Speak for the Moon Grass

A Story From My Friend James

(My friend James at work recently took his new boat out of storage for the winter. This is the tale, in his own words, of his shrimping trip on Saturday)

Here’s how the trip went.

The trip starts as usual. Got a late start. Left Anchorage around 1PM. Cannot seem to leave in the morning. I think fishing before dawn only happens in the movies. Stop by Costco to fill up the boat. I fill it up, but manage to get gas on my shirt. I think it’s minimal, but when I start driving in a confined space, it becomes too much. I’d rather not get high on fumes. The shirt comes off and goes into the bed of the truck. I can show off my lack of tan or wear a sweater. The sweater wins.

Got to Whittier around 2PM. Minimal traffic at the boat launch. Cool. I back the boat up doing my usual back and forth. Straighten up…turn, pull forward, go backwards, go forward, turn left, no…turn right. After several attempts, got the boat in the water. I didn’t hit the side rail like someone else did. So, the time was worth it. It’s probably close to 3PM, but who knows for sure.

I leave the boat, while I parked the truck and trailer. Of course, it’s a long walk back to the dock. Probably a 10 minute walk.

I’ve got to go to the bathroom before I get on the boat. So, I stop there. While walking back to the boat, I see there’s a store open. So, I stop and look and get some snacks for the trip. Ok, another 10 minutes goes by.

Get to the boat…ok, ready to go. Start the engine. Turn on the GPS and radio.  Good to go. Start backing up and I hear…”Why is there water coming in the boat?” I panic. Pull forward a few feet. Remember all those minutes passing by while the boat was in the water? Long walk from parking lot, bathroom break, and stop at the store? During those delays, the boat was filling with water. There is a reason a boat has a bilge pump. It’s because people like me (on the first trip of the year) forgot to do the most important thing…put the boat plug in! I’ve heard stories of people sinking their boat at the dock because of this…panic continues.  I rush to the back of the boat and reach into the area where I need to plug the boat. No time to show off my tan, and take my sweater off. I reach into the water (elbow high) and plug the boat. Whew, water stops rising. The boat is still on top of the water and not sinking. I turn on the bilge pump. It’s a good 15 minutes later before the boat empties. 

It’s probably close to 5 before I get out of the dock. You know…late start, backing the boat up into the water fiasco, walk from parking lot, bathroom break, store break, boat plug fiasco.

I did manage to get the shrimp pots in the water. Since the Whittier tunnel closes early during the winter schedule (it’s still on winter schedule), I didn’t leave the pots in the water long. Close to an hour and half. Checked them. Here’s how the story goes.

Gas for truck and boat         $160

Whittier tunnel fee               $20

Boat launch fees                 $20

Parking Fee                          $10    

 # of Shrimp                           0                                             

 The story I can tell:               priceless.

2 Old Guys

Went into the 24/7 post office at the airport last Sunday to mail a birthday card to my daughter and a manuscript to a friend. It was early evening, the sun still up, the streets wet with melting snow. At the end of the long line were two elderly black men, one with a cane and one leaning heavily against the long table that ran down the middle of the lobby. Both held a few envelopes in their hands.

As I joined them the leaning man looked at me and smiled and said “How you doin’ today?”

I returned the grin. “Good. How about you?”

“Can’t complain on a day like today. We blessed.”

I smiled. His friend, who had been ignoring us to this point, turned to me and said straight-faced. “Aw, he lyin’, he been complainin’ all day.”

Thank you

What I just posted was the result of soliciting 50 people on Twitter to send me one word each, which I had to include in a story that I was trying to keep under 500 words. Not sure if I reached that goal. I don’t have a word count function on my Mac’s TextEdit.

Anyway, I’d like to thank these people for being kind enough to indulge this narcissitic effort by sending words: @TinyNietzsche, @peteec, @ryang121, @BestServedFresh, @no_left_feet, @55Bentley, @iamscottciccone, @unheavy, @ShineSweetly, @rejecter, @skullcat, @LaetPO, @aroberts72, @PetticoatRN, @Mozzaerella, @thetearooms, @_Nardster, @MsCourtReporter, @AdInsanitum, @MmeLaCrooz, @sethboyer, @tweetcomedian, @Kraz60, @Chappaquiddish, @museofhistory, @The_Hedgehogs, @CJRomig, @IMBeanz, @Gabryyl, @eliyudin, @nomeDlivE, @GodlessAndHappy, @btemps, @endlessbabe, @grumpassgrumpaw, @Kimmittable, @PopsNO2, @Brat142, @sperkal, @UrFaveStranger, @Freckleface12, @Ish (that word was a bitch dude), @cerebralbeef, @TweetweetAK, @juicymorsel, @sneakypants, @subjectobject, @jebanthony, @veronaway2 and @FloYEdmondson.

I listed folk in the order that I received the words. The words were: lederhosen, perplexed, plethora, steak, betwixt, aardvark, acknowledged, no, romantic, ardor, mitten, chicken, exsanguinate, ubiquitous, fortuitous, satisfaction, whiz-bang, sempiternal, iridescent, behoove, murmur, periwinkle, cloaca, efficacy, fabulous, acquiesce, circle, shenanigans, coffee, discombobulate, smush, tuatara, freedom, tea, asswipe (my fave), moist, the, love, peace, bulwark, puppy, despicable, bollocks, coccyx (ugh), verisimilitude, persnickety, Cheez-Its, maracas, horizon, psychotic, duplicitous, vintage, carbon, sassafras, poppycock, paraphernalia and benevolent.

Sorry, this is horribly self-indulgent. :)

Hunting the Great Northern Platypus

A seasoned Alaskan big game guide will blanch at the mention of the Great Northern Platypus, which some call the Arctic Furred Alligator. The Eskimos call them “ituktuk” and generally forbid their mention unless it’s to say “Look out behind you! An ituktuk!” 

As a trophy hunter, I have partaken in a lifelong pursuit of a “Noah”, which, in my circles, means you have killed a male and female of every land mammal on earth. Also, a Great Northern Platypus killed my dad. So, two birds, one stone.

In arranging the hunt, every guide I called, usually after a short hesitation, would not even acknowledge the existence of the Platypus. Some went so far as to call me psychotic. It was fortuitous that, after dialing from the bottom of the phone book listings, I struck gold with my last option, Aardvark Big Game Guides. After listening to my query, Ned, the soft-spoken fellow who answered the phone, said he’d meet me at Merrill Field the next day at noon.

That day at the airfield, Ned came clattering up in a rusted blue vintage Ford pickup. He was wearing periwinkle lederhosen and carrying a cup of coffee from Starbuck’s. He was a bandy-legged little Eskimo man, about 60, his hair streaked with gray. “You bring your lederhosen?” he said.

“Huh?” I said, but thought, poppycock, this guy’s up to some shenanigans. “No. What the hell you talking about?” He regarded me for a moment then gestured to the white and red Cessna 180 on skis with a silhouette of an aardvark painted on its rudder. “Put your gear in there.” I acquiesced and saw that in the back was a jumble of survival paraphernalia: an ax, a box of Cheez-Its, some canned chicken, a small camp stove, a compact first-aid kit and a tent.

Ned reached into the bed of a pickup and withdrew a brown puppy. “What’s his name?” I said.

“Asswipe,” he murmured. “He’s our bait. When ituktuk emerges from its ice hole to eat the dog, you shoot him betwixt the eyes.” 

“Couldn’t we use a steak or something?” (I haven’t yet killed a dog — no heart for it. I especially love puppies. They bring me great peace.) 

“The efficacy of that would be doubtful,” said Ned. “Besides, puppies are ubiquitous. No one will miss him.” This guy was a fucking romantic.

He climbed into the plane and and proceeded to run through the preflight check. I was happy to see he was persnickety about that. I took the copilot’s seat and looked back at Asswipe, who was sniffing the survival gear. I noticed his “maracas” had already been removed. Poor little guy. He’d never know satisfaction.

“Clear!” said Ned and he hit the starter. The engine cranked then caught. He gestured to the headphones draped over the control wheel on my side of the cockpit. I put them on.

“You know, ituktuk will hesitate if it thinks you’re German,” he said. “It would have behooved you to have brought lederhosen. In fact, you’d probably look fabulous in them.” He said this without a hint of a smile. I wasn’t sure what to say. He radioed the tower, got clearance and we taxied to the runway where he firewalled the throttle and we raced down the tarmac and lifted off into freedom.

We cruised over Anchorage until we hit Knik Arm, where we banked south toward Merrill Pass.

“Flying makes me moist,” said Ned over the headphone intercom. He smiled for the first time. I felt discombobulated. Who the fuck was this guy? Was he some duplicitous serial killer posing as a hunting guide? “I dreamt of a tuatara last night,” he said. “It was offering me a carbon copy of a mitten. Bizarre, huh?” 

“What the hell’s in that coffee cup?” I asked, gesturing toward the Starbuck’s container he was holding between his legs.

He grinned. “Sassafras tea.”

I was thinking of asking him to circle back when he punched me in the arm and said “Let your bulwarks down. Where’s the ardor I heard on the phone yesterday? Just trying to get you to loosen up.” 

I relaxed a bit. Just then the plane bounced in some turbulence. I lifted out of my seat a bit, was pulled back by the seatbelt and hit my coccyx on something hard. I scooted forward and looked on the seat behind me. It was a box of shells that I hadn’t seen in our hurry to get in the plane. I grabbed it then reached back to put it in the rear seat. There lay Asswipe. Luckily the survival gear hadn’t smushed him. He was curled against the jumble of stuff, the picture of the sempiternal peace of a napping dog. I wondered if he was capable of missing his “bollocks”, as my English friend Nigel would have said.

After flying in silence for awhile, I said “What’s it going to take to make this a whiz-bang hunt?”

“Ituktuk is a despicable creature,” Ned said. “We’ll land by its hole in the ice, let the puppy out, and when ituktuk emerges, you shoot it in the head, which will knock it out. You run up, stick your fist up its cloaca, open your hand and drag it back to the plane, where we’ll tie its tail to the wing strut, then you cut its throat to exsanguinate it. We just hope it doesn’t wake up. You’ll have about five minutes to cut it.”

“What if it gets Asswipe?”

“So what?”

I was silent.

“Look at the horizon,” Ned said, nodding ahead. A bank of fog. It had all the verisimilitude of my destiny. Above it, the sun shone, encircled by an iridescent sundog. Dog. Asswipe. I thought of sticking my fist in ituktuk’s ass-pisshole and suddenly felt benevolent, hesitant. I looked back at Asswipe again. Hesitated. Thought. Yes.

I touched Ned’s shoulder and he looked at me. I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at Asswipe. “Let’s turn back. I can do this another day.”

Ned looked back, then regarded me for a moment and slowly smiled. He banked the plane in a steep 180 and we headed back to Anchorage.

Accepting that those in poverty are not fully responsible for their impoverished state of living, with it’s poor access to healthcare, education, and “basic” things like fucking organic orange juice, would require the wealthy to accept that they are also not fully responsible for their wealth and their access to things like goddamn non-generic acne medications. Accepting that generational and outside factors affect poverty (and therefore poverty is not something people can just “work” themselves out of) would require those with great wealth to accept that they were also not personally responsible for their great wealth- and are not intrinsically entitled to it. This would require a great deal of humility, humility that would inspire, nay require, a sharing of such wealth. It is this lack of humility that keeps other people impoverished.

amywithlemon:

And yes, I know that some people use their wealth for good, and that they are humble people. Unfortunately, not everyone recognises their true wealth, nor are they humbled by it. Great wealth is an abhorrent environment for generating humility.

/2 cents.