by Peter S. Oleson
We were back on the road again and had no particular place we
had to go or be. We had our canoe on top of the camper and had brought
almost everything we owned. I had left my vinyl collection with a friend
back in Ketchikan, to be mailed up later, when and if we found what we were
looking for. I had a list of all the VW dealers in the state and Soldotna
seemed to be the destination of choice, being in an area of the state that
had a climate, hopefully, that was not too forbidding or as wet as Southeast
or Kodiak.
We took our time, stopping in Juneau for a while, continuing by boat to
Haines. Then it was back onto the gravel and across the border into Canada.
We stopped wherever it looked like there might be a good place to fish.
There were a lot of places that looked that way. We hopped from town to
town and campground to campground, eventually ending up in Dawson, Yukon
Territory. We had all been there before. The town isn't very big and there
is still a lot of gold mining going on there. The town itself, though,
caters to tourists. They have become quite adept at separating fools from
their money, and they got a little of ours. They may have gotten more that
a little of Andy's, he never would 'fess up how much he lost playing blackjack
at the casino.
We moseyed on into Alaska and made our way up to Fairbanks for a few days.
It was a pretty lethargic trip and I can't help but notice that it reads
that way. We avoided public campgrounds for the most part, preferring secluded
trails and pull-offs at small lakes and streams. Andy had this weird habit
of parking his truck right alongside ours, I mean within a couple of feet.
Nobody for miles around, all the room in the world and Andy three feet
away. Toward the end, I'd try to park between trees, but even that didn't
work. He'd back his camper in behind me so we were door to door. Eventually,
I had to resort to public campgrounds to get some semblance of privacy.
On the way from Fairbanks to Anchorage, we made the mandatory stop at Mt.
McKinley and spent a day on the school bus looking for wildlife, like all
the rest of the tourists. By the time we got to Anchorage and looked up
Steve C., I was pretty much fed up with camping. After spending the Fourth
of July there with Steve and Sherry, we headed for Soldotna to check out
the employment situation. Andy ran into one of our old friends from Ketchikan
and the two of them split off to go their own way. I believe they ended
up in Kodiak for a while, but both of them ended up eventually returning
to their respective "homes".
I applied for work at the VW dealership, but it didn't sound too promising.
We ended up working in a salmon cannery. Diane in the egg room and me
in the "slime line". In the egg room they salted down and boxed
salmon roe for shipment to Japan. In the slime line, we had to catch all
the fish that the automatic cleaning machine screwed up. Sometimes that
was a lot of fish. They were supposed to come out with their heads, fins
and intestines removed, but at times they would go through sideways or backwards
and the resulting mess was our problem on the slime line. Sometimes the
machine had a conniption and we couldn't keep up. I still have this vision
of some housewife opening a can of salmon to find a salmon face staring
up at her.
All the other people working on the slime line were from the Philippines
and jabbered all day back and forth. Most of the time they were probably
laughing at me, they had done that work for years, and I was all thumbs.
The place would shut down at noon and we all got fed for free. Huge amounts
of food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I didn't know anyone there but
Diane, so I figured that the two of us would go sit with the guys I was
working with and shoot the shit. I figured wrong. They didn't want any
white people at their table and went out of their way to make sure I didn't
misunderstand them. So we went over and ate with the white people. Kind
of an awkward situation, the white people wondered why we wanted to sit
with the Filipinos.
On days that no fish came in, we got to sort cans in the cooling shed.
Thousands and thousands of cans of fish that had to be individually inspected
to make sure they sealed properly, then packed in cardboard boxes to go
to the distributors to be labeled. If they didn't seal, we could take them
home to eat. I didn't really want to eat any. I'd seen some pretty crappy
looking pieces of fish go past me in the slime line, and even if I hadn't,
after looking at fish all day, I sure wasn't wild about eating any. That
job lasted maybe a month. The only thing I would miss about it was the
food, they sure fed their people good.
After that, we took up temporary residence in the city campground in Kenai.
A nice little campground right in town. They don't allow itinerants there
anymore, I suppose that real tourists are better for the local economy.
I checked back at the VW dealer and got hired. There was a little problem
the first day I showed up for work, though. I had dropped off my resume
and checked back with my hair stuck up under my hat. Bill was a little
surprised when I showed up for work with a ponytail. He got over it. Bill
was from Switzerland, as was his wife Charlotte. There were two other mechanics
working there: Jeff (who I would introduce to my mother years later as:
The biggest pervert I ever met), and Glen (later to become my brother-in-law).
There was Bill's son Peter, and the after school helper Norm. Kind of
a mom and pop dealership. Bill and his family lived behind the shop on
the Kenai River, Glen lived with his family in a rental house right in the
parking lot.
Diane got a job at the airport in Kenai, so as soon as the weather started
cooling down, we had to find a place to live. We spent that first winter
on the Kenai Peninsula in an eight-plex one block from the bluff in Kenai.
It was pretty small, but it was warm and there were no rats. I bought
a little black and white 12v/120v television set and we watched television
for the first time in three years. We also bought a little car so we could
both drive to work. We began to find a new groove.
The Kenai-Soldotna area is very much different than Southeast Alaska.
There is no where near as much rain, and that is reflected by the differences
in the vegetation. No towering Sitka spruce and no cedars of any variety.
Most of the trees are spruce or alder, although there are a few others.
The Kenai Peninsula also has the highest per-capita population of Vietnam
Era veterans in the country. With the Kenai Mountain range taking up the
eastern half of the Peninsula, Cook Inlet bounding it on the west and most
of the rest of the land under the control of one government entity or another,
people here are really not far from whatever recreational environment they
could desire.
Things proceeded pretty well until January, when the typical winter commerce
slowdown forced the newest employee, me, into unemployment. I hung around
the apartment for a couple weeks but it drove me batty, so cold and dark
most of the time. I think I collected two unemployment checks, the only
two I have ever gotten. Diane switched jobs about that time, also. She
started working at a small Mom and Pop laundry just north of Kenai, for
a delightful old couple. I started looking for work again. In a couple
weeks, I found another job at a small repair shop almost across the street
from where Diane was working. Very convenient.
Winter slowly worked its way into spring and I was at work on that day
in April when I got one of those phone calls that you wish you could go
through life without. It was my sister in Wisconsin. Eric had been in
a motorcycle accident and he was dead, please come home, we need you.
I told my boss that I had to leave, and I didn't know when I'd be back.
I phoned Diane and told her and went out and sat in my car and wondered
what I should do, what I could have done differently, but I was in shock
and nothing at all made the least bit of sense. It was only a few minutes
until Diane hopped into the car and we could hug and let the tears come,
just the first of many.
There really wasn't any choice, I had to go back. We went to the apartment
and told the manager what had happened. She was sympathetic; just go, we'll
work it out when you get back. Grabbed a few clothes and the checkbook
and headed for the airport. Plane to plane to plane, no sleep, just dread
and despair for hour after hour through the night. The turbulence didn't
even bother me, what could have happened?
We got back just in time to head for the funeral home to pick out a casket.
Listened to the facts, what there were of them. He was riding with some
friends, in the lead, and he never took the lead before that day. A car
turned in front of him without signaling and left him with no options.
He laid the bike on it's side but hit a patch of gravel that threw him chest
first into the car. He laid on the ground and drowned in his own blood.
The paramedics got there in time to catch him before his heart stopped,
but his brain was inactive. At the hospital, Dad, between a rock and a
hard place, told them to pull the plug, and it was over. Just like that.
Funeral details and stories of individual grief are pretty much universal,
I see no reason to go into them here. Suffice it to say that it was indeed
a dark day in the Oleson family, and we all bear the emotional scars. I
worried myself sick about where he had gone, he wasn't in his body anymore,
he had to be somewhere. Diane and I flew back to Alaska and we haven't
been back since.
A month or so later, I had a dream. I was driving a car and I looked
in the rear view mirror, and Eric's eyes looked back at me. He said "
It's OK, let it go, I'm fine." Goodbye, my brother, my friend.
Peter S. Oleson
From [poleson@ptialaska.net]
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