would wander into Kodiak for the summer and
scout around looking for work and places to live.
One of my
hacks is that I would keep a fishing pole and a little tackle outside the
trailer. It was there because I would quietly permit some of the more
respectable newcomers to borrow it to catch fish to feed themselves.
After a
while I didn’t even have to bother to go fishing myself because the deal was
that if they caught one fish it was theirs. If they caught two or three I got
one. If they got four or more I only got two because that’s how many I could go
through before they started going bad.
However I
never did tell them about the crab ring off of the fuel dock because I knew
that if word got out they would pick it clean.
I managed to
get quite a number of fish that way during the runs. If something happened and
a fish went bad it was no biggie. I’d use it to bait the crab pot at the fuel
dock. Still, I ate an awful lot of fresh salmon during the late spring through
the fall. Occasionally I’d snag a bunch and bring them to someone I knew that
would smoke them and I’d get some smoked salmon out of the deal.
In the
spring during the herring season I’d manage to get some herring from a
fisherman if it was really fresh. I’d generally trade beer for it and give the
herring to one of the locals, an older woman and she’d give me a couple of jars
of pickled herring after she pickled it.
I could also
get pickled octopus out of the same kind of deal but that was later when I
lived on a sailboat.
There was
also enough housing going up so I could find work doing that. It paid
reasonably well and it was pretty good work and exercise.
Seeing I
didn’t have to pay rent I was doing fairly well and wound up with plenty of
time to spend doing fun things like hike, hunt, fish and just plain goof off.
One summer I ran a small bush plane air service as the office person and
general dog’s body. It paid next to nothing but the guys would let me fly the
airplanes from time to time. I never did solo but I did learn a lot and had a
lot of fun.
One of the
joys of life there was that I had options most people never have. I wasn’t
chasing the almighty dollar. I worked to live instead of live to work and I
could easily afford to take a job for less pay that I enjoyed rather than take
a job I hated for more money. To this day I call that a HUGE luxury and have
always been grateful I was able to live that way.
Occasionally
I’d run into a tourist and invite them over for a crab boil or grilled salmon.
This wasn’t totally altruistic, though. Most of them would return the favor by
taking me to dinner the following evening.
I’d grill
salmon on a hibachi which was at least semi civilized. However it was a crab
boil that would make me wonder about some people. I’d boil crabs in this big dented
fire-blackened pot that looked like hell and looked like it should have been
scrapped years ago. I’d serve my guests off of enameled camp ware with the mismatched
flatware I had scored at the Mission. A roll of paper towels served as napkins.
Instead of
being appalled, most of them were delighted. It was kind of funny. Most of them
loved it! One time Jack Lemmon (the actor) was visiting town and was walking down
Cannery Row when I was just starting to cook a salmon fillet. I offered him a
piece and he took me up on it. He ran down and got a six-pack while I cooked
it. He was a nice guy. (I was in the B&B bar later that day and he walked
in and got pranked by the bartender. He laughed along with the rest of us. What
a neat guy!)
All in all
it was a pretty good life. If I wanted something I got off my ass and earned
the money to pay for it. I paid my way and still had all sorts of opportunity
to do as I saw fit.
There was
one thing that I did have to deal with periodically and that was when someone
or another would get all pissy and gripe about people camping inside the city
limits. There would be a brief ‘clean up the town’ doing and I’d generally move
the trailer outside the city limits for a while only to return.
The police
were actually pretty good about this. Several of the officers I knew on sight
would see me and let me know in advance so I could avoid trouble. That was kind
of them and was a win/win deal. It saved both of us trouble and I always
appreciated the heads up.
The truth if
the matter is that I was in a nether world where my existence was illegal.
However, the rules were seldom enforced if people behaved themselves. At the
time there was a serious housing shortage and rents were through the roof. If I
decided to rent a place it was either going to be with roommates or I would
have to find a very steady job and work full time to make ends meet. There
would be little time or money even to go out for a beer.
The police
knew this and knew who was an asset to the community and who was not and
enforced the laws accordingly. In a way it was a good thing because it made me
behave myself.
This is a
pretty good time to interject something. While drugs were everywhere, Kodiak
had no drug problem. Anyone could get anything they wanted, hence no problem.
Cocaine was expensive as hell and a bag of good pot cost an awful lot of money,
too when you compared it to stateside prices. I steered clear of this basically
for this reason. A bar owner once said I could feed my belly or I could feed my
nose. I chose to feed my belly and never looked back. Liquor and Camels were
affordable, while coke and pot wasn’t. It wasn’t worth my effort.
I saw too
many fortunes squandered away on cocaine, heroin and speed and count my lucky
stars I never did get into that world.
Looking back
on it, only a part of it was the money. I saw early on that almost everyone
involved seemed to have money, legal problems and were constantly getting their
places burgled. On occasion it extended all the way to murder if you
investigated things far enough. A couple people I knew got shot at and one guy
went to Anchorage with a huge wad of cash to score cocaine for resale. He was
found dead in the Anchorage dump. Needless to say, his money disappeared with
his life. I wanted no part of that lifestyle. I do believe the police knew this
and it was a big part of why I got left alone.
I had a
friend get ten days (non drug/alcohol related) once and I decided to visit him.
I brought him a cake with a file sticking out of both ends of it. I made it
clear I was not REALLY trying to smuggle something illegal. Needless to say, the officer saw it, removed
it and looked at me. I told him that when he gave my friend the cake to tell
him they had to pull a file out of it. He shook his head and chuckled a bit.
I visited
him like he was a bank robber in a gangster movie and later when they gave him
the cake they gave him a good natured drubbing about finding the file.
When he got
out he went straight to Solly’s Office and bitched at the guys for not visiting
him and said I was the only one that visited him and that I had at least brought
him a cake with a file in it. That got me a lot of drinks bought for me when
word went out.
I do
remember one night when was out of propane for my heater. I had been out of
town a few days and returned. I was out of propane and there was a note and
some money on the counter. One of the guys had needed a place to stay for a couple
of nights and had run the propane out. The place was also cleaned and smelled
of Pine-Sol.
I took the
empty propane bottle and headed downtown. It was a really cold night. A police
car stopped and offered me a ride. On the way down I explained what the deal
was. The fuel dock was closed and I was going to try and get one of the guys to
‘drift’ enough propane from his bottle to mine to get me through the night. The
cop told me it would probably be easier for me to overnight in the jail and
take care of it in the morning. I dropped the bottle off outside the police
station and ran downtown for a burger and a beer and returned and slept in the
jail that night.
After I was
released I wandered down and refilled the bottle.
One of the
people that was pretty good to me was the building inspector. He was a Borough
official and had clout in and out of the city proper. From time to time the
Borough would try and shuffle us camper types around and the building inspector
was the person that was supposed to make us move. He’d leave me a note that it
was time to move and I’d find another place.
A couple of
times he made suggestions as to where I ought to hide out next. It didn’t take
me long to figure out that he was sending me somewhere that was littered. I’d
clean the area up and be left alone. This was one of the rewards of keeping a
clean campsite.
All in all
life was a pretty good deal any way I sliced it.
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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