Perfect Storm II

This is a link to a article about a gale on the Georges Banks that decimated the fleet of schooners that were anchored there. This happened in 1862, but the whole episode reminded me of a bit of Enge family history from the same time period, in Norway. (Maybe some of the family still back there can fill me in on the details, mainly the exact date of the storm in question.)

This is about Rasmus Enge, my great-grandfather, who had built a 62 foot schooner he called the 'Socrates.' He would fish cod in the Lofoten Islands in N. Norway and then sail the product to Spain to trade for oranges. Norwegians were a little short on oranges as you can imagine and they were highly valued as stocking stuffers at Christmas. (It would also be interesting to know what a Spanish orange at Christmas in Norway would have been worth in today's dollars.)

The storm that hit the Norwegian cod fishermen was characterized to me as a '100 year storm,' their version of the 'Perfect Storm.' It seems that 200 fishermen lost their lives in that storm. Maybe there would have been more immigrants to Petersburg had it not been for that storm. Many of the Norwegian immigrants to Petersburg were from that area of Norway. I've heard that a cemetary on one of the islands there my family came from looks like the one in Petersburg with all the many same family names.

Of course Rasmus survived the storm and went on shore after that. He tried farming and then immigrated with his wife, Anna, right before the turn of the century. They hit Minnesota first, but I guess the lure of the sea was too great, so they ended up in Seattle where they met Peter Buschmann. Buschmann was from the same area of Norway and was building up a string of fish processing plants in S.E. Alaska, the chief one being in Petersburg. Rasmus signed on.

It wasn't until a shirt-tail relative of ours, Reidar Enge, settled in Petersburg in the early 1960s that we heard more of the storm story. It seems that Rasmus had tied himself to the wheel and headed out to sea when it got real bad. How you do that in a sailing vessel of that size is beyond me. The bulk of the rest of the fleet were these little dorys that looked like miniature Viking ships, with elongated stem and stern posts. We have a picture of the 'Socrates' anchored in a cove with another schooner and a smattering of these dorys. The dorys capsized as they made their way to shore to get out of the storm. The waves just built up near shore.

Like all those schooners that were lost in the storm of 1862 on the Georges Banks, you wonder what it was like out there for those that made it back and those that didn't. And you wonder how big the seas were , and in comparison to those of the regular big storms in the Bering Sea. A captain of a king crab vessel related running before a storm in the early days of that fishery when he was a green captain. The boat was nearing the shores of Western Alaska in 78 foot seas, by his account. He was able to turn around when the seas moderated to 65 feet. During WWII that colorful cannery manager and a former boss of mine, Larry Freeburn, said he was in Military Intelligence on a Naval vessel and they had to run with the seas for three days in the Bering Sea toward Russia.

The bulk of the sinkings in the Bering Sea have been in the area just north of Unimak Pass. That key passageway from the Gulf of Alaska into the Bering Sea. Whether that area's tidal currents, increased wind speeds or freezing spray or a combination of those were the cause, every individual situation was undoubtedly unique. Just like the Graveyard of the Atlantic, that area off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I visited the Maritime Museum near Hatteras, N.C. last year. The museum has architectural features resembling the skeleton of a sailing ship. The Labrador Current meets the Gulf Stream in this area, generating confused seas, and has additionally created shoals from the north and southbound drifting sand reaching twenty miles out to sea.

These days there is not much excuse for a ship large enough to sport all the modern electronics to blunder into a storm. There are even animations of wind speed and direction at any point in the world. And there is an effort afoot that has successfully tracked big rogue waves. Gone are the days, in the beginning of the king crab fishery in the Bering Sea, when Peggy Dyson in Kodiak volunteered for years to give the fleet weather warnings by single side band radio. But as every mariner knows, the weather can change very fast. And if maritime commerce is to continue normally, a strong Coast Guard presence is essential for saving lives. And maybe they need to take a more proactive approach in situations like in the grounding of the Shell oil drill rig on an island off Kodiak Island. Or, I should say, the cavalier attempt to cross the upper Gulf of Alaska in late fall under tow at, slow speed, with a bad weather forecast, and without adult supervision. Now, that's the real 'Perfect Storm.'

I tend toward analysis somewhere in a tale, so to conclude, in my mind is the the real possibility of collision of cavalier resource extractors with an increasingly angry mother nature. And the larger the operation, the more cavalier, meaning more lives at risk in one incident. Not to mention the certain environmental collateral damage that seems to increase proportionally by size of the operation. There are many regulations that reflect these truisms, but often politics trumps all considerations, adding to the peril of 'Perfect Storm II.'

Bobbie (Enge) Anderson, RIP

First, I want to give kudos to Bobbie's daughter Augusta for such great obituary. It gives testimony to the wonderful job Bobbie did as a parent and home-school teacher. Bobbie and Augusta followed Carl around to logging camps in Alaska, some floating, where Augusta was home-schooled and exceeded state expectations by a wide margin. God bless you Carl and Augusta, I think I can safely say that you were everything Bobbie ever wanted. I know, God wants to bless all of us, but this is hard to put into words. I'm very saddened by the passing of my first cousin who I treasured as a friend as well.

I remember the first time I spent time with Bobbie. She was about 10 and I about 5; we set sail together as ship-mates on our Grandfather Martin Enge's gillnetter, the Portia, for the Stikine River. In those days you could fish up in the river and I remember only seeing brown water around us. Grandad used a flatbottomed skiff to carry and pull the net with. Bobbie lost her necklace somewhere along the line and Grandad found it clinging to the net when he pulled it by hand the first time. There is a picture around here somewhere of me and Grandad sitting together in the skiff while I was getting the feel of the oars that was taken by Bobbie. That picture is a treasure to me, thank you Bobbie.

There were many family get-togethers with Uncle Ernest and Aunt Ethel and their three daughters, but I mostly remember them excusing themselves early for some mysterious function with the older crowd. We bumped into each other often through the years that flew by too quickly, and ended way too quickly. At Dad's graveside memorial a few years ago Bobbie characteristically said, "Well John, how's the other black sheep of the family?" And just as characteristically I said, "You know Bobbie, we always did exactly what we wanted to do." And she replied in form, "You're damned right we did."

She lived emphatically, to the fullest, and loved deeply. I remember when we were leaving the church funeral service for my Grandmother Augusta, Bobbie was sobbing. The only one I saw who was. I couldn't see over the casket, so she must have been pretty young too. I always liked that she cried at our Grandma's funeral. Bobbie, I'm having a hard time not crying right now. And I liked that she gave comfort to my good friends the Thompson boys' Grandma, Ann Thompson, in her final years, reading the Bible to her among other things she needed help with. Ann provided us little cookie beggars with many a cookie through the years.

Bobbie was responsible beyond her years was my impression. I remember going downtown to the cafe, about where Viking Travel is now, and getting breakfast before daylight with Dad before going out deer hunting. Bobbie was there waitressing. I remember being surprised how spry and awake she was, and young to be doing that. I don't want to drag on because I think her daughter Augusta's piece is the one to remember here. Bobbie was preceded in death by her father Ernest, mother Ethel and Sister Bonnie and Bonnie's husband Ed Duncan. Lots of comfort to the rest of the family, especially Carl and Augusta.


 By Bobbie's daughter, Augusta

Bobbie Anderson, Mom, Wife, Nana, Sister, Auntie, Cousin, Fisherman, Master Baiter, Best Friend, Alaskan, Trouble Maker, Wave Causer, Problem Solver, Pain in the Ass and Peace Maker. These are a few of the names my mom has been called through the years, but for me, my personal favorite is Mom.

Mom passed away in Bellingham on Monday evening, March 3rd. We surrounded her in her final moments and blanketed her in love. I now know the true meaning of oxymoron, because her passing was the singular most wonderfully terrible moment in my life and the lives of her family.

Many people knew her, some understood her and fewer appreciated her. But know this, she loved fiercely and was fiercely loved by those few in return. No need to mention you by name, if you were in that few you are feeling the loss right along side us and our prayers are with you.

How can such a colorful woman leave this life and not take some color with her? Impossible, I say. There is a certain dimness in my hours as I look around the world resisting the urge to pick up the phone to call my mom to tell her how shitty my day has been. The dimness doesn’t stop at the colors, it has selfishly taken over sound as well. Nothing is as sharp as it was a mere 72 hours ago. Photos seem faded, eyes seem dull and music is muted.

Each of us had our own relationship with her. She was Dad’s soul mate and best friend; my mother, friend and comrade in arms against the world; Vinnie’s confidant, partner in crime and so much more than any mother-in-law could ever be; Bubba’s homie, his biggest fan and her chance to act like a teenager again; Quincey’s protector, supplier of cookies and never ending faith, love and support….that and neither of them are afraid of flipping the bird at any deserving soul.

She made some really wonderful friends during her brief time on Hospice. Brooke her nurse, Jennifer her chaplain, Cheryl her social worker, Michele her bath aide, and others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

She was a beautiful woman both inside and out, a hard worker, a commercial fisherman; an Alaskan through and through.

She was born on October 14, 1943 in Petersburg, Alaska and passed into the loving arms of her Lord and Savior on March 3, 2014. She is survived by her husband Carl Anderson, her daughter Augusta Anderson and son-in-law Vinnie Anderson, her grandson Carl Anderson and Amanda Carpp, her granddaughter Quincey Anderson and Nick Ackerman, her sister Signe Haltiner and an extended family too vast to name.

Mom was a loving and caring woman who selflessly put other’s needs in front of her own on a daily basis. She didn’t take shit from anyone and had the bumps and bruises to show for it. She hated to see us in pain and reprimanded us if we cried too much and acted too little. She was a gladiator on deck, a hoot and a half, a little woman with a big attitude. She was our Mom, Wife, Nana; she was a force that will always be missed and our only comfort is that we will see her again someday.

The Epitome of the 20th Century Cannery-man

My father worked in the fishing business all his life, not necessarily starting working in the cold storage in Petersburg when he was thirteen. That would have been around 1929. The year the stock market crashed. Also the year his parents built the house that his sweetie still lives in today, up the street from Raven's Roost park. The prospect of keeping the mortgage afloat those first years in that first architect-designed house in Petersburg was dim indeed.

Grandma Augusta went to work in the steam laundry while Grandpa Martin kept plugging away with the family fishing boat, the Augusta. I don't know what happened to fish prices in the early years of the depression, but it couldn't have been pretty, if there was much demand for the fish at all on the market. The family home was ultimately saved by the generosity of the woman who owned the steam laundry at the time. I remember us driving to her house in Seattle to visit during my first trip to Seattle, during the 1962 World's Fair. It was a fateful moment in the Enge timeline.

Cannery-men are still the subject here, but in passing, I should mention the generosity of John Hammer and Andrew Wikan, who owned a grocery store. Many Petersburg folks would have had an unknown future if not for the credit these two businessmen extended as well. The only reason they stayed in business was due to the rental houses they owned adjacent to the present South Boat Harbor. People pulled together back then. Not that they still don't, it's just that big businesses dominate the landscape with the classic W. C. Fields motto, "Never give a sucker an even break."

Dad certainly did his share of crewing out seining for salmon and longlining for halibut on the Augusta with his two brothers and other crew members. He remembered his dad settling up with the crew with little stacks of gold coins on the galley table. Of losing Uncle Ernest, the youngest of the three boys, overboard and Martin just turning the wheel hard over at running speed to come about and pick him up. Dad seemed to be the skiff man a lot. Which meant you had to lean into those big oars on the seine skiff the whole time the seine was in the water. That was probably the hardest job on the boat. Now it's the least physically demanding, albeit, requiring some above average boat savvy.

He worked his way through the University of Washington School of Fisheries this way. He was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity and lived at the frat house. He was it's President for awhile at least and had his brother Arnold stay there too while he was taking flight lessons. They shared ownership of a Model A Ford. Dad was quite the Esquire Man even back in those days. He told of dating the daughter of the head of the Alaska Packers Association who had canneries all over Alaska and Puget Sound. The girl had her own Dussenburg which in those days was the equivalent of dating Paris Hilton. Dad said she wore braces on her teeth which sounded like a deal-breaker. But maybe this was the time he became interested in fish buying and plant operations. Certainly there would have been influence if he had been around the father much.

Those old captains of industry were the kings and king makers of the economy of the West Coast in those days just prior to World War II. And I know that the draw of Alaska is also a deal-breaker for relationships at college in 'The Lower 48.' Spring anywhere in the world smells like herring and salmon and reminds one of the cultural and financial rewards of getting one's rear end post-haste back to the fishing grounds. I was in Israel when this happened to me once. Dad was like his sons and most Alaska men, content to live the demanding lifestyle of Alaska last frontier life until love comes knocking in the form of a recent immigrant beauty. In Dad's case it was a new Home Economics teacher at Petersburg High right after the war.

His leadership skills were further formed in the crucible of the War as a Lieutenant in the Navy, first as a Navy pilot, then as the captain of several ocean going LSTs. He had been in the ROTC at the U of W. When war broke out he was in Petersburg and immediately reported in. But between college and his military service he had been buying fish at the Petersburg Cold Storage for Washington Fish and Oyster Company of Seattle. His good friend, Dave Ohmer, was the buyer for Whiz Fish Co., also of Seattle. Besides bidding on halibut trips that came in to the Cold Storage under the then auction system at the public facility, he ran a fast flat bottom river skiff down the Wrangell Narrows to buy from the beach seiners like Shaky Frank and Hermann Papke. Shaky Frank had a warehouse in the first bight in from the mouth of Petersburg Creek. Papke had one at the mouth of Blind Slough.

Dad had also fished commercially up Petersburg Creek as a kid. He and a couple of other kids gillnetted steelhead for his Grandfather, Rasmus. I don't know who did the splitting and salting in barrels, but they did the cold, wet fishing in the spring for that early run, which could have been substantial in those days. Petersburg Creek even had a king salmon run in those days, but I don't imagine it lasted long with commercial fishing available anywhere in the watershed. The king run could have been snuffed out in that first steelhead fishery up the creek. Which begs the question, could they be re-introduced?

After all, Rasmus had been the first Production Manager the town of Petersburg had. It was his job to get fish for the canning line in the first cannery there. Back then at the turn of the century anything went as far as finding fish went. Manifest Destiny was in full swing in Alaska, even though the buffalo had been wiped out by then Down South. When Rasmus had a falling out with Petersburg's namesake, Peter Buschmann, over Buschmann's excessive harvesting of herring in front of town, he got into the fish buying and selling business himself. Rasmus pioneered the Stikine gillnet fishery too and sold barrels of salt fish to the Norwegian farmers in Minnesota out of a horse drawn wagon.

When Rasmus settled in to run his theater and roller skating business and building buildings on Sing Lee Alley, Dad was his little shadow. Dad loved to accompany him around town visiting other businessmen friends of Rasmus. Business got in his blood. Dad was tall for his age and his mother Augusta, the socialite that she was, made sure he was properly decked out in the latest boy's fashions. She even had him take piano lessons. Dad recalled looking down from the second floor of the Enge Building on Sing Lee Alley where they lived, and where he was born, at the other boys playing while he was supposed to be practicing. The lure was too much and Augusta finally relented, thus ending his piano career.

You might say he was groomed from the start in the business end of the fish business. But he also was a product of generations of Enge fishermen before that, and someone was bound to end up running fish plants. And he was quick witted enough to pull it off. In later years when the politics of the fish business became particularly odious, Mom said that Dad kept his job running the plant in Petersburg for Whitney-Fidalgo Seafoods mostly because he had a good recall of facts and figures. By then, in the seventies, he had mastered the fishing game and worked it until his retirement from Petersburg Fisheries at the age of 72.

I suppose I'll have to recount his exploits and routine duties of running cold storages and canneries in Alaska in future posts before I can move on to other subjects in this blog. It's hard to stick to one subject about Petersburg and Alaska when memories come flooding back. I'm sure it's Jean Curry and her work on the Petersburg Class Reunion web-site that has re-ignited my desire to get back to where I started in my blogging: putting memories to paper for my kids and others. And maybe with the idealistic aim of trying to keep history from repeating itself so much.

 I think Dad excelled at the game of bidding for halibut and salmon on the Petersburg fish auction. He said some buyers had a hard time keeping up. He really wanted to expand his role at that facility due to this success, but he was young. And very young for a ship's captain when he had to quit buying to support invasions of Japanese and German held lands. He might have been at the Normandy invasion except his ship was blown in half by a German torpedo or mine. He spent most of his service in the Pacific supporting the island hopping of the Marines. Sometimes he would have two landing craft on deck when they got somewhere and then slide them over the rail to take men ashore. When the beach was secure he would land his ship and disgorge tanks and whatever else was on the main cargo deck.

The scope of operations like that certainly gave him a larger vision of what could be done to improve the infrastructure of the fishing industry. Cannery tenders and canning lines could hold no mystery after experiences like that. I think he was typical of servicemen returning to a economy devastated by the Great Depression, an economic void, but with the resources and now full of war-hardened men with vision and a lust for the good things of life. With his prior fish buying experience, Dad sought out a potential fish buyer in the form of Lennie Engstrom of Wrangell, who needed buyers in various places. Dad got the job of buying fish for the Engstrom Brothers at the fairly new Pelican Cold Storage in Pelican. That's where a couple of us little Enges sprouted from.

There was a lure to being a fish buyer and plant operator in Alaska that maybe even had more allure than being a hedge fund manager today. In owning a plant there was certainly the prospect of relative healthy financial rewards. But even as a hired plant manager, there was the prospect of the traditional role of the superintendant as king of the local economy and a good piece of the fabric of the culture of the town it was located in. Mankind has always sought power and my Dad was no exception.

After two years in Pelican he met a cannery-man from Petersburg, Chris Dahl, who offered him the job of running their new cannery and cold storage there. The dream job just showed up. Being the top buyer in the town he knew and that his Grandparents helped found. His town, and now he had the job befitting his experience, his DNA, and expectations. To most of the old cannery-men it didn't matter much whether they owned a piece of the action or not, just being the top guy was enough. He passed over some opportunities to get a piece of the action, but at less comfortable and secure positions.

Is what he liked, besides 'unloading the boats' as he said, was helping people in the fleet and the business.  In that regard he wasn't the best at what he did. He wasn't ruthless enough to go beyond what he had on his plate as a 'super.' He bemoaned others who broached his sense of fair play. And ultimately he came under the axe of the out-of-control Whitney-Fidalgo Seafoods 'axe man.' Not that the axe-man was out of control. Whitney only lasted two more years before filing for bankruptcy protection. In 1969 when they bought the Kayler-Dahl Fish Co. plant in Petersburg Dad was running, they were canning 25% of the Alaska canned salmon pack and were about the largest fish company on the West Coast of the United States. It was fun for both me and Dad working for them in the early to mid seventies. Disappointment with the company set in pretty fast.

Dad liked helping out fishermen wanting to get a new boat or into a new fishery. Some of this was from his knowledge of fish resources and fish biology from his training under Dr. Donaldson of the U of W. Some came from the pioneer days of people helping each other to just survive. One time he bought a sweet little troller called the 'Adak' for a fishermen who just didn't have the money at the time. We had some great trips on that boat until the fisherman came up with the money to buy it from Dad. We would tow the little Davis double-ender to Ideal Cove and us kids would hike up to the lake for some swimming and trout fishing. When Andy Mathiesen accidentally shot his hand and he thought his life in the fishing business was over, Dad introduced him to fly-fishing and one of Southeast Alaska's first and most respected guide businesses was launched.

Later my uncle and Gordon Jensen brought up the first steel fishing boats to Petersburg and Dad got Ernest  prospecting for king crab. He got another less-than-prosperous boat man to run a company salmon tender to bring in some of the first catches of king crab to Petersburg. Ralph had been a famous brown bear guide out of Petersburg. He just didn't have the knack for fishing and that pioneering effort flopped as well, with the loss of the string of company financed pots. My uncle developed multiple sclerosis two years after buying that big steel limit seiner. But by then other fishermen for the other big cannery in town had jumped in and the rest is history. Mostly a history of overharvest as was the case in the Bering Sea king crab fishery.

Like Dad's prior appointment to the Alaska King Crab Marketing and Quality Control Board that kicked off the king crab boom and craving for the delicious seafood, he worked with the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Program Director, John Doyle, to inaugurate herring gillnetting. One of Whitney-Fidalgo's plants, the cold storage in Yakutat, had been the first in Alaska to buy and process seine herring for the Japanese roe market. I was working there at the time. Dad however felt that gillnetting herring was the best way to catch herring as it was possible to select only the upper year classes with larger mesh nets, where seining catches the younger year classes as well, making it harder to sustain the fishery. In fact, many of the seine herring fisheries in Alaska are depleted even after seining has ceased on them for many decades.

This was the kind of work that set the stage for him to be the pioneer processor and maybe instigator of the first herring gillnet fishery in Alaska. I say this because us three boys represented the company, a tender, and a gillnet skiff in the first attempt to go out and actually gillnet some roe herring. The first processing of finfish caught with pots also occurred at his plant in Petersburg, with me supplying the blueprints of the pots and Steve going out and loading up on blackcod.

This prefaced his work to run one of the first two bottom-fish plants in the State and surrounding waters by Americans. More on that in a later post as well. And I suppose that last pioneering was the pinnacle of the career of a cannery-man: the establishment of a major processing contingent using new technology. And it didn't hurt that he was named the first President of the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, whose pilot project proved that Americans could make surimi just as good as the Japanese.

Getting back to his helping people in the industry pull themselves up by the bootstraps, he gave the founder of Icicle Seafoods his first job in Alaska. That was a real win, unlike trying to get a bunch of king crab into his plant. Helping Bob Thorstenson was something he naturally did. Petersburg was ripe for a new processor when Pacific American Fisheries closed it's doors in Petersburg due to the loss of it's fish traps. Bob had been it's accountant and saw an opportunity to rally some fishermen to help start the original cannery up again. Dad's boss had alienated the big fleet of Petersburg seiners they had when he didn't match the prices paid one year and the fleet was happy to go over to 'the new guys,' with promises of stock options as well. But Dad had the background to always make a profit for his company, even with a smaller fleet.

I remember Dad and Tom Thompson, a cold-storage man and Ex VP of Icicle, discussing the break-even volume of canned salmon needed for particular plants like they had analyzed the numbers for months like a Marsh & McClennan accounting office. They had a lot of comparable factors in their heads that nobody but these plant managers would have a clue about. Just a long history in the fishing game.

Cannery-men sometimes had ancillary skills like Dad's interest and adeptness in aviation. Flying a plane for the fish company came in real handy when a boat needed help wrapping up a school of fish, or a part needed to be dropped off on the grounds. Cannery men had a lot of interests that were later parlayed into good moves on the chess board of fisheries. Doing a lot of these things yourself made it possible for a small cannery/cold storage to make money and support the family which ended up numbering five children. As he was retiring. other plants and fishermen started to hire pilots with airplanes to do the same thing.

Recruiting of key staff and control was not the least of his abilities and talents. His cold storage foreman worked there for 25 years and his shrimp and crab and sometimes cannery foreman about the same amount of time. One Alaska Native and the other Japanese American. Loyal to the core and efficient to the max. They were like King David's Mighty Men of Valor who could shoot a bow with right or left hand. Joe Kawashima could teach anyone how to best pick shrimp, rewire a motor from single phase to three phase, or he could drive piling by himself in the middle of the dock under buildings. I didn't find out until years later when I was contacted by someone in Los Angeles researching Ben Berkeley that he was in fact a martial arts master. My first boss and a wonderful teacher of many things practical in the cold-storage and in general..

Some of the rest of the crew were similarly skilled. Like Dick Kuwata who trained in the Philipines to resist a communist insurrection. He could draw and throw a knife like nobody's business. Dick could head salmon so perfectly and fast that there was no reason to get a heading machine for the cold storage while he was there. And everyone else had to shoot for his degree of perfection, saving the company untold dollars in the recovery rates attained. Dick worked for Dad for about 22 years I think.

When we both went through the 'great disillusionment' during the fall of Whitney-Fidalgo, I felt it more keenly than Dad who had seen companies come and go and his own boss cause the near ruin of Kayler-Dahl Fish Company. And his grief of being frozen out of the Petersburg Cold Storage when he came back from the War. Where I picked up my pieces and took a right turn into R&D, fisheries banking, and government service, he went on with a different company, working for his former protege, Bob Thorstensen, like nothing had happened.

Old Petersburg Basement and Secrets of WWII.

Enge boys of multiple generations have played in the concrete confines of the basement of the Enge home on First street in Petersburg, in the inclement weather or darkness that impeded outdoor adventure. The home was built in 1929, just before the Great Stock Market Bubble of the same year. The home was built for the Martin and Augusta Enge family, with boys John, Arnold and Ernest. The boys were employed to pick and shovel the solid blue clay, that the house is built on, into wheelbarrows and wheeled up a plank to be dumped into the back yard. That provided a pretty poor place to grow anything, as Martin found out later when he planted a bushel of potatoes and got one bushel back.

The house had a large number of unique features for a Petersburg home. I always heard it was the first home in Petersburg to be designed by a bona-fide architect. Unique features include the prominent brick chimney at the front of the house, arched entry way, sliding glass paned doors to close off the living room, a curved bannister in the foyer. And one of the first central heating systems in town, the big old wood and coal furnace, with it's octopus-like airducts branching out in different directions. Martin didn't burn coal for more than one winter, but there is still a boarded up hole where a coal chute was.

That basement was usually around fifty-five degrees and dry all the time and was a favorite place for many hunters in the neighborhood to hang salted front quarters of deer, aka, spekekjott. (Pronounced spic a chit, and the first recipe in the 'Viking Fare' section of the Petersburg Sons of Norway Cookbook that I have.) At an early age, when a cardboard box looked like a good play skiff to me, a leg of spekekjott with a sampling notch in it also looked a good deal like an outboard motor for said skiff. It is interesting that I inverted the front quarter of deer in my mind to see a potential propulsion unit for my skiff. I suppose an open mind to ideas came at an early age, because later I lead several industrial design and prototype building projects.

We had moved into the Enge home on First St. not long after John and Carol came back to Petersburg from Pelican in 1951 with three new little Enges; Arnold, John and Steve. Dad had been buying fish in Pelican's new Cold Storage Plant for Elton Engstrom of Juneau. Then Chris Dahl hired him to run his and Dean Kayler's new plant in Petersburg, aka, Kayler-Dahl Fish Co. This was a pretty close second to his first choice of things to do after bringing his ship back from Japan and being de-commissioned in '45. Being froze out of his dream to resume buying fish at the Petersburg Cold Storage was one of the three big disappointments in dad's life. The other two were the death of his grandparents and his brother, Arnold, during his Wartime absence.

Us boys launched many an expedition from the stores of boots, jackets and fishing poles held in the basement of the Enge house. Along with neighbor kids like Floyd Strand, Mark Sandvik, Rob and Tom Swanson, we also charted our course to outdoor adventure on the chart table of the Cub Scout Troop my mother led in our basement. Early expeditions were of a closer orbit however, that of the crevices and hiding places in the house itself. We were in awe of the wondrous and strange implements of early Petersburg life such as trapping supplies, brass trolling gurdies and old tarnished trolling spoons.

We found voids in the house that the Architect couldn't quite reconcile: secret lairs that may never be discovered again. And then there was the bent airplane propeller. The story we heard was that it was the propeller from the war-plane Uncle Arnold lost his life in while ferrying it from Sitka to Juneau during WWII. The propeller was wood with brass reinforcing on the tip and leading edges. It was about four inches of the tip that was bent. The propeller was about five feet from one tip to the other. Very mysterious. As was Arnold's old leather flight jacket with a tiny silver cross under the collar. There was also a leather helmet and goggles with various tinted lenses.This was the attire of both he and Dad while learning to fly Navy planes with the open-cockpit Stearman Bearcat at Sand Point in Lake Washington..

Deepening the mystery was the day we dug into an old steamer trunk, being now big enough to get it off a top shelf, and read, and finding the yellow Western Union telegram from the War Department to Grandma Enge. The telegram was brief and to the point: Arnold had been killed in action. No details. Grandma had been making meatballs with Mrs. Eric Fuglvog next door when the telegram arrived. I remember discussing the find of the telegram at the dinner table that day and being filled in on some of the details.

Dad said Arnold had been ferrying a military plane from Sitka to Juneau and crashed coming into the Juneau airport. The connection between the old wood propeller and the crash was never firmed up, so mostly the connection was in us kid's minds. Apparently the Sargent who assigned the plane to Arnold knew there was a defect in the plane, but for whatever reason sent him anyway. Through the years I heard other details, like that Arnold had wagged his wings at a Petersburg halibut boat in Chatham Straits on his flight. I thought I had heard the boat was in Hawk Inlet and that it might have been the 'Middleton.'

As I write this from my desk in Oregon I looked at my Alaska Atlas and Gazetteer and sure enough, Hawk Inlet on the north end of Admiralty Island is a shortcut through the Mansfield Peninsula that comes out adjacent to the north end of Douglas Island, which is on the other side of Gastinau Channel from the Juneau airport. I fished in Hawk Inlet on the Enge family boat, the 'Augusta,' for halibut one time as well. So the stories are adding up. Here's where some of the stories head into the fog.

One; Dad said there was no airport in Sitka when Arnold made his ill-fated flight. That the plane might have been some experimental model that flew off a ship of some kind. Nobody has ever mentioned the presence of a aircraft carrier in those waters that I know of. Two; the Juneau folks wrote in their history of their town that Arnold crashed on take-off, because a small boy reported it that way. I have other information that disproves that account, including the picture of the crash site that I have just seen this winter. More on that in a minute.

The tale that has never been printed before was told to me by an old salt from Juneau who saw the accident happen. In 1990 I brought my family to Juneau from Anchorage to take a job running a seafood processing plant. We opened the plant with tanner crab production and then slid into buying black cod. I had helped arrange the pack loan and the sales contracts but not the hiring of tendermen. We had sent the 68 foot 'Christian,' owned by Ole Nelson, out to Squid Bay on the ocean side of Yakobi Island. One day I decided to charter a plane out to see how he was doing and that was one of my more peculiar experiences.

Flying in a small float plane along the coasts of Alaska is a particularly thrilling experience, but flying into the area as an adult after leaving the area as an infant added to the effect. When I had gotten situated at Ole's galley table with a cup of coffee and the plane was gone, Ole launched right in. He started with a clarifying question: "So, you're John Enge?" That opened my ears right up. Naturally he knew who his plant manager was. I think he wanted to make double sure the forthcoming narrative was going to the right address.

Seems he was a seventeen year old attending the one-room North Douglas school right across the Gastineau Channel from the Juneau Airport one fateful day. He was standing in the school-yard with the other children when a bright silver war-plane roared past them. It made a turn-around over the Channel and started it's approach to the runway. Then a second one came into view and roared past them wagging it's wings when it was abreast of the kids. At that instant the plane took a 90 degree dive right into the shallow water of that part of the Channel and mostly disintegrated on impact. Ole found out later it was a Petersburg pilot named Arnold Enge. Ole said he went to the crash site at low tide after the wreckage was removed and found a wristwatch with a shattered crystal. If Arnold's watch crystal was shattered, the propeller would have had much more damage than a bent tip. And the prop we had wouldn't have been big enough for that plane.

Dad was sensitive about the tragic loss of his brother. They had a lot of good times together. He said he and Arnold used to row down to Blind Slough to camp and sport-fish for sea-run cutthrout trout and jack cohos. And of course they crewed together on the 'Augusta,' etc., etc. Now Mom says to complete the story, so that's what I'm doing.

The crash picture cooberates Ole Nelson's story of where and how the plane crashed. The crash site is just west of the north-south axis of the runway and rules out a crash on take-off. Did someone in Juneau send an old propeller laying around as a memorial item, of was it a prop from an earlier plane Arnold flew in peacetime? The flight path was most likely through Peril Straits cutting through the mountains of Chichagof/Baranof Islands. Then up Chatham Strait, through Hawk Inlet, and across Stephen's Passage to the North end of Douglas Island. They would have rounded the Island and headed down and across the shallow north end of the Channel and the duck flats to do a hard left turn and land heading north.There is a low hill at the north end of the runway that jets now skim to land from the north.

What kind of plane it was is the subject for serious inquiry. It might be about as fruitful as getting a straight answer to what kind of charge blew Dad's LST in half in the English Channel. The official story is that his first command was torpedoed. The violence of the explosion made him believe it was a mine that didn't get cleared in time for his convoy. Any Southeast Alaska War Aviation buff might discover some interesting goings-on from the War years in trying to find out what kind of planes these were. Arnold had been a flight instructor in Ketchikan right before December 7, 1941. He had taken flight lessons at Boeing Field in Seattle and stayed in Dad's fraternity house at the University of Washington. Dad was the frat President so Arnold got special dispensation I think. Besides Dad was dating the daughter of the President of the Alaska Packer's Association and had her own Dussenberg to drive, real West Coast royalty.

Memorial Day 2012

Three of my five children were here at the house in Central Point, Oregon for a Memorial Day barbecue. That included grandson, Connor (7) and two caregivers that help Morgan and Alicia. Missing was Daniel, last known location, the Marine Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan. Elias is still training and working based out of Florida with the Air Force Combat Controllers.

I was never in the service myself, just started to apply for a very selective Navy program when I was at Oregon State University, but stopped when I saw how really selective it was. Only two people in all the colleges on the West Coast were selected. I had taken a course from the Navy in navigation and liked it. Jesse had spent two tours of duty with the Army in Iraq, so he had some memorializing to do. And another Vet friend of his was present. But it was my father who was on my mind that day.

Dad had been in ROTC at the University of Washington in the '30s while pursuing his degree in fisheries. His brother Arnold was there in Seattle living with him in the Chi Phi fraternity house. Arnold was taking flying lessons and they shared their first car, a Model T Ford. Dad was back in Petersburg buying fish at the Petersburg Cold Storage for Whiz Fish Co. of Seattle when Pearl Harbor happened. He was sitting on the second stool from the wall when the news came through. My brother Arnold was given that stool by Dave Ohmer when Trident Seafoods bought the old Pastime Cafe building for a mess hall and bunkhouse for their plant.

Dad went back to Seattle to join the Navy Air Corps and started training in the old Stearman Bearcat bi-plane at the Sand Point field on Lake Washington. I think he was doing OK as a pilot, even being the only one in his flight to make it back to the field when the mechanics forgot to fuel up a who flight of Bearcats. Planes were dropping into the potato fields east of the lake, and even into the lake trying to make it back. Dad made it back to land crosswise on the runway, which he caught hell for. He had to have an operation on his septum when he went to Texas for more advanced flight training, to make it easier to equalize the pressure on his eardrums. It was there his future as a dive bomber pilot ended. Probably a good thing, as he might not have survived if he had gone to Midway. Whole flights of dive bombers were shot down there.

He next went back East to talk to someone about getting assigned to a ship. He was questioned about his experience in Alaska snd he was given a ship to command when asked if he had navigated the Wrangell Narrows. The Narrows was known to them on the East Coast too. It has the most aids to navigation of any body of water that length in the U.S. I used to get a kick out of taking wheel watch on seiners at night in the Narrows myself. So they gave Dad a 385 foot Landing Ship Tank, aka, LST.

On his first convoy to Europe his ship was blown in half and he anchored the bow half. He lost 17 men. It was such violent explosion he never believed it was a torpedo, but a mine that hadn't been cleared. He said he was just sitting down when the explosion occurred, so wasn't injured by standing or sitting.. He spent some time in London and searching the beaches at Land's End for survivors after that. His next ship was similar, a Landing Ship Infantry, and he picked it up on the West coast.

After some time anchored in San Francisco Bay and hob-nobing in the finer watering holes of the city, they sailed for the Philippines. I'm sketchy on what operations he was involved in in the Pacific Theater, but he ended up at the invasion of Okinawa. He was hauling Marines around in his overgrown landing craft, and even carried smaller landing craft on deck. The old Alaska State ferry we bought and were restoring in Seldovia Bay seemed a miniature version of those LST's dad ran. After all, the 'Chilkat' was a WWII design 100 foot landing craft and not much more modern construction, having been build only ten years after the end of the war.

Dad saw the munitions dump on Okinawa go up when a Japanese sapper snuck in with a satchel charge and touched it off. And his ship shot down one Kamakazi. Mostly he worried a lot about being blown out of the water again. Not that they couldn't see lots of other ships being sunk all around them, but dad had been sunk once and knew the feeling. That was what occurred to me to get me writing this. Dad was skinny as a rail when he got back to the states after that. I think his nerves were shot.

He might have been fairly observant before, but when I was around him he liked looking out to sea and all around. A little like Jesse when he got back from Iraq and stayed with me and Terry for a spell. Any restaurant we would go to he would sit at the corner table with his back to the wall while packing heat. He'd been shot in the middle of the armor on his back once. Dad was just plain full of energy for the most part. I recall him pacing his office while giving an interview, and staying at his cannery office until 11:00 every night all summer to keep track of the tenders and be of assistance to any of his fishing boats. I'll never forget his call sign, 'KWB 91 Petersburg,' and the sound of his voice when he said it. I think there a number of skippers in Petersburg and elsewhere who remember that as well, but they are getting fewer all the time.

In the years leading up to his passing, two years ago in May, he traveled to San Francisco to meet a group of his former shipmates. I read where a group of these ex-LST sailors restored one in Italy and were fixing to run it to the States for fine tuning. Some guys were doing that to a PT boat in Portland recently too. I can really identify with this kind of thing, especially after my floating shipyard work in Alaska's remote Seldovia Bay.

This memorial to Enge family veterans of foreign wars wouldn't be complete without mentioning Dad's brother Arnold, and my brother Arnold named after uncle Arnold. Dad's brother was killed ferrying a defective war-plane to Juneau during the war. He crashed near the airport in Juneau. A tenderman we had when I was running a fish processing plant there, named Ole Nelson, saw it happen. I've talked about this in another blog post. Maybe not the mystery of how he was coming from Sitka with a wheel plane before the runway was completed there. These days you don't even want to mention things like 'military secrets' on the Internet or you'll go on  a watch list, after mentioning one of 667 words or phrases on Homeland Security's super-computer. Oops, I forgot.

Arnold had his own flight school in Ketchikan before the war. He had a Belanca on floats. I sure don't know how he financed it, except the family probably pulled together on it. His dad, my first skipper, was a highline fisherman in Petersburg and in '29 had build the first actual architect-designed home there.. He trained some famous Southeast Alaska pilots like Bub Bodding of Ellis Airlines and Alaska Coastal-Ellis fame. You're talking the predecessor airlines of the iconic Alaska Airlines of the present. There is still a flight jacket of his at Mom's house in Petersburg that I used to use. When I had my Harley-Davidson 250 (not an 1100) in Petersburg in the early '70s, guys liked to call me 'Bronson.' after a TV character who rode a Triumph motorcycle around and did good deeds. (I met a woman here in Southern Oregon whose mother was the leading lady in that TV series.) Small world.

I know more about my brother Arnold's service in the Navy on board the aircraft carrier 'Enterprise' during the Vietnam War. That's a story for another time as well. Here's to all our Veterans, but especially my Dad this Memorial Day week. Maybe someday I can fulfill Dad's wish to put a replica statue of the Navy sailor  in the Memorial Park in Petersburg. And there were a lot of Navy sailors that came  from Petersburg.

Petersburg, post John Enge Sr.

My Dad would have taken the toppling of the big mountain ash tree behind our house in Petersburg in stride, just like my mother did. Dad has been gone a year and a half now and it almost seems like he got off the merry-go-round just in time. Although, he did see the bursting of the derivatives bubble in '08. But to back up a bit, it would have been interesting to hear his take on that typhoon that crossed the Pacific and knocked down the mountain ash tree, and a bunch of others on the Petersburg property they have.

My Mother said it was the worst storm she had seen in her 86 years. She came to Petersburg, Alaska as a 21 year old teacher from Iowa, right after helping make bombers at the Boeing plant in Seattle. Would it have been the worst storm Dad had seen from 1916 on? The only time he wasn't around town was when he captained ships across the Pacific and the Atlantic during WWII, but I never heard about any real wild storms he got into then. Not like Raymond Olsen's father who was in Admiral Halsey's task force when they blundered into that typhoon that sank a number of destroyers.

To put things in perspective a bit, the snow that fell in Central Park in New York City a week and half ago or so was the most accumulation that early since they started keeping records in the 1800s. The blow that took out my mother's big shade tree was on Terry and my anniversary, Sept. 24. Both my brothers, Arnold and Steve, were out on their boats at the time, but they ducked into places with good protection for boats.

Trees have been falling partially because it has been raining non-stop for 90 days in the Petersburg area of Southeast Alaska and the ground is waterlogged. Anybody want to move there? Look at the airline records. People are flying out of there in droves. Most will come back when the weather changes or they run out of money, whichever comes first.

Then Al Stein told me last week that another storm just went through and logged 100 mph winds at Lincoln Rock. What's that all about? But the salmon runs don't seem to be suffering, unless there is too much water in the creeks for the salmon to spawn successfully this fall. The prices were certainly good for salmon this summer.

Speaking of salmon, there is a continuing effort to consolidate the fleet with a buy-back. Don't think my Dad would have appreciated that, being in synch with the canneries in S.E too. The Sitka cold storage seems to be the only one, and it's run by Seattle types. Not a good thing for the communities. Petersburg lost the production from 17 of the top salmon and herring seniers and longliners to that Sitka plant as well. Dad would have had a lot to say about that. The boats being supported by Petersburg's infrastructure and city services and the production going to a competing town. That wasn't the formula that made Petersburg what it is, and isn't what will sustain it.

That movement of big boat owners has a lobbyist who just won't let up. That's about the sum of that. Folks just get worn down terrible listening to him. There was a time when mothers tried to get their kids out of being in his classes in Petersburg's lower grades in school. Part and parcel of the whole financial crisis. I think it's just that modern technology has allowed money to work it's magic even faster in compounding itself. The folks that had some before the tech explosion, they're the ones who's got the most now.

My good friend Jim Hansen, the engineer we brought up to Seldovia to restore the 'Chilkat,' echoes some nice rich folk I saw recently on a Barbara Walters special. One of them said if companies want to sell in the U.S. market, they should make the products here. Another guy said he'd be glad to pay a ton of taxes, if the government wouldn't just fritter it away.

But what Jim was pointing out is that U.S. products like Stihl chainsaws are darn near at the pinnacle of perfection and are affordable, given the amount of work they will do. What need is there to farm that out to Malaysia, for example? Another notion that has started up is making your own Christmas presents. For us here in the Rogue Valley it was easy to use Petersburg technology to crank out a quick five cases of grape 'jammy.' That's a cross between jelly and jam that we do. All natural great flavor. You can almost put a dollop on the side of any chicken dish for a little garnish and sweetening.

And I think Dad would be proud to have Joe Upton's upcoming book on canneries dedicated to him. Joe has been around Petersburg and on the 'net doing research for it. I'm sure he'll get plenty of grist for his word-mill from Petersburg folk. Some might remember him as the author of seafaring and guide books for tourists traveling to Southeast Alaska. And before that, Dad and I recruited him to run a tender for Whitney-Fidalgo Seafoods. He's owned a few commercial boats himself too.

What else has happened in the year and a half since Dad left? Three of his grandsons have distinguished themselves to the point of mass-media coverage of their individual exploits in defense of their country, or at least in low-pay, brutally trained high-risk service to their country. Even though war veterans like Dad weren't too hot on war. Dad said he didn't even want to talk about it anymore.

But my boys loved Dad a lot and were enthralled by his service record, and there is no changing an Enge's mind once it's made up. Gotta love that Norwegian tenacity. I'm sure you that know us Enges will agree on that one. We went in slightly predictable ways, but with definite individual flair, marked with courage and persistence. You can tell I'm getting professional at bragging on my boys these days. LOL

Eratta for the new year

The aches and pains from having too much fun in Petersburg in August are finally gone. But I refuse to believe that a 61 year old shouldn't be able to put a row-boat on the roof of a car and then toss it in the water later by himself. And trying to set a speed record rowing it. I'd be willing to bet I forget my age the next time I want to go rowing in Petersburg as well. However, I figured that I might mount an electric trolling motor on my replica of our old Davis skiff next time, just for the sake of going further afield. Strictly an efficiency measure of course.

I'm thinking now of exploring as many nooks and crannies of the shoreline as possible. I first thought of the islands at the mouth of the Stikine river at high tide. I could throw the skiff in the water at the end of Mitkof Highway and then it's only a half mile across. Fall with a shotgun comes to mind as well. But anytime I think with such silent travel, it might be surprising how much wildlife one might find to view and photograph. And such stealth is not lost on king salmon in the spring, dragging a bait behind the boat.

Poking around like that it's easy to check the water temperature and on a sunny day after the tide has come in over a big tide-flat, there is great swimming to be had up in the sloughs. Which brings to mind going up Petersburg Creek with our parents when we were real small. Like in maybe we could see over the side of the skiff if we didn't fall off the seat. (That happened to my brother Arnold, in Pelican when they were getting ready to go Nagoonberry picking in Phonograph Cove. He got soaked in the bilge and delayed the whole outing.)

Anyway, I remember dad anchoring the speedboat and both parents abandoning us little squirts by diving off the bow. Is all I remember of the whole episode is the diving part, but I doubt we were in much jeopardy of falling over and I don't think mom and dad swam very far from the boat either. The water can get quite warm in the sloughs of Petersburg creek on a hot summer afternoon. But it's a rare phenomenon. But that's one of the charms of living in Petersburg. Natural phenomenon abounds: it's just a matter of knowing when they might happen and positioning yourself accordingly.

Speaking of that, and seining for humpies, we were batting around the big set that Tom Rustad made that yielded 55,000 fish. The matter was resolved when Linda Reeser, a bookkeeper at Whitney-Fidalgo Seafoods in Petersburg, had her new husband, Tom Rustad the second, provide the facts. The set was definitely made at Ann Ann Creek south of Wrangell and the year was '49 or '50. I suppositioned that it was in 1949 because that was the year I was born and my father was too busy with record runs of salmon as a fish buyer in Pelican to bother with baby-being-born stuff.

The story I heard was that when there is such a mass of fish schooled up near a spawning stream, they will swim in a circle with a hole in the middle. Tom set in the direct path of the swimming fish and ended up filling one tender after another. Understanding this natural phenomenon served him well. I heard someone else was in this kind of position, however he didn't understand the phenomenon as well and round hauled the hole in the middle and made a skunk set.

The natural runs around Petersburg aren't anywhere near what they used to be, but it sure is nice to see such large individual salmon return like last year. In some of the streams there is only a remnant of the run left. Since there is still some degree of catch per unit of effort remaining, the commercial fisheries are left open, but they are mostly the sum of the remnant runs. They could use some of the incubator boxes http://vimeo.com/5314044 that are being deployed in B.C., Washington, and now in Oregon.

My new 'indicator creek' is Sumner Creek down the Woodpecker Cove road. The creeks just plain need more help than what they are getting. More natural runs just keep getting skinnier. You see all sorts of game hogs in the creeks too. I've seen dynamite used on fish in Alaska just like it has been used down here in Oregon. For some people it isn't about the food supply or the enjoyment of fishing at all. And catch and release is political suicide for politicians. Just say'n.