He, (Let's call him: "Lord Baltimore," a famous Pinkerton Detective. Butch Cassidy, et. al.) did, however, piss in my morning coffee and deserves to hear some Lively Polka Music. A "good- natured ribbing," Fish-Boy-Style. It could've been worse. I coulda' hit him with three hours of Frankie Yankovic, Weird Al's Dad.
I understand enough German to make general sense of what's being sung about, I like the way the phrasing of the music wafts through the air like a soothing swish of a paint brush on the back of my consciousness and, given enough volume, it drowns the "Island Hip-Hop In A Waring Blender" coming through the wall.
So. L.B. comes to the door after he figures it out and asks: "What's going on with you? What are you doing?" I reply: "Drowning your crappy music like an infective rat, AGAIN. And, 'writing.' I'll talk to you LATER, if I feel like it." He knocks over Jemimah Puddleduck, my door stop (Just a painted plaster casting of a comical looking duck) and leaves. Just what The Doctor Ordered. Desired effect achieved. It could have been allot worse, trust me. I made a snap decision between Wagner's "Lohengrin" and Yodelling. Yodelling won. Yodelling 1, Island Slop, 0.
I have THE LOUDEST STEREO RIG in the building. It's not a Voice of The Theatre P.A. pushed by two Crown DC 300's or anything but, in a 500 sq. ft. place, a Denon 90w per side amp and a pair of Kirksaeter Studio Reference Monitors will flex the glass and the walls. It's not a "power sucker" but, it's very efficient.
O.K., I'm "over it." I can't even stay angry/upset at MYSELF for 5 minutes. A good trick to know. Especially on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Particularly in a homey place like the Bering Sea or The Gulf of Alaska. Once, I got mad at "The Kid," who was one of two of my "regular underlings" when I worked on a vessel flagged: The P/B (Processing Barge) Bering Star. A 240', 55' wide top deck, 5 decks tall above water, "Floating Cannery." I ran the Box House. The only reason I got the job was because I was older and more experienced in a fish plant than 90% of the Crew, including my Boss.
Anyway...The Kid got pissed off at me one day. My general habit is to: "Ask Someone That DOES Know," when I don't. I used to bug the Guy who ran the operation previously for advice/help when something was going haywire with our $30k Box Former, a hydraulic, heated glue spewing, "mandrel/re-former" that turned flat cardboard into "fish boxes" to be filled with Pesce Morte, flash frozen, coded for I.D. purposes and later off-loaded onto a Tramp Freighter bound for Japan. They get the eggs, we get the Herring back for crab bait. Herring for sack-roe production and Pacific Cod, for your Fillet-O-Fish sandwiches, (Originally, one of God's "mistakes." Back when he was doing Bio-Design Engineering With Crayons, much like the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. The longest word in the Hawai'ian language, by the way. Boy-O, they like consonants. It's allot easier to say: "Painted Triggerfish"). So. The Kid yells at me: "You're just a Lazy Hippie! Why do you always have to go ask someone else how to do stuff?"
I spun around from what I was doing and roared back, menacingly: "Shut The Fuck Up And Do Your Goddamned Job, Kid! When you GROW UP, you can call the shots!" I am a Solid Muthafucka' of a Leo. I ROAR, not YELL. Simultaneously, I sensed a third person in the area and looked over at the open part of our "house" to find the vessel's Chief Engineer standing there, eyebrows raised. He'd: "Heard the whole thing." The Chief Engineer is the One Guy you don't want to cross on a vessel of any considerable size. Anywhere. For ANY REASON, ANYTIME. The Chief Engineer actually "runs the vessel." "Captain," is an honorary title that designates that you did some book learning, probably worked your way into your "bars" and passed your Final Exams. Most of the time. I have worked with a few Captains that were True Sailors and knew the boat and their job, the target object's every nuance, etc., inside out.
I just nodded/wagged my head, tongue in cheek and said; "Mornin', Chief." and went about what I was trying to fix and/or, "adjust." It was very quiet in The Box House for the rest of the day. Later on, in the Galley, The Kid comes up to me, sheepishly, and says: "I was way out of line. I'm sorry." I looked him in the eyes, over my glasses, and replied: "Yes, you were 'out of line' now, let's forget it, eat something and go back to work. Someday, Sunny Jim, this will all be yours. You're not just working with me.You're being TRAINED to be your very own: Lazy Hippie." The Chief had: "straightened him out." No doubt about it. He, The Chief, was a good guy but, very strict and "by the book." It worked for me. Neither of us was on that vessel to: "make new friends and critique their behavioral patterns and/or disorders."
Well, The Kid was. He liked to: "Talk smack about people behind their backs" and found himself a very attractive Hispanic Gal to bunk with. More than a few times, I had to either poke him in the ribs to make him get up at 04:00 or pour freezing cold water in his ear. Woodsy Owl (The Kid was from a small logging town Southeast of Portland, Or. that I'm intimately familiar with.) didn't want to leave the serenity of La Chica Bonita's embrace. She was pleasant, didn't speak a word of English and just wanted to get pregnant and live with Woodsy The Kid, in Lincoln Log, Oregon after their Tour Of Duty was over. (I've wondered, a couple of times, "how" that turned out.) We had work to do though and Midnight was a'wastin'. It was that really fun, "dark all the time" period in Alaska after we left the Ballard Locks in Seattle on January 6, 1992.
I actually "like" that part of Living In Alaska. Many people go nuts, stay drunk all the time or worse, commit suicide, do something stupid and die or turn into Grouchy Hermits. Not me. Ya' just gotta' have some hobbies (crafts, cooking and storing food and wood, gun maintenance or ammunition reloading, making roughed out furniture, playing guitar or another instrument, monitoring weather statistics and logging it's trends, reading and writing, having a Ham Radio/Ship-To-Shore Setup, etc.. A good fire and a cup of Russian tea or good coffee and a book can be your New Best Friends. Phantom four hand Poker games can even be "fun.") and knowing how to ride a snowmobile and/or "mush" or cross-country ski towing a "trailer." I had all three and more, in spades. Being outdoors in -40 Fahrenheit, doesn't bother me. Ya' just gotta' know how to dress for the party. Having a good, BIG, dog doesn't hurt either. (Or a nice Girlfriend that comes over about every two weeks, for the weekend.) Or, a bear that thinks he or she is a dog. Bears "hibernate" though and are, generally, more of a nuisance than Y'er Pals. Go for The Girlfriend or The Dog.
Dogs have to be coddled a bit. Girls "just want to have fun." A dog is a good excuse to go out to play, get freezing cold and coming back inside to towel off and get warm again. A Girlfriend is a good excuse to drink some Hot Toddy's, stoke up the woodstove and not go out there in the first place. Nothing better than watching your or "any" dog try to find the snowball with your smell on it in a big snowbank. Nothing better than waking up next to a pretty Gal with a hangover, having another Toddy and watching the submarine races all over again, making a puptent in the living room and taking a bath in a horse trough. O.K., so it's a tie. Who's Winning? We're All Winning! Throw a log in the wood stove, pour me a drink, I hear sonar.
Shooting Ptarmigan, Snow Hares, etc. and cooking them, smoking the breasts, are necessary skills to have. Fishing, through the ice on a lake or braving the Winter froth at the beach, surf casting, is also a skillset you want to possess. Trapping animals, skinning and curing/tanning fur/leather is handy too. Anything one can glean from the environment and turn into something useful is not only a "creative time waster," it's needed. Get yourself a copy of: "Alone In the Wilderness" and some Robert Service poetry compilations. If you want to know: "What NOT to do" read John Krakauer's "Into The Wild, " about Chris McCandless, the dumb kid who ate berries he was unfamiliar with, found a schoolbus and starved/froze to death when the river rose. Well, he wasn't really "dumb." Just inexperienced.
My plan was to stay aboard the Bering Star for my 6 month contract and then explore the fuck out of Alaska. I'd "been there before" but, quite frankly, had seen very little of the Interior. Mostly, I'd been on wiggly little boats and on-shore in canneries in The Southeast. (That strip of land that runs down the chin of British Columbia and contains villages like Ketchikan and Petersburg, Sitka and Juneau) I really didn't want to work Salmon Season on the Blow-Me Star parked off of Dillingham, Ak. with very little in the way of "shore leave." I had my Able Bodied Seaman's Z-Card and was a licensed Deck and Dock Crane Operator. I knew there'd be better opportunities down the road. Besides, I REALLY wanted to wake up next to a beautiful woman with a hangover REALLY SOON or, I was going to throw my Boss overboard. He was a prick. One of those sanctimonious "Dry Drunk" sober bastards that found out the BIG SECRET TO THE UNIVERSE and knew where the diners "up/out there" hid the keys overnight.
I'd seen the Green Flash, had my belly shaved and tits painted psychedelic already. Didn't have to get dressed up like a Girl and have pee and/or fish guts dumped on me or anything, Thank God. A rite of passage known as "Becoming A Shellback" for you Land Lubbers. Otherwise known as: "Crossing The Equator, for the first time." Tuna, with a Crazy Crew of Guys From All Over. San Francisco to the bottom of Peru and back. Most of the Guys were Italian and Portuguese. There was a Guy from North Africa and a couple of Europeans. Danish or something. Everybody spoke smatterings of others' languages so, communication wasn't a problem, unless you were being trash-talked-in-quick-step, in a language you weren't all that familiar with. It didn't happen all that often anyway. The goal of every soul aboard the boat was to get off with a nice, BIG, chunk of money. Preferably, alive. And then head for someplace idyllic where you didn't have to Smell Another Guy's Farts for a long time. I chose Montana and Wyoming, Utah and Oregon, Hawai'i, over a span of years of that job and a few others. Warm? Once in awhile. Idyllic? You bet. "Not a fart in a truckload." (Tijuana Horse-Shit Cigarettes Slogan).
The hidden "key" to enjoying Fishing-For-Dollars is: "Being comfortable in your own skin and off-time." Otherwise, it's long periods of tedium punctuated by moments of sheer terror. War. Flannel sheets, a good sleeping bag, a high quality music source and stuff you like to listen to in your rack, good books, A Love Of Sleeping, being an affable conversationalist, having enough socks and underwear, good gloves and boots, Elmer Fudd Hat, sunscreen, good coffee and a way to make it, silk long underwear, good cigarettes if you smoke (my own preference is for either English, Canadian or Turkish fags), a good imagination and a dislike of gambling while onboard. (I shouldered about 140 lbs. of gear onto the Bering Star, for instance.) As regards "gambling:" I used to play Backgammon and Poker-For Match-Sticks with The Guys but, NEVER for money. It creates resentments. There's enough of that already going on, depending upon crew size.
Fish Murdering and Mortician-ing. I almost threw in some "walking," in Denali National Park and shore leave in Central America Stories too. They'll keep. I don't forget much. Yet.
Here's a fine photo of the Blow-Me Star. Icicle Seafoods can sue me all they want. Just leave me my stereo, computer, recorded music and a couple of guitars. Some clothes would be nice, too. The photo of my Ex-Wife and Family Members, stuff like that. The rest of it is all transitory fol-de-rol. Wampeters, Granfalloons et Foma.
(Thanks, Kurt!)
The B-Job-Star, below:
Love, Lust, Saltwater Taffy and Little Chocolate Doughnuts,
(Praise The Lord And Pass The Antibiotics)
-Doc
Doesn't look 240' long, does it? The M/V Impala, in front of it is 120'. Way Bitchin' Camaro of a boat! Huge, Twin Caterpillar V-12 Diesels, Twin Screws, four-person Crew. Great Skipper! I coveted it, many times, in dreams. It was the vessel I "should have been on" rather than the Colossal Garbage Scow it's towing here. The B-Star is the only vessel in the Icicle Fleet that's not under it's own power. It's towed.
Notice the Aleutian Geese flying over and behind the stern. It's your marker for: "Where this is." A bay near The Chain? The Aleutian Peninsula, somewhere? Maybe around Dillingham, too. Lots of good possibilities... I get the very same Aleutian geese flying over my place here. Their Winter/Summer Range is pretty amazingly long. 3-4,000 miles or so.
Full bellies for everyone! Don't do anything stupid. Go ask the guy that had the job before you signed on...
Moving on now to making myself a nice, simple, dinner. Switched over to listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto:
So much for: "Not writing any epic posts." This thing just kinda' got away from me and I kept Editing In.
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