In the mid 80s I met a beautiful woman. We flirted for a while, but we never really connected romantically. We liked each other, though, still do. During this time she was clearing out a lot of household stuff as she prepared to go teach in a Bush village. Because I was living winters at the East Pole at the time, she gave me a chainsaw she didn’t need any more. A few years later, she met a good friend of mine. I cannot truly remember if I introduced them or not but I like to think I did. No matter. They were married and have two beautiful daughters. They live an interesting life, part remote, part not. They live close enough to town to work there, but off the grid, so have no electricity, or running water. As a result they burn wood for heat. One night her husband and I were having a beer. As I said, friends, we have been hanging around on boats together for years and were telling sea stories until he started talking about putting wood in for the winter and how he didn’t really have a good saw for the job. Somehow the subject of the chainsaw his wife had given me came up and I realized this was becoming a broad hint to return it. I listened for a while, nodding my head until it finally got to be too much. I looked at him and said, “Look, you can have any of my women you want. But, this is Alaska and I am keeping the damned chainsaw.”
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