The One That Didn't Get Away

Even though I caught a king salmon last year during the derby I was still convinced that this year I was a hex to boats, bad luck; I thought I was cursed. Before Monday, every time I went trolling, no one on the boat would catch a king salmon. There were a couple of halibut caught, and other superfluous, useless fish, but no salmon.

Sunday was almost my last straw. We were out for hours at the Nose with not even one significant strike. Because there were so many boats out, perhaps eighteen of them, I didn’t want to stick my butt over the side of the boat and pee, so I held it for about five hours. And I was dozing. And it rained sporadically. It was just an unpleasant day out on the water. I vowed that if I didn’t catch anything the next day, I was done for the season.

Scott and I set out Monday around 10:30 a.m. with Maria and Dave. We went to Mud Bay. We set our poles up and within five minutes …





The curse is broken!

That’s So Alaska

When former mayor of Wasilla Sarah Palin became Alaska’s governor, many had the fear that she would try to move the state capital from Juneau to Anchorage, a move that’s been contemplated before in state history I believe. And a move that’s been feared by southeast Alaskans for some time.

Well, she may have made her first effort by suggesting a special legislative session be held somewhere “less expensive” than Juneau, as reported by the Juneau Empire.

While this is interesting news and all, the best part of the article was at the very end when the date of this special legislative session was discussed:

“Palin didn't say precisely when the fall special session would be. It likely would be scheduled after fishing season but before hunting season, she said.”

Graduation

My co-worker Beth is on a cleaning spree around the office, and our office could use it. People have compared our office to a storage room. We have extra papers from weeks, months back piled in boxes, on shelves. We have superfluous cords and keyboards and discs and parts of computers from the 1990s, the 1980s perhaps. There are just boxes and boxes of stuff, unknown stuff.

Amongst the rubble, Beth found old Wrangell High School yearbooks. She was delighted and pulled out yearbooks from the early 80s. And now Beth and Kris (my other co-worker) are pouring over them looking at feathered hairstyles and goofy grins of people we all know and love.

We saw Beth’s senior class group shot – young hopefuls on the verge of graduating. More than half of them still live and work in Wrangell and it was great to see Greg, the harbormaster, looking all cool and aloof, or Ernie, the manager at Ottesen’s, looking all proper as he still looks now, or Heidi Armstrong, a mother of six, wearing a gold chain heart necklace looking sweet and religious. It’s funny how these people haven’t shed their high school personas.

What blows my mind is the fact that Beth graduated with these people and still interacts with them on a daily basis. I shouldn’t be so shocked because all of Wrangell is based on that concept. I’ve known this since I’ve moved here. But to see these people as young as they were with these crazy hairstyles and cool clothes in yearbook pages, it just made it all the more real. It made me try to think about an imagined life where I still interact with those I went to high school with, but it’s really too hard to even imagine.

Because she grew up here, Beth knows everyone’s story, everyone’s high school boyfriend and girlfriend, who kissed who when, who had a drug addiction when. She knows who married young (everyone) and divorced early. She knows the true birth parents of kids.

Jodie is in the office now (Jodie also grew up in Wrangell) and they are recalling Sophomore Slave Day, when Monty Buness, the current principal of the middle and high school, had to wear a cloth diaper and was paraded around town on a leash. After that year, Sophomore Slave Day was abolished.

Now the two of them are talking about how Brian Merritt, fourth grade teacher, was a mean kid growing up. “He is not the Brian Merritt you know today,” Beth said. The Brian I know is an amazing teacher and father. His daughter took my dance class and when it finished, he wrote me a gracious, kind thank you email.

The people here know each other’s histories like their own. And there’s something to be said about that. There’s something to be said about the class slogan of 1981, “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are not as important as what lies within us,” which I think is a lot more meaningful than this year’s senior class slogan, “Life is a garden – dig it.”