Laundry On the Cheap.

Not every home in Bethel has a washer and dryer. Mine doesn't. They're costly, not only transporting them here but also installing the hook-ups, preventing waterline freeze, and increased water and power usage. There are laundromats but they're costly too: $12/load and $16 for cab fare. To save money I bought an EcoWash tumbler.

I had zero appreciation for the labor-savings of a washing machine until now. I should have, because growing up we used a combination of washer, wringer/mangler, clothesline, and dryer to clean the clothes of seven people. It was hard but I was young and all work was hard. Laundry takes labor at any age, it turns out.  

The EcoWash is actually fairly simple; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND7_9aQ5HdM. It was about $60 on Amazon and it's paid for itself a hundred times over. It does take time; one load, from wash fill, crank, drain, rinse fill, crank, drain, hang, takes about thirty minutes. The loads are small so I do around three/week. It takes 24-36 hours for the clothes to dry on a folding rack standing in my bathtub with a fan blowing on them. I estimate the clothes are about 60% as clean as they would be in a conventional machine and there tends to be some annoying soap residue on dark clothing. I use Dropps mini detergent pacs (dissolvable organic pods). 

While I enjoy the moral superiority of environmentally-friendly laundry, if my landlord said he was installing a washer/dryer I wouldn't argue. I have tremendous respect for people who did laundry by hand for most of the history of clothed humanity.   

Groceries, Through the Looking Glass.

10:00 Sunday morning.  On a happy walk to Alaskan Commercial to buy groceries; I can see it just a quarter mile ahead.

                “Hey!”

                I walk a few more steps in hopes the voice isn’t directed at me but there is no one else outside within 500 yards and I realize I will have to engage.

                “Hey!”

                I stop walking and turn toward the voice, an older woman in a red shirt, who waves at me from the doorway of a ramshackle house across the street.

                “I need your help!”  

                “You need help?” I repeat.  Maybe she’ll think I’m an idiot and ask someone else.

                “Yes!” she says and retreats inside. I wait for traffic to clear, trudge across the muddy street, through a muddy yard, have a choice of walking up a wheelchair ramp (a clue to what I’ll find inside?) or snow-covered stairs.  I take the stairs.  The snow will clean my boots a little.

                The door is ajar but I knock anyway. There is no answer. I push open the door and enter a short mudroom and an overwhelming miasma of rotten food, feces, seal oil, and vomit.  The small living room is strewn with flotsam over old linoleum that has likely never been swept since it was laid.  Sunlight streams through the windows, highlighting a bucket next to the sagging couch, half full of the likely source of the smell.  The red-shirted woman is gone, but a young Yupik girl in her mid-20s stands silently centered in the doorway to the living room.  She stares at me with dark brown eyes half hidden by puffy cheeks tinged scarlet with acne. 

                “How can I help?” I ask her.  I remember to go silent.  It’s called the “3.5 second rule”: wait at least 3.5 seconds after speaking to a Yupik because their conversation pattern is slower than white people are used to. I wait.  She says nothing, just stares, unmoving.

                “Someone said they needed help?”  Nothing.  Stare. She reminds me of an animal caught in a trap.

                “I’ll help if I can.” Stare. 30 seconds pass.  I stay still on dirty cardboard in the mudroom, conscious of my filthy boots.  I stand openly, non-aggressively, my gaze directed at the space between her eyebrows so as to project eye contact without actually looking into her soul.  She seems torn between bolting and accepting my offer.

                “I think she’s having alcohol withdrawal” she says timidly “she’s seeing things and acting crazy.”

                “Hellooo!” cries a voice from another room, “who’s here?  Are they here to help?”

                I step to the end of the cardboard, peek around the corner and see the woman in red reclined on a bed in a back bedroom. I turn to the girl, who hasn’t moved.

                “How long has she been seeing things?”  I think through my OPQRST pneumonic, O stands for “Onset”.  She says nothing, stares at me as if gauging my usefulness, or gullibility.

                “Can you describe how she’s been acting crazy? Does anything set her off?”  I ask.  P stands for “palliative or provocative”.  I pause to give her the requisite time to reply.

                “It’s alcohol withdrawal” she says again, more confidently. “I’m having alcohol withdrawal.” She has decided what to do with me, how I can be useful.

                “Oh, you’re having alcohol withdrawal!”  Pause.

                “I drink a lot.”  She starts to tremble, but it looks forced.  I’ve seen plenty of alcohol withdrawal, including my own.  Tremors are different than trembles.

                “When was the last time you had something to drink?” Back to O.

                “Two hours ago.”

                “What did you drink?” Pause.

                “I… it was vodka, I think.”  She has not stopped staring.  Her eyes are lovely - and inscrutable.

                “Well, if you drank two hours ago you’re not going through withdrawals” I say matter-of-factly.  I smile to soften the truth; no one likes to hear the truth.  She stares at me then snorts a puff of laughter –or disgust - and puts a hand to her chest.

                “I’m having chest pain from the withdrawals.  I’ve had withdrawals before, I know what they’re like.  My chest hurts. I need you to call an ambulance.”  Ah, they need me for my phone.

                “You want me to call 911?”  She nods silently.  I sling my backpack off, set it down on the chest freezer that sits in every mudroom in Alaska and pull out my phone.  I dial 911 and hand it to her.

                “I don’t know your name or address so you’ll have to talk to them.”  She takes the phone, looks at it briefly, and makes a tiny, impatient grunt. I see her thumb twitch over the hang-up button.

                “Are you here to help?” the lady on the bed yells.  I look around the corner and give her my biggest smile.

                “Yes, I’ll help if I can!” I yell back.

                “Who are you?” she shouts.  “Oh, you’re the person I waved at across the street!  Are you here to help?”  I look back at the girl. She is holding my phone out to me.  It has been disconnected from 911.  I don’t take it.

                “If you want an ambulance, you’re going to have to talk to them” I say patiently. She says nothing, just holds the phone out to me. We stare at each other for 20 long seconds.  I take the phone.

                “Do you want an ambulance?”  She starts trembling again.

                “My chest hurts.”

                “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does your chest hurt?” Pause.

                “Seven.”

                “Then let’s call the ambulance.” I dial again and hold it out to her.  “I don’t know your address, you need to tell them.”  She takes it and this time she lets it connect.

                “I’m having chest pain” she says simply.  She gives her age and location then hangs up.  The 911 dispatch doesn’t ask many questions, they get these calls all the time.

                “Do you have something to drink?” the lady in red asks, weaving into the living room.

                “No, I don’t. I stopped drinking a while back.”

                “Oh, who are you?”

                “I’m John.” 

                “Come in and talk with me!”  She plops onto the couch, the definition of bedraggled.

                I remove my boots and enter the bright living room. I have to squeeze past the girl who has not moved.  Her head swivels to track me as I pass.

                “I’m a nurse, if it makes you feel any better” I tell the girl.

                “You’re a nurse?”

                “Yes.”  She mulls this over.  I choose a child’s plastic school chair to sit in; it’s clean, it’s lower than the couch which makes it non-threatening, and it leaves the other chair open for the girl if she wants to join the conversation.  I hope she will.  I hope she’ll trust me, call off this charade, and we can have a good conversation.  My foot nudges the bucket, which sloshes.  A sickening wave of fresh stench erupts.

                “I’m Mary*. Tell me about yourself!” chirps the red lady expansively, draped over the couch.

                “I’m John.  Ummm… I grew up on a farm.” Pause. Gasp. Breathe through mouth.

                “Oooohhh, I LOVE farms!  In fact, I have always wish I was on a farms!”

                “Are you from here?”

                “Yes, I’m from here.  My mother, she left me – oh, I don’t know how many plots.  I have…” she waves a hand in a general direction “sooo many plots.  Sometimes I have to… you know about the homeless people?”

                “No, I don’t know about the homeless people.”

                “You’re a nurse?” the girl asks just as the paramedic knocks on the door.  She is still standing in the same spot she was in when I arrived.  The paramedic cracks the door and pokes his head in.

                “You having chest pain?” he asks, eyes flicking between the three of us.

                “Yes” the girl says.

                “Can you walk to the ambulance?”

                “Yes.”  He withdraws his head and she follows him out without a backward glance.

                “I have had so, so much things happen in my life” says Mary thoughtfully.

                “I’m sure you have.”

                “I’m 57.  And how about you?”

                “I’m 47.”

                “Oh, I’m older - then I can boss you around!”

                “Sure.”

                “I’d boss you around until you got tired of bossing… oh!   Excuse me.  I just farted!”

                “That’s OK.  Well, I’d better get goi…”

                “No!  Stay – please stay!  I get so lonely!”

                “OK.  I’ll stay a few minutes.”

                “Do you have anything to drink?”

                “No.  I used to drink but I don’t anymore.”

                “I feel sooo sad!”

                “What makes you so sad?”

                “I don’t have anything to drink!!!”

                “You said you liked farms.  Have you been to a farm?”

                “One time we went to Canada, to a farms.”

                “What did they grow there?”

                “Oh, fruit trees, and, well, just everything that grows!”

                “Mary, how old were you when you went to Canada?”

                “How do you know my name?”

                “You told me, just a few minutes ago.”

                “How long have you been here?”

                “About ten minutes. You called me over, remember?  You stood in the doorway and told me you needed help.”

                “Ha! That’s right!  What were you doing?”

                “I… was just out for a walk on a glorious Sunday morning.” I almost let slip that I was headed to the grocery store. She didn’t need to know that I had money and access to alcohol.  There are no rules for the desperate drunk.

                “Do you have anything to drink?”

                “No, I quit drinking.” I add that every time as the gentlest of suggestions that not drinking was an option. She seemed to hear nothing beyond “No”. I stood up.  “I’d better go.  It was nice to meet you, Mary.”  She pouted, but shook my outstretched hand.  I grabbed my backpack, stomped into my boots, opened the door, and looked back.  Mary lounged in the sun on the beaten couch, a frown on her face, staring into the bucket of vomit.  

                The fresh air was life itself.  As I walked I wondered what game the girl was playing. Sometimes when someone is truly in alcohol withdrawal – which can be deadly – the doctor will order them a beer.  It comes wrapped in tin foil so the other drunks in the emergency department can’t see that it’s a beer but since soda cans don’t come wrapped in tinfoil really the only mystery is which brand the hospital stocks.  Maybe she faked chest pain to get a Sunday morning beer – the most expensive beer ever, if you’re a taxpayer.  She may also have gone in search of pain medicine.  I wondered if she went for herself or for her mother, if Mary was her mother – family ties are less nuclear here. Maybe she would get the beer or pain medicine and tuck it into her sock to bring home because it was too painful to see her loved one so desperate.  I do know this isn’t the first time she’s done this; she knew all the triggers.  

From talking with nurses in the E.D. I know this same story happens all day, every day in Bethel.  Being here is like stepping through Alice’s looking glass and can quickly turn a mundane walk to get groceries into an extraordinary rabbit-hole.

*Obviously, not her real name.

Why Speaking Yup'ik is Hard.

I'd like to learn some Yup'ik words but they confound my English-trained tongue.  Here's an example:

The new hospital being built is called the Calricaraq Project.  Instinctively, I know this should be pronounced "Kal-rik-a-rak" - don't say it like that, you will be scorned. It is pronounced "Jala-gay-jahak" or "jalgeejagak" meaning "to come together". The "c" sounds like "j" and the "r" is..., well the "r" is a throaty "khy" sound that could be "g", "k", or "y" to my Western ears; there's no easy equivalent in the Latin alphabet. To hear them speak, native Yupiks use a great deal of this gutteral sound in their conversations, lots of hard "k" & "g", almost clicking their tonsils together - hard, but not harsh. "Kayak" is one of their easier words. Their conversation is melodic, like a mash-up of Sioux, Russian, & Chinese, with a lilting rythm that carries over into their pronunciation of English, if they speak it.  I could listen to it all day.  I just despair of ever actually learning it.

The Elasticity of Alaskan Easter.

 There are at least 11 churches in Bethel representing Roman Catholic, Moravian, Russian Orthodox, Church of God, Covenant, Baptist, Church of Latter Day Saints, Seventh Day Adventist, Assembly of God, Pentecostal, and (because why not, in bush Alaska) the Korean church.  Christianity is a big part of modern Yupik culture, since first contact with "Western" culture was by Russian Orthodox missionaries followed by the legendary Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson.

Sheldon Jackson: a controversial, proselytizing dynamo.

  This cemented in the native mind an inseperable connection between the benefits of Western conveniences and belief in Jesus.  They still hold on to some ancient beliefs (10,000 years of history is a lot to give up in 150 years) considered animistic: they believe the land is alive, aware of everyone living on it, and rewards good actions with good harvests & vice-versa.
 There was an intersting event last year that provides a good example:  2017 was the worst king salmon harvest in their collective history.  In July, a whale swam 30 miles up the Kuskokwim river (remarkable because it's not normally a fresh water mammal) and was killed with great ceremony and joy by the villagers just downstream from Bethel (which is about 40 miles up stream from the Bering).

Relieved Napaskiak villagers harvest a sacrificial gray whale.

There was no question in their minds that it had sacrificed itself for them due to the poor salmon run.  In a perfect example of the tension between modern culture stamped over ancient tradition, the villagers got in trouble with U.S. Fish & Game because these inland villages don't have whale hunting rights - that's reserved for the more northern, coastal tribes.  By law, they should have gone hungry.
There's a limit - perhaps measured by the level of the larder - to how far the natives will carry the yoke of  Christ and turn the other cheek. In that, I think they're not so different from most.
So there's plenty of churches here to celebrate Easter with; nearly everyone will attend and enjoy the social & emotional refreshment it provides. But in the harsh reality of their every-day survival they will always thank the caribou, moose, bear, salmon, fox, rabbit, or whale for giving themselves up, and offer some of their catch back to the earth in gratitude. They grudgingly render unto Caesar what Caesar forces them to, and willingly render unto God what is God's.  But which God depends on their perception of who met their most fundamental needs: Father God, or Mother Goddess.

Native communion of sorts - but with which deity?

Going Native.

The natives here are fascinating, ancient customs mixed with modern technology, like blue jeans tucked into handmade sealskin mukluks - with a smartphone in the back pocket. Or a Northface down jacket with a mink-skin hat. The younger ones seem to have a haughty tolerance of Kass'aqs (white people) while the "elders" (anyone older) are genuinely friendly - although you still get the sense that it's benign tolerance, like being polite to a visitor in their home.  Plus, few elders speak English so who knows what they're really saying to you in Yupi'k.  It's strange that the grandchildren speak only English and the elders only Yupi'k so they can't even talk to their own grandkids!
Here's an example of the native teenager's attitude and also how different it is in Bethel:
I volunteered at their annual dance festival - Cama-i - this past weekend, held in the local highschool. I sat checking in dance groups at a table backstage where the dancers prepared.  Two Bethel high school students, Seth and Katrina - both locals, were volunteering with me.  A teen volunteer usher came by the table after his shift to turn in his usher vest.  He looked full-blooded Yupik and had an obvious dip of tobacco in his lip.  Katrina told him:
"The high school is a tobacco-free zone, you can't chew here." 
He looked at her with disdain and said insouciantly:
"I'm Native, who cares.  And you shouldn't be so judgemental".
As if to say "Your silly rules don't apply to us, we only just barely tolerate your existence.  You're lucky we don't take our Ulus and turn you into fish bait".
Later, when I donned his vest and took over his job as usher (which involved the sisyphean task of deflecting mischievous children away from the 'Elders Only' entrance to the gym) I stood next to a trash can that was really a spittoon: at least a third of all the teenagers swung by to spit tobacco juice into it.  So I got the impression that 1.) "Tobacco-Free Zone" is viewed as a humorous suggestion rather than a strictly-enforced rule, 2.) Native teenagers don't feel the need to hide their rule-breaking activities, 3.) Pointing out a disagreeable fact is "being judgmental", 4.) Natives distingish sharply between 'native' and 'local', and 5.) Trash bags full of spit quickly become quite heavy.

Love the Chub.

My new favorite food.

Entrenched in the Tundra

Took the 0600 Delta flight from Charlotte to Atlanta, then to Seattle.  Took Alaska Airlines from Seattle to Anchorage, then on to Bethel. 20 hour day.  Landed in a blizzard.  Hooray!!

Lodged in temporary quarters 4.5 miles from town.  It's on stilts, like everything here, to protect the permafrost from melting.  The land isn't as flat as I thought, lots of wrinkles and hillocks.

Had a couple days off before work started so I walked into town the next day to get my supplies.  I shipped six boxes averaging about 60 lbs. apiece for a total of $743.  Should be just about everything I need plus a month's worth of food.  Had to wait nearly two hours in the cold behind the post office for a cab large enough to fit everything.

On the walk in I passed the airport.  It's large, and services 3 jets from Anchorage daily (weather permitting) along with countless prop planes.  Alaska would barely be habitable in today's world without the thousands of daring pilots who fly everywhere.  Nearly every village has a short runway. I took a picture of the Yukon Aviation headquarters, one of a dozen small plane services based here.  They really are the last cowboys. 

Attended NEO (new employee orientation) and am finally ensconced in my new office as clinical nurse educator.  Everyone is so happy I'm here, it makes me nervous.  What are they so excited about?  What miracles am I supposed to perform?  Whatever, I'll do my best, with enthusiasm!

Bethel or Bust.

Bethel, Alaska

I got a call in late December from a headhunter out of Texas looking for someone with my skill set to be a clinical educator for the Yukon - Kuskokwim Healthcare Corporation in Bethel, AK.  After a round of interviews they made an offer and I accepted.  I'll be in Bethel for the next three years and try to keep this blog updated with observations and daily doings.

Damned Date Night

We’re married. Our schedules are hectic. Evenings are little more than a quick family dinner and maybe a half-episode on Netflix before we’re both nodding off.  So we set aside a night to DO something, have some fun, go on a Date. I crafted a foolproof plan: we’d shoot some guns, eat some seafood, get a hotel.  Perfect!

Before Date Night got started, I met some friends for coffee at a downtown Starbucks. The parking lot was packed but I found a spot in the very back. 

 The conversation and coffee were lovely; I hated to leave, but Date Night started in 30 minutes and I still had to drive a long way during rush hour.  I hastily said my goodbyes then jogged to my car where a parking boot had been lovingly placed around my front tire.

An urgent phone call to the number conveniently pasted to my window roused the man sitting in a pickup right next to me to lumber out and charge me a breathtaking fee to remove the boot.  Pointing to a tiny sign mostly covered by foliage - parking for main key building only - he told me the parking lot for Starbucks actually only comprised 10 slots out of the nearly 200 in the lot, the rest belonged to a squat, unlabeled office building on the other end, the main key (no caps) building.  He spent his days sitting in the lot with a truck bed full of boots happily immobilizing hapless coffee patrons and making an absolute fortune for the owners of the main key building. It was a scheme so stunning in its audacity I couldn't even get mad.  Using strip mall logic I'd assumed that the main key building was a euphemism for the anchor building, or the biggest moneymaker in the strip, which - duh - would be Starbucks.  Whatever, I had to go.  

                 Bootless, I dodged the driving dead across town to get Date Night underway. We rendezvoused at a shooting range near her work with anticipation of numb palms, spent brass, gunpowder residue, and cordite.  The young instructor asked how much experience we’d had. 

                “Not much… I shot some in basic training!” I added hopefully.  Twenty years ago, I thought.

                “What’d you shoot?”

                “Beretta” I said proudly.

                He handed me a Beretta M9 and challenged me to click off the safety and remove the clip.  I turned it over in my hand a few times, gently poked at some levers and knobs with no result and quietly handed it back to him.  He then demanded my manhood card and tore it up, letting the pieces fall to the floor.  No, not really, it just felt like it. 

                “I can’t let you on the range, you’d be dangerous” he said. “Come back next week, I’ll train you for a couple hours, then we’ll see - only cost you $100.”

                No way, I thought, I’m not paying for some condescending, snot-nosed redneck to chuckle with his buddies over my forgotten firearm skills. I have a Sharpshooter pin, dammit!

                “Ha ha, sure, sounds good!  See you next week!” I said handing him the money and scuttling out the door in a fog of shame.

                I had a restaurant gift card from last Christmas good for multiple eateries but the closest one was Red Lobster, just a couple miles away.  I’ll drown my shame in tartar sauce! I thought gleefully.  The two mile drive took 40 minutes, thanks to the traffic.  Red Lobster – never the first choice of discriminating diners – was practically deserted. For the evening rush. Not a promising harbinger.

                At the reception desk we saw a sign stating “As of August, only gift cards specifically for Red Lobster will be accepted.  Sorry for any inconvenience but as you can see by the empty booths we’re nearly out of business and we need you suckers to pay full price to keep our one bored cook from being deported.” 

                No, it didn’t really say that last part, but it felt like it.  

After consulting with two layers of management the hostess grudgingly agreed to accept my gift card because there was, after all, the name of their restaurant on it, among other stellar standouts such as the Sagebrush Saloon and the Olive Garden.

                Our main courses arrived approximately 36 seconds after our appetizer – bored cook – and it was all forgettable, then regrettable, when the unmistakable signs of food poisoning arrived the following day.  We did enjoy the ice water, which was refilled in a never-ending stream by our extremely attentive – probably also bored – waiter, Cody.  His enthusiasm for our dining pleasure visibly waned when he saw I was paying with a gift card.  Nothing says “cheap diner = lousy tip” like a gift card or coupon.  I didn’t care.  I was looking forward to the hotel.

                On my last job I traveled a lot, stayed mostly at Best Western and collected rewards points – “Best Rewards Program in the Business!” – which never expire and can be redeemed for free nights at any Best Western.  With two curious boys in a tiny house, marital intimacy tends to be low on the priority list so I’d cashed in some points to score a free night at the Best Western, just a mile down the street.

                We mulled our mushy fish while a man was murdered in his car - a mile down the street. Literally, while we were eating!

                “Charlotte’s 55^th homicide of 2017!” the newsfeed would crow the next morning.

                 Of course we were ignorant of this, sheltered in the dim, vacant dining room protected by hovering presence of Cody.  We were perplexed when, after departing Red Loser, the entrance into the Best Western was blocked by two police cruisers with flashing lights.  We'd just driven by the hotel an hour before and it had been silent as a tomb.

                 Forced to U-turn, I thought about a 5 mile detour to attempt the back way to the hotel, with no guarantee it would be open. I thought about how terrible the traffic was. I thought about the emasculating debacle at the range.  I thought about the second-rate seafood dinner.  I thought about the two naïfs freaked out about their parents staying overnight in a local hotel.  I thought about how tired we both were.  I thought about how my life feels like a dead-end.  I thought about how awesome it would be to own a Tesla at the dealership I was creeping by.  I thought about how that will never happen.  I thought I heard my phone buzzing.

                “Hey.”

                “Hey. It’s weird they have all the roads blocked off.  I wonder what happened.”

                “Don’t know.  Somebody did something, I guess.”

                “Crazy night. What do you want to do?  Try to go around or just go home?”

                “Let’s go home” I said quietly relieved, “I’m an unlovable loser; too wretched to be romantic right now, anyway; our perfect date turned into a catastrophic trifecta, there’s no hope for me, the future looks dismal, you should get out while you still have your health.” 

                No, I didn’t really say that last part, but I felt like it.

Crazy Lady

When they pityingly told me I was getting the crazy lady in bed 20 I quailed.  I hate taking care of crazy people.  She’d been transferred to our neurosurgery service after a CT scan at an outlying hospital revealed a big, wobbly aneurysm behind her right eye that could pop any second.  Blood pressure control was paramount.  Great. She’s old, gets upset easily - I’m going to go in there and she’ll flip out because I’m a male, her blood pressure will skyrocket, that squishy blood balloon will pop and she’ll die immediately.

                She’d already slammed a nurse against the wall (she liked to lift weights at her assisted living home as a hobby) and threatened to leave AMA (against medical advice); she’d acted so irrationally that they assumed she was incompetent to make her own decisions and filed involuntary commitment paperwork with the magistrate, meaning they could legally do as they liked with her.  I braced myself for a wild-wigged harridan and gently knocked on her door.

                We hit it off immediately; I spent the next two days just listening to her life story.  Let’s call her “Lydia” - wasn’t crazy, she was a fiercely independent, proud, stubborn, Southern, nearly 80 year-old woman with recent tattoos and zero tolerance for political correctness.  She’d lived alone most of her life and liked it. A year back she’d fallen, broken her hip and neck; while she was hospitalized her daughter had cleaned out Lydia’s apartment and had her placed in assisted living without telling her.  When the pain meds wore off Lydia found herself in a regimented residence with a gloomy roommate.  She hated it, was powerless to change it and began asserting power where she could.  She broke three different wrists with her aluminum cane in the first six months. 

                The assisted living facility called to let me know they wouldn’t be taking her back after her discharge. Now she’s not only irascible, she’s homeless.  I don’t tell her this news, or the fact that she’ll need to go to a skilled nursing facility (SNF) after she recovers from surgery.  A SNF is far more regimented than assisted living.  She will not be pleased.  All she wants is to be independent – and left alone.

                What struck me was how her situation precisely paralleled the revelations I’m discovering in Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.  Her longing for autonomy is shared by most elderly people – it may be, Gawande argues - their most fundamental desire.  Such freedom is intolerable in a safety-conscious culture where the infirm are carefully packed away in regimented facilities – involuntarily, if they don’t meekly knuckle under. In these institutions residents survive without thriving, joy and adventure are stripped for safety’s sake and gradually the light in their eyes fades out. Lydia knew this, raged against it, and placed all her fierce hope in the belief that surgery would allow her to go back to living independently in an apartment.  I wasn’t brave enough to shatter that illusion.  

Cigarettes, Alcohol, Pork Rinds, and Mountain Dew

Castle Anguish

This is where I work weekends, 6:30 a.m to 7:30 p.m.  It has nearly 1,000 beds, each filled with someone who doesn't want to be there tended by caregivers who feel the same. It is an inexorable economic engine largely fueled by poor decisions. Already monstrous, it continues to bloat and swell in synch with the local populace. Its ramparts loom over the surrounding vassalage.  It even has a moat.

There hasn't been a study, but I'll bet you could find a direct correlation between number of items consumed from a gas station and number of nights in a hospital bed.  

Jack That Shit Up

                 

                 “Hey, how much morphine should I give my comfort-care patient?”

                The standard hospital dose for intense pain is 2 mg.

                 “Jack that shit up, man, run it fast, make him comfortable, you know?”

                 I didn’t know, which was why I asked. 

                “Hmmm.” I said. `  

          

                I went back into the room. Right now it was running at 2 mg / hr. while the dying man huffed like a gargling bear.

                I’d bolus-dosed the pump for about thirty seconds then stuck the bag with a syringe, pulled 6 ml and pushed it in the IV fast to cover any breakthrough pain.  Twenty dubious family members silently gave me the side-eye.

                The morphine bolus changed nothing. His limbs remained rigid, gaze locked downward, snoring rapidly through his bubbling saliva.  I taught the family how to suction his mouth then left and found another nurse.  “I just hung a morphine drip for my dying patient, what should I run it at?”

                 “If it was me, I’d jack that shit UP, put ‘em in la-la land”, they said in passing. 

                “OK”, I said and returned to the room, bumped it to 4. 

                The family watched in disapproval.  The doctor called, “How’s it going?”

                 “Fine.  We pulled the tube at 5:00. I started the drip.  Family’s all in there, quiet.  Some crying, not much.  Hey, how fast should I run it, do you think?”

                 “Fast.  Jack that shit up.”

                 “Well, I don’t want to… you know, kill them.”

                “Isn’t that kind of the point?”

                “Yeah, I guess.  I’ll bump it.  Thanks, doc.”

                “Thank you. This was a tough one.” 

                “Yep.”

                I returned to the room, shouldered my way through the mute crowd, turned the morphine to 10.  If 2 was normal, 10 would be pretty aggressive, right?

                It was odd that everyone said the exact same thing, like a standard dark-humor catchphrase when someone was actively dying.  We all knew there was a razor-thin line between ‘comfortable’ and ‘dead’ and no one wanted to put a number on that. All I wanted was a ballpark figure but “jack that shit up” gave me nothing.

                My job was to make him comfortable but the only way to tell the morphine’s effect was if he stopped breathing; if that happened too early in the process the family would freak.  They were irrational but they weren’t stupid.  They would make the connection between me tweaking the pain medicine and their loved one suddenly going silent; if they hadn’t processed their grief stages to ‘acceptance’ they might blame me for killing him.  They looked the type.

                I found my charge nurse.  “We withdrew on bed three.  Morphine’s running.  The order is to titrate for comfort – what should I run it at?” 

     “If I was dying I’d want you to jack that shit up, make me happy.  What’s he doing now?”

     “Breathing like a freight train, 40, 50 times / min., drooling all over the place.  I’ve got the family on suction, gets them involved.” 

 

     “What’s the morphine at?”

     “I’ve got him at 10.”

     “Oh god, turn it up!”

     “OK.  To what?  I don’t wanna just kill him, gotta ‘let nature take its course’ and all. How do I know he’s comfortable without shutting him down?”

     “Well, what’s the standard order if you didn’t have a drip?  Isn’t it a 10 ml bolus every 10 min.?  So run it at 60 and go up from there.”

     “Hmm. You’re right.  Thanks.”

                Shit.  He’s been under-dosed for an hour.  He’s been suffering for an hour! Of course I knew that about the injection dose – so stupid!  I squeeze into the room again.  It’s silent but for the struggling rasp.  My fingers fly over the pump’s buttons and the drip increases to 60.  The whir of the pump rises dramatically. I worm my way out, almost to the door when a defensive voice, tight with mistrust, asks me why I keep coming in.

 

     “What you messin’ wit?” Forty dark, angry eyes skewer me.

      “The pain medicine,” I say with confidence I do not feel. “I want him to be comfortable.  It’s what I would want if I was in his place.”  I smile and touch the questioner’s shoulder, part commiseration, part assurance that I know what I’m doing and while I appreciate his astute questions, he should trust me - I’m a nurse, for heaven’s sake!

                The shift changes, my relief comes.  I give report on the dying patient.  “How much morphine have you given him?” she asks.

     “I’ve got him on a drip at 60.”

     “Sixty!  You gotta jack that shit UP!”

                Sometimes I’m not sure I can do this anymore, that I should do this anymore.  I’ve been doing this for ten years and I have no idea what I’m doing.

My shit is all jacked up.

The Villains

I got so annoyed this weekend at some visitors, an arrogant couple who stood in my way while I worked and treated me like the hired help as they pressed my confused stroke patient for details on how to run his business while he recuperated. 

 The main antagonist was tall, lean, fashionably dressed, sported turtle-shell glasses, oozed false bonhomie, and wore an oily, skeletal smile like Jeff Goldblum. His partner was a dark, stolid woman, silent and brooding, planted squarely in my path. She forced a constant detour while I cared for the man in bed. The pair would have been instantly recognizable as villains in any Disney movie. 

I couldn’t help but think they took advantage of my patient’s condition to shoehorn their way into his affairs.  I worried he’d recover his senses and return to his convenience store only to discover himself bankrupted by this conniving duo.  

Ultimately, I did nothing. I cared for my patient’s immediate needs, threaded around them, ground my teeth in silence, awash in their fetid, unctuous wheedling of him punctuated by their supercilious demands of me. 

Alaska Journal - 1990

Alaska, 1990

Jan. 13, 1990 – 6:56 p.m.  On Amtrak going through Burlington, IA

                Well, we got off alright, cruising on Amtrak and it’s pretty alright.  I spent the night at Dan’s last night and we invited a whole bunch of people over – Glen, John W., Margaret, Mike White, Bev McKean, Drew, Jessica, Dai, Julie Nieves, Amy Davis.

L-R: Me, Danny, Glen Proctor, Bev McKean, Drew Otto

Drew Otto, Me, Mike Burke, & Danny goofing off before departure

 We talked forever about everything and almost got into a fight about racism.  Then Dan & I smoked in peace for a little while after they left, then Bev came back and she and Dan talked in front of the fire, so I went to bed.

Today we saw Drew and talked to him for a while about his sister Jane, who’s in a drug rehab center.  We also spent the day w/ Mike Burke and had lunch w/ the Plueddemann’s, then Shari came home in the middle of it and said she had to break up w/ Brian. Then we left for the station.

Loading up

“All you need in life is ignorance & confidence, then success is sure.” –Mark Twain

I met Mom & Dad & Alta, who saw me off, and we were away!

Alta, Mrs. Plueddemann, Shari seeing us off

                We sat in the lounge car & talked about us changing, then we met these guys from Schaumburg who were going to Denver for a ski vacation.  We went down and played Rummy w/ them for a while.  Their names were Matt, Ted, & Frank.  They were pretty cool.

Jan. 14, 6:15 a.m., Mountain time – Colorado / Nebraska border.

                Dan & I went to see the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ in the lounge car but it was so crowded that we had to sit way back.  We sat next to an English girl named Lynn. We talked to her for 5 hours.  She is way cool. She rides horses and told us she rode in the Olympics.

                I slept pretty well on the floor and we will be reaching Denver soon.

Jan. 15, 11:41 a.m., outside Granby, CO in the Rockies

                Wow!  A whole boatload of stuff has happened since I wrote over 24 hours ago.  Dan, Lynn, and I (her real name is Linda Cook, born Nov. 13, 1964 in Chesterfield, England) got off and wandered the town of Denver which is a very impressive town.  Since it was Sunday, the town was dead, besides which the Broncos played the Browns in Denver for the championship.  Broncos won.  They play the 49ers in the Super bowl.

                We did everything, met a bum named Ron, tried to go to church but it was closed, had a picnic on the front lawn of the capitol, talked to a hitchhiking prostitute, tried to get into three museums that were closed, went to the zoo, tackled each other in the duck poo in city park, ate tiny microwave pizzas straight out of the 7-11 microwaves and drank a SuperGulp of Mountain Dew together, laughed, wandered, lived, became very close friends and traded addresses. 

Olympian Lynn

Dan & I hugged her on her way out to the bus and kissed her cheek goodbye.  Then, after she was already on the bus, she ran back and kissed us both on the lips. That was cool.

                So Dan & I washed up in the restroom then headed out to make camp in City Park.  All day long it had been about 60 degrees, and as night fell it slowly dropped.  Dan & I laid out bedrolls under separate trees, smoked our pipes and retired. It was a night from hell.  The temp dropped to about 25 degrees.  He only had his poncho while I had a sheet sack, poncho, & kikoye.  It was unbelievably cold.  We both kept waking up.  The ground was hard and frozen, our feet were numb, we kept chattering. It was a hard lesson learned.  But we made it.  We got on the bus to the train station and the driver told us we looked like death.  When we told him we’d slept in the park he looked surprised and told us people get murdered in that park all the time.  We got to the station and made our train to Salt Lake City.

Jan. 17, 10:00 a.m. Somewhere in Idaho.

                On the train to Salt Lake we met a guy named John, who was a Christian.  He liked to talk so we talked for a while, then we met this other guy who races boats. He was way cool.  He had dredlocks in his hair, was drinking a beer and telling us stories about the sea.  Then we went back to our seats and talked to this guy named Gerald, who loved to talk, and had opinions about everything.  He said to remember that success is empty and meaningless.  He’s a millionaire himself, his son is a bum, his daughter is a fat, unwed mother, and his pride and joy was his wife, who looked a hell of a lot like Kristen Allen and only talked about cats.  Then we met Cathy, a beautiful girl with a child whose boyfriend left her.  She was very nice and I got to fill up her kid’s bottle for her.

                Dan & I got off in S.L.C. and called a homeless shelter, the Jesus Saves Rescue Mission, which took us in even though it was midnight.  We slept with the homeless that night and they made all sorts of funny noises in their sleep.

                We all got kicked out at 5:30 a.m. so Dan & I went to the train station to clean up. Then we went gleaning, but just our luck, it was garbage day, so we went to Hardee’s and wrote post-cards. Then we got kicked out so we wandered our merry way up to the capitol building which was pretty boring so we went to Temple Square, where the Mormons hang out.  We were there for about 4 ½ hours.  It was way cool.  They’re very nice people who believe you can be saved by either the Book of Mormon or the Bible, and that you can be baptized for dead ancestors.

                So we left and met Don, a street person, who we took out to lunch.  He was very interesting, and was simple, yet not stupid.  We talked for a while then met Nick, who was trying to get enough money to hop a freight train.  Then we walked to a laundromat and washed a few clothes while I called Aunt Vera. Then we bought some groceries and walked toward the train station.

                Our packs were heavy and painful on our tired shoulders, so we stopped in front of the Wendy’s where we’d had lunch, sat on a sidewalk planter and ate some potato bread & Hi-C coolers.  This drunk guy approached us for cigarettes, but we didn’t have any. He hung around anyway, acting stupid and drinking rum from a bottle.  Then he told us he liked men better than women. I wasn’t too surprised, just kind of revolted and I felt sorry for him too. He had a filthy mouth and kept going on about his sexual fantasies.  So we told him to go ask this girl who was walking up the street for cigarettes. He did, and we felt bad for setting him on her. When she came up to us we apologized, but she said it was no problem. 

                She went and bought some cigarettes and came back to talk to us.  Her name was Cathy, and she’d just quit her job as a cocktail waitress.  She’d been a model since she was 14 years old, and had lived in Paris for a while.  She was beautiful, and she offered to take us out and show us the town, and a few bars. We were hip, so after we talked for about an hour, her mother came to pick her up and she promised to return.

                While we were waiting, this guy named Richard came up to talk to us.  He seemed very nice, then told us he was gay. It was interesting to hear him tell his side of the story. 

                He said we were on the gay strip, so after waiting two hours for Cathy to come back, we decided to move on.  We went to Denny’s, where the waiter was gay.  Ahhhhggg! 

                But, we made our train and are on to Seattle.

Jan. 19, 10:50 p.m.  Aunt Vera’s house.

                It’s been a while.  On the way to Seattle, a pickup truck ran into the train.  I guess he was trying to beat it, then chickened out, only it was too late.

                We made it to Seattle alright, got in at about 11:30 p.m., then had to find the Metro route and find Jenny Gott’s (formerly Jenny MacGuire) house.  We were on our way when we stopped to ask two girls what time it was.  They told us then offered to take us where we wanted to go.  Their names were Narasha & Jen.  Jen was blind.  The drove us around Seattle and we never found Jenny’s house or Aunt Vera’s. By then it was my birthday, and the girls and Dan sang Happy Birthday to me at 12:01 a.m. The girls told us they were activists from Skagway and hated Ronald Reagan.  I didn’t like that.  I don’t know why.  So they dropped us off at a cheap motel, where we spent the night and got showers.

                In the morning, we left the hotel and wandered the streets until we found the docks, where we went boat to boat asking for work, always getting turned down but everyone wishing us good luck.  We commiserated over a bowl of clam chowder & some fish & chips. Then we went to find Jenny’s house.

                We found it, and met her kid – Jeremiah – and her husband Eric, and we all went bowling.  I cleaned up with a 139.  We slept O.N. there, then called all sorts of companies in the morning, and even locked ourselves out of the house.

                We went downtown and to the Fish Market – a very cool place – and spent the rest of the day at the docks getting applications.  We stopped by Seattle Pacific University (SPU) and found out that Eric Morgan goes there.  Then we had supper at Jen & Eric’s house and came here to Aunt Vera’s where we had a nice chat and will now sleep.

Jan. 26, 8:29 p.m. - Lounge at SPU, overlooking North Seattle.

                About all I can say about the last week is that we looked for jobs hard.  Every day we took the bus from Des Moines to Seattle, all-in-all about a 1 ½ hour trip. We called & went to almost every freaking trawler company in Seattle and it was always the same thing, “Nothing now, but maybe in March”.  We got more and more frustrated.  Eric Morris had some connections but even those didn’t pan out.  We walked & walked & walked & walked.

Finally, Eric gave us some advice.  He said to be persistent, follow up, ‘bug ‘em’.  Then you have the most recognized face when it comes to being hired. So we tried it. And it paid off.  We got hired by the Deep Sea Fisheries on the fishing vessel (F/V) Olympic.

F/V Olympic under construction - Foss Marina, Lake Washington Ship Canal, Seattle, WA

Today was our first day. It wasn’t too bad. But work starts at 6 a.m., so I’d better turn in.

Sunday, Feb. 4, 8:40 p.m. - Galley of the Olympic.

                We’ve worked 10 days now, and hard work it’s been, too.  Carrying, painting, scrubbing, pounding, loading, pulling, grinding, pushing, welding, cutting, climbing, untangling, brushing, walking, getting cursed at, chipping, scraping, balancing… but it’s all been worth it.  We’re in pretty solid with the guys now and since we’re the youngest on the boat, we get all the scummy jobs and do all the hardest work.  We got our first paycheck on Friday for $351.65. I sent it home.

                We moved out of SPU after two hellish nights in the study room, which had a constant stream of people opening the door, then the ironing room, whose floor was hard as rock and was also constantly tried to be gotten into.  We moved to a guy we met on the bus’s house.  His name was Eric and he was way cool.  We stayed there for a few nights, then moved onto the boat.

                Our quarters are tight, 6 men to a room that’s probably 8 x 15 feet.  In it is Merlin, a very cool guy who looks like Robert Redford, Mark – Merlin’s friend – who is very funny. Both just returned from Peru, where Mark’s wife is, and Merlin’s fiancé is.  Then Tim, who’s 27 and looks 20, who’s been working on boats for 6 years. Other guys are Victor and Javier – two Mexicans – and Troy & Alex, a pair a lot like Dan & I, along with some others.  According to Chris, the work foreman, we leave a week from yesterday, or on the 10^th of Feb.

Alex & Merlin

Victor

Happy Javier

Tim, the psycho butcher-boss, on the crane controls

                I don’t really miss anyone yet, but lots can happen in 4 months.  I plan on losing all the fat and gaining some muscle, myself.  Dan & I were praying every night, but no longer keep up the practice in the crowded room.  I have determined not to swear to any great extent, as it would spoil my witness. Dan has taken to it quite readily, however.

Feb. 15, 10:30 a.m.

                The boy had been keeping a very loose journal, only adding entries every week or so, as all that had happened was pretty dull to describe in said journal, and he hadn’t felt up to it, really.  He finally took pen in hand again and proceeded to relate of the toil, or lack thereof, that he and his friend had been through.

                It was painting mostly, as all else was already done or required specialization.

Learning to weld from Pinball Pete (so-named because he kept bonking his head on things)

Painting, and growing terrible muttonchops

Looking astern at the cluttered main deck, our sister-ship F/V Alaska Mist (before it burned) in the background

 They’d had a day off one Sunday, and decided to go to church with their friend, Eric.  The boy hadn’t been to church in a while, and wasn’t at all sure he wanted to go.  Once there, however, it was a good thing for the boy, and he enjoyed it immensely.

                He and his friend then proceeded to walk down the sidewalk in the University district to see what they would see.  They stopped in several used record & tape shops, and even purchased a few, had lunch in a Mexican cantina then moved on to the bus stop to get to the mall where the boy received his first mark of manhood. After his ear was pierced, the left the mall and went back to their ship, to gloat over their day’s adventures.

                Ah, what a grand time these two were having. Sometimes there was no work, so they wrote letters home, and to friends, or just went into town.  There were no parents, no rules, and they did as they pleased.

Doing as we pleased, which did not include showering

Underway for sea trails on a misty Seattle morning

The finished product

F/V Olympic heading out for sea trials, derelict ship in foreground, taken from Ballard Bridge

March 15, 9:06 p.m. – Exactly one month later.

                We’re 4 days out of Seattle, on the Gulf of Alaska, where rollers toss our 450-ton ship like a cork.

Dolphins keeping pace

Off the Canadian coast on the Inner Passage

Through the San Juan Islands

 I’ve been a bit seasick, but Dramamine and lack of work will chase it away.  Mostly we string bait jars, tie knots, sleep, eat, or watch movies.  It’s very easy.

                I took out my earring today, as it was so infected that it was swollen 4 times over, and had literally swallowed my gold post.  A bit painful and disappointing.  My tattoo is healing well, though, and looks very cool.

                We eat like kings, and I have put on a few pounds, 5 or 6, to be lost during the next 4 months.  I get along pretty well with everyone, better with Troy and Joaquin.  I’ve learned a bit of Spanish, and a few knots, which all comes in handy.

Merlin, Danny, Victor reviewing knots

                I’m already looking forward to getting a motorcycle, going home, going to Taylor, and seeing the gang. The Lord has blessed us beyond comprehension and while I don’t often acknowledge Him, I now formally thank you, Lord Jesus, for your guidance and help in our ventures.  Your praises cannot be sung loudly or long enough.  You are without comparison.  We deserve nothing, yet have everything. Praise the Lord Jehovah!

Sunday, March 18, 7:03 p.m.

                I hear Randy broke up with Michelle.  I suppose he’ll spend more time at home now, or perhaps they’ll get together again.  She was his life, everything he did was centered on their relationship.  I feel pretty badly for him.  I can only imagine how dejected he must feel.  Ah, Randy.  I wish I could spend some time with you, let you know I care.

                Today, I feel great.  No waves.  Yesterday was hell.  After 5 days of holding my guts together, last night they unraveled and let fly.  To be followed by the anchor chain clanking against the wall next to my head on every wave, all night.  The waves were very high, and Dan felt bad too.

                When I woke up I felt great, ate brekkie, washed the dishes for Sharmon, the only girl on the boat.  She loves it when I do the dishes for her.  After lunch, I did the dishes again, and she said, just within range of my hearing, “I think I’m beginning to like this guy!”  Not only that but she touched me!  She doesn’t touch anyone, usually, but she placed a hand gently on my shoulder and one on my back, and she said “John, I love it when you do the dishes for me, but where the *&#% do you keep putting the measuring cups?” It could only be love.  I do do a damn good job in the kitchen; it comes from my Honey Rock training.

                I was tooling around with Dan up on the second deck, learning the Lover’s knot and the Bowline, tossing a braided rope around like a Frisbee, cruising on a very sunny day through the Aleutian Islands when Kim (the skipper) spied a couple of pot buoys off in the distance.  He decided to swing by and pick them up. So we cruised over, snagged ‘em, pulled up the pot and found 8 or 10 cod. 

Cod - we ate it fresh every day and also used it for crab bait

We put the grabber on 3 and chucked it back in.  Joaquin gutted ‘em and Victor & Big John filleted them. We’ll have fish & chips tomorrow.  It was way exciting.  Tomorrow, we reach Akutan.

Akutan Island, Alaska

March 20 - I wrote a letter and story to myself and mailed it home, to remind me of the experience.

                

Dear John,

                 Tomorrow is Dan’s birthday and you get to give him that card you’ve been toting around since Jan. 9.  Today is Tuesday, your laundry day, and you really don’t have that much to wash.

                You’ve been away from home longer than you’ve ever been away before, a little over two months, and while you miss some of the people at home you really aren’t ready to go back yet.  When you do, you’re thinking, it will be in style, on a brand-new motorcycle.

                You took your earring out because it was badly infected.  As soon as it was out, your ear healed in about two days. It was goofy.

                You got seasick and puked, but didn’t tell anyone, so no one really knew but Dan.  Being seasick is the pits.  Your eyes ache, your head pounds, your stomach roils, it’s the worst.  But as soon as the rolls stop, you feel great.  It’s like a switch is thrown.

                You’re looking at the next four months with expectancy, and a little despair, because 4 months is a god-awful long time. All you can do is wait and see.

                Something is starting to dawn on you, a thing that is seeming to be extremely important, and something that you should pattern your life after.  Dan lives by it and you should too: anything that is worth having is worth going after 100%.  That means anything.  It has to do with your goal setting, also.  A motorcycle is worth having. French & Spanish are worth having.  A relationship with God and knowledge of the Bible are worth having.  Good friends are worth having.  Go get ‘em, Ace.

                                                                                                                               Your friend,

                                                                                                                               John Morris

                It wasn’t so much the fact that he was four thousand miles from home, nor was it that he was in the center of the Aleutian Island chain on a 187 ft. crabbing boat while an icy wind blew over the calm waters of the Alaska Gulf.  It was, he supposed, as he stood on the upper deck watching the sun set over the island mountains leaving a burning trail across the waves, it was the fact that he was not there.  He could have been rowing a sampan in China and he still would have felt the same; that feeling of want, of a fierce longing that fills your guts with an ache to be quenched only by immersing yourself in past memories, savoring them, then moving on to the next, and on, and on, like an old man in a nursing home who has nothing but his memories and a cold bed pan.  Only the old man will never again be able to create memories, while the boy knew that in just four months he would again be with the gang, spending the rest of the summer making memories, the same memories he would relive when he was old, if indeed that ever happened. 

                Still, with spring coming on and that vibrant expectancy of summer, which is always the best, he shivered in the cold of the coming Alaskan evening and longed to be with the gang, all on a ski trip, or maybe camping, huddled around a merrily popping campfire, laughing and telling stories under the stars, forming that special bond of a special moment, knowing it will never last but not caring; that’s what growing up was all about and that’s what the boy missed. Sure he was growing up, and fast, but it was always so much funner with a lot of close friends to do it with. 

                He wondered what was going on back in Chicago, who was going out with who, who was going where, who had something new in their life.  The funny thing was, he knew, they were all jealous of him and his friend because of the wild adventures they were having.

                “Keep moving”, he muttered, and turned to go.

May 19 ?

                This venture of ours has treated us well.  The first trip was tough, working 18 hours straight, sleep 6, up again, for 20 days.  But Dan & I both made about $1700.  We really got to know everyone well, and Dan & I made the shit list for not working hard enough.  Kim threatened to fire us if we didn’t work harder. Our bodies craved only sleep, blessed sleep, all else didn’t matter.

                I learned a lot of different music, all of it played very loud.  There was Eric, the guy everyone had it in for, who got canned at the end, John, a big fat guy who hurt his back on the 3^rd day and lay in his bunk the rest of the time, occasionally coming out to pack, me doing case-up (which I hate), life was a bitch.  But we did it.  We made it.  Don’t think. No past, no future, only NOW. Just Do It.  You. Bust. Your. Ass.

                Our feet turned numb and started to fall apart from jungle rot, we got saltwater sores on our wrists, snot dripped from our noses, our hands turned white & pasty, we went to bed damp every night but didn’t care, woke up still damp, not enough time to dry out, the hydraulics going constantly, 25 foot rollers, the stink of dead, rotting crab underneath the butcher stands, puking on the floor from the smell of the cookers.  Off-loading onto the Marlin, busting ass all day, ‘Maxi-Stow John’ – that’s me – earning respect by hard work.

                Then the second trip, 4 new faces: Jeff, a huge bear from Las Vegas, Matt, a chinless dough-boy who’s lived in London and thinks more than you’d give him credit for, Troy Sutor – Sharmon’s brother – and his girlfriend Mindy, a short, petite, pretty girl of 22 who has a child, rides a motorcycle, shows horses, and is not meant for this kind of life.

                The second trip lasted 25 days, not much work, mostly sleeping.  I’m about 15 lbs. heavy from the rich food but also much stronger and bigger than when I left.  This time we offloaded our one freezer full in St. Paul, a small island with numerous shipwrecks on its rocky, barren shores.

A barely-visible shipwreck on St. Paul Island

We offloaded onto the Yellowfin, a huge freighter with only 9 people on it.  A pretty neat set-up.  We lost Mindy, as she returned home to Idaho – for the best.

                Third trip, we’re 10 days into it, no much crab, no ice though, like last trip.  The butchers & packers are getting good and can empty the live tank in about 2 ½ hours.  I’ve gained much respect as a hard worker and am even looked to as a leader in some things.  I’ve worked in the freezer while Sean sleeps and it helps put muscle on my bones, as well as relieve the monotony of processing.  Every day I work as a deck hand at some time or another, whether I want to or not, because they need the help.  It’s good experience, and I don’t mind the work, but I take a lot of shit from the cocky deckhands and I don’t get paid enough to work out there, but I’m the best out of all the processors, so it’s me.  Brad, the first mate, and I are fast becoming friends.  I gained his respect by hard work and my attitude, which is different from everyone else as I try to live out my Christianity.  He’s a good guy.

May 26

                Not much happening, crab coming in slowly, freezers filling slowly, time going by slowly.  We’re very far north, about 30 miles from the Russian border. We’ll be offloading on St. Matthew island at the end of the month.

                I think about home a lot now, and long to see people.  I can hardly believe that Mattie & Cathy & Glen & Kari & Elissa & all my friends will be graduating in a week. I wonder how Mattie liked Colorado? Still a long time to go, it seems, and much money to be made to pay for college.

                I punched my earring back through and continue to clean it. It would suck to get it infected again. Six months is a long time to do this kind of thing, or be away from home.  Home is great, isn’t it?  It’s wonderful.  I surely do miss it. Here’s not bad, it’s just not great.  Home is definitely great.  At home, people love you all the time, you can do what you want, go where you want, talk to people worth talking to, get away from laziness, selfishness, power-trips, every-man-for-himself – surround yourself with friends who want the best for you, making you want to look out for them in return.  I’ve made some friends on this boat, Merlin, Javier, Brad, Victor, Brian, Sharmon – all people who care, are humble, hard-working and fun-loving.

May 27

                I look forward to going to Taylor very much. Surrounded by Christian people, open space, 5 hrs. from home, friends, football, dorm life, studying, writing, exams.  I wonder how long I’ll last before wanting to go somewhere.  I’d like to go to Mexico.  I think I’ll try to go during interim.  I’d also like to do a Wandering Wheels trip.  If I do get a motorcycle I’d like to drive to South Carolina some weekend, to see Cathy at Furman.  Furman!  Jeez, why is she going to Furman?  I hope Elissa decided on Taylor.  We’ll have some kind of fun there together.

                When I get home I’d like to project a seriously fun-loving attitude, with a little impishness thrown into it, be open, frank, honest, sincere, laugh a lot, tell funny stories, let people know how you feel about them, don’t hide your emotions, or be afraid to let your love show.  Just determine when is the right time for these things before you jump in.  Learn to control your tongue, leave some things unsaid, don’t swear, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.  When you start something, finish it, be it a job, a conversation, an argument, a thought, an idea.  Don’t ask anyone to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. Work hard at whatever you do – give 100% - go all out.  Don’t even think about what other people will think of you – 90% of the time you’ll be wrong.  Don’t complain, even if you think you’re getting stiffed.

June 9

                As of tomorrow we will have exactly one month left.  EEEEEYAAAAHOOOO!!

                I’m looking greatly forward to going home, do some camping, swimming, biking, running, weightlifting, music listening, driving, lots of laughing, talking, bonding, and learning. Dan heard about something called Drive-Away, where you are paid to drive a car back to its point of origin.  Sounds like a plausible way to get home.

                We offloaded on the first of June, three thousand 70 lbs. boxes of frozen crab legs.  Troy Bygrave & I stacked every one, as fast as we could.  Boy, was I beat.  Then for a couple days we were on the crab and processing 24 hours a day.  Setting records and filling the freezer fast.  Now it’s not so good, but OK.  All around us are Russian long-liners dragging for whatever, thinking we’re in their territory.  Big boats that all look the same.

A rare calm morning on the Bering Sea 

A couple days ago it was 65 degrees and so sunny that I laid out and got burned a little.  4 more days of crabbing!

June 13

                We are a couple hours off St. Matthew’s.  All of our pots are stacked, plus some we picked up along the way. That was pretty cool, picking up lost pots.  One bag had three pots on it.  Kim came down from the wheelhouse and showed us that he really does know what he’s doing on deck.  Both Brad and Kim want me to come back in January as a deckhand.  I don’t think I’ll miss school to do it, though. I’ll see.

                Yesterday was a long, hard day, with bad attitudes flying. I need to go see some other people, need to get off this damn boat, get away from these same people I see every day.

June 14

                We didn’t process for as long as I thought at St. Matt’s, only about 12 hours or so, as we didn’t get an extension permit.  So we’re on our way to Dutch Harbor, to offload in Akutan.  Lots of people are going home, some of which I’ll be glad to see depart, others whom I’ll be sorry.  Brian, Brad, Alex.  Alex told me the other day that he liked me.  It was cool.  

                                I don’t want to see anyone from home until I lose this fat, makes me sick, I’m 20 lbs. overweight, what a nightmare.

End of Journal

Exploring an abandoned military base in Dutch Harbor

Climbing Amaknak Point in Dutch Harbor with Javier

Fishing trip to Beaver Inlet, Unalaska – the whole crew, 23 people in one truck.

Home

The reward!