Lightning at Yaqui Point

It took awhile to make up my mind, but when I did I didn't want the love of my life to feel cheated.

What to do?  There were complications.   Just go down to the courthouse and see the justice of the peace?

The Grand Canyon's only a few hours away.  I called them to see if we could get married there.

Sorry, sir, we don't do weddings ... but the justice of the peace from Williams does and he comes up here a few times a week.  Why don't you call him.

Hi, this is Jim.  My gal and I'd like to get married at the Grand Canyon can you help?

Sure.   You're in luck.   I'm scheduled for a wedding at Yaqui Point overlooking the Canyon on Friday.   I'll do you when I'm finished with the first couple.

My gal calls her friend and she and her husband volunteer to go and be witnesses.   Friday rolls around and sure enough there's a justice of the peace hanging around Yaqui Point waiting for us to show up.

Pictures.   We're posing with the JP and our friends keep saying back up, back up, so they can get everyone into the camera's field of view.



STOP!!!!!!!!!!!    The JP's wife screams.   He's gotten a little too close to the edge of the canyon. It is ... a long ... long way ... down to the bottom ... from the edge of Yaqui Point.

Things go well enough from there.   Then the clouds start rolling in predictable in the Arizona high country when the sun gets tired of heating things up and the storm clouds take over.

Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife.

CRACK flashed the lighting.  BOOM went the thunder. 



Yes.

Afterwards we sat on the porch of the El Tovar hotel overlooking the canyon and drank champagne.  El Tovar, the crown jewel of National Park lodges, built by Fred Harvey, a cross between a Swiss chalet and a Norwegian Villa, out of Arizona limestone and Oregon pine.

Shoes of the Fisherman

My buddy's dad, Red, was a disciple of all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.   He could also swear like a fisherman ... which he was.

Well fuck me silly, you god damn, two-bit whore, %@#*% piece of shit.

Then he'd kick the winch and it would start working again.  You wondered if the winch just needed a kick or if the profanity just scared the crap out of the thing.

In addition to having a way with words,  Red was an entrepreneur.   He ran a fishing boat during the season and a had triplex with three apartments and a laundromat on the bottom floor.   The laundromat made pretty good money in the summer when the tourists arrived.   Red lined the wall with limericks.   In the back, Red's landromat had public showers.

50 cents per shower.
$2 for two at a time ... double the price for double the fun.

We were a day out on our run to Prince William Sound and came up on Seal Rocks outside of Resurrection Bay and the Town of Seward.   Couple miles offshore.   Red pulls up near a charter boat fishing at the rocks.   We're watching from my buddy's boat and wondering what the hell is going on.  Red pulls out a rod and reel and throws a line into the water.   Pretty soon Red is pulling fish out of the ocean one after another.   Amazing.   No one on the charter's having any luck. 

I look at my buddy:  you're dad's amazing.

Not really.   He's gone high tech and bought a sonar gadget for his boat.   He can see exactly where the fish are.

Pretty soon Red got bored with amazing the people on the charter boat and we went back to heading for Prince William Sound to catch some salmon.

Do the Fish Shoot Back?

Long before there ever was a Forrest Gump my Navy buddy said ...

When I go home to Alaska, I'm getting myself a boat and going fishing for salmon.  Call me if you need work.

It was a good bet.  His dad and mom had practically been original homesteaders when they went up there after WW2.   They fished for salmon the old fashion way pulling in the nets by hand without the help of a hydraulic power block run off the boat's diesel engine.   Hell, back in the day they were probably rowing the boats. 

My buddy and his brothers grew up working for his dad on the fishing boats.   They lived off what the land and sea provided.   The oldest brothers slept in a lean-to next to the house. 

In the winter ... in Alaska????????????

We had sleeping bags and blankets.   It doesn't get that cold down by the water.

That translates to

Most of the time in the winter it stays in the teens and twenties at night ... and for a few nights when the cold blows in from the north ... only five or ten below.

If they were lucky,  they'd shoot a moose.   They probably didn't think of it back then, but moose meat pepperoni works pretty good on pizza ... with an couple of a Olympias.

My buddy said:  I hate oysters.   My mom would harvest oysters from the Homer Spit at low tide and can them for the winter.   One winter pretty much all we ate was canned oysters.

Now they advertise:

These oysters grow in clean, cold glacier pure waters and taste like the waters they grow in.  The finest oysters in the world.

I doubt my buddy's mind's been changed by the sales talk.   I'll have to ask him some time.   I wonder if he's on Facebook.

One of the manly fishermen who'd been around for awhile asked me:

This is work is pretty hard?   Do you think you'll be able to keep up. 

(Let me retort)

Do the fish shoot back?

He was puzzled.   Perhaps I should have added the part about recently being in firefights with the North Vietnamese for weeks on end with little or no sleep.   I never even got around to telling my buddy about that.   Instead I went back to the truck and got some more eggs to put in the boat.

Beer Pancakes

So why do you make beer pancakes when you're the cook/deckhand on the MV Mugwump.

Numero uno:  because it's fun.   Numero dos:  milk doesn't keep that long.

We're loading supplies for our trip to Prince William Sound.   I got the part about we don't take milk.  It doesn't keep ... even if the MV Mugwump had a refrigerator.  We loaded lots of beer and some whiskey for emergencies.   If the fishing was bad, we'd at least be happy.   The fishing was good and there wasn't any time to sit around and drink so most of the beer went into the pancakes.   I think Olmypia was Alaska's favorite beer back then.   Now it's probably an IPA.   It's bewildering to think of fishermen drinking an India Pale Ale in Prince William Sound these days ... but what's a guy gonna do ... they closed the Tumwater, Washington, brewry ... now Olympia "It's the Water" is brewed in Southern California where the water is no longer supplied by "artesians."

Then we got to loading the eggs.   No milk, but we're loading lots of eggs.   Calhoun (my buddy who owns the boat), how come we're loading eggs?.   They'll go bad like milk ... no refrigerator.   Nah, Mac, the eggs will be fine.  It's Alaska (stupid).