Some members of Front Dock at Tony's Bar, St Patrick's Day 2014
Only Jason was in green. The Russians were bringing in the p-cod. This was us at Tony's, where we started the celebration. Dominic, pictured laughing, was still with the dock crew. He would be fired in the last days of p-cod season, when the work ran 20 hours a day, the Russians arriving in boats one after the other through the night and it was blowing a gale with wind and sleet and snow. Dom couldn't handle it and walked off the crane. Even Charles was down on the dock pitching fish and running one of the cranes and raving like a madman. I got on the crane Dom abandoned and had to forklift two boats at a time. It was a helluva spot Dom put the crew in walking off. But this picture comes before all that. Dom was a good guy after all. This was St Patty's Day and we were just getting started here. Mad Jack had brought us downtown in his quacking taxi.
There was a movie crew rumored to be in Seward and on this night the locals thought I was an actor in this film that was to be shot. I did nothing to dissuade this presumption and encouraged it and Jason and Dom spread fabulous lies about my acting career. The movie plot was some sort of secret but we explained it all: there were Alaska bears and snowmobiles and Inuit hunters in the film. Extraordinary things were happening. We made promises to get these locals in the film and took their phone numbers. The locals offered their snowmobiles and expertise. We said we would need it all, most definitely. Dom, I said, was a production assistant. He would be in touch with them.
Then, naturally, we met more people as the night got drunker. These people were from Los Angeles and they were the actual film crew. Jason, fish pitcher and the film's head of cinematography, was now concerned our lies would be exposed, and had us flee to the Yukon where we ran into more of the Los Angeles crew. Things got sloppy after that. Things I cannot write, that I might tell you if we were together and there was a solemn promise made not to repeat these things. For a St Patty's Day is not complete if it does not get a little strange and Seward late in the night and early morning could get as strange as ever.
Tony's is at the end of the line, great for pool when you want to play alone or when everything else is crowded. The great race up My Marathon begins and ends there. I slept on a picnic bench near there and later on lived nearby in my truck. The f/v K was nearby, that too was my home for a time. Pcod is a lot of work.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting note that the blue sleeve in the corner of the picture belonged to a greenhorn deckhand on the aforementioned F/V K. This young man would depart the vessel and relinquish his position to Maximin. Indeed, Maximin when this picture was taken was just a few months fron arriving in Alaska.
ReplyDeleteVerily, Alaska remains still very much unresolved. What might have happened there did not happen. Perhaps we came to it too late, perhaps not late enough. Though it was not a failure, it never did lead to what I sensed was possible.
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