There’s an old line here that Anchorage is the closest big city to Alaska. This refers to Anchorage being more of a city and headed in a cosmopolitan direction, but still claims Alaska roots and just over the mountain there is Alaska. The divergence has grown over the years and the other day I came across a minute but telling example of how that works. A snowblower has a shear bolt that holds the snow-churning rotors to the axels. The idea is when the rotors are stopped by an obstruction, the bolt breaks rather than more expensive parts. So, I broke one. I went to the Honda dealer in Anchorage. Now this is a modern store with lots of glass, machines all over the place and lots of gear to sell. While Honda equipment is popular in Alaska because of its reliability, this new store emphasizes motorcycles and high-end four-wheelers rather than the nuts and bolts of generators, snowblowers and working heavy duty four wheelers. So, I went there to replace the shear bolt. The parts desk takes up a tiny area in a massive showroom. It is even difficult to find among the $20,000 motorcycles and mannequins clothed in the latest leathers. I told the guy what I wanted and he looked at me quizzically, Then he got out a book with a blowup picture of my model snowblower. I showed him where the bolt went. But he couldn’t find anything like it after searching through a multi drawer cabinet. We finally guessed one particular bolt was the right one, so I bought it. Of course when I got home, it was not the right one.
I put this off for a while, not really enthusiastic about returning to that store. The other day I made a trip in another direction and realizing I was going to pass the other Honda dealer around here, I planned a stop, even took another shear bolt off the machine to take with me for comparison.
Mind you this is an old building, one story, been there forever and needs a coat of paint. Much of the display inventory is outside during the day. A few of the popular sellers have special places indoors. The parts department has two entrances, two people working there and a long L-shaped display case/counter. A young man finally waited on me.. He looked maybe late teens, but was probably well into his 20s. I told him I wanted a shear bolt for my model snowblower and started to pull my sample out of my pocket. He said, “Oh I always keep a box of those right here this time of year.” He turned, reached under the counter into a battered cardboard box, in the process asking me how many I wanted. I said four and had them in my hand, all in about two minutes.
I had to smile. realizing in this place I was much closer to Alaska than I had been in that modern showroom in Anchorage.
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Memorable quotations
The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.
"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent
"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger
"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend
A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader
“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May
“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.― Kurt Vonnegut
“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”―Stephen King
The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"
"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”
Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.
Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently
My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter
Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.
"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN
Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?
My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.
I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry
I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"
“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper
Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka
We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again
If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle
Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."
If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin
It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell
You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”
If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both
If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that
I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill
German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”
Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”
Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem
Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center
One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan
Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends
It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson
3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes
Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”
You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming
He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama
Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker
“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500
Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla
“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti
“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places
As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again
Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting
Each day do something that won’t compute – anon
I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration
Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”
You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer
Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama
Sports malaprops
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Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey
Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank
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