Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

     This past week, we were expecting two of our good friends, Mark and Sarah Smith, formerly from Hoonah to come for a visit for a few days. We hadn't seen them for several years and we'd planned a few day trips locally, as well as a few hours at the bowling alley, totally humiliating ourselves, but having fun nonetheless. I was expecting to spend the better part of at least one evening looking over my stamp collection. When Mark was the Hoonah post master, he went out of his way to order the latest, most interesting stamps that became available. In a large part, I owe my fascination as a philatelist to him. He was a deep well of knowledge and we spent many  hours not only discussing stamps, but a variety of other subjects, both appropriate and not so much so while he was collecting a wage from the government. It was time well spent though. There was some talk of a pod cast, though I don't know anything about those things or how they would work. No doubt it would r...

     The girls and I had such a good time last week when we went to Kepler Lake, we decided to go fishing again. Liz has been on vacation, and Autumn has been off work waiting for the new location for the cafe' to get the necessary permits so they can open. We wanted to try Hatcher Pass again. Last time I was there in June with Camille and her daughter Justine, there was still ice and a foot of snow on the lake. I checked with Fish and Game and found out that they stocked the lake on July 4, but it still had ice and snow on it. We figured by now, it had to have thawed out. We wanted to catch some of the thousand trout that ADFG had stocked. This time, I figured that I would offer the trout something other than nightcrawlers so I wouldn't have to spend all my time baiting the girl's hooks. I brought a handful of frozen, raw shrimp with me. I still ended up baiting some of the hooks and taking a few of the fish off, but for the most part, I spent most of my time baiting my ...

  About a month ago, I was getting desperate to go fishing. I tried to get several people to go with me down to Kepler Lake, near Palmer, but for one reason or another, it didn't work out, so I went by myself. I won't say that it was a mistake to do that, but I will mention that it was a real challenge. For one thing, the john boats, while large enough in length and width, don't have much depth to them. I guess because they are flat bottomed, kind of like me, they don't want the seats to be too high in the boat. As a result, unless you are young and limber or an athlete of some kind, they can be incredibly uncomfortable to sit in for any length of time. They all come with oars, but for an additional $5.00 per hour,  you can rent an electric motor to push you around the lake. In retrospect, perhaps I should have just stuck with the oars, although that would have provided an additional challenge. As it was, I was sitting in the stern of the boat, facing the front, and hav...

    Last week, while my daughter, Camille, and her oldest daughter, Justine were visiting, I recalled that there was a little park down on Lake Lucille that was populated with quite a number of wild Mallards and a few Grebes. I guess they're wild, although by the look of these pictures, I suppose they could be considered domesticated.  They certainly come running whenever anyone comes to the park and gets close to the water. Since we didn't have any stale bread we wanted to get rid of, I took several tubes of saltine crackers to feed them, along with some black sunflower seeds. Needless to say, they made short work of the food we brought them. Justine laughed with delight and of course tried to get them to eat out of her hand, which they didn't want any part of. Like most things we enjoy doing, once wasn't enough, so we made a second trip to the park to engage the feathered gluttons. This time I didn't bring saltines, I don't want them to end up with high blood ...

    About a week ago, my neighbor and good friend, Butch, mentioned that a friend of his who he has hunted and fished with for years wanted to go fishing for the afternoon at Finger Lake, close to home. He wanted to take his boat out and make sure the motor was running OK. Of course I don't know what we would have done if we'd gotten stuck out in the middle of the lake, since he didn't have a kicker motor, but I'm sure we could have gotten a tow in before it got dark. The day was almost ideal for fishing, overcast with a slight wind. It was kind of cool, but I had brought my jacket, so I was pretty comfortable, unlike my last experience with a boat up here. I need to do a post about that, but I want to get a picture of the boat I rented first so you'll have an appreciation of what an experience that was. Anyway, we motored over to where my friends wanted to fish and I dropped a salmon egg into the water with a bobber about three feet up the line. It didn't take ...

 Last year when we went East on vacation, I briefly mentioned stopping in Vermont and picking up my friend Buffalo Bob on our way down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We spent several days in Vermont looking around, and Buff knew all the local areas for miles around. Amongst the places we visited was the famous Vermont Country Store. Perhaps you've been there yourself or received one of their catalogues in the mail. I don't know if they still do mail order, I guess they sell primarily on line now. Anyway, I happened to be thinking of things from my childhood the other day, and one of the things I recall was Chum Gum. It was bubble gum, but it came in sticks like regular chewing gum. I think you used to be able to buy it in a pack of three, I'm not sure. Anyway, it was by far the best bubble gum on the market, sweet and soft and chewy. Like most bubble gum, the flavor didn't last very long, but it was sure satisfying while it lasted. Unfortunately, the company that...

  I haven't had much to write about lately. My life has been incredibly boring. I suppose if I were living in Iran or Israel right now, my life would be something they would envy. I did go fishing last week, which turned out to be a fiasco, but I'll write about that at a later date when I can get some pictures of the place I visited. I rented a boat, and I wasn't foolish enough to bring my camera with me, knowing full well it would probably end up in the bottom of the lake. So, I'm going to write about our trip down south last year. We visited the Ark in Kentucky, which I did write about I think, I'll have to check, then we made our way through our home town in Ohio, where we visited my sister and one of Jan's friends. We stopped off at Niagara Falls, New York, since we were passing through anyway on our way to Vermont to visit our friend Buffalo Bob Holden. Niagra Falls used to be a big honeymoon place when I was a kid. It runs in my mind that different game sh...

Normally, the phrase I used for the title of this post would be reserved for something other than fruit, but in this case, I felt that the description more or less fit the item I was describing. A few weeks ago, my oldest daughter, Jen, blessed us with a gift from Harry and David's for Mother's and Father's days combined. It sounds like for the next few months we'll be receiving whatever fruit is in season. I'm fairly certain they won't be sending any watermelons through the mail, but there may be peaches, plums or nectarines, I'm not really sure. This month it was strawberries, and as you can see, they dwarf any normal sized strawberries that most of us have ever seen. I didn't know what to compare them to, so I used a teaspoon to give you some idea of the size. Of course strawberries are easy to bruise, and it would be disappointing to open a box of them and find that they had been damaged in transit. The folks at H&D solved that problem with a cus...

         A couple of days ago, I went to the Jewel Rental Company and rented a lawn aerator, something I'd heard of a few years ago. Not being in the possession of either a pickup truck nor a flatbed trailer, I was able to get my neighbor to use his equipment to help me in retrieving the tool. I'd never used an aerator before, and had no idea how it really worked, nor the amount of difficulty it would be using one. I watched a few videos on Utube, and the people I saw using an aerator made it seem like a breeze. Of course they aren't me, and if I'm not mistaken, the brand of tool they were using was different than the one I rented. Jewell tool rental carried a Huskvarna  brand aerator. Huskvarna is a really reputable brand. The only time I really came into contact with anything they made was back on my years on the farm. There were a few folks who owned their chain saws and really liked them. Let me say upfront, there is a world of difference in a chain saw...

  The leaves have finally made an appearance here in Southcentral Alaska, and they are certainly welcome. It wasn't a very harsh winter, as winters go, but it was nonetheless painfully long, as most winters in the north are. Along with the leaves, the annual ritual known as spring cleaning has started. Actually Jan was working diligently a few weeks ago, wiping down the walls and going through the closets, sorting out things she didn't feel she needed anymore. Inevitably, she'll run out of her things, and start looking at mine. I never like it when that happens. I'm not a hoarder, but I can't see getting rid of something that I might need in the future just because it might be a little bit old, or even very old. We have a bookshelf full of books that we've already read, and while I seldom re-read most books, some of them I do. The others I can hardly stand the thought of parting with. When I look at some of Jan's books, I can see where getting rid of them wo...

      Last weekend I took my grandson Dante' to Home Depot to buy some toilets. We left the store with not one, not two, but three "comfort" toilets. I should point out that Dante' is a bit of an expert when it comes to toilets. You would think that I would be since I've had so much more experience using them down through the years. However, he's worked as a plumber, so I trust his knowledge. I once had a plumber tell me that there were only two things you needed to know in order to be plumber- crap flows down hill and payday is Friday. I have a feeling he was over simplifying the job, otherwise more of us would be making the big bucks that plumbers make. There was nothing wrong with the toilets that we had, they were just too short. After my knee surgery, I had a toilet riser that I borrowed from a charity that carries all manner of things needed for folks who have had surgery, wheelchairs, walkers, toilet risers, canes, shower seats and I don't know what...

  This past Wednesday morning, I had to roust out of my bed early so that I could make a trip to the hospital for a scheduled knee replacement surgery. I've been through this procedure once before, on my left knee, now it was time to experience the joy on my right one. Part of the reason I haven't been on Fan Story much lately is because of the preparation involved prior to the operation. I wanted to get all my papers together to send down to the accountant so I wouldn't be trying to do tax papers while I was in a pleasant stupor brought on by the powerful drugs that the doctor prescribed for the post surgery operation. I also wanted to get all the bills paid up and had the oil changed in the car so Jan wouldn't have to think about it, not that changing the oil in the car would have occurred to her otherwise, but just as a precaution. I'd forgotten about how many tests I'd have to undergo in the week or so prior to visiting the hospital. I had an EKG, a blood te...

  One of the more distressing issues of getting older are the various physical changes that I've had to deal with as time marches on, and I get dragged along in its wake. I don't mind a few wrinkles, and having to spend less time in the barber chair doesn't distress me so much, but lately I've been dealing with an ever-expanding gut, and apparently a decrease in the amount of fat in my butt, or so it would seem. I can't really say for sure that my butt is getting bonier; I can't really see it, but it sure feels that way. It used to be that when I would spend an extended period of time in the car, I would have to remove my billfold to keep from causing an undue amount of pain over the long haul. Now it seems like a short trip to the grocery store, a mere fifteen minutes away, presents the same problem. Just now I removed the offending obstacle from my back pocket so I could write this short article in peace. At first I thought perhaps it was because my wallet was...

  While the title might sound like a category for the game of Jeopardy, it's not. It's just a reflection of some of what I find when I'm out picking up trash on the side of the road.   When we returned from church today, I was driving up a road close to home and noticed a Mike's Hard Lemonade bottle off to the side. I was afraid that if a car was coming in the opposite direction, it would be easy to run over. Of course I wasn't thinking about someone else running over it as much as I was thinking how mad I would be if I ran over it. Years ago, I would have just hoped that such a thing didn't happen, and I'd go home and forget about it. However, either because I've matured, or I've had enough experience to know that Murphy's law would certainly come into play and I'd be the unfortunate clown who destroyed his tires, I decided to come back with my grabber and a large plastic trash bag and pick it up.   Picking up trash is like eating Lays Potat...

About a month ago, I broke down and bought myself a new mattress. The last one I bought was shortly after we  moved in to Hoonah from the farm. I guess the one I had was roughly forty years old. I know, I know, who has a mattress for that long? Well, obviously, I did. About ten years ago I had bought a topper for it at Costco, and it made it fairly comfortable until just recently. I was waking up every day with back pain, and I tossed and turned all night trying to find a comfortable spot. Obviously, it was time to buy another one.  I had seen advertisements for the Purple mattress, and they were quite clever. One ad showed an egg on the mattress and over six hundred pounds of sheet glass being lowered onto it, without the egg breaking. That was impressive, but I'm not an egg, and I'm fairly certain I'll never have six hundred pounds forcing me down into the mattress. I had visions of trying to get myself out of bed in the morning and sinking into the waffle design. It migh...