We follow Mr. Horsey to the end of the beginning of the Iditarod; he gets eaten by a big fish; Balto comes to the rescue

We did not arrive at Fourth Avenue in downtown Anchorage for the ceremonial start of the Iditarod until near the end, when just a few teams were left to go. We were not concerned about this, because the real start is on Sunday, at Willow, in the afternoon and we are pretty sure we will be there.

Still, Jacob and Lavina wanted to take Kalib downtown so that he could experience some of the flavor of it all and I wanted to go, to. Margie wanted to hang out with Jobe and he needed a babysitter. So I dropped her off at the house, then accompanied Jacob, Lavina and Kalib to Fourth Avenue.

But what is that little Mr. Horsey doing tucked into Jacob's coat as he and Kalib walk down Fourth Avenue?

Here. Read the story for yourself. The above letter came to Jacob and Lavina in a box along with a disposable camera. So, before Mr. Horsey makes his next journey, before hopefully one day in the near future returning to his first grade class in Killan, Jacob, Lavina, and Kalib thought they would give him a chance to experience the Iditarod.

Jacob is photographing Mr. Horsey with the banner that marks the Iditarod starting line in the background.

I believe this is the third to the last team to go. Jacob takes a disposable camera picture with the sled dogs in the background.

Shortly after the last team had left, this man, wearing a wolverine hat, and this woman, wearing a wolf hat, posed with Mr. Horsey.

I am not sure how such a scene will play in a first grade classroom in Southern California, but it does represent life in Alaska.

Shortly after that, Mr. Horsey sat in on a dog team line himself.

Melanie and Charlie joined us, under a real, live, snarling, angry, grizzly bear. I was terrified, but, as you can see, these three were very brave. The bear did not frighten them at all.

Across the street from the bear and a few steps down the sidewalk, Mr. Horsey took a short nap on the wing of an airplane flown by a rather odd pilot and his oddball passengers.

I don't think this airplane would pass annual and I am certain there are some aviation safety violations going on here.

From there, we walked down the hill to the train station.

"Take my picture, quick!" Mr. Horsey shouted at me. "Before we get run over!"

Then we met this fellow, whose name I forget. I wasn't worried about that, because he directed us to a table womanned by his wife to get a brochure and he said his name was there. So I got the brochure and I just now took a look at it for the first time and it has no names in it at all.

Anyway, he had some puppies for sale. These are a mix of great dane and something else - I forget what, because I thought that was going to be on the brochure, too, but it's not. His web address is, however, and maybe the information is there. I haven't looked yet and it is late and I am tired and want to get to bed, so I will leave that to you, if you are interested.

He said he also had some small breed pups and that Bristol Palin had bought one from him in the morning.

He and his wife also cater pony-parties for kids. All that information should be on the website, I would think.

Next, we moved on to the snow sculptures, where a giant halibut took an interest in Mr. Horsey.

Oh no! A leaping salmon got him!

How are we ever going to explain this to that first grade class in Killan?

Assuming that he and Melanie would be able to get tickets to the Miners and Trappers Ball, Charlie planned to enter the beard contest at 8:00 PM. I would have liked to have gone to take pictures of him competing, but, I didn't have a ticket and I was pretty sure that Margie and I would be back in Wasilla by eight.

We tried a couple of other places, but there were no seats available. Melanie called ahead to Snow City and by the time we reached there, walking, there was a table for us.

I ordered a portabello mushroom sandwich and Charlie picked up the tab.

I had never thought of Snow City as a place to eat any meal other than breakfast, but, that sandwich...

superb!

Kalib ordered some hot chocolate topped with whipped cream. He found it superb as well.

After lunch, Melanie and Charlie parted company with us and went their own way.

As we walked the mile or so back to the car, Jacob said he wanted to stop by the Balto statue to pay his respects to this great lead dog who saved so many people in Nome during the 1925 diphtheria serum run.

When we got to the statue, I could not believe my eyes. Balto had saved Mr. Horsey. I have no idea how Balto did it, but, as anyone can plainly see, he did.

Jacob, Kalib and Mr. Horsey, under the banner that marks the ceremonial starting line for the Iditarod.

We walked on, past the Fur Rendez carnival. Kalib had grown very sleepy.

He fell asleep in the car immediately.

I guess everybody was pretty tired.

In fact, I'm tired. Too tired to describe what is going on here.

These two had enjoyed a lovely time together while the rest of us followed Mr. Horsey about.

Super Bowl madness - two two-year olds, Kalib and his cousin, Gracie, visiting from the Navajo Nation, tear up the home turf

A couple of two-year olds were coming out to the house to take in the Super Bowl, so Margie and I headed to Carr's, to buy some Super Bowl food. Here's Margie, passing by some of our locally-grown Alaska pineapples as she takes the Super Bowl food to the counter.

Here's one of the two year-old's right here: Gracie, with her mother, Laverne, who is Lavina's sister. They traveled all the way up from Shonto, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation so that Laverne can help Lavina out with the new baby, which we hope will be born very soon.

Jacob and Kalib dropped these two and Lavina off and then headed back to Piccolino's to pick up pizza.

The game has already started and the Colts have taken an early lead.

Jacob enters, with pizza and Kalib in hand. Kalib holds a football, but quickly hurls it.

Gracie comes up with the football. Yet, she soon spots something of far greater interest to her...

...a black cat! Jim, to be precise. She goes chasing after him.

Gracie catches Jim by the back door window. Before she can put her hands on him, he will leap over to some magazines atop a nearby end-table. If I had been shooting with my DSLR's, I could have got that leap, but the pocket camera is just too slow to recycle quick enough.

Still, I love the pocket camera. It is not only small and light, but much less disruptive.

There, Gracie reaches out and touches him.

Gracie is very pleased. Jim licks his chops.

Readers who have been here long enough will remember that we did not get around to putting up Christmas decorations until almost the last minute. We still have not taken down the lights by the front room window. Most of the time, we leave them off, but we turned them on for Gracie.

And on the screen, the Colts and the Saints battled on.

Kalib did some showing off for his cousin. He pretended to know all about this bicycle tire pump and how it is used. He showed her how to push down the handle, and then he pulled it up to push it down again. This time, Gracie helped out.

Gracie takes in the game. For the moment, Margie and Jacob occupy the living room couch. Originally, Laverne and Gracie did, and then I was there, too, but Gracie forced me to leave when she went off to the places pictured above and did cute things with Kalib.

There was a great deal of musical chairs going on. For the moment, Kalib and his parents occupy the living room couch.

Then, the two year old cousins disappear and I watch a couple of minutes of football. The Saints battle from behind to take the lead, but the score is close and the game could go either way.

Next, I hear commotion in the back room - the one where Jacob, Kalib and Lavina used to sleep.

Pulled away from the game once again, I go back and this is what I find. The big person bouncing is Lisa.

Gracie watches in awe as Kalib demonstrates his well-honed bouncing technique.

Then the two cousins play a game where they repeatedly dash off down the hall, then come charging back, one at a time, past Kalib's grandma. Here comes Gracie...

...and here comes Kalib!

They collapse, laughing, upon the bed. Most of the time, these two cousins are separated by 2400 miles. I hope, though, that things work out that they can always know each other well, that they can be close cousins and good friends.

It is a joy to see them together. They get along well.

Next, they go into my office to feed the fish. Kalib considers himself to be the expert here, and lets Gracie know how its done.

One of these days, should I succeed at keeping this blog going and building it into what I want it to be, I will post the history behind the German Messerschmitt that hangs on my wall, alongside an American Mustang - but no British Spitfire.

It is a painful, tragic story, but one of great import to my life.

It is a story that I must tell. I had imagined making a book of it and maybe I still will, but maybe I will blog about it, first.

My working title:

Two Airplanes on The Wall

To be quite honest, I saw very little of the Super Bowl - although I did see that moment when the Saints beat back the Peyton Manning drive that almost kept the Colts in the game. Instead the Colts fell, 31-17, to the Saints. I'll bet no reader knew this before coming to this blog.

Shortly after, Gracie put on her hat and then she, Kalib, Laverne, Lavina and Jacob all left.

"It sure is quiet in here now," Margie said, afterward.

I know. I changed the tense again.

I don't care. This ain't no English class. 

This is my blog and if I want to change tense, then I damn well did.

Margie returns carrying a buckskin cradle board; Melanie's birthday celebration

So here I am, in the car, driving to airport "arrivals" to pick up Margie. See the smiling Yup'ik face on the vertical stabilizer of the Alaska Airlines jet on the other side of the new terminal building? That is Flight 91, just landed, coming in from Seattle where she changed planes after leaving Phoenix at 7:00 AM. Margie is still on board, waiting for them to open the door to the terminal so she can get out and come to me.

Soon, she is sitting beside me in the car, looking at a card that was sent by my niece Khena and husband Vivek. It has several pictures of their baby, Ada Laksmhi, half-a-year old now, highly intelligent, a full head of thick, black hair and, as you can see in Margie's expression, extremely cute.

She lives in Minneapolis. I hope we get to meet her, soon.

As for Uriah, he is home and has some healing to do, but is on the way to recovery.

I ask Margie if she is hungry, and she is. She has eaten only a bagel since flying out of Phoenix more than seven hours earlier. "Where do you want to go?" I ask. We are headed in the general direction of Melanie's work, because it is her birthday and we want to wish her a happy one. Plus, the engineering firm that she works for was recently bought out by a bigger corporation and she just moved into a new office, which we have not yet seen.

Margie thought about the question for about five minutes. "Taco Bell," she said.

So here we are at Taco Bell by Dimond Center. There is an empty parking space close to the door and these ravens have gathered in it. I make like I am going to park there and Margie scolds me, just like I knew she would. "Don't you dare!" she says. "Look at all those people you will disturb!"

So I parked elsewhere and several ravens came to join us. We went inside. I was not very hungry, so I ordered a cheese quesadilla and a small Pepsi.

Margie ordered a chicken soft taco and a small Diet Pepsi.

The ravens took whatever they could get.

We then went shopping, to buy her some gifts. Melanie loves dark chocolate, so her mother had brought her a box of Godiva chocolates that she had bought in Arizona. We went into Pier 1, which actually has some pretty neat stuff. Margie tends to think practical, so she found some nice, orange, couch pillows that seemed to match the decor of Melanie's living room.

I seldom think practical when buying gifts. I found a decorative pair of birds on a stand. They appeared to be dancing with each other.

We bought both the pillow and the birds.

Now we needed to get them wrapped, but to box and gift-wrap them seemed quite impractical, at this time. So we went to another store, where Margie decided to buy some fancy gift bags to put them. She thought she would be very quick, so I dropped her off and circled the parking lot.

As I came back, I noticed this bear, standing under this word, in front of Sportsman's Warehouse.

Margie did not find any gift bags, but she did find some little white bowls shaped like hearts. She thought Bear Meech and Diamond, Melanie's Anchorage cats, would enjoy them, so she bought them.

Next, we stopped at Melanie's new place of work. We wished her a happy birthday and examined the premises. Melanie told us about a nearby coffee shop that had the name, "cats" in it. She said the coffee was good there. We went looking for it, but never found it. We wound up at a nearby Kaladi Brothers instead.

The coffee was superb. 

From there, we did some grocery shopping for Melanie's birthday dinner and then we headed over to Jacob, Lavina and Kalib's. Margie was eager to see Kalib, but he was not there. His dad had picked him up from daycare and they had gone off to do a little shopping themselves.

Lavina was home alone, as she had been all day. She was almost desperate to see people. Margie then gave her the Apache cradle board that her sister, LeeAnn, had made for the new baby-in-waiting. That's white buckskin that you see on the cradle board. The part that Lavina is touching and admiring is made from cholla cactus.

During the time that Margie and LeeAnn had been snowbound and then even afterward, LeeAnn had worked hard and long to finish the cradle board. She completed it the night before Margie left.

She also made the one that Kalib spent his babyhood sleeping in.

All of our own children were packed in such cradles - made by Margie's mom, Rose. If you should ever get a chance to see the February, 1980, issue of National Geographic, I have a three-part story and photo spread on the White Mountain Apache Tribe in there and it includes a picture of Rex in his cradle board, as his grandmother works on others.

A few years back, the Governor of Arizona declared Rose to be an Arizona State Living Treasure for her skill in making cradle boards. 

I think LeeAnn is a treasure, too.

Even though I missed this trip, we are all planning to go down for a Sunrise Dance in June, so you will get to meet them all then.

As for the baby who will occupy this cradle board she... well, could be a he, but I have just been feeling that it is she, but I could be completely wrong... is definitely getting ready to be born.

Lavina is experiencing intense contractions again. Of course, this has been going on now for a couple of weeks - intense contractions, followed by light contractions. She visited her doctor today and our new grandchild is right there at the door, ready to exit.

As soon as Lavina's contractions get to be ten minutes apart, she is supposed to go in.

This is the longest labor I have ever known of.

Jacob and Kalib finally arrive. Margie is thrilled to finally see her grandchild again. Kalib reacted the way I used to react when my grandmother's would hug me.

Yes, I still remember.

Soon, everybody had arrived - except for Caleb, who stayed in Wasilla to sleep before heading out to his all-night work shift.

Can you guess whose feet these are?

We gather in the kitchen to get our avocado cucumber sandwiches and our baked potatoes and corn chips.

See the fact at the far right? The one that is just barely into the picture frame? That face is Lisa's face, just as the feet in the previous frame are Lisa's feet.

The arm at the right belongs to Bryce, Lisa's boyfriend.

The others, of course, are Margie, Melanie and Rex.

Kalib rips his sandwich apart and devours it. I suppose one day soon, he will have to start learning some table manners. I don't think the lessons will please him.

As he always does at anybody's birthday party, Kalib came dashing over to help blow out the candles. He puffed so hard that he nearly blew Melanie away.

She quickly recovered to blow out the remaining candles.

Next, she opened her gifts. I will not list them all, but I will note that this one is from Charlie and he did the raven painting himself. You can see how he docorated the package.

Afterward, Kalib rolled a big ball down the stairs several times. 

Is my beautiful, sweet, baby girl, who I love so dearly, so sweetly, who I cherish more than I cherish the sun that shines each day, the earth that spins, my own life, the little girl who, when she was small, would automatically appear in my lap whenever I sat down, really 29 now?

She really is.

How beautiful she is, from the first moment onward.

I wrote up an extensive journal entry about her birth, which started in excitement, turned frightening, and ended wonderfully. I was going to transcribe it into this post and I actually began to, but then, just as happens every time I read it, I began to weep. Twenty-nine years has passed, but I sat here at my computer and I cried, as they say, "like a baby."

I had to pull back.

Skating on Wasilla Lake; a wayward puppy goes beneath my car; Kalib; full story of the dog that almost killed the rabbit at the corner where the chicken crossed the road and the rooster got shot

I was driving by Wasilla Lake when I noticed some little kids skating, and two bigger ones practicing hockey. So I decided to stop for a few minutes and take some pictures.

This is Shane, one of the older two. He is in the seventh grade and played on a hockey team for four years - in Kansas. After his family moved to Wasilla a few years back, he stopped playing organized hockey, but still enjoys getting out, skating, and knocking a puck around.

This is Shane's older sister, Amy, a freshman at Wasilla High. She plays for the Mat-Su Ravens, a high school team that combines girls from schools throughout the valley, as no single school has enough interested girls to put together a team of it's own.

She is doing a face-off with her brother to see who will get the puck.

And off they go - brother and sister, fighting for the puck. My camera battery was dying and I needed to get back home, so off I went, too.

I should note that they both like Wasilla way better than Kansas. No offense to any Kansans who might read this.

Their mother Lisa watched as they skated. "Oh, yes," she agreed. "We love it here."

This was the first picture that I took when I stepped onto the ice, just before I met Shane and Amy. The man is Gregory and he is photographing his daughter, Korynn - the one who is still on her feet. The one who has fallen to her knees is Korynn's friend, Roslyn, and this is her first time on skates.

It's Korynn's second.

Roslyn climbs back up, takes hold of the walker and skates just a few inches. "I think I can do it without the walker," she says.

Roslynn leaves the walker behind.

She soon falls, but she smiles about it and then gets right back up. Had I stayed longer, I feel confident I would have seen her skating with confidence.

As I neared home, I saw Becky, Danny, their mom and their little dog, Toby. I stopped the car and tried to take a picture through the window, but my camera battery was dead. So I pulled it out of the camera and warmed it up in my hands, to see if I might coax one more shot out of it.

I did. One more shot and then it died again. I had to bring it home and recharge it.

Melanie and Charlie arrived in the early evening and they had Kalib with them. They were baby-sitting him so that Jacob and Lavina could go out with some friends who had returned from Outside for a short visit. Charlie stepped out of the house to get some firewood. As he was loading up his arms he thought he heard someone crunching about beside him. It was a moose.

After Charlie returned with the armload of wood and the moose report, Melanie went to the window and quickly spotted the moose. She called Kalib over to the window to see.

"Moose," she said.

Kalib peered out the window.

"Puppy!" he said, excitedly. It seemed that the poor little kid was confused.

We then had a debate about what to do for dinner. There was really nothing in the house to cook, so we decided to go out and grab something, somewhere. I auto-started the car so it could warm up. After a bit, Charlie went out and strapped Kalib into his car seat.

Then I climbed into the car and waited for everyone to get seated. "Dad!" Lisa suddenly warned. "Don't back up! There's a puppy under the car!"

Sure enough, there was. This little fur ball. And I might have squished it, had not Charlie spotted it and then pointed it out to Lisa.

Now we faced a quandary. What to do? I decided that the puppy should go into the garage until we got back from dinner. So we put the puppy in the garage, but then the cats freaked out. Their main litter boxes are in the garage and I did not want the puppy to scare them away.

Charlie had temporarily traded his car for Jacob and Lavina's Tahoe, as it has a car seat for Kalib. Muzzy rides in that car all the time, so it is already rich in dog odor. Lisa went into the house and came back with a flattened carbboard box. She put it in the back of the Tahoe and then puppy was put in on top of it.

And then we all went off to eat, Melanie's treat, at Señor Taco. Of course, I took pictures and got some good images, but this blog has had many eating pictures lately and so I will not post them.

We probably would have lingered longer at Señor Taco and visited more, but we had to get back to that puppy. I feared that the night was going to be long and miserable - disrupted by the combination of puppy whines and cat paranoia.

After we returned home, I sent Charlie walking one way down Sarah's Way and I walked the other. I knocked upon door after door and then showed whoever answered the picture of the puppy on the LCD of my pocket camera. Nobody knew where this puppy belonged.

I returned down the other side of the street and then walked up Brockton just a short ways and then turned back. Now, there was just one nearby house left to check: the corner house - the one where the chicken crossed the road, the rooster got shot; the one where lives the dog that nearly killed the rabbit.

I did not really want to knock on the door of that house. Shortly after the family that lives there moved in several years ago - long after the drunken ice cream lady had crashed her good humor vehicle on that corner - I walked by to find the woman of the house outside with a beautiful orange cat.

I stopped introduced myself, told her I was a photographer and loved to photograph cats. She was happy to have me photograph her's. I then told her that I photographed not only cats, but all kinds of things, from life in Rural Alaska to what I saw in Wasilla and the neighborhood, children playing, whatever.

She reacted with paranoia. "You can photograph my cat," she said, "but don't you dare photograph my children. That's just weird, that you would photograph children."

After that, if I walked by that house and the children were out playing and they spotted me, they would shout a warning to each other: "It's the camerman! The weirdo!" Then they would flee.

If they had friends over and saw me coming, they would shout to their playmates, "That's the cameraman! Watch out! He's a weirdo! Run!" And then, just like when they were playing alone by themselves, they would flee. When the husband would be out in the yard and I would walk, he would glance at me with cold, hard, eyes. He would not return my nod, nor my smile, but would turn away.

When you are a photographer whose pictures of children have been published and enjoyed far and wide, in newspaper, book, and magazine form, including National Geographic, it is quite a thing to be labeled a weirdo because you like to take photographs of children.

Then they got some chickens, including the one that crossed the road, and a rooster. In the summertime, when it never gets dark, that damn rooster would crow all night long. There was no getting a good night's sleep. It just couldn't happen.

I began to get desperate for sleep. I knew I had to talk to them about the rooster - but my experience so far with them did not leave me feeling optimistic about how that conversation would go.

Then, one day, before I could find out, I answered an angry knock upon the door.

It was the woman. "Someone complained about our rooster," she said angrily, "was that you?" It did not prove to be a moment of calm and reasoning.

The rooster crowed on for about three, maybe four weeks after that. Then, one morning, about three or four AM, as I lay awake and aggravated in bed, that rooster was crowing away shrilly as usual. Suddenly, I heard a gunshot.

The rooster never crowed again. No ruckus was ever raised about that gunshot. I do not know, but I had a feeling that it was not taken by a neighbor, but by an occupant of the house who choose a gun and not an axe or a wring of the neck in order to make a statement to the neighborhood, to whoever had complained about the rooster.

I could be wrong. But that was what I suspected. Maybe it was an aggravated neighbor who shot the rooster, but I don't think so. Had it been, I suspect all hell would have broken loose.

Instead, immediately after the gunshot, the neighborhood fell into peace and quiet.

Then, a couple of weeks after I fell, shattered my shoulder, lost it, and got a titantium one instead, I had just turned the corner by that house when I saw the dog that appears in yesterday's post, happily running around a rabbit pen with a single rabbit inside.

I could also see the children at the side of the house, laughing and bouncing off of a trampoline. They were completely unaware of me and of the dog, running around the rabbit pen. Then, somehow, that dog found its way into the pen.

Looking as happy and ecstatic as a dog can look, it grabbed that rabbit, carried it out of the pen, took it across the street and then began to maul it to death.

My shoulder was extremely fragile and I was helpless to intervene. I could not pick up a rock, I could not run and chase the dog off the rabbit.

I shouted at the kids, as loud as I dared. "Your dog is killing your rabbit!" Even the effort of shouting brought added pain to my already hurting shoulder. The kids continued to bounce and laugh. They did not hear me. In sheer delight, the dog continued to maul the rabbit. 

I walked as fast as I could, but that was not fast. "Your dog is killing your rabbit!" I shouted again. The kids bounced on, laughing.

I walked a little closer, shouted again, same result. A little closer... finally the kids heard me, but they did not understand.

They quit bouncing and looked at me. "What?" one of them shouted back at the man who their parents had taught them was a dangerous weirdo. 

"Your dog is killing your rabbit!" Finally, they understood. The girls and younger boy started to scream. The oldest boy, who had been truly vile towards me in the past, charged over, and drove the dog from the rabbit. 

The rabbit was limp and still. It looked dead. The girls and the smaller children were weeping. The mother came out, saw the rabbit and looked at me suspiciously. I told her what had happened. She told the children to gather up the rabbit and they would take it to the vet.

Then, an amazing thing happened. One of the girls walked up to me, looked up into my eyes and said, "thank you, Cameraman." Then, one by one, each child - including the oldest boy who had been so vile toward me, walked up to me and said the same, "Thank you, Cameraman." 

The mother watched, but said nothing. She did not smile. The suspicious look never left her face.

And from that day to this, those children have continued to avoid me. And although the First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives me the right to photograph anyone and anything that I can see in public, I have taken no pictures of those children - even though I have seen wonderful ones, ones that I knew that parents would have treasured.

But it just wasn't worth it.

Yet, the kids and I - we did have that one moment, right after the dog almost killed the rabbit.

I decided to knock on the door, anyway - just in case they had gotten a new puppy.

They hadn't, but when they learned my mission and I showed them the picture of the puppy on my camera, they reacted in a friendly way. The husband told me that he had seen it, running with a big dog that lived on a corner three blocks away, where a tire swing hung from a tree.

So I walked back to the house, got the puppy, Melanie joined us and I drove to that house.

And that's where I took this picture, right after I reunited the puppy, Kuna, with this man, who had been very worried about it. "You little turd!" he said, affectionately, as he tousled Kuna's fur.

If you look closely at Royce's chin, you will see that there is a bit of drool smeared into it. Even so, he has been a little better today than he was last night. Melanie, who had not seen him for two weeks, was pleased with what she saw. "He's definitely gained some weight, Dad," she said.

So maybe the situation is not as grim as it seemed last night. Still, he is light and frail, but Melanie is certain that he is doing better than when she last saw him, before I started giving him his medication, before I began to feed soft food to him.

The two buddies, Kalib and Royce.

Kalib, Royce, and Melanie.

Lisa and Royce. See the drop of drool on his chin?

Still, this was a good moment for him. You could call it "a good quality of life" moment.

Review of the Kabab and Curry, part 2: Melanie, Charlie and I dine; I see a familiar face from the Great Gray Whale rescue; we visit two cats

It was Melanie who invited me to come and join her and other family members at the Kabab & Curry, Alaska's newest Indian Restaurant. She told me to arrive at 5:15 PM. As I prepared to leave Jacob, Lavina, Kalib and the unborn baby's house, I was a little worried, because I could see that I would be a few minutes late. I got into the car and then received a text message from Melanie, instructing me to ask for a table for four, should I arrive first.

I did arrive first - at 5:20 PM. Look how light it is, when so short a time ago it was total night at this time.

The Kabab & Curry had not yet opened, but I did not know this and the door was not locked, so I entered anyway. Everybody inside was surprised to see me. The waitress who greeted me seemed to feel self-conscious that I had entered early, before they were quite ready, but she let me stay inside.

I picked a table, sat down, and then Melanie and Lisa arrived. The waitress apologized, informed them they would not officially be open until 5:30, but allowed them sit down with me, anyway.

Charlie sooned joined us. By then, the restaurant was open and nobody felt self-conscious anymore. As we studied the menu and discussed what we wanted, I ordered a cup of Chai Tea.

Then, for some reason, I started to think about Dillingham, about what a pretty village it is. I wondered if the Yup'iq lady who I found giving away kittens in front of the AC store there was able to put them all in good homes? I remembered visiting Jacob there once, when he was overseeing a water and sewer project, and how, in his spare time, he was making a model replica of the B-24 that his grandfather, my father, flew in World War II.

He would later give that model to me.

I remembered putting him in the back seat of my airplane and then flying him out to Aleknagik, where people were catching salmon. I had planned to buy gas there, and then take him on a more grand tour of the Tikchik Lakes, but it was a Sunday and there was no gas to be had. 

I barely had enough gas to make it back to Dillingham, where it wasn't easy to get gas, either. By the time I did, it was too late to take the tour.

I remembered how hard the wind once blew, and how cold the driving rain was, and how I had to go to my plane and turn it around because the wind had shifted 180 degrees from the breeze that it had been when I first tied down. It had been a big challenge to turn that plane around in that wind and driving rain, but it had to be done and I did it.

God, I loved living like that! You cannot know how much I miss having a working airplane. I want to live like that again - before I grow too old and it becomes too late. This will be the case, all too soon.

I don't know why I thought about Dillingham after Charlie sat down, but I did.

I was shocked when, instead of Chai Tea, the waitress brought me a cup of Charlie Tea. "Take it back! Take it back!" I protested. "I refuse to drink Charlie Tea! I ordered Chai Tea."

"Oh, I'm sorry," the waitress apologized. "I thought you asked for 'Charlie Tea.'"

She quickly dumped the Charlie Tea and then brought me the Chai Tea, as Charlie came staggering out of the kitchen, shaking hot water out of his hair and wringing it out of his beard.

The chai tea was good. No, it was excellent. It was superb. It was savory. I wanted to drink 39 cups of it, but I knew this would not be a good idea, so I restrained myself.

As you can see, Lisa sat to my left, which happened to be to Charlie's right.

And Melanie sat to the right, which means that she also sat to the left. From her perspective, she sat neither right nor left, but at that ever-present place from which right and left extends.

This is our waitress. I forgot to get her name. Sorry about that. I will just call her, "Our Waitress."

I had planned to order South Indian food, like that that Vasanthi and Soundarya and the cooks at Soundarya's wedding had prepared for us, but the waitress informed us that, new as the restaurant is, they do not yet have their South India menu in place yet. She promised that they soon will.

Our Waitress then noted that several items on the Tandoori menu were not available this night, along with a couple of other items. This, she said, was because those items had proved to be more popular than expected and they had not ordered enough to meet demand, but would remedy the problem in the future.

I immediately decided that the unavailable items were exactly the dishes that I wanted to chose from. I didn't want anything else - only the absent Tandoori dishes.

"But don't worry," Our Waitress promised, "Everything on the menu is delicious. We haven't had a single complaint about anything. You can't miss, whatever you choose."

Truth is, when we were in India, we would not have eaten Tandoori, as Tandoori is "marinated meat cooked inside a tandoor (Clay Oven)." Our Indian family is Hindu, vegetarian, and everything that they fed us was vegetarian. And all the time that we were there, I never missed meat. 

Maybe because it was so hot in India that you don't need meat the way you do in a cold climate - but also because they prepare it so well that when you eat it, you have the sensation of eating a dish with meat, even though there is no flesh in it.

For the sake of my brief India times, I ordered off the vegetarian menu: Daal Makhani, "whole urad beans simmered with kidney beans at a very slow fire bringing out exotic flavors and are finished with a tadka of ginger garlic and tomatoes." That's what you see in the brass pail.

Charlie ordered Adraki jhinga - one of the available items from the Tandoori menu: "Smoothered with a marinade made with ginger, this is a delectable prawn apetizer. Is flambe' and served with tingling peanut chutney."

Chutney. Vasanthi makes that - and it is good stuff. Hot, and very good.

Now I am getting a little confused, but if I remember correctly, Lisa ordered Makhani,* from the curry menu: "Best Seller - Creamy Tomato curry flavored with house blended spices and fenugreek leaves from North India." It also came with her choice of meat and she chose chicken.

Melanie - I cannot remember the name of the dish that she ordered. I just can't. 

Actually, we had all ordered for each other, as we agreed to eat "Family style." We would share each other's dishes. We also ordered three servings of plain naan bread and two bowls of rice.

What can I say to describe the meal that followed? How do I communicate the ecstasy in which this fine food engulfed the tongue and sated the belly? It was superb, it was exquisite, it was sumptious, it was delicious, it was succulent!

It was pretty damned good.

Outside of India, it just may be the best India Indian meal I have ever eaten.

It just may be. Melanie and I had a pretty good one in Washington, DC, once.

Our Waitress was right. It seems you can't miss on this menu.

I can't wait until Margie returns from Arizona, so I can bring her here and let her sample all this delicious goodness. Kabab & Curry just may be my favorite restaurant in Anchorage now. Hard to say for certain. There is a Mexican restaurant on the corner of Northern Lights and Boniface that Jacob and Lavina took us to, once, which is heavenly.

And then there are a couple of sushi places that must be in the competition, too.

But right now, at this moment, with the taste and aroma so fresh in my memory, Kabab & Curry is my favorite restaurant in all of Anchorage.

Yet, I predict problems for Kabab & Curry. It is a very small restaurant. Five, maybe six, tables. Once people figure out how good this place is, they are going to need more tables, but I didn't see any place to put more tables. In fact, even before we finished eating, every seat in the house was taken. More and more diners will soon be coming.

Toward the end of our meal, I saw a face enter that reminded me of one I had once known. I had last seen that face close to 22 years ago. I wondered if it could be the same face, with a couple of decades of wear added to it?

The man who owned that face looked directly at me, but showed no sign of recognition. So I figured maybe it was just someone who bore a close resemblance to that man with whom I had shared a momentous experience 22 years ago. I thought this because I look exactly the same as I did 22 years ago, just like the young kid that I always feel I am, so he would have instantly recognized me, had it been he. 

That man was Jeff Berliner, a reporter for United Press International. It was October, 1988, and Berliner had come to Barrow to cover the Great Graywhale Rescue. He needed a place to stay and so he stayed with me, in the quonset hut that I rented for several years. And every day, he sent my gray whale pictures out over the wire and they appeared in newspapers all over the world.

All readers old enough to have been aware of the larger world at that time will recall the Great Gray Whale Rescue. For two weeks, even though a Presidential Election was less than one month away, it overshadowed every other story in the universe.

I won't say much about it, now, because Hollywood is making a big film based on the Great Gray Whale Rescue and when they release it I plan to run a series of posts that will show you how it unfolded in front of my eyes. Some of you have read about it in my book, Gift of the Whale, but I only had so much space to tell the story there and so gave an abbreviated account.

When the movie comes out, I will present a more complete account, spread over several days, right here, on this blog.

I could not leave without asking and, as it turned out, the familiar face did belong to Jeff, who went on to work for several years in Russia, and then came home to serve as an investigator with the Alaska Public Office Commission, better knowns as APOC. It was his job to keep Alaska politicians honest in their financial disclosures.

Man. Talk about a tough job!

Here he is, Jeff Berliner, who experienced the Great Gray Whale Rescue with me, standing alongside his wife, Michele Brown, an attorney who served as the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation under Governor Tony Knowles.

Charlie went off to join in a low-stakes card game and the rest of us went to Lisa's, to visit her cats. Here she is, with Zed.

And here is Melanie, with Juniper.

Juniper, in front of Lisa.

Melanie, Juniper, and Lisa.

And then I came home, exhausted and full.

And I am exhausted now, too.

Once again, I have overdone a blog post. I should edit, tighten up, trim it down, seek out and destroy all typos and such.

But I am too exhausted. Blogs are works of great imperfection - and this one rises to that standard.

I will leave it as it is and go to bed.

*If you look in comments, you will see that Lisa has corrected me. She actually ordered chicken tikka masala: "Chunks of marinated boneless meat roasted on skewers in *Tandoor* finished in creamy tomato based curry."

While I am humiliated to have made such a flagrant error, this does give me an opportunity to add another adjective to describe the superlative cuisine to be had at Kabab & Curry. That would be, "piquant." I have no idea what "piquant" means, especially in relation to food, but its a damn-fine-sounding adjective and deserves to be used. Now I have used it, and can move on with my life.

I should also add the address: Lois at Spenard.