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.

BARROW STORY FOUR:

 

BARROW STORIES FOUR: Patricks recipe.

When I worked in Barrow at the hospital, I would occasionally eat in the cafeteria, There were only about six tables there and it got very noisy. One day there was a pause in the noise and Patrick said, “..hamburger dildo..”. Dead silence. I asked Patrick what that was all about.

It seems that his aunt, a very conservative Catholic lady had a recipe for hamburger dill roll. It consisted of a large dill pickle wrapped in hamburger meat and fried. I asked what the side dish was and Patrick replied white sauce and two medium sized boiled onions. The family promptly renamed the dish Hamburgery Dildo. We all got a huge laugh out of that one.

BARROW STORY THREE

 

BARROW STORY THREE:

Ricky the Red Headed Hitchhiker. This young man on a nice sunny day decided to hitchhike the Dalton Highway or the Haul Road. My Uncle Darrel drove on the haul road when the pipeline was first started. The Dalton Highway is 414 miles long from Valdez to Dead Horse. There only a couple of stops for fuel and a 256 mile stretch without fuel.

So, Ricky decided that when ever he saw an 18 wheeler coming he would lie down in the road and pretend to have a seizure. The truck picked him up and dropped off at Deadhorse. They did not have medical services and put him on the next jet to Barrow.

He arrived in the walk in clinic carrying an Alaska Airline cardboard suitcase and smelling very bad. He was triaged and found to have cerebral palsy and he was given the opportunity to clean up. The staff could not recommend any treatment for him and put him on the jet to Anchorage.

I like to think that Ricky is still successfully falling into a fake seizure as he travels through out the lower 48 states. I wonder if he has tried Canada?

BARROW STORIES TWO

 

BARROW STORIES TWO:

The Ninja sex change kidnapper. I would ofen man the front desk from twelve to one for walk in clients. One afternoon, a silky voice announced, “I am Michelle K” Okay I looked that up and said I could not find the name. Then she said, look under Michael K. Oh. Would you like me to add Michelle as Also Known As? Yes, please. He/She went on for the walk in. I had seen him in the neighborhood. He liked to dress all in black as a Ninja, he did not have the throwing stars or the swords. He applied to Arctic Slope Regional Corporation for money to get a sex change operation. He was turned down. He was very disappointed so much so that he kidnapped a teacher couple and kept them in their house. He demanded the money before he would let them go. The standoff went on for most of the day. About the time the SWAT team from An;chorage landed, he decided to give up. The sentence for kidnapping in Alaska starts at 99 years. Since he was nonviolent I am sure the sentence was far less than that. I do not think they do sex change in prison, so he probably had to save up his various dividends. I am very sure that Michelle is now happily going about her business.

BARROW STORIES ONE

The mystery of Aunt Mary.  I worked in Barrow, Alaska for all of the nineteen nineties.  I loved it there.  I worked in medical records and sometimes took a lunch time shift at the front desk taking walkins etc. One of the elders came and she did not look well.  She died four days later.  There is no coroner or funeral services in Barrow.  The body must be shipped to Anchorage.  In a week or so the casket is returned and the family views the body in the back hallway by ER in front of a two drawer morgue.  In due time the casket arrived. The family arrived.  The casket top was opened.  That was not Aunt Mary.  It was the body of an old black woman from North Carolina.  Oh dear what happened.  That casket was returned to Anchorage.  In about a week Aunt Mary was returned.  The family came for the viewing and left satisfied.  The casket to be transferred to the Presbyterian Church.  One of the nurses was heard to murmur rather sadly, "You know, Aunt Mary never traveled that much when she was alive."

QUILTING

QUILTING. The earlierst quilt was one of Grandma Horns, The garments used were familiar. I recognized someones shirt, skirt, blouse etc.  No fancy stitched sewed together on the wonderful old treadle Singer machine.  Later, in Junior High when she lived in town I would go over after school to make three baby doll quilts for my three sisters for Christmas. Then Mom showed me a quilt pieced by Grandma Latimer when she was born.  It was a red, white and blue log cabin pattern.  At one point in the nineties she decided to complete it.  First she fixked the turkey red because she knew the color would run something awful.  I believe she used vinegar, well soaked and rinsed.  Then shes about using thick white threat to quilt the thing with  filler and backing of course.  It was just gorgeous when it was finished.  She gave the quilt to Carla, I think who then sent it to me.  I decided to use archival paper to wrap the quilt in as well as a cloth where I printed the history of the quilt. I then carefully folded it in paper and sent it to Ellen, who has always loved it.  I loved to attend the annual quilt show held at the former highschool.  My favorite was a beautiful Mariners Compass.  Gorgeous.  There was an avant guard quilt of dark green, ugh.I made several quilts for relatives all of of polyester.  Mom made a small baby quilt for Charlie Sherry had it for a while.  I think it got used as a saddle  blanket. Mom got it back for me and I believe Charlie still has it. I have seen the gorgeous Victorian pieces with fancy stitching but never made one or wanted one.  If anyone else has quilt stories do let me know. R

TRAVELING WITH ANIMALS

 The first animal I remember traveling with was a puppy we had taken on the summer we went to Aripzona  We stopped for lunch at a spot and the puppy mysteriously disappeared.  The next time was when Judy Jones went to Emmett with me.  She brought a ginea pig, the girls were thrilled.  It was very squeaky. Then there was the time we flew from San Francisco to Bluefield West Virginia.  Judy brought her black poodle, Lucky.  There were three adults, two childre;n and the dog.  We had so much luggage we had to wait until the next day to pick it up.  Betty used one suitcase for her wig.  We truly did look like the Gabor sisters on tour.  Next animal was in Barrow. Tim had a Manx named Bradford.  He became hyper thyroid and we had to take to Springfield to be radiated.  It worked somewhat.  He was charming and spoke Chinese when he was warbling about something he was pleased with.  The next Kitty was Jubilee. She had five kittens while I was in Barrow and Tim  in Coquille.  I took two kittens to Barrow for adoption.  Litters were very rare, they went to good homes.  All of those kittens remaing died.  Our last kitty was Charlie he was born 2016 and died 2024 he was our last kitty.  Gale felt sorry for us and purchased a black kitty from Amazon to put in the window.  Tim was trying to find a Vet, the Animal Hospital in Coos Bay had an interesting answer on their phone.  If you wish to incur a bill from 1200 to 1800 dollars, please press one.  Um, no  Local people were available and were very kind. Still cost three hundred dollarsl.  Pet insurance?  NOOOOO

CORVETTE SUMMER

CORVETTE SUMMER:

Judy Jones came to own a shabby looking 1956 Corvette.  It had a removable hard top for going about in the sunshine.  It was held together mostly by bondo and fiberglass.  Eventually it got painted white had red leather interior and looked pretty snazy.  One weekend we drove to Bakersfield with the couple from Judy purhased the car.  We went to participate in a Corvette Cross track trial.  There two runs for each car.  Judy drove one, I drove the second.  It was a lot of fun, I believe I stalled out.  But she won a noncompetition trophy because there were no other 56 Corvettes.  On the way back, we were pulled over by the State Police.  His reason was that he could not see the front plates.  I think he just wanted to flirt.  We got home and Judy kept the care for a couple of years.  She gave it to her younger brother, Ed.  He painted it blue.  Do not know what happened to it afterwards.  It was a fun car.