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.

The Old Ski Hill

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.

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?

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.