I must be getting old if I can post one of my own pics from "Back In The Day."
Went through a bunch of old photos over the weekend. Found some that were hunting and fishing.
This one struck me, as I was almost 13 and spent a summer fishing on my Grandfather's halibut long liner in southeast Alaska. Kind of started my infatuation with Alaska.
Every kid should get sent to Alaska for a summer when he is 12 or 13, instructed to do nothing other than fish and investigate all the place has to offer. Do so in the household of your mother's parents who have already raised eight of their own kids and have no energy for worrying about the mischief you might get into and what danger you escaped from without their knowledge. In the process, you will climb mountains, get lost, try to kill ptarmigan with rocks, figure out how to trap sea-run cutthroat, catch more Dolly Varden than your arms want to reel in, and if you are really lucky, your grandfather will own a commercial fishing boat and you get to spend two months baiting halibut hooks on what you think is the "high seas."
You will be innocent enough that when called the "Master Baiter" by your youngest uncles, you smile proudly that you have been provided a title that you think is an official position on the boat. Finally, your Grandfather will tell your uncles to stop calling you that name, though your naivety leaves you confused why he is fed up with it. You are then given the name "Big Fin" as part of your Finnish ancestry on your father's side, which to your mother's Norwegian family is more derogatory than your prior title.
You will see the inside of Rosie's at Tenakee Springs, the nightly fist fights of Pelican, the pleasures of Hoonah and Angoon (not sure there are any), and pretty much every harbor pub from Haines to Petersburg. You learn a little about fishing and a lot about hard work.
In the process, you will catch more creatures of the sea than you ever thought existed. You will learn that working from daylight to dark has a different meaning in Alaska. You will become proficient at cussing and take detailed notes of the adult jokes that make others laugh loudest. You hope you never see another frozen herring and learn the true meaning of recycling by using all the scrap fish and fish scraps to bait the next set.
Mostly, you will thank your lucky stars that your mother was clueless as to what dangers the summer held, as she would have never let you go and indulge in such adult fun, had she known.
One of the smaller slabs of that summer.
Went through a bunch of old photos over the weekend. Found some that were hunting and fishing.
This one struck me, as I was almost 13 and spent a summer fishing on my Grandfather's halibut long liner in southeast Alaska. Kind of started my infatuation with Alaska.
Every kid should get sent to Alaska for a summer when he is 12 or 13, instructed to do nothing other than fish and investigate all the place has to offer. Do so in the household of your mother's parents who have already raised eight of their own kids and have no energy for worrying about the mischief you might get into and what danger you escaped from without their knowledge. In the process, you will climb mountains, get lost, try to kill ptarmigan with rocks, figure out how to trap sea-run cutthroat, catch more Dolly Varden than your arms want to reel in, and if you are really lucky, your grandfather will own a commercial fishing boat and you get to spend two months baiting halibut hooks on what you think is the "high seas."
You will be innocent enough that when called the "Master Baiter" by your youngest uncles, you smile proudly that you have been provided a title that you think is an official position on the boat. Finally, your Grandfather will tell your uncles to stop calling you that name, though your naivety leaves you confused why he is fed up with it. You are then given the name "Big Fin" as part of your Finnish ancestry on your father's side, which to your mother's Norwegian family is more derogatory than your prior title.
You will see the inside of Rosie's at Tenakee Springs, the nightly fist fights of Pelican, the pleasures of Hoonah and Angoon (not sure there are any), and pretty much every harbor pub from Haines to Petersburg. You learn a little about fishing and a lot about hard work.
In the process, you will catch more creatures of the sea than you ever thought existed. You will learn that working from daylight to dark has a different meaning in Alaska. You will become proficient at cussing and take detailed notes of the adult jokes that make others laugh loudest. You hope you never see another frozen herring and learn the true meaning of recycling by using all the scrap fish and fish scraps to bait the next set.
Mostly, you will thank your lucky stars that your mother was clueless as to what dangers the summer held, as she would have never let you go and indulge in such adult fun, had she known.
One of the smaller slabs of that summer.
