About that cup of coffee... plus two dogs, three cats, and an airplane

Last night, I was just too exhausted to post an entry, so now I discover that yesterday has gone. No one knows that I came out of the Wasilla Post Office to see this dog and her lady sitting in a truck.

This is wrong. The world needs to know this. The burden is upon me. Sheba is the dog; the woman is Debbie. Debbie says that Sheba is an exceptionally bright and intelligent dog, sweet and loving.

Of course, I would have liked to have learned more about Sheba, but Debbie needed to get into the Post Office and I needed to get into my car.

The temperature was 10 degrees F and the wind was stiff, as you can see by the flag across the street. I wore only a light jacket and that wind was going right through it, so I could not chat long with Sheba and Debbie.

You can see that Sheba is, indeed, sweet and loving, but I did wonder about the intelligence part. Then, as I got back into my car, I glanced over just in time to see Sheba arrange a Rubic's Cube - only the most intelligent of dogs can do that.

This is one of those images that fails to come across blog size, but that's me, reflected in the left side of the window at the Well's Fargo Bank drive-through. Those two ladies behind the window have just removed a check written to me and are about to put into my account.

They will tube $200 back to me, and then I will drive to Taco Bell, which is only about 100 yards away.

Pretty convenient, huh?

If you click on the picture, you can see it a little bigger.

Of course, I would not want to frighten you.

Back home: Royce, Chicago and Martigny share a sunbeam. The two calicos tend not to want to share anything with each other, save for a hiss and a flying claw, but they shared the sunbeam.

Late  yesterday afternoon, I was out again, headed toward a coffee kiosk but first found myself near Anderson Lake. Anderson Lake is where I kept my airplane before I crashed it. In the winter, I kept it on skis atop the lake; in the summer, alongside the little gravel strip adjacent to the lake.

Out of curiosity, I drove onto the lake to see if anyone had claimed the spot where I used to tie down..

They had. Another Citabria was now tied down where the Running Dog used to sit and wait for me. That was a really good life. I miss it terribly.

Except for the color, this Citabria looks just like mine did, before I broke it. I had a different brand of skis, though.

Mine were better.

Now, about that cup of coffee... the one that I referred to Saturday, at the IHOP breakfast...

I am a little reluctant to tell the story...

Just as I am a little reluctant each time I post a coffee picture, and tell a coffee story.

I am reluctant, because I have informed a number of my relatives down in Utah and Idaho about this blog, plus a few friends from the life that I was born into and lived until about three decades back.

I do not wish to shock, dismay, disappoint, or disillusion any of them. I do not wish to shake or weaken their faith, even though I no longer follow it.

In the culture and religion that I grew up in, to drink coffee was a sin. In their degree of wickedness, sins had an order to them. With one exception too complex to get into here, the gravest and most evil of all sins was to commit murder, to shed innocent bled. For this, God would not forgive.

Then there was sex, conducted outside of marriage. This could be forgiven, but not easily. One would have to first suffer the searing pains of conscience, confession and penance.

Not far below these two in magnitude of evil was the consumption of alcohol, the smoking of cigarettes, and the drinking of "hot beverages" - widely recognized as coffee and tea.

Playing cards was pretty damned evil, too - as was saying "damn!" unless you were a righteous person and were using the word to a righteous end. Then damn was fine. Brigham Young himself was known to use the word a few times.

So, you see, I grew up without learning a good many of the social skills generally required to get one through this life. Unless one settles in Utah or Southern Idaho. My family sure hoped I would, but I could not.

Yet, as reluctant as I am to do so, I said that I would tell the story so yesterday, well after 5:00 PM, I set out for my afternoon coffee break, determined to take a new picture that was a little bit different from some of the other coffee images that I have placed here. I would use that picture to illustrate the story.

I remembered this little kiosk that sits exposed to the mountain vista of the Chugach. I decided that I would get my coffee and take my picture there.

But when I arrived. it was closed.

This kiosk closes at 5:30. I arrived at 5:31.

I thought I would photograph it anyway, but then I saw the young woman who had just closed shop (you can see her in this picture if you click on it) walk out the back. I feared that it might frighten her if I took the picture as she walked from the building, so I put my camera down.

Then the raven flew into the picture. I had to take it.

The raven, Raven himself, is a most important character in traditional Eskimo belief.

It was the Eskimos who taught me how to drink coffee.

The first instance happened on Halloween of 1982. This was not the first time that I had drank a cup of coffee, mind you. I had consumed a few cups after youthful drunks, intent on getting sober before a responsible adult spotted me, but that was different.

On that Halloween, I flew into the St. Lawrence Island village of Gambell with a group of Inuit thespians from Greenland, known as Tukak Teatre.

We came in on a big, fast, two-engined airplane but even then, we would not have been able to land had the wind not been blowing straight down the runway. That wind was strong. Fifty. Maybe MPH. Maybe knots. The pilot just said "the winds doing 50."

The temperature was not that cold - nine degrees, F, but I had not yet learned how to dress for Arctic conditions and in it that wind, it felt frigid - damn frigid.

Worse yet, I turned my hand in such a way that the wind caught the cusp of my right glove, ripped if off my hand and shot it off into the distance to disappear in the blowing snow. Maybe it went off to Russia. On a clear day, you really can see Russia from Gambell. To my knowledge, our governor has never been in Gambell.

A villager pulled up on a three-wheeler and offered me a ride.

I hoped on behind him and pulled my bare hand as far up my coat sleeve as I could.

It was a wild ride, through the wind, and over bumps that he did not even slow down for.

"This is the real bush!" he shouted back at me.

Then he dropped me off at the home of my host.

I went inside, almost frozen.

My host offered me a banana and a cup of coffee.

I took both.

I wrapped my hands around the cup and savored the heat as it radiated into them.

I then lifted the coffee to my lips.

I drank. I felt the heat spread outward from my esophagus and belly throughout my body.

I treasured that heat. It was wonderful.

When I was done, I asked for another.

The picture above, by the way, is from today. I went back to that same kiosk and got there before 5:30. Before I ordered, I stopped in the Three Bears parking lot across the street, and took this shot of Morgan, serving a customer.

And here is Morgan as she serves coffee to me.

The St. Lawrence Island experience did not make me a coffee drinker. My faith in the religion of my birth had already been terribly shaken by then, never to recover, but still I had no desire to drink coffee. It had brought heat to me when I was cold, and that was that.

I did not drink my next cup until May of 1985. This was the spring that I began to follow Inupiat whalers out on the ice as they went out to hunt the bowhead, upon which their life and culture is built.

At whale camp, I had basically three choices of beverages - coffee, tea and, when someone would drive their snowmachine to the community and come back with a sled-load of fresh supplies, an occassional Pepsi. The coffee and tea were made by melting old ice that the salt had leeched out of, or glacier ice that had floated into the ocean to become lodged in the sea ice.

If I was really quick, I could sometimes snag a cup of that water immediately after the ice had been melted over the Coleman, but mostly, I drank tea, and coffee.

My pee turned dark, and stained the snow in a shade that I had never seen before - just like the hunters who I was with.

Then one day, I was out in the ocean off the village of Wainwright in a tiny, tiny, boat. That boat, along with several others, was attached to a heavy rope the other end of which had been looped around the tail of a bowhead whale, 58 feet in length. On the shore side of us, huge pressure ridges - the tallest reaching up to seventy feet, jutted out of the ice.

On the seaward side, the pack ice drifted. The sun, which hung low over the northern horizon, caused eery and strange mirages to form above it. Castles would appear, and then disappear. A man would show up out there - a really tall man, looking at us, and then shrink away until he became just a shard of ice.

Our forward progress was slow, maybe two miles an hour, if that. The boat ride would be long - nine hours - and cold.

"The way to stay warm out here," one of my boat mates told me, "is to drink lots of coffee, and pee often."

Some survival experts will tell you not to drink coffee at all in cold weather situations, but nobody knows more about staying warm than do Iñupiat whale hunters.

So I drank lots of coffee and I peed often - and always into a rusty Folger's can, which I then emptied over the side of the boat.

I could go on and on. I could tell you about the times spent as a guest in Iñupiat homes, when friends and relatives wander in and out of the house at all hours of the day or night, just to visit, to play cards, to dip their frozen or dried meat into seal oil, and to drink coffee.

I would join in. Then I would go to bed at maybe 1:00 AM, maybe 3:00 AM, maybe 4:00, so full of coffee that I was certain I would lay awake for the rest of the night.

But I would sleep well.

Better than I almost ever do, for I am a chronic insomniac.

Today, after I bought a cup for me and another for Margie, I turned back towards home.

I had not gone far when I saw a car parked at the corner of Bogard and Trunk. On it was a sign that read, "puppy."

I could not let such a newsworthy event pass by unphotographed, so I pulled over and stopped.

So did these two. I thought they might take the puppy. They didn't.

The girl oohed and aahed for a minute or so. The boy seemed to want just to go. They did, before I could find out anything about them.

The lady who was giving the puppy away did not want her face to be in the photograph, but she did not mind if the puppy was. So I left her face out of the picture - although there still might be a clue or two here as to her true identity, should anyone who knows her see the picture.

She said the puppy was the last of eight. The others had all been given away.

The puppy was vexingly cute. When I petted it, it looked at me with eager, pleading eyes and I felt a sore temptation to bring it home - but five cats and one St. Bernard already live here.

I resisted.

But look! On the dash!

It would appear that the puppy is a coffee drinker, too!

Wasilla Creek runs just behind the spot where the woman and the puppy had parked. As I drove away, I saw the woman get out, and carry the puppy toward the creek. In some places, this would be a worrisome sight. But not here. That creek was frozen solid.

The puppy just needed to pee.

Too much coffee, obviously.

Comments

[Suzy (=^..^=)]

I think I saw you in WalMart last night...were you shopping around 7:30ish? I think it was you, but it didn't register in my mind until you walked past, and then my brain clicked who it was. Um, since I've only ever seen you in this blog. ;) Didn't want to turn around and follow you, that was too "stalker" like, even for me.

And maybe it wasn't you...:)

We have a new stray cat. Again. The kids have nicknamed him "Big Mac", since he doesn't eat inside, he's a drive through eater only. This will make my cat total 6 - if he stays around. He's very nice though, skinny and hungry, and attention starved, so I think now that he's got a name, he's pretty much ours.

[Wasilla, Alaska, by 300]

I'm afraid I did not go to Wal-Mart last night.

Still, if you think you see me, don't be afraid to say hi.

The worst that can happen is that someone else might say no.

That cat knew where to go.

Maybe one day I will meet Big Mac.

[ASHU]

Thats great thanks