Friday, August 5, 2011

Best hug ever



It’s funny how something can trigger a memory of what seems like a totally unrelated event. I went to see the new Harry Potter tonight, in Imax even. In the second to last scene, where Harry throws Voldemort’s wand into the abyss and walks away, Hermione and Ron stand and watch him go. (No spoiler alert necessary, that’s all that will be said.) I had the strangest feeling she was going to run after him and jump on his back in celebration, just like someone did to me many years ago. Wait. What?

Wow there it was. It would have been the summer of 1981. I was running a small charter boat on Prince William Sound, working out of Whittier. Early in the summer, I met a wonderful woman and hired her as crew. What impressed me? Only in Alaska. On the charter where I met her we were taking a friend of hers out to an island to spend at least a month observing pigeon guillemots, a shy shorebird. To do it she had a small inflatable and an outboard motor and to run the motor she needed fuel. Here’s one of those lift solutions. She wanted a full 55 gallon drum but I knew we would never lift a full drum off the boat. The solution was two drums half full. Those we could lift, toss overboard and float them to shore.

After we arrived at the island we helped the scientist load all her gear ashore and then went to the fuel barrels. This woman and I prepared to lift one. Figure the drum and 25 gallons of fuel weigh something over 200 pounds. So, this woman and I got a grip and I was prepared for a heavy load. That drum came up so easily it surprised me. I looked at her and I could swear she smirked. I fell in love right there. All the way back I schemed how I could see more of her as we chatted a little. It turned out she didn’t have a job and was kind of looking around. It turned out I didn’t have a crew person and I was kind of looking around.

It took a call to the owner but he was all for it, and there we were. As the summer progressed we grew closer and closer. There are several stories but this is about the hug.

The previous winter I had been sending my first book manuscript to various publishers and receiving it back only to send it out again. I mailed it one last time before I headed back to the boat in the spring and checked the mail religiously the twice a week it arrived in Whittier. The rejections may sound depressing but I had read about a writer who said, “naw, every day I go to the post office and my book is accepted. Only once is it rejected and I have all those days of acceptance. I send it out again and then approach each day with optimism and dreams of acceptance.”

We came in from a trip late on a mail day and while she stayed and cleaned the boat, I raced to the post office. I was standing there in the small room filled with people waiting for their mail while the postmaster, I remember his name as Cowboy, called out names. Whittier is a small town after all.
He called my name and handed me a normal letter-sized envelope. It was from a publisher. This wasn’t a returned manuscript. This was a letter. I knew what that meant and let out a whoop. Cowboy who knew what I was looking for asked if that was it. I think so, I think so. Others in the room knew also and pretty soon there were cheers and jumping up and down going on. I remember a very short tourist woman tugging at my sleeve and then asking anybody who might know, what is it? what is it? Somebody said, “It’s his book.” Sometime in that melee she actually asked me to sign an autograph, my first.

This was going to take a celebration and I was not going to do that alone. I probably half flew back to the boat. People were driving past me honking and waving, giving thumbs up.

It was less than half a mile to the boat and I think I did it in seconds; it felt like it anyway. I hopped onto the boat and hollered for her and told her what happened. At this point I realized I had not opened the letter yet. We opened it together and sure enough it was an acceptance. I was officially a writer, there it was in mauve and green (woman publisher).

A couple of people stopped by as we gathered our things to go up to the bar for that celebration we knew was about to happen. There were five or six of us in a group heading toward the bar. Rain had begun falling while we were on the boat. It is understatement to say it rains a lot in Whittier so this was barely noticeable.

Somehow I remember I was talking with someone as we walked and she had ended up walking behind me. I was pretty happy and was probably close to that bubbling we hear about. Suddenly I heard what could only be called a growl behind me, then something hit me hard in the back and an arm went around my shoulders and neck. She hit me so hard we both went down in the wet and the muck and she never let go. I managed to twist and throw my arms around her as well and we laughed and rolled around in pure wet muddy joy. The best hug ever.

That still didn’t stop us from spending several hours celebrating with the rest of our friends. The letter was passed up and down the bar for everyone to read, beers were drunk, songs were sung hugs were exchanged. Memories of the later hours of the evening have disappeared into a haze, but given our proclivities during our time together, I am quite positive it had a happy ending.

The book was published a year later, but sadly the relationship didn’t last that long. Over the winter I had to go someplace alone and quiet to do the rewrites and revisions and she had to go back to her home and straighten out life and a former boy friend and we drifted apart. If you have been reading this blog, it was she who led me to call the bar Key Largo.

In the 1990s I learned she and her more recent husband had been flying from a claim they worked near Yakutat back to their home in Kenai and were lost over the Gulf of Alaska, never to be heard from again. It’s a sadness I carry when I think about her now and then, like when it looks like Hermione is going to jump onto Harry’s back in celebration.

The photo is a pigeon guillemot stolen from Wikipedia
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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?"

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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”

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Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

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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

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Sports malaprops

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"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

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This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

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Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

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"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

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