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.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Thursday, May 31, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
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
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
Sunday, January 9, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, November 29, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
A Petersburg Co-op?
The 'One Minute Manager' is in a 'safe place' so I can't get a chapter heading out of it for a title for this post. I'll rename the post if the book ever becomes 'not so safe' and shows up around the house. I do have a major correction having to do with the name of this whole blog. My mother informed me that the Pastime Cafe has indeed always been in the very same place as the later Homestead Cafe, and now the Trident mess hall. And that the cafe I was referring to across from the Mitkof Hotel was called the 'Recreation.' Jeez, these young whippersnappers don't know a thing.
My sincerest apologies to the past patrons of Petersburg's iconic cafe and unofficial city council chambers. And business incubator, and mental health center, and perpetual political caucus. You just couldn't get a majority of the councilors together at one table, or one would have to leave, although that wasn't the way it always was. Just the way it was at the end before Trident Seafoods bought it. Nowadays I see more clusters of people standing around talking on the floats or docks, gathered in a pilot house, or in the Harbormaster's shack.
Which leads me to mention that my mother is advancing my sister's idea of gathering community support for another regular cafe, since there isn't one now in downtown Petersburg. The spark for it didn't come from this blog, but from the need of a local woman who lost a son to join the land of the living again and go to work. A win-win situation. Could the Economic Development Fund be used? Well, of course not. And certainly not to help a respected citizen get back on her feet. That just doesn't compute. I raised two kids in wheelchairs and believe me, there is always a hitch in getting help.
The existing EDF monies can only be used by a not-for-profit organization. Meaning it won't be successful and the EDF will have to be hit up again to bail projects out. They might not have ever seen a crusader as determined as my mother though. After all, she raised us three hellions and two gentle-ladies. And she has been on half the committees in town and got out the book 'Petersburg Profiles.' The P.P. is used all the time in Petersburg to see who is related to who, by those who don't readily accept that everyone is related to everyone else, and is simply referred to as 'The Book.'
When the restaurant in Petersburg burned down early in the 20th century, my great-grandfather Rasmus, decided to build another so the town wouldn't die out without one. Hence the 'Enge Building' on Sing Lee Alley. It was a great story, as little white lies usually are, but my mother had a different story and probably the correct one. Rasmus wanted a place to provide female company to his wife Anna, the first white woman to settle in Petersburg. After all, when they came to Petersburg from a 'worst winter ever' in a log cabin to prove up Bushmann's claim in Sitkoh Bay, Anna cried on seeing only "one watchman and two Indians on the beach." The cafe in the bottom floor was a win-win for Anna and Petersburg. In the distant past, you didn't hear as much "screwing up the simplest things" going on.
I've maintained for some time that you run the risk of ruin by changing the model of the successful fishing port by moving the key infrastructure out of the downtown district. Then if you want to apply the coup de gras, close up the restaurants. Petersburg has done just that. The population has already dropped by one sixth.
What else is going on? The older wood boats in the harbor, like the 'Betty,' the 'Baranof,' the 'Silver Crest,' the 'Jerry O,' and the 'Duwam,' are looking mighty good. Although there was a troll opening under way and a lot of nice wood trollers were fishing so I didn't get pictures of them. There was always a Petersburg culture of taking good care of the boats, and a good shipyard to help. As well as a culture of getting bigger and bigger boats. I think those are two different cultures though.
The old 'Vesta' that was 'retired' in Thomas Bay in the '70s I noticed is deteriorated down to an engine block and a few ribs. It was the Lee family boat, and before it got too bad Scott Hersey cut out the name on the stern and mounted it and gave it to Harold Lee. Harold's mother was one of the women hired to help my great-grandmother run the restaurant in the bottom of the Enge Building long ago. One of the Lee girls was telling me they are now the proud owners of a sister peapod to my row-boat. That makes five of them in Petersburg now, plenty enough for a row boat race next Norwegian Independence Day celebration there. I told her I'd see her at the races. Although I'm a little loath to go up against her longliner husband. I might have to bring in a ringer, heh, heh.
Getting Glorianne as Harbormaster was a real score. I think the consensus among fishermen is that her name be put in for Alaska Harbormaster of the Year. It's only a matter of concern to harbor users. When the Governor's brother applied for the job, the City Manager was politely advised by the retiring dock boss to "either hire Glo or pack your bags." That's the way to cut through the politics and get something done right. That right there made my day.
Lots of money in Petersburg these days with the sale of Icicle Seafoods, and many of the shareholders being Petersburg ones. All except me maybe. My stock disappeared somehow not long after I set up and ran a buying station for them one time. It would be a good time to form a co-op with all that philanthropic goodness in the air, from fishermen who invested in a plant to help a town. They started the Medford Co-op down here to sell food, why not a Petersburg Co-op to sell food?
My sincerest apologies to the past patrons of Petersburg's iconic cafe and unofficial city council chambers. And business incubator, and mental health center, and perpetual political caucus. You just couldn't get a majority of the councilors together at one table, or one would have to leave, although that wasn't the way it always was. Just the way it was at the end before Trident Seafoods bought it. Nowadays I see more clusters of people standing around talking on the floats or docks, gathered in a pilot house, or in the Harbormaster's shack.
Which leads me to mention that my mother is advancing my sister's idea of gathering community support for another regular cafe, since there isn't one now in downtown Petersburg. The spark for it didn't come from this blog, but from the need of a local woman who lost a son to join the land of the living again and go to work. A win-win situation. Could the Economic Development Fund be used? Well, of course not. And certainly not to help a respected citizen get back on her feet. That just doesn't compute. I raised two kids in wheelchairs and believe me, there is always a hitch in getting help.
The existing EDF monies can only be used by a not-for-profit organization. Meaning it won't be successful and the EDF will have to be hit up again to bail projects out. They might not have ever seen a crusader as determined as my mother though. After all, she raised us three hellions and two gentle-ladies. And she has been on half the committees in town and got out the book 'Petersburg Profiles.' The P.P. is used all the time in Petersburg to see who is related to who, by those who don't readily accept that everyone is related to everyone else, and is simply referred to as 'The Book.'
When the restaurant in Petersburg burned down early in the 20th century, my great-grandfather Rasmus, decided to build another so the town wouldn't die out without one. Hence the 'Enge Building' on Sing Lee Alley. It was a great story, as little white lies usually are, but my mother had a different story and probably the correct one. Rasmus wanted a place to provide female company to his wife Anna, the first white woman to settle in Petersburg. After all, when they came to Petersburg from a 'worst winter ever' in a log cabin to prove up Bushmann's claim in Sitkoh Bay, Anna cried on seeing only "one watchman and two Indians on the beach." The cafe in the bottom floor was a win-win for Anna and Petersburg. In the distant past, you didn't hear as much "screwing up the simplest things" going on.
I've maintained for some time that you run the risk of ruin by changing the model of the successful fishing port by moving the key infrastructure out of the downtown district. Then if you want to apply the coup de gras, close up the restaurants. Petersburg has done just that. The population has already dropped by one sixth.
What else is going on? The older wood boats in the harbor, like the 'Betty,' the 'Baranof,' the 'Silver Crest,' the 'Jerry O,' and the 'Duwam,' are looking mighty good. Although there was a troll opening under way and a lot of nice wood trollers were fishing so I didn't get pictures of them. There was always a Petersburg culture of taking good care of the boats, and a good shipyard to help. As well as a culture of getting bigger and bigger boats. I think those are two different cultures though.
The old 'Vesta' that was 'retired' in Thomas Bay in the '70s I noticed is deteriorated down to an engine block and a few ribs. It was the Lee family boat, and before it got too bad Scott Hersey cut out the name on the stern and mounted it and gave it to Harold Lee. Harold's mother was one of the women hired to help my great-grandmother run the restaurant in the bottom of the Enge Building long ago. One of the Lee girls was telling me they are now the proud owners of a sister peapod to my row-boat. That makes five of them in Petersburg now, plenty enough for a row boat race next Norwegian Independence Day celebration there. I told her I'd see her at the races. Although I'm a little loath to go up against her longliner husband. I might have to bring in a ringer, heh, heh.
Getting Glorianne as Harbormaster was a real score. I think the consensus among fishermen is that her name be put in for Alaska Harbormaster of the Year. It's only a matter of concern to harbor users. When the Governor's brother applied for the job, the City Manager was politely advised by the retiring dock boss to "either hire Glo or pack your bags." That's the way to cut through the politics and get something done right. That right there made my day.
Lots of money in Petersburg these days with the sale of Icicle Seafoods, and many of the shareholders being Petersburg ones. All except me maybe. My stock disappeared somehow not long after I set up and ran a buying station for them one time. It would be a good time to form a co-op with all that philanthropic goodness in the air, from fishermen who invested in a plant to help a town. They started the Medford Co-op down here to sell food, why not a Petersburg Co-op to sell food?
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Sourdoughs
"The final solution is supposed to be the relief wells BP is drilling, and on the day I realized even these might not arrest the blowout, I decided to stop thinking about it all." This is how I feel about all the bad news of continuing foreclosures, unemployment, corporate personhood, consolidation, genetically altered food, fish farming's effect on natural runs of salmon, ex-Treasury Secretary Rubin, and on and on.
There is plenty of good commentary on these things, yet somehow nothing ever gets done to remedy them. We are back to the pre-Great Depression days of the wealth being consolidated in only a couple percent of the population. But the momentum is in their favor. I can hear all the "Oooops" coming from Washington D.C. Not all by accident either. And talking about all that isn't my intent here. I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee in peace.
In fact I've been planning all summer to visit Petersburg for 9 days starting on Aug. 24. I'm hoping to get out in a skiff and show Terry a whale, camp out in a Forest Service cabin and in general forget about strategic planning for awhile.
On the brighter side, I found that I was allergic to wheat and caffeine. I'm serious. Since cutting those out, I can hike up Crater Lake Mountain like walking down the block. Wow! What a difference. My sinuses cleared up as well. There's a guy I know who does muscle testing and can simply (and inexpensively) find out what you're allergic to. Jesse had been a skeptic of this for a long time, but he's eating fresh spelt bread with me and has become a believer. I can even do quadratic equations in my head now. Just kidding.
The big question is, where should I go around Petersburg to catch a coho or something. The choices are many. I just don't know how the runs are faring in all the creeks. They have been trending downward ever since I was a kid, when my rubber shoe pacs almost came up to my knees. (That was before xtra-Tuffs by the way) I would like to try Castle River if for nothing but the solitude and memories of camping there in the sixties.
I suppose I'd better bring warm clothes. It got down to 80 yesterday and it felt like a cold snap. Back to high ninetys and low 100s for the next week I hear. I'm going to only use a fly rod, unless I see some cohos jumping out in salt water, then it's Flash-N-Glo time, baby.
The best news is that just today, that old salt, John Finley of Kodiak, gave me his sourdough pancake recipe. For his bread flour, he uses equal measures of millet, flax(less of this), oats, barley, and buckwheat. For pancakes he just uses millet, oats, and buckwheat, or spelt I suggested. He says that making sourdoughs is like sprouting the grain berries first. I've heard before that sprouting is a good thing. I told him I'd trade some of my planned crabapple wine for some of his planned gooseberry wine.
Hopefully the deer can be kept away from my mother's gooseberries. I'm not sure if that is possible though. Well, we'll get some red huckleberries for her to make us a pie or two I'm sure. I'd better check around the old house there to see if I can repair anything too. Sure have been no lack of projects. I just calculated that the family house is eighty years old now. It was built the year of the stock market crash, in 1929. My grandmother went to work for the steam laundry in Petersburg to try save the house from the bank, but it was the laundry owner who came to the rescue, out of her generosity.
I'm sure all this has been written about before. Before WWII, the newspaper editor interviewed the family for a long series on their lives in Petersburg from the start of the town. So, if all goes well, I'll be packing my new LED headlamp for the trip north soon.
There is plenty of good commentary on these things, yet somehow nothing ever gets done to remedy them. We are back to the pre-Great Depression days of the wealth being consolidated in only a couple percent of the population. But the momentum is in their favor. I can hear all the "Oooops" coming from Washington D.C. Not all by accident either. And talking about all that isn't my intent here. I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee in peace.
In fact I've been planning all summer to visit Petersburg for 9 days starting on Aug. 24. I'm hoping to get out in a skiff and show Terry a whale, camp out in a Forest Service cabin and in general forget about strategic planning for awhile.
On the brighter side, I found that I was allergic to wheat and caffeine. I'm serious. Since cutting those out, I can hike up Crater Lake Mountain like walking down the block. Wow! What a difference. My sinuses cleared up as well. There's a guy I know who does muscle testing and can simply (and inexpensively) find out what you're allergic to. Jesse had been a skeptic of this for a long time, but he's eating fresh spelt bread with me and has become a believer. I can even do quadratic equations in my head now. Just kidding.
The big question is, where should I go around Petersburg to catch a coho or something. The choices are many. I just don't know how the runs are faring in all the creeks. They have been trending downward ever since I was a kid, when my rubber shoe pacs almost came up to my knees. (That was before xtra-Tuffs by the way) I would like to try Castle River if for nothing but the solitude and memories of camping there in the sixties.
I suppose I'd better bring warm clothes. It got down to 80 yesterday and it felt like a cold snap. Back to high ninetys and low 100s for the next week I hear. I'm going to only use a fly rod, unless I see some cohos jumping out in salt water, then it's Flash-N-Glo time, baby.
The best news is that just today, that old salt, John Finley of Kodiak, gave me his sourdough pancake recipe. For his bread flour, he uses equal measures of millet, flax(less of this), oats, barley, and buckwheat. For pancakes he just uses millet, oats, and buckwheat, or spelt I suggested. He says that making sourdoughs is like sprouting the grain berries first. I've heard before that sprouting is a good thing. I told him I'd trade some of my planned crabapple wine for some of his planned gooseberry wine.
Hopefully the deer can be kept away from my mother's gooseberries. I'm not sure if that is possible though. Well, we'll get some red huckleberries for her to make us a pie or two I'm sure. I'd better check around the old house there to see if I can repair anything too. Sure have been no lack of projects. I just calculated that the family house is eighty years old now. It was built the year of the stock market crash, in 1929. My grandmother went to work for the steam laundry in Petersburg to try save the house from the bank, but it was the laundry owner who came to the rescue, out of her generosity.
I'm sure all this has been written about before. Before WWII, the newspaper editor interviewed the family for a long series on their lives in Petersburg from the start of the town. So, if all goes well, I'll be packing my new LED headlamp for the trip north soon.
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