"Did you eat today?" asked Blaine.

Kodiak in the early 80s was a strange place.

A long dead friend of mine would often greet each other with that question. The one that asked it had money in his pocket.

If I was flush I would ask him and if he had money he would ask me.

If I had eaten I would say I had so as not to take advantage of him. If I had cash in my pocket I would simply say I was OK.

He did the same thing. This lasted for a couple of years until Blaine moved back to New Jersey where he was later killed in a skiff accident off the Jersey coast. Shortly after I heard about his death I returned the Zippo he had given me by committing it to the deep near where he was killed.

It was an interesting way to live and was pretty unique that two guys would meet and ask each other that but the reason was that while both of us had employment of sorts, our incomes sort of staggered. While he was pretty much strictly a fisherman, I was a fisherman/carpenter.

We never knew when we were going to be getting paid and how much. We sort of ganged up on the outside world and took care of one another.

Sometimes the "Did you eat today?" didn't mean we were going into Solly's Office for a burger. It often meant we were inviting each other over to dinner. 

The paradox of being invited to dinner is that when we were broke we had to settle for King Crab which we caught off the fuel dock or venison that one of us shot. I generally was the deerslayer because I had a friend that would let me use the freezer for a cut of the venison. Other times it was halibut, salmon or occasionally duck.

Almost forty years later it is strange to look at the way things were back then but I would not have missed it for the world.