Back from the memphis journey, or whatever that was, fresh off the sandlines m-fortworth to west colton junker i take com trans to go visit my mother a few weeks in escondido. and during this time find a couple of job opportunities on this website some chick in denver had told me about.. 'workaway'. one in the bay area and one further north in the puget sound.
around the same time i was getting ready to head back out there was a post by a couple of fellow crusties about passing through to the bay from yuma in a vehicle.. i jump on this opportunity to taxi back up to colton. just had to meet them at salton sea, just 30 miles to the east. to avoid the heat i take off in the early evening to ruck the desert highway through the night, catching a few z's in the early morning upon reaching the station there.
younger people and a bit rambunctious for me, but we do some hanging around on the way up and it isnt all unpleasant, after a fair amount of drinking.
they drop me next to the yard later in the night and i grab a northbound over the interstate from L.A loop next day no problem. a peaceful spot to wait, and you can essentially catch out to the east and west here also.. only its one of the most exhausting, at the same time — you have to book it through the sand some 100-200 yards up to the mains at the east throat and jump up into a box at a run with the last measure of air youve got left, as soon as you see it swing up and over and decide its got enough empty lumber to be sure its not a barstow/las vegas train. which has also happened and sucks.
anyways, i grab the right manifest and im in roseville 16 hours later. there, already acquainted with the new oakland cc point, im on the international stacks east for four or five hours through the early evening and sleep in some cranny next to the tracks there. next day a bus and a couple more over the golden gate to salsalito where i meet with this lone older gentleman living out of his little sloop anchored by the docks at the edge of richardson bay. and theres a little community of them, some 20-30 more, by the grace of whatever legal loophole, doing the same thing rent free there.
no pay and not much in the way of food. (he brought me to the bum feeds, where he had many friends.. himself also homeless. which i was in no way averse to and if nothing else this made him easier to relate to. but, in this man's listing on workaway he had expressed the desire to teach people how to sail. so i found this a worthy detour, on the way up the i5 corridor to the next thing in any case.
but.. after a few days i quickly fell under the impression this man was a bit screwy and that i wanted nothing to do with him any longer. so stayed a few more for whatever novelty could possibly be left in the thing.. and then i walked away, without a word further.
im fairly certain, 90%, it was on this trip that i nabbed my first deep well container — ever — north out of roseville. immediately i was of the notion that this was the rare sunday special to seattle out of oaklands desert yard, it being sunday and the entire thing being made up of these blue APL cans which id never seen before either. and i think this was before i ever learned of the lcbr to pdx being rerouted north through sacramento instead, or id not been looking out for an IM at that hour of the night in the first place. luckily.
anyhow, its all 48 foot containers inside 53 foot wellcars, leaving a good chunk of space on either side of it in the bottom, where many of the cars there is only a crossbeam between you and the ground.. but in others a solid 2 1/2' x 7' of floor to lay out (or sit upright) in. completely unseen. cool beans yeah?
i get off in portland anyways, to refill, then take an empty gondola on the good old trash train, off champ siding, for the last leg to seattle.
this next thing is a landscaping position up in the san juan islands. so getting off in georgetown, i take the first bus down to the airport where theres this special (and unnecessarily spendy) $40 shuttle straight to the ferry terminal in anacortes.
technically theres a way to freight all the way to anacortes, but itd be an unnecessary feat of traincore figuring all that out when the com trans there is like 6 dollars in total.
id never been to the islands before so didnt know what to expect. place turns out to be a total partier resort and has plenty of avenues for further employment opportunities around, for those looking to lay down roots.
at the center or belly if you prefer of orcas, is eastsound. the islands only actual town. there you have the one library, the one gas station, one grocer, and the four or five bars all in the same few square blocks.. a long bay jettisoning out into the sound.. and here just a hundred feet off the shore like a naval sits a smaller island.. or whatever the dictionary would more properly term an island this small. no bigger than a house really.
doe bay resort and retreat then, starts its interns off on a biweekly stipend of 200 loaded onto a cashcard useable only there. but after a month or so they put me on an actual payroll as an employee.
theres only a handful of us at first, beginning in march, but many more show up later in the spring and the place gets to be quite lively. there are cabins and designated camping spots reserved for employees on the premises, all up the hill way back into the woods where theres a smattering of benches.. restrooms.. outdoor showers.. and one yet unfinished outdoor kitchen underway.
a bonfire most every night with a quarter of the staff around it, winding down after work before trickling off to bed.
and at the base of it all though, the amenities there are hot tubs, sauna.. a licensed masseuse.. veggie garden.. cafe overlooking the bay, with a little soundstage in it for live music on thursdays.. finally, a real change of pace for me. everyone here so laid back it took me some time getting used to.
they put me as landscape lead and then after some weeks on dishwashing at the cafe on weekends. that, then spa maintenance once a week and im all booked. 7days a week.
pretty soon im showing up to work so hungover im still drunk from the previous night, every few days. giving off definite candle at both ends vibes for sure. it was funny at first but then some people started showing some signs of concern after awhile. there goes old rob again back to his camp, with his two growler sized beers. how does he do it.. myself, i didnt know some days.
all the positive signals from the womenfolk but i never make any moves, mostly out of sheer laziness. but also on many occasions when id have liked to, because i was aware of my being too far passed a harmless buzz to really pull it off with any surety. in these environs with its multifaceted complexities of.. social credit, in a word.
i was rapidly budding into the resorts own resident alcoholic, and for that i had a very fine balancing act to maneuver through if i was going to make out alright on an island this tight-knit, and i knew it.
meanwhile were all going out to the lower to play pool and carouse around on weekends. long drunken walks with coworkers… and somewhere in the midst of all this i was beginning to feel somewhat strange. at times a little more than somewhat, but in an even profound and spiritual sort of way.. about things in general.. and it could well be that a sort of prolonged burn-out which was accruing slowly over a period of work related, mostly physical, stress was partly to blame.. but it felt almost like i was losing my mind some days — except in a vaguely pleasant way. it seemed that all the faces and places and occasions of the recent past and over that previous winter most particularly (as it had been fairly difficult and rife with ever present dangers throughout), were replaying through my mind still fresh as yesterday. this sort of.. kalaedescopic.. effervescence of memories that i could sit down with a beer between i and the window of the cabin and never grow bored or lonely — and it distracted from other things, like my peers. lost in thought, and tired. always tired.
there was one though. one girl. i was in good position for it too as it happened, since i was a staple on the maintenance side and, well, known-of. it was by now common knowledge i wasnt out for the ladies much at all. so all i really had to do, to say it, was look at her. and she goes cursing out to the smoke table like somebody just slapped her in the face.
got her good: by surprise. but that was only one step in a dozen and i overshot things; the dream faded. life intruded before i could build it all up properly. i had to get away from the workplace and find something else. so left abruptly to alaska for a second go at salmon season. and i leave just the same way as usual, walking the whole 20 miles back to the ferry terminal without comment. one morning i just didnt have the heart to show up anymore, as positive an experience as it was while it lasted. and i really do sometimes think back and wish that i had stayed a little while longer.
Bristol bay, AK just a week later and its 16 hours a day, 7 days a week racking frozen fish. grueling work, but not so bad knowing what to expect after the first time three years earlier at the same plant. but its got a bad batch of angry laborers this time around and the season gets pretty wild. i knew by then to keep my head down so i survive it all fine, myself. but over the final week there people are getting damn near murdered.
a couple days before we all get our paychecks and flown back down to the lower fourtyeight theres a full on riot.
i wake in the middle of the night to go take a leak and dont hear all the screaming and shouting until im just out the door pulling the earbuds out of my ears. i look to my right and in the hallway is a mass of 15-20 bodies all over oneanother and just as many more standing just beyond, some trying to deter one or another and here and there someone jumping into the mix. somebody had ripped a toilet out of a stall and thrown it through somebodys bedroom door. and i saw someone grab the fire extinguisher and try to smash the face of someone else on the ground with it, before that got ripped away by yet another party who proceeds to spray the entire parade down with it in effort to break it up. semisuccessfully. but it keeps going.. and im just standing there with the other white guys, the dude next to me with his mouth hanging open.. in raw, genuine awe.. transfixed in childlike wonder. we exchange glances for a brief second, and we are in silent agreement on something nobody ever really quite works out in words but rather senses all the same. there surely must be significant differences, from one ethnicity to the other. and you dont really feel it so much as witness the thing.
before long sparky, the lead foreman, comes bursting from the second-stairwell door into the hall with a baseball bat, yelling.. and it was just like one of those comic fight sequences in the jackie chan movies.. this little philipino man makes ten-fifteen feet and stops dead in his tracks before two behemoth black dudes standing in his way grinning.. and doubles back out the way he came, more screaming than yelling.. the two directly after him, right by me and this gorgeous philipina across from me whom id never dared talk to there and we only turn to eachother wordlessly like, did you just see that fucking shit, laughing out loud. what the fuck.
with that the whole mess kind of migrates outside and eventually the police make it out and some arrests are made.
my first summer up there id spent a whole month between herring and salmon in anchorage, waiting to get flown back for the other, may to june. mostly drunk for the duration. mustve hit just about every bar in town. west and then working my way to the east side after a time. first just recovering from herring though, initially. sore all over, down to the finger bones sore. my whole body hurt. but i eventually got around to the train yard there. id been wanting to scope that line up to fairbanks out. so starting from the bridge over the river from downtown, north onto the bikepath running between that and the tracks i work my way up. and its here that im first acquainted with alaskas mosquitoes. and as my stroll progresses out to the east throat of the yard and then backtracking over to the west and over to the north side to access the wooded area along the bluff opposite, i discover just how bad it really is. there are so many mosquitoes, setting up on this or that side for any length of time is inconceivable to me. not for an hour, not for a minute. and then, surveying what all i have to work with under these conditions i discover that i am even iller-equipped for this than i had assumed i was — my bug-net is in fact only coffin sized.. 3x3x7; cubic, and without stakes for the four corners of the thing. not at all practical. in short: anchorage proved to be straight ass for camping. and the yard itself altogether its own beast, the security is unexpectedly harsh. at some point someone spies me — from close to a mile away spies me — crossing over the mains well outside the yard itself, to go have a merry shit in the woods. thats to say, i didnt make a ride to fairbanks.. you see, i was nearly arrested by the rail police instead, just barely talking my way out of it. carefully emphasizing that i was homeless and only sitting in the bushes next to the railroad tracks with all my hiking gear because all the other spots to sleep have been claimed, sir. a shame too, my ride left just some minutes after corporal dicksuck did and it was really crawlin at a friendly pace.
so i give up on fairbanks and kinda just resign myself to the hostel for the rest of the month. the hostel and all the bars. i found a nice pool hall too, a real big one with like twenty tables and five of that other thing. billiards or whatever. would daydrink away there, playing myself mostly. sometimes my roomie would come along though. also a drinker, and also waiting on hr to bring him out for salmon processing, only further south down the panhandle. back at the hostel motherfucker was facetiming his wife and kid every day in the bunk below mine crying like a whiny bitch. its alright though, some people just never been long away from home. otherwise a pretty solid guy. but for that was nice to get him out and about at times, so at least i didnt have to hear it.
so besides all the wandering around town either drunk or hungover out of my mind im kind of just doing a lot of small talk with randoms. surprisingly never getting into any confrontations for as strung out as i was waiting for salmon to pick up. but there was this once i almost got my ass beat by this samoan dude. some club up towards downtown. was standing around with my drink just enjoying the music, watching people dancing. but was staring too long at all the ass in between i guess because these three samoans appear before me and guy gets real in my face to say that the chick im looking at is his fiance and hes not playing at all, just staring into my soul. i surprise myself with how tactfully i reach out my hand at the last moment in way of deference and congratulate him on his betrothel. he accepts that and fucks off thank god. but i did no more floor gazing after that, needless to say.
overall anchorage was not unlike most any other city, although relatively small for a fullfledged metropolitan, whole swathes of wooded/undeveloped sections here and there which isnt typical fare for its size, gave it its own feel a little i guess.. but im mostly just reminded of bellingham when i think of anchorage, or viceversa possibly.. both in terms of layout and atmosphere. the sea to the wet end and mountains on the east. although surprisingly, for anchorage, where the sun is never entirely set until 2am, there was not much of a nightlife. or so it seemed that way wheresoever id gone drinking in the evenings; everywhere closed right around ten or eleven or sometimes even earlier. step out of the bar and it aint even fucking dark yet. and i found this somewhat depressing. really the only thing i have against anchorage i think.. that and the mosquitoes, obviously.
anyway, salmon that year the going was pretty cool and people at the plant were easy going. we got along swimmingly. but this summer was about opposite that. and in between days, when there were no loads coming in id be walking the 5-10 miles down the beach and to the first market in naknek for beer. following grizzly tracks in the sand all the way back. alone, considering myself an awful lucky cunt never catching up with the bear, each trip i made. (3 maybe, im not totally nuts) there were ofc others making the same hike, but together in groups. they were smarter, you see.
all up and down fishing boats near and far, some laying down nets and others smaller and closer anchoring trot lines to shore. little cabins and storage sheds here and there.. a few houses. their families out and about on bikes or atvs or in trucks.. imagine owning beach property right on bristol bay. raking in fish every summer with your wife and kid. selling that by the truckload in town or to nearby plants like pederson point by the pound. blowing the odd moose or grizzly away with your hunting rifle..
none of them looked terribly rich, in fact most of them looked to be scraping by relatively humbly — and this i found peculiar. a sort of striking contrast there.. these people made it look easy, like you could just show up one day with a trailer full of lumber and stake out a plot right there on the water, live the dream out there in the alaskan wilderness. fishing boat and all. that was i think what made bristol bay so oddly picturesque to me.. made the imagination wander..
drawing up images straight out of hemmingways old man or islands in the stream.. these hovels perched humbly against the great northern sea, with the salt of the earth trickling in and out of them. campfires.. laughing, cooking. living.