DILLIGHAMB=BITS AND PIECES

 

DILLINGHAM BITS AND PIECES:

One time is snowed and I went to town to grab some donuts for a medical staff meeting. I decided to stop at home for some reason and at the top of the hill just before our duplex my right passenger side tire fell off. I managed to skid my was to a stop in from of my place. I walked back uphill and found the tire. For some stupid reason I took off myglove and poked my finger inside one of the hole. HOT burned my finger. I walked back to the house to call Janice to tell her what happened and made arrangements to get the car towed to the gas station and wait for parts. Janice picked me upl and I attended with meeting with donuts. Yummy.

It took a few weeks for the part to come in and then it got fixed, I do not remember what it cost. I had

Another time it showed and then froze. Janice went to go to work and promptly slid off the road. She hollered at me not to try it. So I called into work to say I would not be in. After a while a car creeped slowly to park in from of my house. I invited her it and began decorating my Christmas tree and make fruit cake. Later on I received a Happy Winter Solstice card from her. I think she was Wiccan.

Il a

I also had some visitors come, first was Ellen and Mom. Ellen treated them both to a inner island cruise. Mom said she enjoyed it but Ellen said she griped about everything. They bought an airbag because I only the bed for Mom, the couch and I got the airbed. Wheee. Mom had an ingrown toenail and insisted that she be seen. I took them into MR and Walter exclaimed, The just keep getting shorter! He was fun. The doctor tried to inject her toe an she kicked him in reflex and he got a needle stick. We ate out a couple of time and had halibut, my favorite.

Then Jim an Jordie came for fishing. Jim chartered a plane for

catch and release. I kept calling Jordie something faintly asian. That was fun.

There was always a weekend garden sale, I bought fingerling potatoes it was delish. One time I was at AC and saw the most strange peaches. Thy were flat, donut shaped with a bulge on one side. Delicious!

Salmon berries were available but the native ladie said dont buy them, they are not ripe.

Had to haul garbage to the local dump. One time the lady asked if she could have a box, sure.

The Seventh Day church had a pancake supper that was wonderful.

One time was had a MR candidate from Florida and she was a disaster. She had to leave Florida because she sold a ingle pill an got busted. Did not hire her.

DILLINGHAM WOMENS RETREAT

 DILLINGHAM WOMENS RETREAT

Everyonce in a while the overhead would announ

ce Native Arts in the lobby.  I went out once

 and I recognized a lady from Barrow. She was

there visiting family and she had a parka for sale. 

 It was a nice print lined in blue warmth and 

had a wolf ruff.  I purchased it for two 

hundred dollars.

A few weeks later Janice said she wanted me to

 go with her to a Women's Retreat sponsored by

 the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  I had a 

cold, coughing my head off and felt awful. 

I said I didn't want to go.  She said she had 

already paid the fee and we were going.  

I got a facemask from the hospital.  

We packed and she drove to Mosquito point on 

Lake Alecknagek. 

 

There was a little old man in his nineties 

using a tug boat to shove a barge onto the beach.  We got loade up and away went.  He was charming and I had a bit of a girl crush on him by the time we reached to island where there was hunting lodge large enough to host 20 women.

We got unloaded and found our rooms. 

In the mean time I was coughing my head off. We met the hosts and got acquainted with them as well as the guest speaker.  She had gotten her doctorate of theology after being divorced.

We had a lovely lunch.  One of the ladies 

started compolaining of chest pain.  

Have you ever had an all veggie meal? No. 

Got to the kitchen sprinkle a couple teaspons 

of baking powder into warm water. 

After you belch you will feel better. Worked.

Then the lady preacher began speaking and I 

continued to cough. She came over asked if 

she could pray for me.  Yes.  She prayed and 

essed me and annointed my forhead with oil.  

Well crap after that I had to pretend I was 

cured. So went the day. 

I stepped outside everytime I coughed. 
 

The next day we got on the barge and headed home. It rained a bit and my wolf skin parka smelled like wet dog. It was interesting. 

DILLINGHAM

 

DILLINGHAM STORY:

I lived in Dillingham, Alaska in the year 2005 and 2006 which came to one yeara exactly.

My boss was Janice Snow, she liked to give people name an extra suffix if their name was one syllable. I became Royster unfortunately. It is illegal to murder yg small presents to your person then on Friday give a bigger present My poor lady received Christmas Cakes then a large one. I do not think she was thrilled.

One of the ladies gave me a can of smoked oysters. I was thrilled I was raving about how much I loved smoked oysters. She said, no look at the label. She had written Smoked Roysters on the label. I laughed it was prett funny.

Ptl =

I loved Dillingham, it was beautiful and when it snowit really snowed. One winter day it snowed and froze. The road was so slick several cars were stopped. Janice took her car and promptly slid off the road. She hollered at me to not go in to work. One woman pulled into our yard. I invited her into the house and got out my Christmas tree and made Christmas Cake. Finally a tow truck came and pulled people to where they could get traction. Later on the lady who shared my morning sent me a Happy Solstice care, I believe she was wiccan but I did not know a lot about the craft back then.

One time I went to my house for some weird reason, my tired fell off and I skidded into my yard. I walked back up hill to find my tire. Found it and like a dummy put my finger in the middle and burned my finger. I made arrangements to get it towed to the end of the road to get if fixed. Took a while, parts had to come in by plane.

Mom and Ellen came to visit. They took a ship tour and flew from Anchorage, we had a lot of fun. Mom had an ingrown toenail and was seen in ER where she kicked like a mule and the doc got stick.Oy.

Then Jim an Jordie came to do some fishing. He chartered a flight for fish and release. My goodness. That was a lot fun as well.

Will talk about the Women's Retreat some other time.

BARROW STORY RABBI DO

BARROW STORY RABBI DO

One Winter we had a Rabbi DO come to the hospital for a few weeks. I do not remember his name. He wore a black fedora and ringlets before his ears. We had all sorts of questions. I asked him how he knew when sundown occurred in Barrow since the sun had set in November, it was now January or so. He said he coordinated with colleaques in Anchorage if sundown was 4 pm there he would celebrate the same time here. Also he had been working at a Kosher winery. How is winery Kosher? The fruit may not be harvested until the vines are four years old. Coincidentally that is usually when the vines first fruit. Salt is Kosher if it does not have Iodine in it. Huh. As time went by he kept busy visiting with the patients. The nurses had a cow because he lit a Menorrah during Hannakuh, OPEN FLAME. Don't worry he wont set an oygen patient on fire. One day I saw him in the hallway and called, “Hey Rab! Happy Hannukah!” He whirled around and asked, “What do you call eight days of great sex?” I shook my head no. He replied, ”Hannaka Lewinsky!” I have since told that joke several times. 

BARROW STORY SPRING WHALING

 

BARROW STORY SPRING WHALING:

The International Whaling Commission established the amount of strikes each village can have each year. These meetings usi annually in a diverse places as Jordan.

One spring a whale was struck. The telephone system collapsed with the volume of calls. This is always a time of celebration. Anyone who can goes to the beach to help haul in the whale. A larger caterpillar using an O ring hauled the whale to the edge of the beach. Everyone rushed to help pull it in further. Daphe Perez was there. She was married to Pedro Perez one of the hospital doctors. She volunteered with the Girl Scouts and had a mile wide smile. There such a cute couple, holding hands and they had two teenagers a boy and a girl.

Tragically the O ring snapped and whipped into the crowd. Three natives were killed outright and Daphne was struck in the abdomen. They got her to the R in time for her family to say goodbye. It was a horrible day. Francis, one of the ladies in Medrec gave her little girl a middle name of Daphne.

Pedro loved to take his family to the Taj Mahal where Mumtaz was the Shah's fifteen wife who died trying to bear hilm another child.

Dr. Perez is working in Seldova. He is a very nice man.

BARROW STORY CULTURE PILL

 

BARROW CULTURE PILL:

I love to take classes occasionally.  The teacher for literature lived in my building and was kind enough to have the classes in downtown Barrow. 

The first class was about Frankenstein. We watched the most recent film starting Robert De Niro etc.  It was very good. At the end of the class we were challenged to write a sequel.

My was titled Big Man.  Frankenstein was last seen in the book as he jumped offith a group of Inupiat fishing him out of the water.  He was burned badly. Soon he was awake, eating and thanking them.  He recovered nicely and learned to hunt. They returned to home The Place of Owls now known as Barrow or Utkiagvik.  He married and the first few children were all named after peole in Switzerland. The rest had native names.  His journal is still held in the archives of the Barrow History center.  

The next story we read was a short story about the Third Bank. A woman asked the priest to bring her husband back who was missing.  He could not do that.  Had not left in a canoe that held only one.  We finally figured out that he had died and could not return. So the third bank was death.

Finally we read Love In The Time of Cholera by Marquez a nobel prize winner for literature The book was only six chapters a great deal of description.  I got the the fourth chapter as I was reading I got a strong sense of Deja Vu.  So I began back tracking until I found a duplicate paragraph.  They were on a steam ship and the paragraph was exact.  I was encouraged to write to the author to ask of the duplicate paragraph was an easter egg.  I never heard from him and have never read any of his other books.  I someone has read One Hundred Years of Solitude and found a duplicate paragraph please me know. Thanks. 

BARROW STORY FIVE

 

BARROW STORY FIVE:

This is about Neal the canary strangler, probation violating murder.

I first became aware of this man when he appeared for walkin. He needed labs drawn for his job. He was worried about being absent too long from his new job. I told him not to worry. He was about five foot eight, middle aged, about 180 lbs, wearing a jacket with elbow patches. He also wore his hair short and blond. He worked in the local attorney's office.

Patrick told me that his roommate was the lawyer for whom Neal was working. At any rate he was soon fired because he was downloading porn on the office computer. He fled Barrow.

We would have never known anything more about him but he called to have his last paycheck forwarded to Florida. It turns out he was a convicted killer, who panicked at the scene and strangled a canary. I will assume that he returned to prison for parole violation but you never know how things go elsewhere in the lower forty eight.