Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  '" I don't like white people much." he said. He was looking straight at me.' This is a quote from a book that I'm reading titled- Neither Wolf Nor Dog, b y author Kent Nerburn. I haven't finished it yet. In fact I'm only about a third of the way through it, but before I forget where certain passages are or the content of a chapter, I wanted to share just a bit. The book is non-fiction and is a startling look inside the mind of a Lakota elder. Nerburn is a white man from Minnesota who had written a book about the natives of that state and it caught the attention of Dan, the Lakota elder who wanted to set the record straight about natives. He invites Nerburn to the reservation to put together a book that white people can understand. I spent over forty years living and working among the Tlingit Indians of Southeast Alaska. I thought I knew them. I worked alongside the elderly native ladies, sliming salmon in wet, cold conditions inside the dark cold sto...

 Jan and I made a trip to Great Clips this past Thursday to see about getting a haircut. I kind of wish that I had  a set of clippers so we could cut it at home, but Jan would be the one doing the cutting, and Lord knows what I might end up looking like. As it was, even though we had made an appointment, the anticipated wait time was over an hour. We happened to go right when the lunch hour had started. We cancelled and took our chances again on Saturday morning. It was still a little busy, but we only had to wait about fifteen minutes before we got in. The gal who cut my hair did a fine job, but after we paid, and I was in the car, Jan asked if she trimmed the hair out of my ears or eyebrows. Crap, I gave her a tip and everything, and she didn't do that. I couldn't very well go back in and ask her to finish the job. I just didn't think about it when I was in the chair. Usually they just do it. I had to go home and take care of the issue myself. I'm always a little nerv...

 Well, somehow we made it through another Christmas. I have to admit, this one wasn't too painful. The kids did a lot of the work as far as cooking and whatnot. My oldest daughter Jen and her youngest daughter Kaylahni came up. They were supposed to be arriving within a few hours of each other at the Anchorage airport, but Kaylahni,s plane was delayed due to weather, so she didn't come in until the next day. Fortunately we didn't have to make a second trip to the airport. When we were going there to pick up Jen, we were amazed at how poorly the streets were cleared of snow in Anchorage. Several times we were traveling in the far right lane of the three lane street when the lane just about disappeared because they didn't remove the snow. I was watching people walking on the sidewalks, but the sidewalks hadn't been shoveled, even at the crosswalks. It was pretty pathetic. I think though, that it's become indicative of what is happening in this country now. Too man...

  I mentioned in my last post that I would possibly write about the time I went to the Everglades and was chased by an alligator, and so I will. You might be wondering why I'm posting a picture of a large coho salmon if I'm writing about the Everglades. Well, I don't have any pictures of Largemouth bass nor do I have any of alligators, so I'm substituting this salmon which was bit in half by a salmon shark several years ago. When Jan and I were living in Key West, there wasn't much money to do anything. We were living in the poverty level because the military didn't pay much at the time. It's not like it is now. In any event, one form of free entertainment was to go fishing. There were many nights where we ate supper and then went down to the White Street pier to fish for the little grunts or whatever kind of fish there were there. None of the ones we caught there were very big and it was a bit of a disappointment. Although I had discovered that the canals h...

  With each passing day, I'm reminded that I won't be around forever. I don't know when my time will come, hopefully not too soon, but one day it will come and aside from any money that I'll hopefully be able to pass down to my kids, I'd like to pass down some memories. Sometimes when certain of my children are here, we discuss things from our past, but I don't think I've ever really mentioned much about the time that Jan and I spent at Key West Florida. When I graduated from Radarman "A" school in July of 1972, I was assigned to work aboard an old WWII radar escort ship called the Kretchmer. It was home ported in Key West. Unfortunately I had to wait to catch up to the ship, as it was in the North Atlantic. I spent a few weeks at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, mainly cleaning barracks and doing a few stints on burial detail. That was kind of fun. The burial detail that is. At least it got me out of the barracks.  I caught up to the ship in South...

  I saw a T-shirt with this saying the other day. It kind of sums up how I feel some days. I know that I'm 70, and I feel like I'm 80, and I probably look like I'm 90 but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I'm an odd, old fart. I don't know how it happened, except that I wake up every day and the calendar has changed. I go in and do my thing in the morning,  and look in the mirror and wonder who the hell is staring back at me. The hair on top of my head is getting pretty thin, but the hair on my ears and eyebrows is as thick as a briar patch. I have to keep my eyebrows trimmed to keep them from poking me in the eye when I 'm driving. The ear hair just looks plain ridiculous. What is the purpose of it? Women don't have ear hair. I think my ears and nose are growing too. I remember seeing old guys when I was a kid and they kind of looked like Dumbo. Just having bigger ears doesn't mean you can hear better. It might be all the hair clo...

                      Jan and I went shopping at the beginning of the week. We wanted to fill a couple of boxes for Samaritan's Purse's Operation Christmas Child. It's an annual event designed to send boxes overseas to various countries to children who normally would never celebrate Christmas. It's an opportunity to share some of the blessings that we've enjoyed because we were fortunate enough to be born in this country. There is a list of suggested items to send, and there are also labels designating the gender of the child and the general age group. I chose the ten to fourteen year old group because I think they have a tendency to be neglected. I believe a lot of people want to buy something for the little kids, which is great also, but regardless of your age, it's nice to be remembered. We bought everything we needed at Wal-Mart. They have pretty good prices and a decent selection. We both bought an assortment of schoo...