in favor of heavy fines for anyone who hires undocumented workers but when it's revealed that you knowingly had undocumented workers on your payroll, you claim that you had no idea and quickly say it's the "blamestream" media's fault.

Gloria Lynn10/13/2010 4:21:15 PM

You Might Be a Republican if........

You think we can pay our doctors with a chicken, that there are be-headings all over the Arizona border, Sharia Law has been put into effect anywhere within the United States borders and that scientists have transplanted human brains into mice.

Carl Andrews10/13/2010 4:20:59 PM

democrats

None of what you posted matters, the republicans will take the house and you have nobody to blame but the democrats!!

Gloria Lynn10/13/2010 4:18:22 PM

You Might Be a Republican if........

You keep calling everyone who had their job outsourced by the policies of the last administration of being lazy bums who should just go get a job and stop stealing your tax dollars.

Gloria Lynn10/13/2010 4:16:10 PM

You Might Be a Republican if........

If you claim you want smaller government with less power but support repealing the 17th Amendment which would give the government the power to hand pick Senators and take the right of we the people from voting for the candidate of our choice

Ballard Mer Ross10/13/2010 4:08:26 PM

Wow

After about the 15th point, it just becomes so clear there isn't a cure for this disease they call Republitosis, sad really, it affects a lot of people, wish I could help them, but you know you can't help someone that refuses treatment.

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  - 
I just had to copy this to my blog. It is the essence of the Republican party, the Republican mindset, the Republican platform today, I'm sorry to say.

And I, for one, am not ready to return this country to the failed policies of the GOP in this election, nor the next, nor the next.

g

CHANGES ARE IN THE WIND!!

I know - you think the beautiful Mercedes CL (Lorinser Edition) that fronts this blog is lovely enough as is; no changes needed.

Ah, but you underestimate the need for constant improvement of one's ride.

Over the next week or so, both visible and not visible modifications will take place; a new photo will be posted in place of the current one; the transformation will be done ..... for NOW!

These modifications, tweaks, upgrades and whatevers, will allow it to take me farther, faster, funner and fancier than it does today.

So: stay tuned!

Thanks,

g

WHAT CHRISTIANS TODAY DON'T KNOW ABOUT THEIR RELIGION

Amongst my collection of books read and yet to be read are some number by Professor Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, who currently chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He is a recognised authority on the early Church.

Too bad his books are not required reading for the faithful: they just might learn something about the book they revere so much.

Here is my take on his text: "Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew." He delves into most of the major texts that circulated during the first century of the current era, and the various sects of Christian belief that these both engendered and supported. There are 'forged' gospels by Simon Peter, Jesus' closest disciple, and Judas Thomas, Jesus' alleged twin brother, the texts recently found at Nag Hammadi, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the epistles attributed to Paul but not written by him (some found in the New Testament), and numerous others.  The sects that battled for supremacy included the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and various 'Gnostic' sects, amongst others.

All of these groups had an unshakable faith in their version of the events in the life of Jesus; but all were at odds with one another. Could they all be right? Not hardly. Could they all be wrong? Quite possibly.

The battles Dr. Ehrman discusses show the ebb and flow of doctrine up through the fourth century C.E. until the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were codified. The story that these books - out of the hundreds that circulated up through that time frame - tell us today is a carefully formulated doctrine meant to shut out all other faiths, creeds and sects who had called themselves Christian, in order to capitalize on the symbiotic relationship with the Roman emperor and government.

The story of these battles, the lies told about and aspersions cast upon the various competing sects, makes one distrust all writings we have today, turn one's back on all forms for Christian faith as we might know it today, and disbelieve all the stories told from Sunday School to Wednesday evening Bible study.

For they are concocted, contrived and compiled from erroneous forgeries from nearly day one of the Christian era.

Were believers to read how their Bible came to be codified, how their creeds came to be formulated, how their most sacred stories came to be manipulated - they would sure shun Christianity as we who have studied these histories have done.

The religion is a sham, a contrivance, less than a shadow of what we can estimate the original intents and meanings to be. And they are provided in order to control the illiterate masses - just like those who first heard the word and believed: the most illiterate, the most gullible, the least critical of all who lived in those times and in the places.

For a believer to say, today, that he knows the word of God as written in His Book, the Bible, must make scholars of religion and the Bible laugh; the book they cherish today is a fraud. Pure and simple.

g

CHAPTER 5: MAIN 70 - MAIN 78 .... THE ONGOING SAGA OF LIFE IN ALASKA

When I was just old enough to know something about telephones – you know, those big, black heavy plastic boxes with rotary dials that went “click-click-click” in rapid succession when you turned them, and hand pieces that looked and felt like lead dumbbells on a leash – Anchorage was what my father euphemistically called a “berg”.

As in, “This berg’s too small for two cab companies.”

But he was wrong, according to my definitions:

- A “city” is so large that you have too many neighbors and you don’t know nor do you want to know any of them;

- A “town” is so large that you still have numerous neighbors but you do know and let your children play with those who live on your same street, or perhaps the next street over;

- A “village” is small enough that most of your neighbors are your friends and everyone else is neighborly, even those who live many streets away;

- A “berg” is so tiny that all its residents are your neighbors and there are no streets!

Anchorage was definitely a village, albeit a very cosmopolitan one. We could claim, in the late ‘40’s, to be Alaska’s largest population center, to have Alaska’s largest “international” airport, seaplane base, Army base and Air base – and two taxi cab companies.

How may “bergs” have two cab companies?

In fact, how many “villages” can boast that? Maybe we were actually a small town; I’ll leave that open to debate.

But what isn’t debatable is the rivalry that existed between the Yellow Cab Company and its archrival, Union Cab.

The ubiquitous, yellow Yellow Cabs could be seen at the head of a billowing trail of dust as they raced though our streets. In my youth I thought of the color yellow as being closer to the shade of mustard, so dirty were these Chariots of Convenience.

Union cabs were far fewer and definitely less noticeable. Their drab green and grey two tone exteriors didn’t seem to show the dust and dirt so readily. Their drivers, too, were undistinguished, whereas the Yellow Cab drivers wore snappy yellow caps.

Like a train porter. Or an airport sky cap.

To a young boy, they had a military kind of look and aura, and were the favorites of my school friends and me.

And apparently of the townsfolk, as well, since it seemed to us that the fleet of Yellow Cabs kept growing and the number of Union cabs kept shrinking by comparison.

Their rivalry led to fare wars and advertising campaigns that kept us all in a state of eager anticipation, awaiting the next volley in their game of one-upmanship.

The most memorable to me was when each company came up with a slogan – and advertising jingle – based on its telephone number.

Being a village, as we were then, our phone numbers were prefixed with an exchange name. The “downtown” area was, of course, “Main”. We dialed “M” “A” as the prefix to those numbers. An astute phone user would know exactly where on the grid of Anchorage and its environs a particular number was located by having learned where all the prefixes were. “MA” was the core downtown, the business district.

And the Main exchange had – get ready for this – 99 numbers assigned to it. The number given to Yellow Cab was “MA70”, which we all pronounced as “Main Seven-Oh”.

Union Cab, a later addition to our growing community, was assigned “MA78”, which we all said as “Main Seven-Eight”.

The advertising war started when Yellow Cab began airing this jingle on our one radio station: “When you gotta go, call Main Seven-Oh!” Having a larger fleet, Yellow Cab used central dispatch. The ad implied, and correctly so, that your phone call started a cab on its way to you from the downtown headquarters. Cabbies sat around the pot belly stove in the cramped dispatch office drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, waiting for their turn. The dispatcher would write the address for pickup on a slip of paper, call the next driver and send him on his way.

The jingle was catchy, easy to remember, and boosted market share immediately. It also appealed to the old-timers in town who always “went” in a Yellow Cab.

But Union Cab, not to be outdone, countered with an equally ingenious jingle based on its “newer” number: “When you can’t wait, call Main Seven-Eight!”

Union Cab, you see, was the first to use radio dispatch in their vehicles. Many of their cabbies were war veterans who were accustomed to the use of two-way radio communication.

In truth, Union’s response time was much faster, since the dispatcher could call for a cab that was already in the area of the pickup address and a taxi could arrive in far less time than it would take for Yellow’s cab to drive all the way there from downtown.

The jingle was not only cute and memorable – it told the public just how different Union Cab was from its nemesis.

Because of their inspired counter to Yellow’s ad, Union Cab saw its own fleet grow over the next several years to match the size of their rival’s. The two companies traded places as Anchorage’s largest taxi operation for a couple years.

Right up until Anchorage switched to seven digit telephone numbers and Union Cab could no longer capitalize on being first with radio dispatch.

- - - - - - - - - -

In later years as I reminisced about these two jingles I was struck by how appropriate they were, how memorable, how fixed in my mind even after forty-plus years. And how many gazillions of dollars Coke, or Pepsi, or General Motors, or any of the other current major corporations has spent trying to get their message across to the public – and how unmemorable their jingles are.

Maybe they could take a lesson from the Main 70 - Main 78 battle.


05. MAIN 70 – MAIN 78

© 6/14/99 Gene Brown

THE BLOGGER IS NOW A 'DISABLED VET'!

Back in November, 2007, during a routine annual medical exam, the doctor found that my white blood count was too high - in fact, it was in the area usually reserved for patients with leukemia. She ordered a visit to the hematologist who confirmed it: I had leukemia. Actually, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL).  This is a leukemia of the blood and the bone marrow - the spongy stuff in the bones that makes the blood cells.

The hematologist asked what work I had done in the past that might have led to exposure to various causal agents, such as asbestos or Agent Orange. And the light went on: I was in Vietnam in January, 1964, while aboard the 7th Fleet flagship, the USS Providence, CLG-6. At the time I was playing lead trumpet in the Com7thFleet Band. It apparently didn't take much exposure - we were there three days, on the ground, playing concerts, marches and Admiral's receptions. But that was enough; both the trombonist Dave Courson and I contracted cancer from this little jaunt.

Dave, I soon found out, had struggled long and hard with the VA to get his medical claim approved; but he had gotten it. So I immediately contacted my local America Legion District Service Officer (DSO) and filed a claim with the VA for disability.

They initially rejected my claim: Navy records weren't detailed enough to specify that the band had been ashore; only that we were aboard the Providence. And being in the waters off Vietnam was not enough for the federal government to authorize the VA to accept my claim. In fact, they still only approve claims from veterans who had "boots ashore" or were in the "brown water navy" - meaning that you had served on the ground in Vietnam or were on the patrol boats in the inland waterways. But "blue water sailors" - those who served in the coastal waters off Vietnam, where the wind blew the Agent Orange spray onto your ship and polluted the water that you drank - these sailors are still denied their benefits, even though the VA's own investigations show that such exposure is a definite causal agent for contracting several forms of cancer.

Turning to the other members of the band, including Dave, I asked for their remembrances of that three day stint in Saigon. Sending their affirmative email responses along with numerous other documents I had from my Navy days (see - it DOES pay to be a pack rat and keep every scrap of paper from your past !!), including a copy of my handwritten itinerary, I appealed the VA decision.

And now, after nearly three years, I have been granted 100% disability. My status as a Disabled Vietnam Veteran is confirmed.

The prognosis of the hematologist is fairly positive: so long  as the CLL remains 'asymptomatic' - that is, it's not racing off the charts, yet! - I might just outlive the disease. But if it gets a bug up its ass and decides to make a run for it, I'm in trouble. CLL is not curable; I'll have CLL the rest of my life. Just how much it will impinge on my continued enjoyment of life is unknown. But as long as I can read a good book, play a tune on my trumpet, peck away at the keyboard, and enjoy the companionship of family and friends, I'll be glad to be alive!

g

HERE'S AN INTERESTING SITE

If  you're interested in the views of other Americans on the growing division between the religious and non-religious folks in the old U.S. of A., or between the various (and incredibly Numerous!!) religious sects themselves, take a look at this blog:   http://tohellwithbetty.blogspot.com/2010/09/tennessee-mosque-burnings-christian.html

There's one thing for certain: the two main religions in America - Christian (and yes, I include here Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Christian Science, and all other, lesser numbered, ilk) and Islam - are being defined more and more each day by their extremist fringes.

And as might be expected, the great, silent majority of both religions sits idly by as these fanatics take over their religion, foment unrest for THEIR sake, and blatantly disregard the peace-loving tenets of each religion. (Yes, I know, most of the Koran ISN'T peace loving, but there are some few parts ...)

I hope you read and enjoy Betty's article.

g

CHAPTER FOUR OF MY COLLECTED SHORT STORIES: MY FRIEND DARRELL

MY FRIEND DARREL

Darrel Bergt, my best friend of my early youth in Anchorage, Alaska, was also my envy. His hair was just a little curly while mine was not; when he'd get up in the morning he could go straight to the breakfast table without having to comb his hair and it would still look OK. I had to wet my hair and comb it or it would have cow licks sticking out in all different directions.

His father, Percy, was an executive at the local power or light company, I think. His family always seemed to have nice things, and I enjoyed playing at his house because of the many toys he had that I didn't. He was one of four children: Three boys and a girl corresponding in ages, roughly, to the four children in my family. Darrel, like I, was the youngest. His sister dated one of my older brothers for a short while. When I was about nine and his parents lived far out of town, one of Darrel's older brothers lived with my family for a year or so while working or going to school in town. He always had a sack in our refrigerator with lunch meat, cheese and mayonnaise and I always snacked on them when I would get home from school. I didn't know he often complained to my parents that someone was eating his lunch fixings. Until one day, when I opened the refrigerator door, I found he had pinned a large note to his lunch sack: "LEAVE MY FOOD ALONE!" Which I did after that.

Our two families were very close. We visited frequently at each other's home; our parents played Pinochle together every week. Darrel and I were inseparable.

Both of our families belonged to the First Methodist Church. In 1948, this was a small log cabin on 9th and G streets. My dad was choir director; my mother was the church pianist. The elder Bergts sang in the choir. So at Sunday morning services, Darrel and I, then about six years old, sat in the front row together, unattended.

During one service in the spring of '48 he and I sat together at the front of the church whispering, giggling, tickling, fidgeting, squirming and doing all the other things that young boys will do when told to be quiet and sit still. Which, of course, we didn't.

My mom glared at me many times throughout the service, to no avail. I knew well what the glare meant, but we were having too much fun for me to let a glare stop me. During the prayer she even came over to us and whispered to me to stop creating a disturbance or I would be punished after the service. Still, to no avail. And during the sermon there were more glares and finger wagging in my direction; but I was oblivious.

After morning service the pastor always walked down the aisle to the church door which he would dramatically open while my mom played the traditional recessional, and the congregation would obediently rise from their seats and file out the door, stopping to shake the pastor's hand while he rejoiced in their attendance. They would dutifully praise his sermon, thank him for the service and move on out the door. And always, my parents were the very last to leave, since my dad would talk to the choir about the next choir practice and my mom would be playing the recessional.

Except on this morning: This morning my mom jumped up from the piano stool, grabbed my hand and raced down the aisle ahead of the pastor. My little feet barely touched the floor as we flew towards the back of the church. The amazed pastor followed quickly, his black robe flowing in the turbulence created by our hasty retreat.

My mom flung open the door with great drama - the pastor could take a lesson from her flair - and stopped on the small porch. There, in full view of the pastor, the congregation, all the other children (my friends, who ALWAYS had to sit with their parents in church and ALWAYS had to sit still and be quiet: A fate I had never had to endure), my mom pulled down my pants and whacked me repeatedly on the rump, all the while telling me that I had better never again disregard her warnings, and had better listen to her every word, and if I ever again embarrassed her at church she would beat me "within an inch of my life" - one of her favorite expressions that I heard her use on me many times throughout my youth - all the while whacking me with her hand. I, of course, refused to cry or say I'm sorry. After all, my friends were all watching in horror mixed with glee!

How the screw had turned; their weekly envy of my freedom in the front row quickly became their delight that I, and not one of them, was getting the tar beat out of me in front of everybody. And of course, I could hear other parents admonishing their children - my friends - that this is what happens when you don't listen to your parents, and I was only one step away from becoming the city's worst juvenile delinquent, and so on.

Now, I don't mind telling you that my mom could do a pretty fine job of paddling a kid's butt. She had had three older boys on which to practice, so whenever she needed to discipline me she had years of experience. Her hands, and her heart it often seemed, were callused. And although my cries and pleadings to stop, and my tearful expressions of sorrow, usually would have gotten through to her heart, this Sunday morning I was as determined to bravely endure without crying out as she was determined to make sure everybody heard me say I'm sorry.

After what seemed like all Sunday morning, but was most likely only several minutes, I could bear the pain no longer, and cried the words for which she had been waiting, "I'm sorry, mom. I'll sit still from now on. I promise."

She stopped the whacking and pulled up my pants. I wiped at the tears, now steadily streaming down my face, and searched the sea of faces for Darrel's. He was staring at me, a look of satisfaction on his face: His mom hadn't beaten him in front of the masses! I knew that I would never forgive him for that look.

And I never forgot that beating in front of the church and the embarrassment I felt that Sunday morning: To this day I will not set foot inside a church.

The Bergts built a new house on a bluff overlooking Turnagain Arm many miles out of town and moved there when I was eight or nine. Before they moved, Darrel and I had visited back and forth at each other's house and played in each other's neighborhood. We had bulldozed and excavated his yard and my yard with our toy road graders and bulldozers, built roads and runways, reenacted major battles with our toy Civil War and World War soldiers, and carried on like young boys will do. But after he moved he never wanted to come into town and play in my yard anymore. It was more fun at his house, he said, because there were acres of woods in which to play, and freshly dozed mounds of dirt in which to build cities and forts, and we could explore for hours without getting bored. And I agreed.

So I began spending weekends at his house. I'd take clothes to school with me on Friday and ride home with him on the school bus after school. I hated that bus ride because the other children seemed so unruly and boisterous. Darrel didn't like them, either, and we kept very much to ourselves on the bus. But as soon as we reached his long driveway, as soon as we got off the bus and started the quarter mile trek to his house, we forgot all about the bus ride and the other children and would break into a run, challenging each other to see who could get to the front door first. Then, we'd play all Friday afternoon and all day Saturday, take our Saturday night bath together - where we'd reenact every naval battle in the history of mankind - and I'd meet my parents at church on Sunday morning, ending the weekend of nonstop playing at Darrel's.

His mom always fixed a huge breakfast for the family on Saturday mornings: Eggs, bacon or ham, toast, juice, a large glass or two of water "to keep our system clean," and some sweet treats. The toast, she always said, was to make our hair curly. It had apparently worked for Darrel and I needed little encouragement to eat my fill.

They had drilled their own well and had sunk 200 feet or more of pipe in order to get water to the house, which was built directly over the well. Shortly after they moved in, they noticed a significant drop in water pressure. His parents were very concerned that they may not have dug deeply enough and had run out of water in that well. This would mean they needed to dig another well away from the house. So they had a contractor come to the house to test the well, and he said it had quite an adequate amount of water in it.

Mrs. Bergt had noticed that the well water, which at first had been very clear and had had a sweet, refreshing taste, had taken on a murky look and now had a strange taste. But the contractor found the well water to be clear and clean.

So, they pulled out the pipe, section by section, to inspect it. And in one section they found a dead, drowned rat plugging the pipe.

I never enjoyed drinking the water there again. To this day I don't drink water unless I absolutely must. It always seems to taste funny.

And while my chest hair must have received benefit from all the toast I ate on Saturday mornings – it is curly to a fault - my head hair is thin and straight.

Just like a drowned rat's.

- - - - - - - - - -

Sometime during our junior high school years Darrel’s family moved from Alaska, back down to the South 48, and he and I lost track of each other. But I did learn many years later that he had become an Air Traffic Controller at the airport in Oakland, California. While living in San Francisco during the 1970s I called him there – and received a very terse, uninterested reception. We have never spoken together since.

His brother Neill, I heard, founded and was president of Markair Airline in Alaska during its brief lifespan. I guess the Bergt family was as nuts about airplanes as the Browns were.

(Photo from the Internet)

4th Avenue, Anchorage, taken in September, 1956.

LEAVING COMMENTS

I have reviewed all the options in the 'Help' menu and have set and re-set all indicators to allow anyone, whether signed up to this blog or not, whether in English or any foreign language (translation from Klingon is in progress: please be patient!), to leave a comment.  However, it took me several attempts to write this posting on the blog, indicating that the blogmaster may be having difficulty of some sort.

So please: try to leave a comment if you want. And if it requires you to sign into the blog, please do so. It won't bite (altho, depending on who you are and how tasty I consider you to be, I might bite...) and I'd enjoy having your comment.

In any case - I just work here. It's not my problem. Take it up with the boss. She's at lunch.  Write your complaint in a 1/2" X 1/2" square box and send by by courier to me ....

g

MORE FUN-FILLED FACTS FROM "THE PORTABLE ATHEIST"

The final chapter in the book, chapter 46, is an article excerpted from "Against All Gods" by British moral philosopher Anthony C. Grayling.  In today's blog, I'm going to just sample some of his observations.

Re: the infallibility of the Catholic Church's Pope: "...the latest eternal verity to be abandoned is the doctrine of limbo - the place for the souls of unbaptised babies."

Re: sustaining religion in the face of growing Enlightenment: "... it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a scare of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep absurdities seeming credible?)"

" "Intellectual infancy": the phrase reminds one that religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young. ...all the faiths currently jostling for our tax money to run their "faith-based" schools know that if they do not proselytise intellectually defenceless three- and four-year-olds, their grip will eventually loosen.  Let us challenge religion to leave children alone until they are adults, whereupon they can be presented with the essentials of religion for mature consideration."

Re: the term 'Atheist': "Is an acceptable (acceptable to the faithful, that is) atheist one who thinks it is reasonable for people to believe that the gods suspend the laws of nature occasionally in answer to personal prayers?  ... no atheist should call himself or herself one. The term already sells a pass to theists, because it invites debate on their ground. (Emphasis added by me.) A more appropriate term is "naturalist," denoting one who takes it that the universe is a natural realm, governed by nature's laws. This properly implies that there is nothing supernatural in the universe - no fairies or goblins, angels, demons, gods or goddesses. Such might as well call themselves "a-fairyists" or "a-goblinists" as "a-theists"; it would be every bit as meaningful or meaningless to do so."

((As an aside, by me: pursuing his term "naturalist", I would encourage you to visit the Pantheist page, at: http://www.pantheism.net/index.htm.  Interesting to see the people who support the ideas proffered by Pantheism.))

"In conclusion, it is worth pointing out an allied and characteristic bit of jesuitry employed by folk of faith. This is their attempt to describe naturalism (atheism) as itself a "religion."  But by definition a religion is something centred upon belief in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe; and not  merely in their existence, but in their interest in human beings on this planet; and not merely their interest, but their particularly detailed interest in what humans wear, what they eat, when they eat it, what they read or see, what they treat as clean and unclean, who they have sex with and how and when; and so for a multitude of other things, like making women invisible beneath enveloping clothing, or strapping little boxes to their foreheads, or iterating formulae by rote five times a day, and so endlessly forth; with threats of punishment for getting any of it wrong.

"But naturalism (atheism) by definition does not premise such belief. Any view of the world which does not premise the existence of something supernatural is a philosophy, or a theory, or at worst an ideology. If it is either of the two first, at its best it proportions what it accepts to the evidence for accepting it, knows what would refute it, and stands ready to revise itself in the light of new evidence. This is the essence of science.  It comes as no surprise that no wars have been fought, pogroms carried out, or burnings conducted at the stake, over rival theories in biology or astrophysics.

"And one can grant that the word "fundamental" does after all apply to this: in the phrase "fundamentally sensible.""

Read, again and particularly, his sentence above: ".... it proportions what it accepts to the evidence for accepting it ...." which leads us, of course, to the idea that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', which has NOT been the case in any religion to date.  Religious claims must be taken 'on faith' due to the simple fact that THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY KIND FOR THEIR CLAIMS!!!

Putting his above referenced sentence into simpler terms: if there is little evidence, there should be little acceptance; and it therefore follows that if there is no evidence, there should be no acceptance.

We have the intellect to discern when there is no evidence for a mystical claim; we need to use our intellect so we don't blindly follow the claims of the religious hucksters and those who sell their godly snake oil.

Remember my motto, emblazoned on many a tee shirt: Reliance on Ancient Mythologies is Degrading to the Rational Mind.

g

CHAPTER THREE: FUN MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD IN ALASKA - A CONTINUATION

                                                                Butch Coomer, Human Guinea Pig


My three older brothers didn’t usually play with me. At nine, twelve and fifteen they had outgrown the kinds of games a five year old liked to play. So, I learned to explore the woods around our new house, alone, and learned to ride a couple-of-sizes-too-big bicycle on Sunset Lane, alone, and hunted for pollywogs and tadpoles in the small lake and stream that were in a marshy area not too far from Butch Coomer’s house, alone.

Did I say “house?” Actually, I remember it as being a very small, several room shack. It had a tar paper roof that leaked when it rained and plywood sheets for siding. The floor was always covered with dirt and mud from everybody’s shoes so I don’t really know what it was made out of. As with other houses on this prestigious lane, Butch’s house had no indoor toilet. I’m not certain it if had a well or if they had to carry water to the house for cooking and drinking. Only those with a well could take a bath at home, as no one could transport enough water to fill a tub. I suspect his didn’t.

Our house did have a well: It was hand dug by my dad and us four boys, under the barn after it had been put in its place on our property. The bigger boys helped dad dig it to about four or five feet deep. We would all crawl under the house – remember, it was sitting on skids perhaps a foot and a half or two feet off the ground – crouch as low as possible and dig. They used the short handled army trenching shovels, since a regular shovel had too long a handle for them to use underneath the barn.

Then, they would lower me in a bucket and I would dig with that little shovel. When I’d filled the bucket they would haul it up, drag it out from under the barn and dump it in an ever-growing dirt pile beside the house.

All five of us took turns digging. But to me at five years old, all I remember is that it was me. Alone. In a dark, damp, cold pit in the ground underneath a big barn that smelled of cow dung and chicken poop. Alone. Digging with that little shovel.

Sometimes one of the other boys would shine a light down the well to see how deep I was and if we had hit the water table yet. But I would know that: I’d be standing in cold water! Exactly why we dug the well in that spot, under the house, instead of beside the house I can only conjecture. Since the temperature in winter might drop to a minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit – that’s -30! – an outside well and its plumbing would certainly remain frozen most of the long winter.

But as a five year old I neither knew this nor cared much about the physics of freezing water. So I dug. When I did finally reach water, they pulled me up for the last time and finished digging, then casing, the well. They assembled a one inch pipe and connected it to a large, anodized metal hand pump bolted to the shelf in the room that served as our kitchen - and during the first winter, also served as our dining room, reading room, library, bedrooms, closet and guest rooms.

I learned to prime the pump by pouring a ladle of water from a bucket kept on that shelf down the top of the pump, then pump the handle up and down, up and down, listening to the sucking sound as the pump tried to coax the well to give up a little water for us. And I learned the true joy of the rewards for my efforts when pure, icy cold water came gushing out of the pump and into the little sink.

We would always fill our bucket so there was always water to prime the pump the next time. Woe to you if you left the little bucket empty!

Did we escape having our pipes frozen? Usually. But occasionally my dad and older brothers would let themselves down through the trapdoor they’d rigged in the kitchen area, light a blowtorch and gently thaw out the pipe. When it seemed ready to accept our efforts, another one of us would prime the pump and heave on the handle.

                                                                           - - - - - - - - - -

But as I said, Butch’s house didn’t have a well. So Butch looked filthy and smelled filthy. He was about the age of my brother Dick, perhaps twelve or so. While his mom worked he was to watch his two younger siblings. But they pretty much took care of themselves, hardly venturing out of their house even on the best of days. I don’t know what they did to pass their days: They didn’t come outside much and I didn’t enjoy going in their house so I rarely saw them.

Butch seemed to talk a little slow. Even to me, at five, he sounded like he was never fully awake. My brothers called him names like moron, or idiot, or sometimes imbecile. I didn’t know exactly what those words meant, but I sensed they meant he wasn’t normal.

When we weren’t digging that first summer, Butch would try to play with my brothers. The oldest, Skip, was too busy with work on the house to play. But Dick and Ernie liked to play cowboys and Indians with Butch.

I remember he liked to be the cowboy. He’d chase through the marsh, getting soaked and covered with mud. Then race through the woods yelling and slobbering after them. He’d use his fingers as pistols and shoot his imaginary revolvers as he ran. And they would pretend to shoot arrows from imaginary bows, whooping and yelling in their best warrior style.

Then, one day in fall, when the sun shone its warmest and the leaves were offering our eyes their most glorious colors, Dick and Ernie got one of the metal pipes we’d used for the well and sunk it deep in the ground so about four feet of it stuck straight up.

It was planted on a little knoll overlooking the marshy pond, maybe a quarter mile from the end of Sunset Lane.

This day, when the Indians captured the cowboy, they stripped him to his shorts and tied him to the pole. Using rope, they secured his ankles, then tied his waist tight to the pole so he cried out, and pulled his arms behind him, tying his hands behind the pole. Lastly, they tied a bandana around his eyes, knotting it behind the pole so his head was pulled hard against the metal.

I watched from a little distance: I’d never before seen them be so rough with him. Now, they filled a bucket from the pond and repeatedly doused him, cleaning the “white man’s stench from him.”

Wet and cold, tied and blindfolded, Butch began to cry out. They danced and shouted all the more – were they still playing? I couldn’t be certain – dousing him, poking him with sticks and terrifying both him and me.

I ran home, through the woods, past the pond, down the dirt trail we called a road and across the small clearing that served as a yard and parking place. Had I heard my mother calling? I hoped so.

But no, the house was empty. Neither of my parents was home from work yet and Skip was nowhere in sight.

Later my brothers came home. They looked tired and dirty, but somehow happy and satisfied, as though they had done something that day they had wanted to do for a long, long time.

When I went to that little knoll a couple days later, Butch wasn’t tied up and the pole was gone. Had I really seen that? No one ever spoke of that incident again, not Ernie, not Dick, and not Butch. Too this day I wonder if it was real or did I have a really bad dream?

                                                                       - - - - - - - - -

Sometime in winter that year – 1947 – around the time of my sixth birthday, Grandpa Wilkins, my maternal grandfather in Pennsylvania, suffered a heart attack. Fearing he might die, my mother hurriedly flew to see him.

This left us five “men” to fend for ourselves. Skip was still busy helping insulate and frame the section of this barn in which we were to live all winter long, and neither Ernie nor I knew anything about cooking, so Dick was “volunteered.” He had joined the Scouts, so he welcomed the opportunity to learn how to do even more things and work on some Merit Badges at the same time.

As a matter of fact, Dick did so well in Scouting that he became the youngest boy to be awarded Eagle Scout in Alaska up to that time, and he was one of perhaps four Scouts to attend the World Jamboree in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1950. On the way home from the Jamboree he toured several famous European cities, most memorably Venice. There, he was treated to the sight of the city’s Death Row: a stone basement that, during most of the year, was slightly above water. But annually, during the period when the city’s canals are inundated beyond capacity, the water pours through the barred windows of this prison, flooding Death Row and drowning the condemned who occupy its cells.

A picture postcard of the era, which he brought home to share with us all, shows an arching, stone causeway between the city courthouse on one side of the canal and Death Row on the other. The windows of the basement are barely a foot above the normal water level, and you know the prisoners can see daily the fate that awaits them at the spring high tide.

But in 1947 he wasn’t yet so accomplished a cook. We ate watery soups, crusty oat cereal, brittle spaghetti and who knows what else.

After a couple days of being ashamed of the food he was preparing, he decided to use Butch as his “tester.” Dick had labored over a huge pot of peas he was cooking for a ham and pea soup. He knew we all liked pea soup, and if this dinner was actually edible he’d earn the praise – and perhaps forgiveness – of us all.

Late in the afternoon he had Butch come over to taste the soup. Ladling some into a bowl he watched Butch eat it all. Then eat a second and third helping. There was plenty – Dick has used our ten quart pressure cooker as the pot – so Butch ate ‘till he was full. Then, saying it was “pretty tasty” he went back down the road to his own house. We all waited for dad to get home so we could all sit down for dinner.

But before we could taste it for ourselves, one of Butch’s little brothers knocked at our door. Butch was very sick, he said. Butch was holding his stomach and vomiting all over the floor. Could we come with him to help, since his mother wasn’t home yet?

Ernie was left to watch me; Dick and Skip ran down the road to see what was wrong with Butch. My dad got home just after that, and he too went to the little shack at the end of the lane. In minutes they had brought Butch back and loaded him into our car. Dad and Skip drove him to a doctor who lived on Spenard Road partway into town.

Dick dumped the pea soup into the pit that was out back of the house where we put all the kitchen scraps. That pit was about halfway from the door to the privy – the outhouse that sat in the woods a hundred feet or so from the house. After we threw food into the pit we’d shovel some dirt over the food to help keep wild animals from being attracted to it.

What was wrong with our dinner, I asked. Dick said the cans of peas must have gotten dented because Butch got very sick from the soup. He called it botulism. I didn’t know what it was, but was happy that Butch got better in a week or so.

Maybe having Butch as the guinea pig for that batch of soup saved all our lives that day. I think about that sometimes.

                                                                     - - - - - - - - -

Dick really learned to enjoy cooking during the two weeks my mom was gone that winter. To this day he can throw together a pretty decent meal and make a lot of it from scratch, too.

He made a very memorable batch of spaghetti, I recall. Again using the ten quart pressure cooker as his pot, he filled it full of water, added a shaker of salt, and brought it to a boil. Then he opened five pounds of spaghetti noodles – Army surplus food in mess hall-sized packages – and dropped them all in the water.

In minutes the noodles started to boil over the top of the cooker.

“Bring another pan,” he yelled to nobody in particular. “Bring another pot,” he yelled again. We did, and he filled that one too. A second and third burner were lighted on the stove.

Three more times he yelled for another pan and three more times we came running with a container to catch the overflow from the pressure cooker. Noodles and froth covered the stove, his clothes and the floor. There weren’t burners enough to handle the pots, so some sat on the 50 gallon drum that we used as our heater.

From this little incident we boys learned several important lessons that have served us all very well in life:

- spaghetti noodles expand, perhaps exponentially, as they cook;

- adding too much salt to boiling water creates a frothy head that resembles good draft beer;

- you needn’t cook five pounds of spaghetti noodles in a ten quart cooker for five people’s dinner;

- Unless you want to eat spaghetti till your mom gets home!

CHAPTER TWO OF MY AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SHORT STORIES

                                     FUN MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD IN ALASKA


                                                       Ed Cheverelle and The Hunt

Our family’s first real home of our own in Alaska was a barn. Literally!

We were living in downtown Anchorage – I was perhaps five – and needed to vacate the house we were house-sitting. My parents wanted to move out of town where they could be more independent: After all, in Anchorage at that time we might have had two or three other houses on our block and real gravel on our streets; there was running water for our taps and a sewer main for our toilets. This was far too structured an environment for my parents!

So, they purchased a piece of property some miles to the southwest of Anchorage in an area known as Spenard. In later years, Spenard Road would become the main highway from Anchorage to the new Anchorage International Airport.

But when we moved out there it was a muddy trail servicing some small number of homestead farms, an occasional grocery store and several trappers’ cabins. Across the road from one farm, and perhaps a half mile down the road from the Spenard Grocery, was a several hundred yard long, even muddier one lane trail without a name. On this trail were two houses: The first was about half-way from Spenard Road to the end of the lane; the second was at the very end. They were both on the south side of this trail. Not another building was visible from the woods surrounding the trail.

My parents purchased property directly across this little trail from the first house and had the barn from the farm across Spenard Road dragged on skids to a small clearing on the property. That barn, still sitting high above the ground on the logs used as skids, still reeking with the odor of cow dung and hay, still nothing more than timbers nailed together – that barn was home.

We named the trail Sunset Lane, an auspicious name for little more than a set of tire tracks through the grass and weeds. And we introduced ourselves to our neighbors: Ed Cheverelle and his wife directly across from us; Duane (Butch) Coomer, his mom and two younger siblings at the end of the car tracks.

This incident and the following ones are outstanding in my mind, highly memorable for a five year old.

                                                                         - - - - - - - - - -

The first winter in Spenard, Ed Cheverelle boasted to my dad and oldest brother, who was then fifteen, what a great hunter and outdoorsman he was. In fact, he bragged, he could take them deep into the woods, shoot a moose and bring it back without taking anything more than a rifle and hatchet. No matches. No tent. No sleeping bag. No food. No other gear.

He was the ultimate woodsman. He would “live off the land”.

Now, neither my father nor oldest brother, Skip, was so naive that they believed this for one minute. Both had hunted deer in the mountains of Pennsylvania so they knew just a little about hunting, tracking, bagging and skinning a game animal, camping and keeping from getting lost in the woods. But they were certainly willing to let Ed, whose log house was filled with stuffed squirrels, mounted moose and caribou heads, racks of rifles and other hunting accoutrement, show them his stuff.

One day in late September 1947, just as fall hunting season opened, Ed took my father and brother on a hunting trip. True to his word, he carried only a jacket, a hatchet hanging from his belt, and a 30.06 rifle with scope. Our two representatives on this outing took full packs with waterproof matches, dried foods, extra clothes, sleeping bags, hatchet, knife, rifles and more. Ed told them to be prepared to spend anywhere from a couple days to a week “deep in the woods” while they stalked their prey.

For the trip into the wilds, Ed had them take the train a hundred miles or so north of Anchorage. There, in the middle of the woods, with snow starting to fall, Ed had the engineer stop the train to let them off. This, we knew, wasn’t unusual, as the Alaska Railroad was the only real access into the untamed country between Anchorage and the next largest city, Fairbanks, some 400 miles to the north. The train made the round trip every several days.

The engineer said he’d stop at this place exactly three days later and wait ten minutes. If they weren’t there, they’d have to catch him the following trip in seven days.

With that, our intrepid hunters disembarked and the train – we all called it the “Moose Gooser” for the oversized cow catcher on the front – chugged away.

Ed started them out by walking directly away from the tracks. “This is north,” he told them. “I know this because of the shadows.” Walking last in the single file formation they had agreed to use, my brother checked his compass.

Due east, it read.

“We’ll keep going ‘till we see something moving,” he continued. “This wood’s full of moose. And we’re the only ones out here according to the engineer, so we can take our pick. You fellas tell me if I’m going too fast for you. I don’t imagine you did much hiking when you were in California.”

During our several visits to his house our family had related the recent move to Alaska from Long Beach, but hadn’t really said much more. But Ed didn’t know that my brother was a Civil Air Patrol (CAP) cadet who had been going hunting since he was a pre-teen. Nor did Ed know that my father was a government civil engineer, responsible for mapping many of the wilderness areas between Anchorage and Fairbanks similar to this one. He was experienced and extremely resourceful in the woods.

But they never let on to Ed any of this.

They tramped a ways from the tracks, turning down this gully, trudging up this knoll, traipsing single file “so they wouldn’t leave too many tracks in the snow.”

As night fell, it was still lightly snowing and perhaps six inches had accumulated on the ground. Ed found a campsite spot next to a stream, began cutting live branches from the surrounding trees and stacking them.

“We’ll make ourselves a campfire,” he explained, “and I’ll show you how to start a fire without matches. I learned this from my pop in Tennessee.”

Dad and Skip exchanged glances: Is this guy serious?

Ed cut two spruce limbs that were about one inch in diameter and perhaps six inches long. He squatted beside the stack of green boughs and began sawing one limb across the other. Keeping this up for several minutes he was soon covered with sweat.

But no spark, no fire, no nothing.

After a quarter hour of futile effort he asked Skip if he wanted to learn how to do this. Skip declined.

My dad, meantime, had moved up the embankment and had cut a number of pine boughs, laying them under a large spruce whose limbs were heavy with needles and grew close to the ground. On these cut boughs he laid out his and Skip’s sleeping bags, then covered them with a deep layer of boughs. This would be their lean-to.

Having seen all that he wanted to see of Ed’s increasingly panicky efforts, Skip rounded up a number of dead and broken tree limbs. Making a fire pit out of the larger rocks on the stream bed, he laid the dead pine branches on the bottom, being careful not to knock off the dried needles. Then, he added other dead branches on top. Finally he took out his canister of Army surplus waterproof matches and lit the dried needles. With a satisfying crackle they ignited, bursting into a flame that quickly spread to the other dried wood on top. In minutes he had a nice fire going.

Ed watched in quiet envy.

“Since I’ve already got this one started, Ed, why don’t you help me get some more dead wood to put on it. You can show me your method tomorrow.”

Without a word Ed joined Skip in gathering branches. By now my dad had found a couple dead alders and began chopping them. They would burn much longer than the pine boughs, though they weren’t nearly so easy to light.

“I’m going to find me some berries to eat,” Ed told them. “I told you we can just travel light and live off the land.”

Dad and Skip declined again. “We’ve brought some K-rations, but thanks anyhow.” Army surplus stores were nearly as numerous in post-war Alaska as were bars; you could practically outfit an army for cents on the dollar. Anyone who didn’t take advantage of the gear offered by these stores wasn’t using very good judgment.

Soon Ed returned, thrashing and crashing through the tree limbs and underbrush in the dimming fall light. “Real good of you fellas to keep that fire burning,” he said. “I sorta had some trouble finding my way back.”

He hadn’t found any berries although he was certain there would be some near the creek. “I’ll have to stock up tomorrow when it’s light.”

My dad offered him a can of K-ration. Ed accepted it and mumbled his thanks.

“You all go ahead and sack out,” Ed told them. “I’ll just stay here by the fire. ‘Long as I have a fire at night I don’t need a sleeping bag. This is plenty warm.” With that he sat down on a pine bough, drew his legs up in front of him and closed his eyes.

Naturally, my dad and brother were extremely curious by now: Was this guy a real mountain man from the Tennessee woods as he claimed, or was he a certifiable nut case?

They hadn’t been in their bags very long when Ed came puffing up the stream bank to the lean-to. “You guys think there’s room in there for me? That fire’s gone plumb out and it’s starting to get cold.”

They looked through the boughs at him: The snow had been falling on his clothes and was an inch deep on the bill of his hat. He was shivering. The confident arrogance that had been his earlier demeanor had been replaced by self pity.

No, there really wasn’t much extra room under the lean-to and besides, there were only two sleeping bags. It seemed Ed would have to rough it just like he’d said he would do.

He mumbled some kind of plea; wouldn’t they try to share with him? Finally, dad and Skip unzipped one bag so it laid flat, then unzipped the other bag to lay on top. Skip and Ed got between these “covers” and my dad re-covered them with the small boughs. Then he slid between the two bags. With all their clothes on except their boots, and covered with the bag and boughs, they were somewhat warm and were able to get some sleep.

When they awoke they saw that the snow had stopped during the night. Perhaps a foot and a half white powder covered the ground.

The decided to make this their permanent camp, and took with them only what they needed for the day’s hunting.

Ed led them through the woods, whispering to them how he was locating where the moose were. Dad and Skip noticed that it seemed he was going in a big circle.

Suddenly he stopped. “Shush!” he said, holding up his hand. “We’ve got company.”

Sure enough, up ahead of them was a set of fresh footprints in the snow. “We’ll follow these to see if we can find out who else is out here,” Ed whispered. “Whoever it is must be pretty smart; looks like they’re going single file just like us!” He set out alongside, tramping though the snow and mumbling to himself.

Skip and my dad again glanced at each other. Is he for real? These footprints were theirs, laid down just hours before!

They followed Ed some distance, circling around the campsite as he followed the tracks in the snow.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “The first set of tracks have been joined by another set. Now there’s a whole bunch of hunters out here!”

He was serious. He didn’t seem to realize he had been following their own trail and had now come upon their own second set.

“Listen, Ed, with all these other hunters out here, we’d rather not take the chance of getting shot. We’re going to just go back to camp and wait until the train comes back from Fairbanks. You go ahead and bag a moose if you want to.”

With that, dad and my brother headed back to the lean-to.

Ed stomped around some more, all the while mumbling to himself in a loud whisper. When he finally arrived back at the camp he was again cold and hungry.

“Couldn’t find any berries. Moose must have eaten them all.” Again, he was offered and accepted with mumbled thanks the food from the packs of his fellow hunters.

On the third day they agreed it was time for all of them to head back to the tracks to catch the Anchorage-bound train. Ed had had enough being cold and hungry.

They caught the train and after they were settled into their seats my dad asked Ed about his hunting experience in Tennessee and Alaska. His answer was not wholly unexpected.

With his eyes downcast and his voice low, he told them his story. “Pop could do anything. He hunted and fished. He made fires by rubbing sticks or something and ate berries and things. I wasn’t too good at camping so I never went with him. But he’d always go, with his buddies, and always tell me about their trips. Mary and I never went hunting, but she thinks I’ve been going for a lot of years.

I bought all the heads and stuffed animals you seen at my place – she thinks I caught them all. I was so sure I could just do all the things Pop had done but none of it worked out.”

He was obviously distressed. My dad wondered if it had ever occurred to Ed that maybe his pop had never been hunting like he’d said, or started a fire without matches, or lived off the land.

Because that’s exactly what it seemed like.











(Photo from author’s collection)

c. 1954-55. Taken with my Kodak box camera, this is Wasilla Lake, as viewed from our

two lots. To left of the view, perhaps a mile away, is the town of Wasilla. To the right,

just several lots away, is the home of the Blacks.

THE ILLNESS CONTINUES

Monday; nearly 8 p.m.

I awoke and got up this morning without dizziness - but it quickly settled back in. So I called my doctor at Virginia Mason clinic in Bellevue and had to settle for seeing a different doctor tomorrow morning.

What could be causing this, I wonder? Seems I've read that being anemic can cause dizziness, as can an inner ear infection, or acute hunger. But I don't think I have any of those conditions.  So what else?

If the doc can figure it out and set me straight, then I'll be able to play again tomorrow afternoon. I'm hoping so - it's too late to find a sub now.  But if I'm still a little loopy, then I sure won't be playing. I'll be lying on my back watching the stars slowly spin around my head.

There is much yet to be read, but I can't stay focused.

And much I'd like to write on this blog, but I can't stay focused.

Damn! Can't even stay focused on a DVD movie. That sucks!

g

SO MUCH WE STILL DON'T KNOW

Yesterday, about 11:30 a.m., as I began driving from my apartment in Newcastle to the rehearsal of the Sophisticated Swing big band in Redmond, I experienced a little dizziness and blurred vision. I attributed this to 'hunger pangs', as I had not eaten breakfast but had had two cups of coffee. My solution: eat a bite before rehearsal so I was no longer hungry.

This I did; I had a cinnamon pastry with coffee there, and proceeded to set up my horns, help set up chairs, get my music stand up and ready, then warm up the lips a little with some light blowing in the green room.

But by rehearsal time - 1:00 p.m. - I was visibly ill.  My skin was damp and clammy, my vision was blurred, I felt nauseous, and I headed to the bathroom .... just in case.

While in the bathroom nothing happened and I started to believe that I could play, so out to the bandstand I went.  On the way, though, I was really getting dizzy, so when I got to my seat I took leave of the others and laid down at the back of the stage.  Not a minute or so later and I needed to barf!

My friend and fellow trumpet instrumentalist, Dr. Elmer Green, was at my side and brought me a trashcan with a liner in it. Excellent!! I proceeded to attempt  to fill it to the brim with the continually souring intestinal fluids (what little there was, having not eaten much that day so far) that were in my stomach and insisting on coming out.

I had the presence of mind to dial my son's home and ask him to bring another driver and come get me.  Instead, Elmer had them call 911 and send an Aide Car for me.  That was a very good choice, as I'd have been continuously sick and barfing had I tried to just go home with Richard.

At Overlake ER, they diagnosed me with Vertigo (and yes, I had visions of Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart in my mind's eye!)  and began to feed me a saline solution to rehydrate me, along with some meds to calm the dizzying effect.

At five p.m. they released me and Richard took me to his home, where I ate some and we watched a series I like.

After arriving back at my apartment, I've slept since about 9:00 last evening until 1:00 today. Then I got up and took my morning meds and went promptly back to sleep.

It's now about 6:15 and I just ate a bite and am ready to lie on the sofa again and nap.  I'm so Very, Very tired! But no longer dizzy.

The part we don't know is: WHY did I suffer from vertigo?  What was the cause? How do I prevent it from  occurring again?  We know none of these answers.

But of one thing I am sure: I told the nurses in the ER repeatedly that my cremation already prepaid!

g

OOPS - MY MISTAKE. NO GOOGLE ACCOUNT REQUIRED; BUT READ ON: THERE'S MORE

I take full credit for the retraction I'm about to print in response to my erroneous advice that you need to open a Google account in order to view the blog; you don't. OK; I admitted it. You use the system to enter your email account and create a password for the blog site. No new email creation required.

But what does this whole event tell us? Well, for one, that even the most conscientious amongst us can be in error. And what an interesting word that is: con (with) scient (using science or logic / reason) ious (an attempt to use all the vowels in the English alphabet in one suffix). 

For another, that things are not always as they might first appear to be. So, going through the process of signing up to view my blog it appears that you need to set up a Google account. But in reality, you don't. It just seems that you do.

It follows, therefore, from the previous observation that instructions are not always as clear to the reader as they are to the writer; this brings up the issue of differing perspectives and their influence on what we deem necessary to make ourselves understood.

And this last point brings me to an observation I had recently when I asked a dear friend to not abstain from reading material I had posted just because it didn't agree with my friend's viewpoint. To me, the request was meant as a gesture of open mindedness - you know, that sensation we feel when we know we are right and want everyone else to see how clever we are in our 'rightness'.  But I observed that my friend could easily have taken it as less a request and more a challenge: read me and learn how silly your viewpoint is; marvel at my clearly superior argument, my perfectly focused logic.

How difficult it is, in truth, to convey our exact meaning with the written word, where we don't have the body language, the voice inflection, the non-verbal 'hooks' to persuade the other person to our opinion.

All of which may explain my fascination with reading, and writing. Oh yes, I enjoy a good debate, a challenging argument, the one-on-one, face-to-face discussion. But when you try to distill it all onto paper, and do it well enough to be both understood and then, agreed with ..... ah, that is another proposition entirely.

g

EARLY YEARS IN ANCHORAGE: COMPLETING THIS CHAPTER

((This is the final segment of the first chapter of my book of short stories. I will post a chapter at a time in future, instead of breaking it into smaller segments.))

Many Alaskans we knew were outdoors people - you had to enjoy the harsh weather and pioneer living conditions or you wouldn’t survive in the ‘olden’ days - and we were certainly no exception. Our family used these small aircraft much as the average family in the South 48 used their automobile: We took our weekend trips in a plane. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of trips we took in one or another of these vintage airplanes. We often went to the tide flats southwest of Anchorage where we fished for salmon using gill nets.


Since these craft were primarily two seaters, we made our way to and fro using the shuttle system: With my father at the rear seat’s controls he would fly my oldest brother and me to our destination, then return to pick up my mother. Lastly, he would make the final trip with the two middle boys. Skip, the oldest of us boys, was proficient with the rifle and he would take it with him on every trip. It was his responsibility to set up camp and watch over me until my mother arrived on site. He often went exploring after being relieved of his childcare duties, carrying the Winchester .32 caliber rifle over his shoulder as I later saw Daniel Boone do on the television show. What was he looking for? Often black bear would come down the steep cliffs to feed on fish that got left behind on the beach. He wanted to bag one for himself.

Our favorite fishing area was on Turnagain Arm. This is a broad body of water similar to the fjords of Scandinavia that, together with Cook Inlet, forms two of the boundaries of the triangle of land upon which sits the city of Anchorage. The third leg of this triangle is the Chugach Range of mountains some fifteen miles east of the confluence of these two bays. The Arm’s size and tidal flow misled its early explorer, Captain James Cook, who tried to navigate it in the 17th century as though it were a channel surrounding an island. Local legend has it that Captain Cook first sailed into the larger of the two inlets, which he later named after himself, believing he would be able to circumnavigate what he believed to be a large, low lying island. In fact, he sailed right up to the mouth of the Knik River and had to turn around and sail back down the inlet. The Knik River flows southwesterly from the Chugach Range, and is the northern side of the triangle.

When he reached the second bay he sailed southeast down it as well, again believing it to provide a means of circumnavigating what he thought was an island. When he reached the end of this waterway he was forced to turn around again, hence the name Turnagain Arm. In fact, this Arm is just a backwater for Cook Inlet. It has no river mouth at its end, as Cook Inlet has the Knik River, so tremendous tidal flows work up and down this basin with no place to go when they reach the end. These tidal flows create incredible undercurrents that can suck a person, or a small boat, under water instantly. And the tide created by these flows comes in to shore faster than a person can run. We often heard in the news of someone - usually a “cheechako” from the South 48 - who had been far out on the mudflats at low tide and was overtaken and drowned as the tide came rushing in.

The topography of the tidelands surrounding Anchorage is interesting and challenging. When the tide is out, both Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm exhibit large mud flats that are cut deeply by streams. These stream beds may be six, eight or even ten feet deep, and usually have very shallow water draining down them. At low tide one can easily walk far out the flats, wading across these stream beds. The mud is firmly packed in most areas so you don’t sink into the muck more than several inches. The ease with which you can traverse this ground is fatally deceptive.

When the tide begins to come in - and the tides around Anchorage can measure twenty or more feet! - a huge undertow is created by the incoming water meeting the flow of Knik River’s water and the standing water of Turnagain Arm. This undertow creates a large wall of water rushing ahead of the tide, a wall we called a riptide. This riptide raced along the flats at amazing speed, catching and ensnaring anyone who was careless, or inexperienced, enough to be far out on the flats when the tide turned.

And while one could easily navigate the flats at low tide, once the water covered the stream beds a person was doomed to step into these deep, watery graves.

Well, putative genius that was my father, he decided that the best place to fish was on Turnagain Arm, and the way to do it was to fly to the beach just as the tide was going out, set up the gill nets several hundred yards out on the mudflats, then fly out before high tide. Hence, our frequent flights to the beaches.

These beaches, at low tide, might be a hundred or so feet wide. On one side was a high, vertical bluff with beautiful and intriguing strata of coal and shale visible. Close to the bluff the beach was sandy and much too soft to land our plane. The sand was littered with huge trees, branches and other flotsam deposited there by the tides. At the high water mark the sand would be wet but hard packed; it was upon this narrow strip of wet sand he would land. After shuttling the whole family from Merrill Field - some thirty minutes away - he and the older three boys would slog a quarter mile through the thick muck of the tidal flats and string the net. Then they would return to a picnic lunch my mother, with me distracting more than helping, had set up for them. As the tide started coming in you could hear the loud, low roar of the riptide. The sound sent chills up your spine even though you knew you would be long gone by the time the water got to you. Long before my dad heard the tide coming he would reverse the order of shuttle and take us all back to the airfield. Although the riptide itself never reached the beach where we landed, the water rose quickly as the tide came in, and there was no time to dally once we started shuttling back to the field.

On nearly every fishing trip his plan worked wonderfully. He read the tide tables and arrived with the first pair of us just as the tide had receded sufficiently to land. And he left the beach with the last two of us just as the tide had gotten within some yards of the plane.

Except on one trip. On this particular trip the tail wheel broke off as he took off from Merrill Field after having ferried the second of the three sets of passengers. With the tide coming in and no time to land and fix it, he flew back to the beach and made a two-point landing. Using the stick to keep the nose down and the tail in the air as he slowed the plane, he dropped the tail into the sand just as he applied the brakes. With the engine running, he opened the door and yelled at Skip to grab me and run to the plane as fast as he could. Skip threw me onto the front seat and squeezed himself in beside me, shouting to our dad to “get a move on” as he closed and latched the door. Waves were beginning to lap at the waterside wheel as our father raced the engine and tried to taxi on the hard packed mud. But the broken gear would not support the weight of all of us, and it stuck in the mud.

He raced the engine again, braked hard and tried to use the stick to raise the tail of the plane so the gear would come up out of the mud, but he had to abandon this effort. He was afraid that if the gear popped loose suddenly he could not react fast enough to keep the plane from nosing into the beach and breaking the propeller. If that happened, we’d all be drowned.

And we weren’t far from that, anyhow, as fast as the tide was coming in.

Finally, in desperation, he told Skip to get out of the plane, go to the back and lift up on the tail. Gunning the engine and keeping his feet hard on the brakes, he held the plane level until Skip climbed back in. Then he released the brakes and we started down the beach. By this time the water was several inches deep and we could not see any dry ground anywhere around us.

We plowed through the water for what seemed like hours until he gently pulled back on the stick and our wheels came up into the air. All of us inhaled deeply to make ourselves lighter as the little plane struggled to rise above the deepening water. Ever so gradually we climbed, with churning water underneath and beside us, and the sheer cliffs menacingly beside and in front of us.

At the last possible instant he banked hard to the left, out over the broiling tide, and leveled off. We were most likely a hundred feet up in the air. The engine was laboring loudly and Skip and I were sweating when from the back seat we heard our father arrogantly announce: “Just like I planned it!”

I wasn’t too keen to be in the last group to be picked up any more, and I began riding with my mom after that.

                                                               - - - - - - - - - -

I was perhaps nine when my oldest brother got married. He was in the Army, and had been stationed at Fort Richardson for most of his hitch before being transferred to the port town of Seward.

While at Fort Richardson he had undergone basic training - going for five mile runs through the deep snow in subzero temperatures while carrying his fifty pound backpack; as punishment for some minor infraction, doing pushups in the snow while wearing only his regulation tee shirt on his upper body: More than once he went to the infirmary with frostbite on his hands, arms and nose from this form of “training” - and having survived those torturous seven weeks, was made into a cook’s helper in the kitchen. He had always been an iconoclast, an independent spirit, a thinker, a hippie before there were hippies, at least in Alaska. This individualistic personality was considered a disorder in the military, and he definitely did not get along with the institution of warfare.

Once he was reprimanded severely for chasing the cook around the kitchen with a huge meat cleaver, threatening the poor bugger with decapitation for something he had said or done. How Skip had talked himself out of brig time I never learned, but he did have a gift of gab and I’m sure that helped.

The brass at Fort Richardson were happy to transfer him out of their command and Seward seemed as remote a station as any.

While in Seward he visited frequently at the children’s home run by the Methodist church, Jesse Lee Home. Having been a senior resident of the Home several years before, he was a welcome visitor. It was there he met a young schoolteacher from Boston with whom he shared visions of world change, and they decided to get married.

Came the big day and my father used one of the small planes - he no longer had the flying school but still had his pilot’s license - to shuttle the family on the several hour flight from Anchorage to Seward. To drive the distance would take a day, and besides, he preferred flying. He took my mom and second oldest brother, Dick, in the first trip. Dick was best man and mom was, well, Mom.

Then, with me and my next oldest brother, Ernie, all scrubbed and dressed in our finest wedding outfits, he loaded us into the front seat and took off. This should have been an uneventful flight since the wedding ceremony was just several hours hence and, as father of the groom, he had important things to do upon our arrival.

But my dad had a bit of British prankster in him which proved his undoing on this trip.

Flying along the Turnagain Arm he shouted above the roar of the engine to us, “Look at the Dahl sheep over on that hillside,” and banked the plane sharply to one side. It seemed he would crash us on the mountain as he buzzed the barren land where no sheep walked today nor had one walked, we were certain, at any time in history. “Look at the bear on that mountain,” he shouted again, and banked sharply the other way to zoom across the water for a look at the fauna of the other side of the Arm. Back and forth across the waters he jockeyed the plane, climbing and diving for a better look at these nonexistent animals, having the time of his life taking his two youngest children on the ride of their lives.

Then Ernie covered his mouth and we heard his muffled “I’m sick. I gotta barf.” My dad yelled something to him that sounded like “Hold it till we land.” Again Ernie shouted “I gotta barf NOW!” And with that he unlocked the door and folded it up. Leaning out the side of the plane he let loose a stream of vomit - right into the sixty mile an hour propwash. The wind blew the sticky mess straight into the back of the plane, covering my dad, his suit, and everything else in its path.

It was over in a minute or two: The fresh air helped and having emptied the sour contents of his stomach, Ernie sat back up and was ready to finish the flight. I hadn’t been in the ‘line of fire’, so to speak, so I was still fine. But our dad was dripping with disgusting droplets of regurgitation. He glowered and raged. He threatened and cursed. His humor had suddenly left him.

Silently we flew on to Seward.

When we touched down my mom was at the small field with Skip’s car, ready to take us to the church. When she saw Ernie get out of the plane she whimpered: She knew by his pale face and splattered jacket that something was wrong. Then when our father climbed out she cried: His face and suit told the story better than any of us could have.

She and father went to the small shack that served as the operations office, got some water and a rag and she wiped him as best she could. She grabbed my hand and led me purposefully to the car and put me in the back seat. “Sit,” she commanded. Ernie was standing by the plane, alone and sheepish, looking very sorrowful and forlorn.

But there was no sympathy for him that day. Father told him to scrub himself and scrub the inside of the plane until it “smelled like roses”. Then when he was done and cleaned up, he could walk the mile or so to the church downtown and “don’t be late for your brother’s wedding!”

Perhaps this incident was a harbinger of things to come: The wedding stunk, literally; we didn’t like Skip’s mother-in-law - she was, after all, Proper Bostonian! - and she certainly didn’t like her daughter marrying some Alaskan “Eskimo” whose father smelled foul; and Skip and his wife parted company after having six children faster than you could say “irresponsible.”

I have always dreamed of being a pilot, flying a small plane to quiet environs nearby. The remembrance of the good times I had around a Piper Cub warms my heart. But then I remember this trip and the odor of vomit fills my nose. And I can’t bring myself to get back inside one of these little planes.

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Amongst the sad tales I can relate about my early years in Anchorage, the story of how our family lost the flying school is perhaps the most pathetic. And perhaps the most indicative of the kind of angst that was to beset us throughout the 1940s and ‘50s.

As with many, or most, small businesses then and now, the flying school business was aided greatly by the financial resources of the local bank: The National Bank of Alaska. The wealth and future of the territory of Alaska, as it was known until it achieved statehood on January 3, 1959, was personified in Elmer Rasmusen, president and owner of this prestigious landmark.

Even as a small child I remember him as being tall, wiry, and finely dressed. He had graying hair that was neatly trimmed and combed, and his facial features were aristocratic. His voice was always well modulated and his language cultured. He was the antithesis of what one would expect an Alaskan to look like, sound like and most likely, smell like.

(In my teenaged years I would have described my father as being tall, wiry and well dressed, with graying hair that was neatly trimmed and combed, with facial features that belied British aristocracy, a well modulated voice and a vocabulary that disguised his lack of formal education. And I have, since my teenaged years, wondered if my father knowingly or unconsciously tried to emulate Elmer Rasmusen.)

How indebted we were to the Rasmusen bank, I don’t know. Even my older brothers, who were more involved in the family business and remembered the after dinner discussions, could not tell me how much of the flying school was owned by the family and how much was owned by the bank. We believed that our parents had purchased the old Lars Larson flight school that had trained such famed bush pilots as Don Sheldon and others, and had most likely borrowed most of the cost of the flight school from the bank. But the National Bank of Alaska owned an order of pontoons, and that was sufficient.

Alaska has been known as a sportsman’s paradise for many decades. Part of the allure of this land is its many lakes and numerous broad rivers. Alaska has more lakes than Michigan which is known for its “10,000 Lakes.” It has more navigable rivers than any other state; claims the highest peak in North America - Mount McKinley, at 20,320 feet - and two more of the highest five North American peaks; is renowned for its lake trout and river salmon, and its incomparable elk, moose, reindeer and Kodiak brown bear. It is, without question, a hunter’s Valhalla. Since before Wiley Post crashed his plane in Nome, killing himself and Will Rogers, sportsmen have preferred airplanes as a means of travel in the area. Small planes like the Aeronca, Piper Cub, Taylorcraft or Aercoupe which our flying school used, could land on and take off from unimproved fields; fitted with skis they could use a level patch of snow as a runway; and fitted with pontoons, or floats as they were sometimes referred to, they could turn a lake or river into a private airport.

Not far from our first home in Spenard was the aptly named Lake Spenard and its larger sister lake, Lake Hood. Located near what later became the Anchorage International Airport, Lake Hood was home to the largest concentration of float planes in the United States. In fact, Alaska boasted, and perhaps can still boast, of having the highest number of float planes per capita of any state, or territory, in the Union.

After a couple years’ ownership of the flying school my parents decided that they would expand the business and offer more than just instruction. They would offer aircraft repair and parts. And the parts they decided would sell best were pontoons. For they knew that, parked at Merrill Field, were dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of planes whose owners would pay dearly for a set of pontoons so they could land on and take off from any body of water around the territory.

There was no supplier of pontoons in Alaska at that time. If you wanted pontoons, you ordered them from a “stateside” supplier and installed them yourself when they arrived. Or you flew your plane back to the manufacturer in the South 48 and had them installed. Then, you returned home. Since the pontoons had wheels attached, the planes could use both conventional runways and waterways on their return journeys. In fact, my father and a friend of his did just that in the fall of 1948, flying along the Alaska-Canada Highway - known to all of us as the Alcan - until they reached the South 48, heading to Ohio somewhere, and returning along that same route. They may have been going to see the pontoon manufacturer for all I know. I do remember the constant tension that seemed to surround my mother during this trip: It must have had some risk.

So, putting his genius to work, my father put in an order with a manufacturer and became the exclusive distributor in Alaska for a certain brand of pontoons. Not having the cash to pay for these - they cost something like $2,000 a set in 1949 - he set up a credit line at the National Bank of Alaska. The line was secured not just by the pontoons but by the assets of the flying school. Maybe even by the title to our Spenard house. Maybe even by the title to our vehicles. Certainly Mr. Rasmusen had a reputation for lending money at rates and on conditions that were most favorable to his bank. You don’t get to be the largest bank in the Territory by being kind and generous, right?

The terms of the note were simple: Without regard for any delays from any cause, or for the results of any “acts of God”, or anything else, the note was to be paid within one hundred eighty days from its inception. My father had contacted the supplier in early spring 1949 and was assured that if he placed an order by a certain date in April, they could ship his order of pontoons within thirty days. This would give us time to take orders, sell, install and collect funds for all the pontoons being ordered and pay the bank well before the term of the note came due.

Thus, the note was drawn up, the order was placed by the April cutoff date, ads were run on the radio and in the two local newspapers, the Anchorage Daily Times and the Anchorage News, orders were taken, deposits were banked and we waited for the arrival of the pontoons.

And we waited. And waited.

The thirty days passed and my parents called the manufacturer. “There is a temporary delay in manufacturing,” they were told. “Don’t worry, we’ll be shipping in a week or two.” So we waited.

June came and went without the arrival of the pontoons. We were now ninety days into the term of the promissory note and we couldn’t deliver the first pontoon.

July was hot, the mosquitoes were out in full battle dress and the flying school was busy. But the pontoons weren’t on this cargo plane or that one which landed at Merrill Field, just in front of the flying school’s front door. Nor were they on any of the cargo ships that docked at the port of Seward.

Came August and September, the hottest months of Alaska’s short summer, when bush pilots are the busiest ferrying their paying customers, hunters and fishermen alike, all around the wilderness, and we still waited for the pontoons to arrive.

By early October many of the customers who had made their deposits asked for a refund, as winter was upon us and they had never received the pontoons. Came the 180th day of the note and Mr. Rasmusen showed up at the door of the flying school.

“I’ve come for payment on the promissory note, Dave,” he said.

“You know I haven’t received the pontoons yet, Elmer,” my father replied. “Can we rewrite the note, since my deposit is still with the supplier, so I can take delivery of the floats next summer and sell them then? I can pay you the note and the extra interest next summer.”

“That’s not what we agreed to, Dave. I want payment now, or I’ll take all the collateral you put up.”

And with that we lost the flying school, the house in Spenard and much else that we owned at that time.

I know that we moved into a house in town that was owned by the parents of Kay Andresen, a schoolmate of mine and a girl that I thought was just perfect. Her parents went to the same Methodist church we attended, and they had decided to travel to the South 48 for the winter to visit relatives. We house-sat until they returned the following summer, whereupon we shared the house with them until moving to Seward the next year. I had my eighth birthday in that house, and while there my father got into the plumbing and heating business.

But he left his heart, and our family left its pride, in the small log cabin by the dusty gravel runways at Merrill Field.

A Piper SuperCub. Note the large front wheels.  This

is similar to the plane we used for collecting the salmon

from the gill nets.

My father playing the first Hammond B3 organ in

Anchorage, circa 1948.  He does look a little

British, doesn't he?