for the winter of 78-79 save to
say I didn’t hitch hike back to Kodiak. I drove up in a pickup.
I don’t
recall a whole lot of my return save to say I did look up a few people asked
then to keep an eye out for something for me to do. While I had enjoyed the
previous spring, summer and fall I wanted to make a few bucks and find a way to
dig in. I wanted to stay in Kodiak for a while and establish some kind of roots
there.
I wanted to
make a few bucks and have a roof of sorts over my head.
It didn’t
take long before someone told me to haul ass down to one of the canneries and
talk to a guy there. I drove right on down and found that the cannery in Kodiak
had a sister cannery out in Naknek that needed a basic carpenter for a season.
I was offered a job and even though the wages were less than union scale I took
it because it included room and board. I was handed a purchase order for a
flight to Naknek made out to Kodiak Western airlines, a local operator that
serviced the peninsula.
I went
straight to Kraft’s and picked up about four cartons of Camels because I knew
it likely be a month before I had an opportunity to buy any more. (I was wrong.
There was a general store in Naknek.)
Ten minutes
later I was stashing my pack and tools at the Kodiak Western building and was
back in my pickup. I ran it out the road to a friend’s place and parked it off
to one side of their driveway. I had previously gotten the OK to do this and
had already trained the homeowner on how to start the tired old Dodge slant
six. The ignition key had long been replaced with a pair of toggle switches,
one of which ran the starter was spring loaded. This meant they would not have
to worry about losing my keys. I also slipped a starting checklist under their
door.
When I got
back to the Kodiak Western building there were no flights headed out so I
simply walked over to one of the airplanes, a huge Grumman Goose, climbed in
and spread my sleeping gear out on the deck.
An employee
saw me, came out as I was laying down for a late nap, looked in, saw me and
laughed. I looked at her and knew she was the woman that had issued my ticket
and she simply told me not to do anything stupid. I sighed in relief and took a
little catnap before I wandered over to Solly’s Office for a burger and a beer.
The days
were pretty long that time of year so I had to be careful. I made a quick pass
through Tony’s, the Village, The Ships and wandered up to the Breakers and
finished my rounds at the Mecca. It was still daylight when I returned to the
airplane and sacked out.
I woke up
fairly early and ran over to the Mecca and washed up in the man’s room, ate a
quick breakfast and checked back in at Kodiak Western. My flight was later on
that day so I checked out the airplanes on the flight line. They were mostly
Beavers and Cessnas, all of which were on floats. Outside the KW building there
was a pair of Grummans. The Grumman Goose is an amphib.
I am wording
this carefully because while the plural of the bird of the same name is ‘geese’
there have been arguments that persist to this day over the plural of the
airplane. Some say Grumman Geese, others say Grumman Gooses. I ain’t touching
that one with a ten foot pole.
At the appointed
time I boarded and got the front seat which was a real plus. It had the best
view. Everyone got on and the pilot drove the Goose down the ramp into the
channel and raised the landing gear. When the gear was up he poured on the coal
and we lifted out of the channel and started to cross Kodiak Island headed for
Naknek.
I was met at
King Salmon airport and taken to the alleged cannery in a pretty beat up old
Jeep that looked like hell but ran pretty good. I met the rest of the
construction gang and instantly found myself appointed lead carpenter.
Living
conditions were as advertised. They were rough and meals were taken at a local
restaurant, basically a diner of sorts. The food was pretty good.
The first
thing I had to do there was form up a low wall for use as a foundation. A steel
building was going up there. When it was
formed we were going to pour it Old School, meaning we would mix bags of cement
in a mixer. There was no concrete plant in the area.
The crew was
great and everyone turned to. Most of them were cheerful college kids that were
there for fun, adventure and a few bucks for tuition. We worked hard and played
hard. We got the thing poured ahead of schedule and found time to work on our
bunkroom. Overtime was unlimited so we could make some pretty good money.
The actual
steel building was put up by an outside contractor and the guys lived right
alongside us. We pitched in some and got done ahead of schedule. What was
interesting is that the contractor boss said our job was better than most
foundations built by professionals. We were pretty proud.
The salmon
season started and the construction guys turned into cannery workers but I was
kept as a carpenter and stayed busy doing any number of things. I worked in the
bunkhouse, mended the dock and a pile of other things.
As the
salmon started to pick up more fish workers arrived and the cookhouse opened
and we started eating on site. The cook was a real character. In addition to
feeding us he put on quite a show.
The fresh
fish workers were younger and some of them were kind of timid. The first meal
they ate with us in the cookhouse was hilarious. It was a steak night. We were
seated snarling like tigers and the cook came out and plopped a huge plate of
steaks onto the table and we attacked it, grabbing what we could. The timid
souls looked at their empty plates across at us as we wolfed down two or even
three steaks.
The cook
came out with a stick and started playfully smacking us as he put out another
plateful of steaks and made sure the newbies got a steak. They looked at him
gratefully. One of us swiped a steak off of one of the kid’s plates and the
cook whacked him with his stick and made him give it back.
Of course it
was a big act and the kids caught on after a while. The next meal everything
settled down to the placid level of a bar brawl and things were normal.
While the
fish workers worked, I stayed busy and a few weeks later the run was over and
things slowed down.
The
mechanics of the fish processing was simple. They’d take in fish, gut and
behead them, put them into a huge tote, ice them and load them onto a truck and
run to King Salmon airport. They would go onto a DC-10 and be flown into Kodiak
for further processing.
At the end
of the season I was flown back to Kodiak in the DC-10. It was a fun run and the
pilot let me sit in the copilot’s seat and actually fly the plane under his
watchful eye. It was pretty cool and he
took it back from me on final approach to Kodiak.
I went back
to the office that had hired me and was handed $100 cash and told to come back
in the morning. I jumped into a cab and recovered my truck. I shot some ether
into the carburetor and it surprised me by starting right up. I headed
downtown, recovered my gear and sacked out in the cab of the pickup that I
parked on Cannery Row.
I woke up a
little late, grabbed my pack and headed to the laundromat and grabbed a shower
and did my laundry. Afterwards I reported to the cannery and was taken into an
office. He handed me a check and we went through the time sheets. He explained
that if there was a discrepancy he would make it good. Interestingly enough, I
saw I was overpaid about $250 because I had told the cannery to pick me up a
Milwaukee worm drive saw and deduct it from my pay. The saw was in my
possession and when I brought it up he grinned and told me to forget it.
I now had
some fairly serious cash and started looking for a place to stay and inside of
two days I got lucky.
On Cannery
Row I met a college aged couple living in a tiny trailer. They had towed it up
to Kodiak and their truck had died. They were headed back to school and the
trailer had saved them a fortune in rent but there was no way to bring it back.
I asked where they were from and found out they were from Tacoma. I told them
to wait a few minutes and ran into a travel agency and got the price of a
couple of one way tickets to Seattle and returned.
I offered
them a pair of tickets home and they accepted. I threw in my little pup tent
and gave them a ride to Fort Abercrombie as they had another few days work left
in a cannery before they went home.
A few days
later I met them and gave them a ride to the airport.
For the next
couple of years I called the little trailer home. It was tiny and I could park
it and save a fortune in rent. Some of the guys nicknamed it ‘The Stay Free
Mini Pad’.
A couple of
months later when I changed the registration on my pickup to Alaskan I had to
supply a mailing and a physical address. I used General Delivery for my mailing
address. My physical address was listed as ‘Stay Free Mini Pad, Kodiak, AK
99615’. I mailed it in and when I got my title back that is what it was listed
as.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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