Float plane landing on Sarah Palin's lake, and other Wasilla scenes: will soon continue the India series

I am so ashamed of myself. This blog has nothing to do with our former Mayor, present governor and ambitious woman traipsing about the nation in preparation for 2012, but I figured if I put "Sarah Palin" in the title, someone might google her name and wind up on my blog.

Not only that, the lake the airplane above is landing on is not her lake at all; she just happens to live on it. It is called Lake Lucille and it belongs to all of us Alaskans - even to you who are not Alaskans.

But don't try to get on Lake Lucille by passing through Sarah Palin's yard.

I don't know if she has a mean dog, but if she does, it might bite you.

The picture was taken through my windshield as I drove down Lucille Street.

A fence and imitation well on Gail street. We have a well in our front yard, too, but it doesn't look like that. We don't have a fence. I don't want a fence. I hate fences.

My next door neighbor has a fence. He put it up so that he would not have to look at my wrecked airplane.

Speaking of which, I saw this Citabria for sale at the Palmer airport. I had a doctor appointment at 4:00, but had to wait until 8:00 PM to see the doctor. I got bored, left the doctors office and drove to the Palmer airport to see what kind of airplanes might be for sale.

And here was this Citabria. Looks almost like the Running Dog once did.

Look at that! $28,000! When I saw that number, my hopes rose. But then I read that part about the fuselage and windows showing their age. Plus the part about the engine and prop "still" passing annual. And nothing about time on the engine or prop. I figure that means they must be high time and so soon will have to be replaced or rebuilt.

So I reckon that once this Citabria is purchased and put into good working order, the buyer will have spent anywhere from $45 to $60,000.

Hell. There's no way I can afford that.

In fact, there's no way that I can afford $28,000.

Yet, seeing this airplane gave me hope and still does.

I don't have $60,000 today but that doesn't mean I won't on another day.

And if I get it, I will buy me a good airplane and Margie will shrug and sigh and think of all the things that she could do with $60,000, but she will love me anyway, and she will smile, and be happy to see me take off and then later buzz the house and then come in for a landing.

That's how it used to be around here.

That's how I want it to be again.

And when it becomes that way, you will see this blog turn into something, because Alaska will once again be mine.

And here is a dog that was at the doctor's office when I returned. I was officially ahead of him in line, but still, he got in to see the doctor ahead of me.

I didn't see it for myself, but I'll bet she petted him.

She didn't pet me.

How come?

Despite suffering two flat tires since I returned from India, my bike works pretty good. I took this picture as I pedaled past this kid.

I take my first bike ride since I fell off the chair; The Fit Lady falls into Catch 22 with the Department of Agriculture and the IRS; various and insundry Wasilla scenes

The last time that I rode my bike was in early June of last year, just before I went to Barrow, stood on the chair, fell off the chair, shattered my shoulder, took a $37,000 ambulance ride in a Lear jet back to Anchorage and got a new shoulder.

But today I rode it. Now I want to ride and ride and ride.

It hurt. It burned my lungs and strained my arms. I am so out of shape.

It felt good.

I just want to ride and ride.

But I have places to go, soon. I won't be able to bring my bike.

As you can see, I kept my brace on. I have been told to keep it on all the time. 

As I neared Serendipity, I saw The Fit Lady, walking on the bike trail ahead of me. I slowed down and pedaled beside her for awhile. She always has a good story. I wondered what it would be today.

Here it is:

Not long ago, she got a bill from the Department of Agriculture demanding that she pay the interest on an agricultural loan that they had never given to her. The Fit Lady is not into agriculture. She is in to skiing and biking and sailing, but not agriculture.

So she wrote a letter and told them so. In time, they wrote back and said okay, maybe you don't have a loan with us. Sometime after that, they sent a statement to the IRS claiming that they had advanced $38,000 in taxable income to her.

Now, the IRS expects her to pay taxes on money she never received for an agriculture business that she does not own.

"I'm not going to pay it," she said. "If I had a cow on my porch, I think I would know. Well, yesterday, I did have a cow moose on my porch. I opened the door and accidently banged her nose. She was there for the bird feeder. She got it, too. There's no food for the birds, now."

Just when so many of them are arriving after their long winter's absence!

After I got home, I parked my bike by my wrecked airplane. After I crashed it, many people told me that I was lucky to have walked away unhurt. It didn't feel lucky then and it doesn't feel lucky now.

I was also told, many times, "any landing that you walk away from is a good landing."

I made many good landings in the Running Dog. This last one wasn't one of them.

Later, I saw this guy, riding his bike. 

I took Margie to Carr's, so that we could buy three-dozen eggs to boil and color. Kalib is coming home tonight. He will need eggs to find tomorrow.

Before I got out of the car, Michael came by. I had never met him before, but he was a nice kid, pleased to learn that he would be on the blog.

Michael has been working at Carr's since January or February, taking groceries to cars for customers, and retrieving shopping carts. "It's a good job," he said. "I meet lots of nice people. I enjoy helping people."

There you go: Michael of Carr's in Wasilla, Alaska.

Inside Carr's, I was surprised to see Slackwater Jack. Slackwater is a commercial fisherman from Cordova and a member of the Native Village of Eyak Tribal Council. I first met him many years ago, when I was doing portraits and interviews of Alaska Native veterans of foreign wars. 

Jack is Tlingit, and fought in Vietnam.

Now he shops at Carr's in Wasilla, because his wife moved here, so he must hang out here a bit, too.

A lot of people will be eating strawberry shortcake tomorrow - Easter Sunday. Does this look like a time of hardship?

And yet it is, for many. Maybe us, in a month or two. You never know, when you work freelance and have no business sense. When I have money, I spend it. When I don't, I don't and when it gets really bad, I sell things, and hock things and sometimes I never get them back - like those guns I was telling you about.

This hasn't happened for awhile, though. Years. Not even this last year, when my income dropped by more than half, due to my injury. I hope it never happens again, but one never knows.

I just want to write my books, now, and do this blog. Neither activity pays any money.

And then these cats who hang out with me always need food, and litter to deposit it in after they process it.

One place I spent money recklessly today was at Little Miller's, where I pulled up to the drive-in window and bought an Americano for me and another for Margie. I could see through to the other drive-in window, where this guy studied the menu before ordering.

I don't know why he stood there and did not sit in a car like the rest of us, but he did.

Margie spent the day working on taxes. I had to spend time rounding up receipts for her. As usual, wherever I was, Jim was there, too. He is here with me, in this office, right now, asleep, curled up on his chair.

My buddy, Jim.

I treasure his presence.

Sarah's Way turns sloppy and mucky but I face up to it; memories of the Lone Ranger; a DC-3 flies above me; yesterday's crime scene marked a shooting incident

This is what I faced this morning when I stepped out of my house and onto Sarah's Way to begin my walk. As sloppy and messy as it looked, I did not let it stop me. I walked right through it.

Seldon was dry when I reached it. I had not walked far before a pink truck came from behind. In all my decades here, this is the first pink truck that I have ever seen on Seldon.

On the other hand, I have seen this orange truck many times. I've never seen it move, though.

As you can see, we here in Wasilla are in constant touch with all the world. Some people think that we are all hillbillies, but they are wrong. Not that there is anything wrong with being a hillbilly. I think I could enjoy being a hillbilly, if I did not love Alaska so much.

As I have explained before, there are no hillbillies in Alaska, but rather, Mountain Billies.

I was pleased to see a Douglas DC 3 fly by overhead. I just wished that I were in it, in the left-hand seat, doing barrel rolls and figure eights. Maybe this very airplane helped us win World War II.

At three in the afternoon, Margie and I ventured over to Well's Fargo Financial Services to talk finance with this man, Chris. Alongside the desk where he sits is a huge photograph of a stagecoach and I liked it, even though it was canned. 

It reminded me of my own stint with the Lone Ranger. I wanted to take a photo, there in Chris's office, with the stagecoach mural in the background. But photography inside the bank is prohibited, since someone who is both exceptionally bright and in a position to lay down mandates and rules believes that a bad guy might look at such a photograph of a man sitting at a desk in front of a photo of a stagecoach and suddenly figure out how to rob that bank.

So I had to photograph Chris outside with the calendar as a stand-in for the mural.

As any American of my generation knows (and even Chris, who is of a different generation, knew), the Lone Ranger, with help from Tonto, did, in fact, break up many stagecoach robberies.

As for my stint with the masked man, it happened when I was very small and lived in Pendleton, Oregon. At that time, the Pendleton Roundup billed itself as the biggest rodeo in the world and when I was four or five, we learned that the Lone Ranger was coming to town to participate and that he would ride a stagecoach in the parade.

Then came the disturbing news, relayed to me by my big brothers, who could read the newspaper. According to news accounts, my brothers told me, when the Lone Ranger got off the plane, no one was there to greet him. Later, someone found him crying at the airport, because his feelings had been hurt.

I refused to believe this, because the Lone Ranger I admired would never cry. No. You could shoot him in the shoulder, and still he would not cry. He would get up, punch and fight and shoot the gun that you had shot him with right out of your hand.

Yet, even my Dad claimed to have read such an article.

It pained me to think that Dad would lie like that. I wished that I could read the paper for myself. I would prove them all wrong.

Come parade day, the Lone Ranger did ride through town on a stagecoach.

Guess who got to climb up on that stage coach, sit beside him, and ride a tiny ways with him, before being replaced by another little kid?

Yes. Me.

It was thrilling. And it was terrifying. To a tiny boy, it was a long way down from that stagecoat seat to the road. I feared that I would fall and shatter my shoulder - or at least my skull. So I sat beside the Lone Ranger and bawled. Part of the time. But then I got brave and smiled. Until it was time to get down. Then I bawled again.

"You're just a damn bawl-baby," my brothers told me later.

And later in life, when I was in college, I not only got to meet Tonto, but to photograph him. Jay Silverheels, the actor who played Tonto, came to BYU with Chief Dan George and I met them both, talked to them both and photographed them both.

I wonder where those photos are?

After we finished at the bank, we went across the street and joined these two ravens in the Taco Bell Drive through.

As to yesterday's crime scene, it turns out that was a shooting there. Fortunately, nobody got hit. You would be hard put to find anyone in Alaska who favors gun control, and I certainly do not. Guns are too important to life here; too many people depend on guns to live, and the idea of taking them away is irrational and stupid.

But what do you do about people like the man who shot up Tailgaters yesterday? It could have turned out much worse. Or how about all the mass murders lately, elsewhere in the US? At least two carried out by men who, in part, justified their actions through their irrational - yes, Glenn Beck, IRRATIONAL - fear that President Barack Obama was going to take their guns away.

The question is a vexing one. That man, and those who committed these murders, should not have guns. But don't even think about taking my gun away.

Oh, wait! I sold most of my guns during times when I needed money more than guns, and then lost my last rifle - a very fine lever-action 30-30 - after I crashed my plane and someone stole it from the fuselage before I did my recovery.

But I still have my shotgun. You can't take it.

And I will get another rifle. Maybe this fall. One with a fast bullet - maybe a .270. Or perhaps one to replace that good, old, reliable, powerful, hard-hitting 30-06 that I loved.

Don't even try to stop me. 

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.

I wonder if there was any school today?

Today as I walked through my personal nightmare, the subdivision called Serendipity, these two boys came zipping by. They turned onto a side road, then soon came zipping back.

If I had had my DSLR's, I could have followed the action, but I only took the pocket camera on my walk and it recycles too slow. So I missed the mishap, which happened immediately after I took the top picture. I did capture the aftermath. 

As you can see, they went around a corner and the sled broke where the rope was attached. The boy on the sled slid to the curb.

That's Tristan, 11, on the left, and Reed, 12, on the right. I wondered why they were out during school hours and thought about asking them, but I did not want to frighten them, so I did not.

It was the first walk that I have taken through Serendipity in a long time; I think the first time this year. It hurts me to walk in Serendipity, that's why. I knew it when it was wild, when no one called it Serendipity. I knew it when, on a day such as today, it would be just me back there, on my skis, with my late dog, Willow, or my even later dog, Scout.

I left Serendipity and headed back to the house. It was then that I discovered that someone was in the air, above me, manning the stick.

This hurts, too.

Kalib stayed with us, all day today, after being gone for several days in a row. He walked all about, as if walking was something that he had always been doing.

All day long, he was happy; happier then I have seen him since before we went to Washington DC and Margie got hurt and he went off to daycare.

All day long, Margie was happier than I have seen her, since she got hurt.

Kalib plays with Royce and Muzzy. There are two more images in this series, but I am saving them for Grahamn Kracker's No Cats Allowed Kracker Cat blog.

I had gone from my office into the bedroom to get my jacket so that I could go to a kiosk and get some coffee.

Margie came in. "There's a young person here to see you," she said.

"Who?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "He knocked on the door and then asked for you."

So I headed to the door expecting to see some kind of missionary or salesman but instead it was Mike. I had not seen Mike for years.

He was probably about 12 when I first met him. I was walking and he came pedaling by me on a bike. I took his picture. We became friends after that and he would often come by to watch my electric train buzz around my office.

He was a train enthusiast, and knew more about them then I did. Once, he needed a caboose, so I gave him mine.

He is 19 now and lives in Talkeetna. Something brought him to the neighborhood, so he stopped by to say hi.

He was curious about my train. Trouble is, after I broke my shoulder and got it replaced with titanium, I could not do the things necessary to keep that train running.

One day, I will make it run again.

Kalib studies a bubble.

Kalib reaches for bubbles. And who blows all these bubbles?

Why, its his Mom, Lavina. 

Kalib. These bubbles were blown last night, by the way.

Today, as I drank my coffee and ate a cinnamon roll, I drove by Iona, the place where people pray. I thought about Elvis Presley, and about the humble people that he sang about.

And this is from yesterday's coffee break. Church Road. People must pray here, too. Maybe that guy up there is praying, quietly, so no one will hear.

Curious. There are no churches on Church Road, but there are a bunch on Lucille Street.