Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  I recently received a care package from one of my Fan Story friends. It contained some really, really good brownies. No, they weren't laced with pot, if that's what you're thinking. They were just very tasty. When I wrote the sender to say how much we enjoyed them, I lamented the fact that my wife and I ate them all ourselves. I would have been happy to share them, but for some reason or other, the usual people we would normally share them with were all gone. It runs in my mind both my daughters were out of town, and my neighbors were still in Louisiana. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think you can freeze brownies can you? Anyway, the bottom line is, we ate them all. I'm both ashamed of myself and pretty full. I was reminded of a time when I was living in Hoonah. My oldest daughter, Jennifer, was an elementary school teacher there. She had a habit of dropping by unannounced every other day or so. I had no problem with that, we always enjoy her company. However...

  In the almost fifty years I've lived in Alaska, I've never had a newspaper delivered to my doorstep. If I want to read the newspaper, which increasingly I don't, I have to go to a store to purchase one. It wasn't always that way though. When I was eleven or twelve, I joined the ranks of the young lads who were willing to abuse their bodies in exchange for a few dollars a week, delivering the news to people who cared; or at least wanted to see what was going on in the world at the time. It was brutal work, regardless of how it might have been portrayed in shows like  Leave it to Beaver. Six days a week a lady named Dolly Tibbles came by my house and dropped off a bundle of newspapers. They were tied together with a thin, hemp rope, which at times cut into the edges of the papers. That always made the customers happy, and you can imagine who they complained to. I would have to retrieve a knife from the kitchen and cut the rope, then proceed to fold the papers in such a ...