Dec 29, 2007 12:34 am165 Views
As I am lucky enough to have chatted with a couple more folks lately, as always I feel compelled to share what I feel like makes/has made me the way I am. One thing that keeps coming up is Alaska and the time I spent there. So, I'll put it out there for anybody who wants to read to make myself more apparent, and hey, I STILL dig talking about that place and time, so much so that, it doesn't make me feel like an old fucker the way it usually does when I recall being young and cool.
Spring 1988:As a college junior at Samford University, I met a girl who was from Valdez, Alaska. This little town of about 2500 people was where the Alaska pipeline ended, and on the ocean, I learned.In addition to her being my first 'real' girlfriend, the stories about life up there positively mesmerized me.My first job when I was 16 was working at a grocery store. My girl said that was a hard job for the Valdez Market to keep filled in summer.
As I am lucky enough to have chatted with a couple more folks lately, as always I feel compelled to share what I feel like makes/has made me the way I am. One thing that keeps coming up is Alaska and the time I spent there. So, I'll put it out there for anybody who wants to read to make myself more apparent, and hey, I STILL dig talking about that place and time, so much so that, it doesn't make me feel like an old fucker the way it usually does when I recall being young and cool.
Spring 1988:As a college junior at Samford University, I met a girl who was from Valdez, Alaska. This little town of about 2500 people was where the Alaska pipeline ended, and on the ocean, I learned.In addition to her being my first 'real' girlfriend, the stories about life up there positively mesmerized me.My first job when I was 16 was working at a grocery store. My girl said that was a hard job for the Valdez Market to keep filled in summer.
Being head over heels in LOVE, and lured by the promise of $8 hour pay (a shitpile of $ for stocking shelves and running a register back then) I went with her when the semester ended. Once she was back home, and I was 3,000 miles away from mine, in 5 or 6 weeks my girl decided she wasn't so much in need of a boyfriend, after all. I had purchased a round-trip ticket, and despite my predictable emotional response to being dumped, I fought back with resolve and determination to make the most of the rest of the summer.
They liked me at the store, which made things bearable. I worked 10 at night to 6 in the morning, and pretty much had things to myself, working the way I wanted to get stuff done, such as filling grocery orders for fishing vessels, merchant vessels, and oil tankers in port, one of which included T/V Exxon Valdez. My experience at my job made me a couple of buddies at work, one twice my age, the other younger than me, but both were way, way ahead of me in the Fun-Having Department. At that point in my wanna-be hippie life, I thought it fun to get high on weed once in a while, in a casual stoner kind of way.
Back then, weed was LEGAL in Alaska, which did not take long for me to discover. Not only was it legal, the pot was of extraordinarily high quality, every single time--'dirt weed' did not exist there. So, I found out that getting high and staying high all day on just a little tiny bit of weed was a pretty fucking cool way to be. And yes, since it's daylight from 4:30 in the morning to about 10:30 at night...what the hell, I'll have me a beer too!By the time my return flight date arrived, I was pretty damn close to being happy and quite well-rounded.Then school got started back, and I got deep into my history studies with good grades to show for it...always did well at classes I loved. Having been told by professors whom I respected that my history and political science major would do little in the way of making me a living, I took their advice, and changed my major to secondary education with the aim of making my way as a history teacher.When social opportunities became available... I was equally well-adjusted. It was quite the revelation to learn that yes, indeed, there were girls around who liked partying with guys like me, and hooking up with no intention of it going any further than that!!! A year before, I would have argued to no end that I was too serious about giving my heart about the woman of my dreams yada yada yada...funny how getting dumped 3000 miles from home will get a man over that point of view, isn't it? Baptist preachers got to send their children to Samford tuition-free....so it soon became apparent that a sufficiently-motivated young man could have his choice of preacher's daughters willing to defy all they had been taught, any night of the week! That discovery greatly accelerated my sexual self-actualization...for example, over the course of a semester, I met and eventually dated each of three sisters whose names were Faith, Hope and Charity....but that's another story for another post LOL
March 15, 1989...I promptly used my income tax refund check to buy another plane ticket for summer in Valdez, by myself this time, knowing a whole hell of a lot more than I did the first time.March 24, 1989..with its captain passed-out drunk after visiting the bar across from the grocery store at which I worked...tanker vessel Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound just a few miles west of Valdez, spilling millions of barrels of crude oil, as most of ye few blog readers can remember seeing on the news.I called the store where I had already been promised my summer job back, and asked if they still needed me. They said YES, please come back, we can't keep help since everyone in town is out working the spill, so we'll pay you $12 an hour instead of $8, and can you get here any sooner?Thus began one of the most hedonistic blurs in all my days. I camped out for 4 months of summer due to the lack of housing...population of town jumped up to about 8,000 after the spill. So I lived rent-free, didn't have and didn't need a car, no utility bills, and the store's deli fed me 3 meals a day as a perk.
The bar across the street from the store closed at 6 AM, the same time we clocked out, and reopened at 7 AM, which gave us time to eat deli chow and smoke funny looking cigarettes on the parking bench in front of the store, waiting for the bar to open.Jobs on the spill started at $16.60 an hour, for those with a valid Social Security number and a pulse, working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with a week off every three weeks. Those with any sort of skill or trade whatsoever could earn to 5 to 7 times that rate of pay.
Cocaine, while never my thing, flooded town beyond belief. At the store, we could not keep in stock baking soda and Chore Boy scrub pads...this being right before crack hit, folks had to cook their own freebase, I was told.Every other type of craziness associated with way too many people with way too much money also flooded town. I was still the wannabe hippy pothead in all this, but I tasted crazy time once in a while. Bought a lot of drinks for people I did not know, just because they bought me a drink first.
There was the one night a big fat dude sent over shots of Yukon Jack, grinning like a possum, so after a while we sent the waitress back over to him and his friends with a couple pitchers, along with a joint rolled full of Matanuska Thunderfuck. They grinned some more and next thing we knew, all of us were standing out back puffing down and talking about what had us busy, what we were doing there, etc. The big dude said he and his buds had a band, and had just gotten a record deal, and were visiting Alaska to celebrate. Sure man, that's cool, what kinda music do you play? Blues, I guess, depending on who you ask...but we are just here to have a killer time right now and DAMN that is some kickass pot where did you get that yada yada yada....before dude and his friends left they gave me a tape with handwritten labels, sure enough it said blues.It was not until spring 1990 that I finally dug out that tape and checked the other side of the label....it said Blues Traveler...hmmm well that's cool...it was another year before I actually 'heard' of those dudes I'd met and puffed down with.
Summer of 89 got gone with the blur still roaring by, I had to get back to Samford and give them all my not-so-hard-earned cash. It lasted a year or so, coinciding with me deciding that I did not want be a school teacher in the spring of 1990.
Stayed stoned and bored and slinging pizzas until 1992, when one of my equally stoned and bored good friends said he wanted to go to Valdez that summer. I'd known Mike since 89, and had told him how cool Valdez was, and he had spent summer of 1990 there by himself. He had it in his blood, too.The two of us and a friend of mine from Pell City who intended to move to Seattle drove his Toyota pickup from Pell City to Dallas to Denver to Seattle that May. Made it on 9 tanks of gas (3 tanks per dude) Mike and I flew on to Valdez, where we camped out and started work: him at a tourist hotel restaurant; me at a cannery full of 'fish-hippies' until he got me hired on at the place he worked. Met a 5'10" waitress from Arizona who worked there, she had a BF so I got stuck in The Friend Zone, still chased her, wrote her after getting back to Alabama, was shocked one day to open a reply letter from her saying that even though she was technically engaged, she was going back for another summer working in Valdez WITHOUT her BF to put him to the test...the next day I bought by plane ticket to get back up there for the summer of 1993. Once there, the two of us got to be better friends, but still just friends, me being respectful and well-mannered.
The first of July, a skinny redhead from Minnesota with a filthy mouth and very nice breasts turned up for her second summer at the hotel, working as a housekeeper. With the waitress unavailable beyond the Friend Zone, and the redhead not shy about going after something she liked, it was not long before my head was TURNED. We started dating a few weeks after she got there, and two weeks after officially becoming An Item, moved in together at my room in employee housing. I made up for time I wasted pining for the unavailable waitress; my new love put me to good use helping her forget all about every asshole BF she'd ever had.
Summer once more drew to its end. She went back to Minnesota in November; I stayed in Valdez until January having by that time secured other types of work at the hotel, and deciding it was time to go on and finish my degree at Samford come spring semester, get a real job and start living a straight life with this incredible redhead.
March 1994...she came to Alabama to live with me. I hesitated in my dedication to finish my degree, and to this day, there it still stands, I guess, lacking 9 hours of student teaching.She worked at a dental clinic, fell in love with my family, enrolled in nursing school with my encouragement. She took to it very well; and even though we lived apart at times, our love kept growing and we married in 1998. She graduated in 2000 and promptly started work as a registered nurse.All right, that pretty much concludes the Alaska portion of my life...for now???
After my divorce ends however it is going to end, with my kids being bound unto whomever they will be bound...it very well could not take much thinking, or more than the one time asking, for me to end up back in Alaska. I have not forgotten how to make my own way very very far from home, and know how to take another on a trip that will change the way their lives look.....
They liked me at the store, which made things bearable. I worked 10 at night to 6 in the morning, and pretty much had things to myself, working the way I wanted to get stuff done, such as filling grocery orders for fishing vessels, merchant vessels, and oil tankers in port, one of which included T/V Exxon Valdez. My experience at my job made me a couple of buddies at work, one twice my age, the other younger than me, but both were way, way ahead of me in the Fun-Having Department. At that point in my wanna-be hippie life, I thought it fun to get high on weed once in a while, in a casual stoner kind of way.
Back then, weed was LEGAL in Alaska, which did not take long for me to discover. Not only was it legal, the pot was of extraordinarily high quality, every single time--'dirt weed' did not exist there. So, I found out that getting high and staying high all day on just a little tiny bit of weed was a pretty fucking cool way to be. And yes, since it's daylight from 4:30 in the morning to about 10:30 at night...what the hell, I'll have me a beer too!By the time my return flight date arrived, I was pretty damn close to being happy and quite well-rounded.Then school got started back, and I got deep into my history studies with good grades to show for it...always did well at classes I loved. Having been told by professors whom I respected that my history and political science major would do little in the way of making me a living, I took their advice, and changed my major to secondary education with the aim of making my way as a history teacher.When social opportunities became available... I was equally well-adjusted. It was quite the revelation to learn that yes, indeed, there were girls around who liked partying with guys like me, and hooking up with no intention of it going any further than that!!! A year before, I would have argued to no end that I was too serious about giving my heart about the woman of my dreams yada yada yada...funny how getting dumped 3000 miles from home will get a man over that point of view, isn't it? Baptist preachers got to send their children to Samford tuition-free....so it soon became apparent that a sufficiently-motivated young man could have his choice of preacher's daughters willing to defy all they had been taught, any night of the week! That discovery greatly accelerated my sexual self-actualization...for example, over the course of a semester, I met and eventually dated each of three sisters whose names were Faith, Hope and Charity....but that's another story for another post LOL
March 15, 1989...I promptly used my income tax refund check to buy another plane ticket for summer in Valdez, by myself this time, knowing a whole hell of a lot more than I did the first time.March 24, 1989..with its captain passed-out drunk after visiting the bar across from the grocery store at which I worked...tanker vessel Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound just a few miles west of Valdez, spilling millions of barrels of crude oil, as most of ye few blog readers can remember seeing on the news.I called the store where I had already been promised my summer job back, and asked if they still needed me. They said YES, please come back, we can't keep help since everyone in town is out working the spill, so we'll pay you $12 an hour instead of $8, and can you get here any sooner?Thus began one of the most hedonistic blurs in all my days. I camped out for 4 months of summer due to the lack of housing...population of town jumped up to about 8,000 after the spill. So I lived rent-free, didn't have and didn't need a car, no utility bills, and the store's deli fed me 3 meals a day as a perk.
The bar across the street from the store closed at 6 AM, the same time we clocked out, and reopened at 7 AM, which gave us time to eat deli chow and smoke funny looking cigarettes on the parking bench in front of the store, waiting for the bar to open.Jobs on the spill started at $16.60 an hour, for those with a valid Social Security number and a pulse, working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with a week off every three weeks. Those with any sort of skill or trade whatsoever could earn to 5 to 7 times that rate of pay.
Cocaine, while never my thing, flooded town beyond belief. At the store, we could not keep in stock baking soda and Chore Boy scrub pads...this being right before crack hit, folks had to cook their own freebase, I was told.Every other type of craziness associated with way too many people with way too much money also flooded town. I was still the wannabe hippy pothead in all this, but I tasted crazy time once in a while. Bought a lot of drinks for people I did not know, just because they bought me a drink first.
There was the one night a big fat dude sent over shots of Yukon Jack, grinning like a possum, so after a while we sent the waitress back over to him and his friends with a couple pitchers, along with a joint rolled full of Matanuska Thunderfuck. They grinned some more and next thing we knew, all of us were standing out back puffing down and talking about what had us busy, what we were doing there, etc. The big dude said he and his buds had a band, and had just gotten a record deal, and were visiting Alaska to celebrate. Sure man, that's cool, what kinda music do you play? Blues, I guess, depending on who you ask...but we are just here to have a killer time right now and DAMN that is some kickass pot where did you get that yada yada yada....before dude and his friends left they gave me a tape with handwritten labels, sure enough it said blues.It was not until spring 1990 that I finally dug out that tape and checked the other side of the label....it said Blues Traveler...hmmm well that's cool...it was another year before I actually 'heard' of those dudes I'd met and puffed down with.
Summer of 89 got gone with the blur still roaring by, I had to get back to Samford and give them all my not-so-hard-earned cash. It lasted a year or so, coinciding with me deciding that I did not want be a school teacher in the spring of 1990.
Stayed stoned and bored and slinging pizzas until 1992, when one of my equally stoned and bored good friends said he wanted to go to Valdez that summer. I'd known Mike since 89, and had told him how cool Valdez was, and he had spent summer of 1990 there by himself. He had it in his blood, too.The two of us and a friend of mine from Pell City who intended to move to Seattle drove his Toyota pickup from Pell City to Dallas to Denver to Seattle that May. Made it on 9 tanks of gas (3 tanks per dude) Mike and I flew on to Valdez, where we camped out and started work: him at a tourist hotel restaurant; me at a cannery full of 'fish-hippies' until he got me hired on at the place he worked. Met a 5'10" waitress from Arizona who worked there, she had a BF so I got stuck in The Friend Zone, still chased her, wrote her after getting back to Alabama, was shocked one day to open a reply letter from her saying that even though she was technically engaged, she was going back for another summer working in Valdez WITHOUT her BF to put him to the test...the next day I bought by plane ticket to get back up there for the summer of 1993. Once there, the two of us got to be better friends, but still just friends, me being respectful and well-mannered.
The first of July, a skinny redhead from Minnesota with a filthy mouth and very nice breasts turned up for her second summer at the hotel, working as a housekeeper. With the waitress unavailable beyond the Friend Zone, and the redhead not shy about going after something she liked, it was not long before my head was TURNED. We started dating a few weeks after she got there, and two weeks after officially becoming An Item, moved in together at my room in employee housing. I made up for time I wasted pining for the unavailable waitress; my new love put me to good use helping her forget all about every asshole BF she'd ever had.
Summer once more drew to its end. She went back to Minnesota in November; I stayed in Valdez until January having by that time secured other types of work at the hotel, and deciding it was time to go on and finish my degree at Samford come spring semester, get a real job and start living a straight life with this incredible redhead.
March 1994...she came to Alabama to live with me. I hesitated in my dedication to finish my degree, and to this day, there it still stands, I guess, lacking 9 hours of student teaching.She worked at a dental clinic, fell in love with my family, enrolled in nursing school with my encouragement. She took to it very well; and even though we lived apart at times, our love kept growing and we married in 1998. She graduated in 2000 and promptly started work as a registered nurse.All right, that pretty much concludes the Alaska portion of my life...for now???
After my divorce ends however it is going to end, with my kids being bound unto whomever they will be bound...it very well could not take much thinking, or more than the one time asking, for me to end up back in Alaska. I have not forgotten how to make my own way very very far from home, and know how to take another on a trip that will change the way their lives look.....
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