Yesterday was a sunny day here in the Rogue Valley, but the rain storm over Thanksgiving weekend had left a thick coat of white on the tops of the mountains. Roads go up into the snow in many places around here. One of the most prominent is the road up Mt. Ashland, where there is a regular ski lift and lodge. A likely place to test out the equipment for my son and grandson. Morgan wanted to go too, so he took everyone in his handicap van. Nobody could think of a smaller facility, or a free one.
The point is that I got thinking about how reliant we were as kids in Petersburg in finding some place to slide down. Petersburg kids would start on one of the hills right in town with their Radio Flyer sleds. The Lutheran Church hill fit the bill for us real well. You could get all the way down to the theater on a good day, and maybe even have to bail out before crossing main street. Not that there was much traffic on it, but you just never knew.
After all, someone had sledded down a hill out by Skylark City and went right under a truck and out the other side crossing the highway. Maybe that was an urban myth for all I know, just to keep kids off main street.
I graduated to cross country/downhill skis of the wooden bear-trap binding variety. Then we'd head across the muskeg up to the old ski hill. It had a rope tow in days past. The rope tow had a Ford Model A engine and it was still there, albeit, in 'good for an anchor' condition. I can't imagine that lasting very long sitting out in the open as it was. The log warm-up cabin was still there though. One of my favorite pictures of my father is of him on skis in front of the warm-up cabin, striking a swashbuckling pose with his aviator sunglasses. Must have been after the war.
I'll never forget one day at the old ski hill, which for us on the north side of town, started behind Mrs. Israelson's house on the hill to Beede's pond. (Now the road to the airport.) It was about a mile and a half, down to Buschman's dam, then out of the woods and across a long upward sloping muskeg to the base of the mountain behind Petersburg. I think the airport rock quarry road is just to the north of the old ski hill location.
There was one person in town who knew how to downhill ski at least, and he cut quite a figure coming down the hill, for all of six seconds. If you wanted to ski down the hill you had to sidestep all the way up, and that limited how high you wanted to go. For most of us, turning wasn't in our vocabulary. It was hike to the top, then schuss straight down and try to stop close to the cabin any way you could. My brother, Arnold, caught a hole left by a snow bunny's ski boots near the bottom, and twisted his knee pretty good. I think he had to be skidded out on a stretcher.
Which is how I got to be skiing home alone that day. There was some heightened concern for Arnold as it was becoming apparent he was a talented runner. And he did get to college under some understanding to be on the school's track team. I can vouch for how fast he is. One time behind Petersburg Mountain we saw a black bear sliding down a snow slide right at us. When I turned to look for Arnold he was a hundred yards away. Never saw him run, he just appeared a long distance away like some sort of cartoon animation.
Well, I ended up skiing back to town myself that day, having been abandoned by parents with shifting priorities. It was fine going, but it had been a tiring day, the skis were thick wood, and I must have only been about nine years old. I came to the fork in the trail that let to the Israelson's house, but for some reason I took the other one as the easier looking one I think. Turns out it led to a different part of town. Which was confirmed when I met Norman Fredrickson on the trail and I knew he didn't live in our half of town. So, back up the trail to the fork I went. That was the hard part. I probably didn't add on more than a couple hundred yards to the trip, but I didn't need that at all.
When you got off the trail at the road, then you carried your skis through town to home. I remember waking up on the couch minus my wet pants, and only half conscious, walking past my dad and Ed Fuglvog sitting in the living room talking. Kind of like adding insult to injury. Thinking on it now, my dad and Ed were probably having a hot toddy after being out in snow themselves all day.
That was snow sports in Petersburg prior to the sixties. That muskeg to the ski hill was the same one that large numbers of Canada geese sat in to eat cranberries on their way south. They would fly back and forth every day from across the bay, to their cranberry patch. Their numbers were falling during the time I remember seeing them. Then after the '64 earthquake, when their nesting grounds on the Copper River delta raised up so the bears and wolves could get the eggs. I don't remember seeing any geese flying back there after that, especially after they built a runway right through that muskeg.
Too, I remember flocks of sandhill cranes coming over in the spring, stretching from horizon to horizon. And they were big flocks. It took you back to some primordial time just watching them. You guessed it, you'd be hard pressed to find a little flock of fifty flying north now.
The last time I saw any geese around town was hunting ducks over by Coho Creek in the evening some decades ago and four geese came in for the night. Those four were perfectly safe flying in my direction in those days. We pretty much specialized in sneaks through the woods to assassinate mallards snoozing at high tide.
But back to winter sports, which is getting to be the main thing to do down south here. Considering there aren't two ducks to rub together to make a fire that I see. We saw three guys floating down the Rogue River a couple weeks ago with shotguns pointing all over the place. We wondered how effective their head to toe camo clothes were considering they were drifting in a purple boat. I heard that steelheaders will do that too. They'll drift down the river fishing, but if they see some ducks, will take a pot shot at them. That probably worked a lot better back when we'd see rafts of thousands of ducks at the mouth of the Stikine River near Petersburg.
In fact, we were going to check out a steelhead riffle on the Rogue the day the kids went to check out Mt. Ashland. Besides not being too keen on getting up in the dark the day after our belated Thanksgiving dinner, I guessed the river was still too high from a hard rain the day before. That was all it took to sleep in. The house was still real warm from burning the last of the firewood. I'd been waiting for Jesse to get back from seeing his Army buddies at Ft. Lewis.
So, fishing and hunting are out for the season, and snowboarding is in. Jesse's snowboard gear, that he bought with his first seine settlement in Petersburg a dozen years ago, is still in working order. The bear sausage and 4 H pork are in the freezer, and now to get some firewood. I've been cutting up all the oak trees that fall on the Elks picnic grounds near Eagle Point. Last year I got a couple of chords making a notch in a big old dead-fall to try get a car through. The notch still isn't wide enough. Maybe this year.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
A Petersburg Co-op?
The 'One Minute Manager' is in a 'safe place' so I can't get a chapter heading out of it for a title for this post. I'll rename the post if the book ever becomes 'not so safe' and shows up around the house. I do have a major correction having to do with the name of this whole blog. My mother informed me that the Pastime Cafe has indeed always been in the very same place as the later Homestead Cafe, and now the Trident mess hall. And that the cafe I was referring to across from the Mitkof Hotel was called the 'Recreation.' Jeez, these young whippersnappers don't know a thing.
My sincerest apologies to the past patrons of Petersburg's iconic cafe and unofficial city council chambers. And business incubator, and mental health center, and perpetual political caucus. You just couldn't get a majority of the councilors together at one table, or one would have to leave, although that wasn't the way it always was. Just the way it was at the end before Trident Seafoods bought it. Nowadays I see more clusters of people standing around talking on the floats or docks, gathered in a pilot house, or in the Harbormaster's shack.
Which leads me to mention that my mother is advancing my sister's idea of gathering community support for another regular cafe, since there isn't one now in downtown Petersburg. The spark for it didn't come from this blog, but from the need of a local woman who lost a son to join the land of the living again and go to work. A win-win situation. Could the Economic Development Fund be used? Well, of course not. And certainly not to help a respected citizen get back on her feet. That just doesn't compute. I raised two kids in wheelchairs and believe me, there is always a hitch in getting help.
The existing EDF monies can only be used by a not-for-profit organization. Meaning it won't be successful and the EDF will have to be hit up again to bail projects out. They might not have ever seen a crusader as determined as my mother though. After all, she raised us three hellions and two gentle-ladies. And she has been on half the committees in town and got out the book 'Petersburg Profiles.' The P.P. is used all the time in Petersburg to see who is related to who, by those who don't readily accept that everyone is related to everyone else, and is simply referred to as 'The Book.'
When the restaurant in Petersburg burned down early in the 20th century, my great-grandfather Rasmus, decided to build another so the town wouldn't die out without one. Hence the 'Enge Building' on Sing Lee Alley. It was a great story, as little white lies usually are, but my mother had a different story and probably the correct one. Rasmus wanted a place to provide female company to his wife Anna, the first white woman to settle in Petersburg. After all, when they came to Petersburg from a 'worst winter ever' in a log cabin to prove up Bushmann's claim in Sitkoh Bay, Anna cried on seeing only "one watchman and two Indians on the beach." The cafe in the bottom floor was a win-win for Anna and Petersburg. In the distant past, you didn't hear as much "screwing up the simplest things" going on.
I've maintained for some time that you run the risk of ruin by changing the model of the successful fishing port by moving the key infrastructure out of the downtown district. Then if you want to apply the coup de gras, close up the restaurants. Petersburg has done just that. The population has already dropped by one sixth.
What else is going on? The older wood boats in the harbor, like the 'Betty,' the 'Baranof,' the 'Silver Crest,' the 'Jerry O,' and the 'Duwam,' are looking mighty good. Although there was a troll opening under way and a lot of nice wood trollers were fishing so I didn't get pictures of them. There was always a Petersburg culture of taking good care of the boats, and a good shipyard to help. As well as a culture of getting bigger and bigger boats. I think those are two different cultures though.
The old 'Vesta' that was 'retired' in Thomas Bay in the '70s I noticed is deteriorated down to an engine block and a few ribs. It was the Lee family boat, and before it got too bad Scott Hersey cut out the name on the stern and mounted it and gave it to Harold Lee. Harold's mother was one of the women hired to help my great-grandmother run the restaurant in the bottom of the Enge Building long ago. One of the Lee girls was telling me they are now the proud owners of a sister peapod to my row-boat. That makes five of them in Petersburg now, plenty enough for a row boat race next Norwegian Independence Day celebration there. I told her I'd see her at the races. Although I'm a little loath to go up against her longliner husband. I might have to bring in a ringer, heh, heh.
Getting Glorianne as Harbormaster was a real score. I think the consensus among fishermen is that her name be put in for Alaska Harbormaster of the Year. It's only a matter of concern to harbor users. When the Governor's brother applied for the job, the City Manager was politely advised by the retiring dock boss to "either hire Glo or pack your bags." That's the way to cut through the politics and get something done right. That right there made my day.
Lots of money in Petersburg these days with the sale of Icicle Seafoods, and many of the shareholders being Petersburg ones. All except me maybe. My stock disappeared somehow not long after I set up and ran a buying station for them one time. It would be a good time to form a co-op with all that philanthropic goodness in the air, from fishermen who invested in a plant to help a town. They started the Medford Co-op down here to sell food, why not a Petersburg Co-op to sell food?
My sincerest apologies to the past patrons of Petersburg's iconic cafe and unofficial city council chambers. And business incubator, and mental health center, and perpetual political caucus. You just couldn't get a majority of the councilors together at one table, or one would have to leave, although that wasn't the way it always was. Just the way it was at the end before Trident Seafoods bought it. Nowadays I see more clusters of people standing around talking on the floats or docks, gathered in a pilot house, or in the Harbormaster's shack.
Which leads me to mention that my mother is advancing my sister's idea of gathering community support for another regular cafe, since there isn't one now in downtown Petersburg. The spark for it didn't come from this blog, but from the need of a local woman who lost a son to join the land of the living again and go to work. A win-win situation. Could the Economic Development Fund be used? Well, of course not. And certainly not to help a respected citizen get back on her feet. That just doesn't compute. I raised two kids in wheelchairs and believe me, there is always a hitch in getting help.
The existing EDF monies can only be used by a not-for-profit organization. Meaning it won't be successful and the EDF will have to be hit up again to bail projects out. They might not have ever seen a crusader as determined as my mother though. After all, she raised us three hellions and two gentle-ladies. And she has been on half the committees in town and got out the book 'Petersburg Profiles.' The P.P. is used all the time in Petersburg to see who is related to who, by those who don't readily accept that everyone is related to everyone else, and is simply referred to as 'The Book.'
When the restaurant in Petersburg burned down early in the 20th century, my great-grandfather Rasmus, decided to build another so the town wouldn't die out without one. Hence the 'Enge Building' on Sing Lee Alley. It was a great story, as little white lies usually are, but my mother had a different story and probably the correct one. Rasmus wanted a place to provide female company to his wife Anna, the first white woman to settle in Petersburg. After all, when they came to Petersburg from a 'worst winter ever' in a log cabin to prove up Bushmann's claim in Sitkoh Bay, Anna cried on seeing only "one watchman and two Indians on the beach." The cafe in the bottom floor was a win-win for Anna and Petersburg. In the distant past, you didn't hear as much "screwing up the simplest things" going on.
I've maintained for some time that you run the risk of ruin by changing the model of the successful fishing port by moving the key infrastructure out of the downtown district. Then if you want to apply the coup de gras, close up the restaurants. Petersburg has done just that. The population has already dropped by one sixth.
What else is going on? The older wood boats in the harbor, like the 'Betty,' the 'Baranof,' the 'Silver Crest,' the 'Jerry O,' and the 'Duwam,' are looking mighty good. Although there was a troll opening under way and a lot of nice wood trollers were fishing so I didn't get pictures of them. There was always a Petersburg culture of taking good care of the boats, and a good shipyard to help. As well as a culture of getting bigger and bigger boats. I think those are two different cultures though.
The old 'Vesta' that was 'retired' in Thomas Bay in the '70s I noticed is deteriorated down to an engine block and a few ribs. It was the Lee family boat, and before it got too bad Scott Hersey cut out the name on the stern and mounted it and gave it to Harold Lee. Harold's mother was one of the women hired to help my great-grandmother run the restaurant in the bottom of the Enge Building long ago. One of the Lee girls was telling me they are now the proud owners of a sister peapod to my row-boat. That makes five of them in Petersburg now, plenty enough for a row boat race next Norwegian Independence Day celebration there. I told her I'd see her at the races. Although I'm a little loath to go up against her longliner husband. I might have to bring in a ringer, heh, heh.
Getting Glorianne as Harbormaster was a real score. I think the consensus among fishermen is that her name be put in for Alaska Harbormaster of the Year. It's only a matter of concern to harbor users. When the Governor's brother applied for the job, the City Manager was politely advised by the retiring dock boss to "either hire Glo or pack your bags." That's the way to cut through the politics and get something done right. That right there made my day.
Lots of money in Petersburg these days with the sale of Icicle Seafoods, and many of the shareholders being Petersburg ones. All except me maybe. My stock disappeared somehow not long after I set up and ran a buying station for them one time. It would be a good time to form a co-op with all that philanthropic goodness in the air, from fishermen who invested in a plant to help a town. They started the Medford Co-op down here to sell food, why not a Petersburg Co-op to sell food?
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Sourdoughs
"The final solution is supposed to be the relief wells BP is drilling, and on the day I realized even these might not arrest the blowout, I decided to stop thinking about it all." This is how I feel about all the bad news of continuing foreclosures, unemployment, corporate personhood, consolidation, genetically altered food, fish farming's effect on natural runs of salmon, ex-Treasury Secretary Rubin, and on and on.
There is plenty of good commentary on these things, yet somehow nothing ever gets done to remedy them. We are back to the pre-Great Depression days of the wealth being consolidated in only a couple percent of the population. But the momentum is in their favor. I can hear all the "Oooops" coming from Washington D.C. Not all by accident either. And talking about all that isn't my intent here. I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee in peace.
In fact I've been planning all summer to visit Petersburg for 9 days starting on Aug. 24. I'm hoping to get out in a skiff and show Terry a whale, camp out in a Forest Service cabin and in general forget about strategic planning for awhile.
On the brighter side, I found that I was allergic to wheat and caffeine. I'm serious. Since cutting those out, I can hike up Crater Lake Mountain like walking down the block. Wow! What a difference. My sinuses cleared up as well. There's a guy I know who does muscle testing and can simply (and inexpensively) find out what you're allergic to. Jesse had been a skeptic of this for a long time, but he's eating fresh spelt bread with me and has become a believer. I can even do quadratic equations in my head now. Just kidding.
The big question is, where should I go around Petersburg to catch a coho or something. The choices are many. I just don't know how the runs are faring in all the creeks. They have been trending downward ever since I was a kid, when my rubber shoe pacs almost came up to my knees. (That was before xtra-Tuffs by the way) I would like to try Castle River if for nothing but the solitude and memories of camping there in the sixties.
I suppose I'd better bring warm clothes. It got down to 80 yesterday and it felt like a cold snap. Back to high ninetys and low 100s for the next week I hear. I'm going to only use a fly rod, unless I see some cohos jumping out in salt water, then it's Flash-N-Glo time, baby.
The best news is that just today, that old salt, John Finley of Kodiak, gave me his sourdough pancake recipe. For his bread flour, he uses equal measures of millet, flax(less of this), oats, barley, and buckwheat. For pancakes he just uses millet, oats, and buckwheat, or spelt I suggested. He says that making sourdoughs is like sprouting the grain berries first. I've heard before that sprouting is a good thing. I told him I'd trade some of my planned crabapple wine for some of his planned gooseberry wine.
Hopefully the deer can be kept away from my mother's gooseberries. I'm not sure if that is possible though. Well, we'll get some red huckleberries for her to make us a pie or two I'm sure. I'd better check around the old house there to see if I can repair anything too. Sure have been no lack of projects. I just calculated that the family house is eighty years old now. It was built the year of the stock market crash, in 1929. My grandmother went to work for the steam laundry in Petersburg to try save the house from the bank, but it was the laundry owner who came to the rescue, out of her generosity.
I'm sure all this has been written about before. Before WWII, the newspaper editor interviewed the family for a long series on their lives in Petersburg from the start of the town. So, if all goes well, I'll be packing my new LED headlamp for the trip north soon.
There is plenty of good commentary on these things, yet somehow nothing ever gets done to remedy them. We are back to the pre-Great Depression days of the wealth being consolidated in only a couple percent of the population. But the momentum is in their favor. I can hear all the "Oooops" coming from Washington D.C. Not all by accident either. And talking about all that isn't my intent here. I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee in peace.
In fact I've been planning all summer to visit Petersburg for 9 days starting on Aug. 24. I'm hoping to get out in a skiff and show Terry a whale, camp out in a Forest Service cabin and in general forget about strategic planning for awhile.
On the brighter side, I found that I was allergic to wheat and caffeine. I'm serious. Since cutting those out, I can hike up Crater Lake Mountain like walking down the block. Wow! What a difference. My sinuses cleared up as well. There's a guy I know who does muscle testing and can simply (and inexpensively) find out what you're allergic to. Jesse had been a skeptic of this for a long time, but he's eating fresh spelt bread with me and has become a believer. I can even do quadratic equations in my head now. Just kidding.
The big question is, where should I go around Petersburg to catch a coho or something. The choices are many. I just don't know how the runs are faring in all the creeks. They have been trending downward ever since I was a kid, when my rubber shoe pacs almost came up to my knees. (That was before xtra-Tuffs by the way) I would like to try Castle River if for nothing but the solitude and memories of camping there in the sixties.
I suppose I'd better bring warm clothes. It got down to 80 yesterday and it felt like a cold snap. Back to high ninetys and low 100s for the next week I hear. I'm going to only use a fly rod, unless I see some cohos jumping out in salt water, then it's Flash-N-Glo time, baby.
The best news is that just today, that old salt, John Finley of Kodiak, gave me his sourdough pancake recipe. For his bread flour, he uses equal measures of millet, flax(less of this), oats, barley, and buckwheat. For pancakes he just uses millet, oats, and buckwheat, or spelt I suggested. He says that making sourdoughs is like sprouting the grain berries first. I've heard before that sprouting is a good thing. I told him I'd trade some of my planned crabapple wine for some of his planned gooseberry wine.
Hopefully the deer can be kept away from my mother's gooseberries. I'm not sure if that is possible though. Well, we'll get some red huckleberries for her to make us a pie or two I'm sure. I'd better check around the old house there to see if I can repair anything too. Sure have been no lack of projects. I just calculated that the family house is eighty years old now. It was built the year of the stock market crash, in 1929. My grandmother went to work for the steam laundry in Petersburg to try save the house from the bank, but it was the laundry owner who came to the rescue, out of her generosity.
I'm sure all this has been written about before. Before WWII, the newspaper editor interviewed the family for a long series on their lives in Petersburg from the start of the town. So, if all goes well, I'll be packing my new LED headlamp for the trip north soon.
Monday, July 12, 2010
"Prepare for the Future"
This is a fitting title as we watch and read the news of the Gulf oil disaster. The toxic effects on such a large area of ocean and coast, and on the people living there is fairly paralyzing. Like the Gulf residents are deer in the headlights. It affects us far removed folk the same way. BP injured everyone on this rock by virtue of our commonality.
We constantly hear that BP is covering up the damage, with the Coast Guard's help. Sounds like Coast Guard ops in Alaska. They'll cite a boat owner for not having a survival suit for a tot, but won't cite trawlers destroying the ecosystem and livelihoods of thousands of Alaskans. And they call picking on small boats for minor infractions "Sustainable Fisheries Patrol?"
We wonder more all the time what kind of a future are we facing. I missed the big multi-year class reunion in Petersburg this Fourth of July, but saw some reports on the goings-on. Sounds like a good time was had by all, in spite of the rain. A poem by one of the attendees was distributed. Good work, Mike. It reflects how ill prepared we are to deal with these disasters, and maybe especially we who grew up so sheltered on a small island in Alaska.
Sure, we roll with the punches. What else can you do? War has had a profound effect on the ones who served in the military, especially in-theater. But it affects all of the rest of us as well, ie., family members, news viewers. My son, Jesse, served in Iraq for two tours of duty and is now out and trying to make plans. He and I went to Alaska last winter to prepare the old State ferry 'Chilkat' for sea last.
Low level bureaucrats can and do scuttle anything new, unless there is enough perceived power on your side to make them think twice about their own job security. Well, that brings up the subject to those new to my blogs, that the PSPA (The shore-based processors, when I was there.) used to go around the agencies in Juneau and threaten jobs right and left.
It's not by the rule-book anymore. Hasn't been for a long time. Education? I remember the Whitney-Fidalgo Seafoods VP for Southeast Alaska telling me that he didn't think the President of the company even knew he had a college degree. Would your college tell you that you should expect to change your entire career five times in your life? And that secure pensions in industry are a thing of the past?
Resource extraction industries are just that. They extract all the resources, whether fish or oil or minerals, then lay everyone off and everybody goes home. Leaving the world a poorer place, of course. So, should we plan for a barren planet?
I think there might be a future in underground construction. They say the water is so toxic in the Gulf of Mexico that it is eating up boats. There might be trading to be accomplished with alternative energy powered vessels, if they stay afloat. And the technology is there. Rest assured the oil producers won't have any qualms about charging ten dollars a gallon for gasoline if they thought they could get away with it.
Where this is going is, looks like planning for change is the way to go. Like they are saying, "Change is occurring at a faster and faster rate all the time." Be resilient. Be adaptable. Be mobile. Funny I should say that, because there is an old saying that in the last days people will be moving around alot. Well, it might be necessary, so get a good fuel efficient way to travel around.
The sage advice of our grade school principal, and you know who I mean, is even more valid; "You need a good woman and fourty acres." Jesse and I climbed to the very rocky pinnacle of Mt. Ashland the other day, and what strikes you is that there is a lot of good quality vacant land out there. Of course anyone who has flown across Alaska is struck by this fact as well. Not that a lot of it is very high quality land though.
Well, don't take any wooden nickels, but certainly don't be the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pot of water. It will boil eventually. I would say any bank money you take is a wooden nickel. The games are much more subtle than the difference between wood and metal. Any more it's like a loan is a pipeline to suck the life out of you.
And speaking of pipelines, I wouldn't vote for someone promising anything regarding a pipeline. I've been working for reason in the fishing industry for decades and it just gets more crooked all the time.
The physical Pastime Cafe was located about across the street from the old Mitkof Hotel. It was the third seat in from the door that my father jumped off and ran to enlist in the Navy when the news of Pearl Harbor came. Seems like he sat in the same seat when I ate breakfast with him before going deer hunting as a kid.
I think Dad was pretty traditional. Same as the rest of us I suppose. He fought for profitability in the fishing industry and so did I. He fought for the same fishing business models, and I for the family fisherman. But, unknown forces change everything for us whether we like it or not. Some say it's just the times, some say it's a money cartel based in London, the old home of the most successful Rothschild sibling. Some say it's a backlash against a greater joy and awareness going around.
Whatever is going around, visualize the future you want for yourself and plan accordingly with good intel. And plan to be in good health. Just don't get your intel here. You get what you pay for. And don't hit the 'snooze' button, no matter how tempting. We really are all connected, so don't let me down.
We constantly hear that BP is covering up the damage, with the Coast Guard's help. Sounds like Coast Guard ops in Alaska. They'll cite a boat owner for not having a survival suit for a tot, but won't cite trawlers destroying the ecosystem and livelihoods of thousands of Alaskans. And they call picking on small boats for minor infractions "Sustainable Fisheries Patrol?"
We wonder more all the time what kind of a future are we facing. I missed the big multi-year class reunion in Petersburg this Fourth of July, but saw some reports on the goings-on. Sounds like a good time was had by all, in spite of the rain. A poem by one of the attendees was distributed. Good work, Mike. It reflects how ill prepared we are to deal with these disasters, and maybe especially we who grew up so sheltered on a small island in Alaska.
Sure, we roll with the punches. What else can you do? War has had a profound effect on the ones who served in the military, especially in-theater. But it affects all of the rest of us as well, ie., family members, news viewers. My son, Jesse, served in Iraq for two tours of duty and is now out and trying to make plans. He and I went to Alaska last winter to prepare the old State ferry 'Chilkat' for sea last.
Low level bureaucrats can and do scuttle anything new, unless there is enough perceived power on your side to make them think twice about their own job security. Well, that brings up the subject to those new to my blogs, that the PSPA (The shore-based processors, when I was there.) used to go around the agencies in Juneau and threaten jobs right and left.
It's not by the rule-book anymore. Hasn't been for a long time. Education? I remember the Whitney-Fidalgo Seafoods VP for Southeast Alaska telling me that he didn't think the President of the company even knew he had a college degree. Would your college tell you that you should expect to change your entire career five times in your life? And that secure pensions in industry are a thing of the past?
Resource extraction industries are just that. They extract all the resources, whether fish or oil or minerals, then lay everyone off and everybody goes home. Leaving the world a poorer place, of course. So, should we plan for a barren planet?
I think there might be a future in underground construction. They say the water is so toxic in the Gulf of Mexico that it is eating up boats. There might be trading to be accomplished with alternative energy powered vessels, if they stay afloat. And the technology is there. Rest assured the oil producers won't have any qualms about charging ten dollars a gallon for gasoline if they thought they could get away with it.
Where this is going is, looks like planning for change is the way to go. Like they are saying, "Change is occurring at a faster and faster rate all the time." Be resilient. Be adaptable. Be mobile. Funny I should say that, because there is an old saying that in the last days people will be moving around alot. Well, it might be necessary, so get a good fuel efficient way to travel around.
The sage advice of our grade school principal, and you know who I mean, is even more valid; "You need a good woman and fourty acres." Jesse and I climbed to the very rocky pinnacle of Mt. Ashland the other day, and what strikes you is that there is a lot of good quality vacant land out there. Of course anyone who has flown across Alaska is struck by this fact as well. Not that a lot of it is very high quality land though.
Well, don't take any wooden nickels, but certainly don't be the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pot of water. It will boil eventually. I would say any bank money you take is a wooden nickel. The games are much more subtle than the difference between wood and metal. Any more it's like a loan is a pipeline to suck the life out of you.
And speaking of pipelines, I wouldn't vote for someone promising anything regarding a pipeline. I've been working for reason in the fishing industry for decades and it just gets more crooked all the time.
The physical Pastime Cafe was located about across the street from the old Mitkof Hotel. It was the third seat in from the door that my father jumped off and ran to enlist in the Navy when the news of Pearl Harbor came. Seems like he sat in the same seat when I ate breakfast with him before going deer hunting as a kid.
I think Dad was pretty traditional. Same as the rest of us I suppose. He fought for profitability in the fishing industry and so did I. He fought for the same fishing business models, and I for the family fisherman. But, unknown forces change everything for us whether we like it or not. Some say it's just the times, some say it's a money cartel based in London, the old home of the most successful Rothschild sibling. Some say it's a backlash against a greater joy and awareness going around.
Whatever is going around, visualize the future you want for yourself and plan accordingly with good intel. And plan to be in good health. Just don't get your intel here. You get what you pay for. And don't hit the 'snooze' button, no matter how tempting. We really are all connected, so don't let me down.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Focus on the future
"Vision for your future is the road map of what God wants to accomplish in and through you." --Jim Williams. It's just that I got the idea to title my posts with Stan Toler's Minute Motivators. They aren't earth shattering, and some people, like my daughter, might think them hoakey. After all, Alicia said the slow 'movement' of the moon "reminds me of God's great patience," at barely five years old.
Genetics got to have a lot to do with it. Like the researcher who figured that six percent of the population is psycho and 12 percent willingly go along with them. On both ends of the spectrum, the individuals know they are different, even as children, and group with others accordingly. And for better or worse, I got the genes to not do nothing when injustice rears it's head. I was the one that beat up the kindergarden bully when I was in first grade. That may explain a lot to readers of my other blogs.
There are cultural norms, like not beating up on other people, for no good reason. If you don't get the term 'helping your fellow man' at least don't beat up on him. I think a lot of folks need to go back to basics and we'd all be better off. And maybe my kids will have a few fish to catch. Just had to get fish in there somewhere. But why not? After all this is Petersburg, Alaska.
The plot about who started the Pastime Cafe gets thicker. I've found so far that Swede and Evelyn Wasvick got the Pastime Cafe well before WWII, and that Ernie Haugen bought it after the war, in 1946. Swede and Evelyn could't have bought much, because they did most of the cooking at home and Swede would drive it down to the Cafe in his panel truck. Everyone liked this couple and I know very fondly by my parents, John and Carol Enge.
Berries, before I forget. My sweetie, Terry, found lingonberry jam and cloudberry jam at IKEA in Portland. (There's an old story that right before the world self-destructs, everyone will be running to and fro. We must be getting close, because Terry is going off on scrap-booking trips all the time and I'm starting to do projects in Alaska.)
Back to berrys: she bought some lingonberry concentrate too, which dilutes the jam in a double boiler nicely. Great on Swedish pancakes. And if you make 'em on Saturday mornings on a regular basis you'll get all the neighbor kids coming over all the time like my mother did. From the Sandvik's house on one side to the Strands house out the other way.
But looking around in the book 'Petersburg Profiles' on the pioneers of Petersburg, I found a different context to a picture of a seine crew in a rowing seine skiff from the thirties. The picture was labled, in my dad's handwriting, "Vernon," "John," "Arnold," "Dad." I don't know who the Vernon is, but Arnold was my dad's brother who died in a war-plane accident in Juneau during WWII. And Dad is Martin Enge, my grandfather. And my first skipper. Grandad Enge started to teach me to row in a gillnet skiff up the North Arm of the Stikine River.
Interestingly, I found the same picture in 'Petersburg Profiles' on the page on Bob and Pam Thorstensen. Bob, of course, was hired well after WWII by my father as a deckhand on one of the Kayler-Dahl tenders and didn't personally fish in Alaska. I guess I'm like the guy who would always disappear from some setting or other to correct an error on the Internet.
Genetics got to have a lot to do with it. Like the researcher who figured that six percent of the population is psycho and 12 percent willingly go along with them. On both ends of the spectrum, the individuals know they are different, even as children, and group with others accordingly. And for better or worse, I got the genes to not do nothing when injustice rears it's head. I was the one that beat up the kindergarden bully when I was in first grade. That may explain a lot to readers of my other blogs.
There are cultural norms, like not beating up on other people, for no good reason. If you don't get the term 'helping your fellow man' at least don't beat up on him. I think a lot of folks need to go back to basics and we'd all be better off. And maybe my kids will have a few fish to catch. Just had to get fish in there somewhere. But why not? After all this is Petersburg, Alaska.
The plot about who started the Pastime Cafe gets thicker. I've found so far that Swede and Evelyn Wasvick got the Pastime Cafe well before WWII, and that Ernie Haugen bought it after the war, in 1946. Swede and Evelyn could't have bought much, because they did most of the cooking at home and Swede would drive it down to the Cafe in his panel truck. Everyone liked this couple and I know very fondly by my parents, John and Carol Enge.
Berries, before I forget. My sweetie, Terry, found lingonberry jam and cloudberry jam at IKEA in Portland. (There's an old story that right before the world self-destructs, everyone will be running to and fro. We must be getting close, because Terry is going off on scrap-booking trips all the time and I'm starting to do projects in Alaska.)
Back to berrys: she bought some lingonberry concentrate too, which dilutes the jam in a double boiler nicely. Great on Swedish pancakes. And if you make 'em on Saturday mornings on a regular basis you'll get all the neighbor kids coming over all the time like my mother did. From the Sandvik's house on one side to the Strands house out the other way.
But looking around in the book 'Petersburg Profiles' on the pioneers of Petersburg, I found a different context to a picture of a seine crew in a rowing seine skiff from the thirties. The picture was labled, in my dad's handwriting, "Vernon," "John," "Arnold," "Dad." I don't know who the Vernon is, but Arnold was my dad's brother who died in a war-plane accident in Juneau during WWII. And Dad is Martin Enge, my grandfather. And my first skipper. Grandad Enge started to teach me to row in a gillnet skiff up the North Arm of the Stikine River.
Interestingly, I found the same picture in 'Petersburg Profiles' on the page on Bob and Pam Thorstensen. Bob, of course, was hired well after WWII by my father as a deckhand on one of the Kayler-Dahl tenders and didn't personally fish in Alaska. I guess I'm like the guy who would always disappear from some setting or other to correct an error on the Internet.
Monday, June 14, 2010
The view from the booth
Most of the time I sat at a table, when it was the Homestead Cafe. And at the cafe that the Ericksons had on the other end of main street too. That one was closer to where we were living at the time; the old Enge building on Sing Lee Alley. Wow, those were the real boom years; when Petersburg had TWO bona-fide coffee shops.
When you said you were going to the coffee shop, people knew which one you meant. They could walk in blind-folded and sit right down next to you for the most part. Most of the coffee crowd had their favorite seat. Like my dad remembers jumping up from the third stool from the end to go enlist in the Navy when the report of Pearl Harbor got to the Pastime Cafe. In later years he sat in about the same place at the Homestead Cafe. That seemed to be the 'elder corner.'
The other two who usually sat near there were 'the Old Doc' and the druggist. One time I had arranged to meet the Lt. Governor for coffee and dad popped out of that corner to land an introduction on our way out. We had been sitting down the row of stools at the counter. I figured the Lite Guv would want to feel like one of the real coffee crowd for a moment in time, before going back to Juneau and ignoring us again.
It was easier for a politician to walk in and talk to a group at a table though. The real business of life was conducted with a mug of coffee near at hand and politicians were only given slight consideration. It was just too hard to figure how a novice to the conversation could contribute. Which is why it took years for a greenhorn to be accepted into weightier conversations.
A memorable period of about a month straight, drinking NUMEROUS cups of joe before daylight, was during the time K... and I were putting the new roof on my folk's place. As I recall, it was raining and blowing all that October. Nobody else in town wanted the project, and I went through ten people before K... stepped up the help. I'd found him a place to live in town when his little family first came to town. They were living on their boat and it was starting to freeze. No place for a baby. Now he has one of the biggest boats in town and was a mover and shaker to get the community cold storage built.
We sat at a booth all that month. Later when I was working for the Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank I'd sit at a booth to talk up our program to several fishermen at once. Once, one of the highliners, and a former skipper of mine, came down off the high ground of a counter stool and sat at a table next to ours to line up for a chat.
I didn't get a chance to accommodate him, and I felt later like I had stood up a date. But our bank wasn't very accommodating to the highliners, even if we could match the other banks' interest rates. Just the words 'cooperative bank' may mean something to a lot of folks, but it doesn't pack much water with hard-nosed fishermen. He was an old coffee drinking buddy of my dad's, which made it worse. He probably doesn't even remember the occasion.
The Pastime Cafe is a good place to admit one's faults, because it's taken in the context of fixing lives. The coffee shop was church for a lot of people. Some very spiritual people too, in their own way. But there was an unwritten rule that you didn't talk religion there. Which is why my old Sunday School teacher, the oil dock guy, never came in for coffee. Of course he worked too far from downtown to duck in for a quick coffee, even if he could take the swearing and loud verbal jousting.
When he would come in it was to find a certain fisherman for some purpose or other. He was the most steady person I knew in Petersburg. He had that job of fueling up boats at the Union Oil dock from when I started buying gas for our three horse, to when I was visiting on business from the bank or state government. Everybody got fuel there.
When I first started getting gas at the oil dock float, they had blue-stone tanks for the net fishermen. Off and on you'd run your seine or gillnet through the tank of copper sulfate to preserve it. When nylon nets came along the practice became unecessary. I won't hurt anyone's feelings now, because they are all gone, but some fishermen used to dump blue-stone in creeks to flush out the salmon so they could catch them at the mouth of the creek.
Blue-stone is sold around here in Southern Oregon to put down your drain pipes to keep out tree roots. Seems counter-productive to all the efforts to bring back the salmon to this area. Although in cattle country, those efforts are pretty weak.
At the coffee shop, conversation always gets back to fish. Why is it that a disproportionate amount of effort is expended divvying up the existing fish between user groups, and going out and catching them, compared to bringing back the fish runs so there is plenty for everyone? That's the kind of question you throw out on a slow morning before daylight and everyone at the coffee shop is still half asleep.
You won't get a paradigm shift before daylight, that's for sure. And probably won't at this forum ever. It's accepted to throw out rhetorical questions, just don't expect an answer that you would be remotely satisfied with. That's the nature of the Pastime Cafe, where the men wear 'skipper slippers' and the women wear Xtra-Tuffs. And it being only a state of mind, but in no way a prison of the mind.
When you said you were going to the coffee shop, people knew which one you meant. They could walk in blind-folded and sit right down next to you for the most part. Most of the coffee crowd had their favorite seat. Like my dad remembers jumping up from the third stool from the end to go enlist in the Navy when the report of Pearl Harbor got to the Pastime Cafe. In later years he sat in about the same place at the Homestead Cafe. That seemed to be the 'elder corner.'
The other two who usually sat near there were 'the Old Doc' and the druggist. One time I had arranged to meet the Lt. Governor for coffee and dad popped out of that corner to land an introduction on our way out. We had been sitting down the row of stools at the counter. I figured the Lite Guv would want to feel like one of the real coffee crowd for a moment in time, before going back to Juneau and ignoring us again.
It was easier for a politician to walk in and talk to a group at a table though. The real business of life was conducted with a mug of coffee near at hand and politicians were only given slight consideration. It was just too hard to figure how a novice to the conversation could contribute. Which is why it took years for a greenhorn to be accepted into weightier conversations.
A memorable period of about a month straight, drinking NUMEROUS cups of joe before daylight, was during the time K... and I were putting the new roof on my folk's place. As I recall, it was raining and blowing all that October. Nobody else in town wanted the project, and I went through ten people before K... stepped up the help. I'd found him a place to live in town when his little family first came to town. They were living on their boat and it was starting to freeze. No place for a baby. Now he has one of the biggest boats in town and was a mover and shaker to get the community cold storage built.
We sat at a booth all that month. Later when I was working for the Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank I'd sit at a booth to talk up our program to several fishermen at once. Once, one of the highliners, and a former skipper of mine, came down off the high ground of a counter stool and sat at a table next to ours to line up for a chat.
I didn't get a chance to accommodate him, and I felt later like I had stood up a date. But our bank wasn't very accommodating to the highliners, even if we could match the other banks' interest rates. Just the words 'cooperative bank' may mean something to a lot of folks, but it doesn't pack much water with hard-nosed fishermen. He was an old coffee drinking buddy of my dad's, which made it worse. He probably doesn't even remember the occasion.
The Pastime Cafe is a good place to admit one's faults, because it's taken in the context of fixing lives. The coffee shop was church for a lot of people. Some very spiritual people too, in their own way. But there was an unwritten rule that you didn't talk religion there. Which is why my old Sunday School teacher, the oil dock guy, never came in for coffee. Of course he worked too far from downtown to duck in for a quick coffee, even if he could take the swearing and loud verbal jousting.
When he would come in it was to find a certain fisherman for some purpose or other. He was the most steady person I knew in Petersburg. He had that job of fueling up boats at the Union Oil dock from when I started buying gas for our three horse, to when I was visiting on business from the bank or state government. Everybody got fuel there.
When I first started getting gas at the oil dock float, they had blue-stone tanks for the net fishermen. Off and on you'd run your seine or gillnet through the tank of copper sulfate to preserve it. When nylon nets came along the practice became unecessary. I won't hurt anyone's feelings now, because they are all gone, but some fishermen used to dump blue-stone in creeks to flush out the salmon so they could catch them at the mouth of the creek.
Blue-stone is sold around here in Southern Oregon to put down your drain pipes to keep out tree roots. Seems counter-productive to all the efforts to bring back the salmon to this area. Although in cattle country, those efforts are pretty weak.
At the coffee shop, conversation always gets back to fish. Why is it that a disproportionate amount of effort is expended divvying up the existing fish between user groups, and going out and catching them, compared to bringing back the fish runs so there is plenty for everyone? That's the kind of question you throw out on a slow morning before daylight and everyone at the coffee shop is still half asleep.
You won't get a paradigm shift before daylight, that's for sure. And probably won't at this forum ever. It's accepted to throw out rhetorical questions, just don't expect an answer that you would be remotely satisfied with. That's the nature of the Pastime Cafe, where the men wear 'skipper slippers' and the women wear Xtra-Tuffs. And it being only a state of mind, but in no way a prison of the mind.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The New Old Pastime Cafe
There was a cafe in Petersburg, Alaska for decades called the Pastime Cafe. It is remembered fondly by folk who waited out snow storms and fishing closures and pouring rain in there drinking coffee with the 'coffee crowd,' as the waitresses dubbed them. The coffee crowd changed over the years as new-comers tried to horn in and old-timers pretended to ignore them.
I was in Petersburg a few weeks ago to attend my father's memorial services and was told a story of one such new-comer's experience with the 'coffee crowd.' As he told it, he showed up in Petersburg with long hair and proceeded to attend the early morning 'mug up' at the coffee shop to try to get to know the locals. It was two months before someone finally gave him the heads up that the 'coffee crowd' probably wouldn't talk to him unless he cut his hair. This he promptly did and the next day when he graced those hallowed stools he recieved a hearty "Hi, K....."
There was decorum, there was education, there was sustenance, there was camaraderie, there was encouragement, there was intelligence gathering for business purposes, there were business meetings, there was politicing, there were romantic rendezvous, and the list goes on.
The original Pastime Cafe in Petersburg moved locations on main street, and later it's name changed to the Homestead Cafe. But there was always a state of mind of the Pastime Cafe. A place of getting your bearings for a new adventure, of fitting into society, and sharing griefs and joys. Petersburg's Pastime Cafe was on a roll all through the years when the town chalked up it's impressive percapita income statistics: second highest income per capita in the U.S. in the 1960 census, and the second highest number of millionaires per capita in the 1970 census.
There is no cafe in Petersburg now that carries the torch. The building that housed the last 'Pastime Cafe' was sold to a fish processing company who turned it into a mess hall for it's workers. I think that was particularly disappointing for my dad who used to be one of the 'regulars.' He was a fish processing plant superintendent and lived near enough the water that he could hear the fishing boats come by headed for town.
The skippers would steam in the 'Narrows' and past his house and he could tell the boats apart by the sound of their engines. The skippers would come in early in the morning a lot of the time to line up to unload. But the first order of business was to head up to the Pastime to brag about the trip, relate any comedic occasions, or commiserate over any unfortunate events during the voyage. My father would know he needed to be there if he wanted to bid on a load of halibut, especially if a highliner has just steamed by at 7 am.
I think maybe some newer folk to town thought his appearance whenever a boat with a load came back was somehow prescient, from comments my dad made. He was one to let a mystery ride, whether it was made up or had a simple explanation. Like the time he told us kids that a cannery worker that was working to push gondolas of canned salmon into the retorts went missing one day. We were told they found nothing but his watch after opening up the retort after cooking a load. He never did retract that story. That's the kind of thing that made the Pastime Cafe so full of life and energy for the rigors of life in Alaska.
That zest for living was common and was probably born of a need to stay sane on long voyages that the ancestors of the town's Norwegian founders fine tuned. Like sailing over to Iceland, or Greenland, or Newfoundland and not knowing if you'd make it back. Now, that right there is Pastime talk. Some people fall into that mode of josh and jive and like the water and never come out. It makes it interesting, but at least folks don't fall into debilitating depression. It's OK.
So, there is no physical location of the Pastime Cafe as I knew it anymore. Maybe in some town in Alaska, or even near where I live in Central Point, Oregon. Starbucks just doesn't fill the bill. The closest I've seen recently is the 'Linnwood' in Seldovia, Alaska. Now there is a thriving 'Pastime Cafe.' It's a bar and grill, heavy on the bar part. But much is done to conduct city business from the comfort of bar stools and a hot cup of coffee. We would stage our forays into town for supplies and showers there this winter. Everybody met there. There were even town potlucks there. When the cafe on mainstreet Petersburg closed, my father took to visiting the coffee pot at the Harbor Master's shack and listening to the harbor chatter there. A poor substitute.
I don't intend to start something with this blog, just to have a fun forum in the vein of the Pastime Cafe as I knew it. (I think I even remember my older cousin Bobbie waitressing at the old Pastime Cafe location across from the Mitkof Hotel one Saturday morning before light. I was going deer hunting with my dad in the fall, and we deemed the day daunting enough to warrant a good breakfast and coffee at the Pastime.)
Now that age is showing my vulnerabilities more, I'll have to stick to herbal teas such as South American yerba mate, with a sprinkle of stevia powder. I found out recently I'm allergic to wheat and caffeine. Another reason to focus on a virtual Pastime Cafe. I think Facebook is a better 'virtual gathering place,' but I can elaborate more on a blog. And I started blogging to set down a record, to tell the story. And definitely a place to stay away from politics and keep it light.
My Great grandfather, Rasmus, who was the patriarch of the first white family to settle in Petersburg, built a cafe in the bottom floor of the Enge Building to help preserve the town. The Moose Club cafe had just burned down and he figured the town needed a cafe if it was to survive. With the moving of the big grocery store and the Post Office out of downtown, and the closing of the last cafe on main street, I wonder about the new model's ability to serve the social needs of a community. These kinds of things are what I think about and may talk about here. Besides rowing, hunting, fishing, ice skating on the beaver ponds, climbing Petersburg Mtn and Horn Cliffs, etc.
I was in Petersburg a few weeks ago to attend my father's memorial services and was told a story of one such new-comer's experience with the 'coffee crowd.' As he told it, he showed up in Petersburg with long hair and proceeded to attend the early morning 'mug up' at the coffee shop to try to get to know the locals. It was two months before someone finally gave him the heads up that the 'coffee crowd' probably wouldn't talk to him unless he cut his hair. This he promptly did and the next day when he graced those hallowed stools he recieved a hearty "Hi, K....."
There was decorum, there was education, there was sustenance, there was camaraderie, there was encouragement, there was intelligence gathering for business purposes, there were business meetings, there was politicing, there were romantic rendezvous, and the list goes on.
The original Pastime Cafe in Petersburg moved locations on main street, and later it's name changed to the Homestead Cafe. But there was always a state of mind of the Pastime Cafe. A place of getting your bearings for a new adventure, of fitting into society, and sharing griefs and joys. Petersburg's Pastime Cafe was on a roll all through the years when the town chalked up it's impressive percapita income statistics: second highest income per capita in the U.S. in the 1960 census, and the second highest number of millionaires per capita in the 1970 census.
There is no cafe in Petersburg now that carries the torch. The building that housed the last 'Pastime Cafe' was sold to a fish processing company who turned it into a mess hall for it's workers. I think that was particularly disappointing for my dad who used to be one of the 'regulars.' He was a fish processing plant superintendent and lived near enough the water that he could hear the fishing boats come by headed for town.
The skippers would steam in the 'Narrows' and past his house and he could tell the boats apart by the sound of their engines. The skippers would come in early in the morning a lot of the time to line up to unload. But the first order of business was to head up to the Pastime to brag about the trip, relate any comedic occasions, or commiserate over any unfortunate events during the voyage. My father would know he needed to be there if he wanted to bid on a load of halibut, especially if a highliner has just steamed by at 7 am.
I think maybe some newer folk to town thought his appearance whenever a boat with a load came back was somehow prescient, from comments my dad made. He was one to let a mystery ride, whether it was made up or had a simple explanation. Like the time he told us kids that a cannery worker that was working to push gondolas of canned salmon into the retorts went missing one day. We were told they found nothing but his watch after opening up the retort after cooking a load. He never did retract that story. That's the kind of thing that made the Pastime Cafe so full of life and energy for the rigors of life in Alaska.
That zest for living was common and was probably born of a need to stay sane on long voyages that the ancestors of the town's Norwegian founders fine tuned. Like sailing over to Iceland, or Greenland, or Newfoundland and not knowing if you'd make it back. Now, that right there is Pastime talk. Some people fall into that mode of josh and jive and like the water and never come out. It makes it interesting, but at least folks don't fall into debilitating depression. It's OK.
So, there is no physical location of the Pastime Cafe as I knew it anymore. Maybe in some town in Alaska, or even near where I live in Central Point, Oregon. Starbucks just doesn't fill the bill. The closest I've seen recently is the 'Linnwood' in Seldovia, Alaska. Now there is a thriving 'Pastime Cafe.' It's a bar and grill, heavy on the bar part. But much is done to conduct city business from the comfort of bar stools and a hot cup of coffee. We would stage our forays into town for supplies and showers there this winter. Everybody met there. There were even town potlucks there. When the cafe on mainstreet Petersburg closed, my father took to visiting the coffee pot at the Harbor Master's shack and listening to the harbor chatter there. A poor substitute.
I don't intend to start something with this blog, just to have a fun forum in the vein of the Pastime Cafe as I knew it. (I think I even remember my older cousin Bobbie waitressing at the old Pastime Cafe location across from the Mitkof Hotel one Saturday morning before light. I was going deer hunting with my dad in the fall, and we deemed the day daunting enough to warrant a good breakfast and coffee at the Pastime.)
Now that age is showing my vulnerabilities more, I'll have to stick to herbal teas such as South American yerba mate, with a sprinkle of stevia powder. I found out recently I'm allergic to wheat and caffeine. Another reason to focus on a virtual Pastime Cafe. I think Facebook is a better 'virtual gathering place,' but I can elaborate more on a blog. And I started blogging to set down a record, to tell the story. And definitely a place to stay away from politics and keep it light.
My Great grandfather, Rasmus, who was the patriarch of the first white family to settle in Petersburg, built a cafe in the bottom floor of the Enge Building to help preserve the town. The Moose Club cafe had just burned down and he figured the town needed a cafe if it was to survive. With the moving of the big grocery store and the Post Office out of downtown, and the closing of the last cafe on main street, I wonder about the new model's ability to serve the social needs of a community. These kinds of things are what I think about and may talk about here. Besides rowing, hunting, fishing, ice skating on the beaver ponds, climbing Petersburg Mtn and Horn Cliffs, etc.
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