When I first came to Dutch Harbor there was very little on the island-- A couple of small stores and a few haphazard cannery setups on old vessels permanently anchored to the beach. The roads were all dirt and gravel and it was a great little place in the middle of nowhere. And then progress laid on its filthy hands and started to wreck everything. When the military first began to modify the island for their purposes they opened up a lot of beach area by blowing away tons of rock a few feet above the high tide water line. In order to pave the main road, which is only 3 miles long, at a million dollars a mile, more rock had to be blasted away to widen the road area. Fortunately for me, the road crew demolitionist was quite competent, because they did a lot of blasting next to my house. And by next to my house, I mean 20 to 50 feet up the road. When a local construction company needed to open up an area for their gravel pit, they hired a rather zealous blast jockey. He overloaded his charge to make a really big hole all at once, rather than several little holes that would have been cleared for the next blast in the procession. Or maybe the owner of the company told him to do it that way to save money. No one will ever know the truth about those particular circumstances. As a result, huge rocks were blasted in every direction, falling short of most houses, except one. The mistress of the house had been informed that blasting was to take place, but that she probably had nothing to worry about, since her house was so far away. But the lady had several huge aquariums and chose to stand guard over the two most vulnerable tanks, holding them steady during the discharge of the explosives. The tanks shuddered, their waters' surfaces shimmied, and shortly afterward a huge rock blasted through the roof in the bedroom and hit the bed. This landing spot may have been fortunate, for though it did nothing for the mattress, the floor was saved from a rather violent compromise. The house now had a skylight in the bedroom. Unfortunately it was not water proof and it rains a lot on this island, or the hole might have passed for an improvement. Of course, the owner of the construction company was very apologetic and promptly had the roof fixed, paying for all associated damages as well. Whether or not he fired his explosives technician, or just stopped trying to tell him how to do his job is information I am not privy to. At Westward Seafoods several technicians were hired to handle the explosives, so that double shifts could be run and the seafood plant could be built as quickly as possible. In one particular instance, a hole was drilled and packed at the end of an evening shift, and repacked the following morning on the day shift. Of course there was no communication between the two shifts, so when the cliff side blew apart, it did so in an unexpected manner. Rocks flew out across the bay in a huge, disintegrating arc like no one had ever seen before. One particularly ambitious boulder nearly bombed a fishing vessel, which may have been the F/V Early Dawn. Since they were on the other side of the bay, and the distance was so great, the crew thought the rock was some kind of meteor at first. Then they realized that it hadn't been on fire and the water didn't sizzle a bit as it splashed down next to the boat. The captain frantically radioed around to find out who was trying to sink his vessel, and to gain assurance that there would be no further attempts. In a way, it might have been a historical anachronism if the boulder had hit the deck of the ship, or perhaps ruptured the hull and sank it. Most vessels sink when they hit the rocks. Not too many boats in modern times that I have ever heard of have ever sank because a rock hit them! It seems like they are always blowing something up on this island. They have been destroying the hill over by the Unisea complex for some time now. About half of it is gone, sent away to other islands for more gravel roads and foundations. I was over that way the other day and realized the feeling around that area had changed. It had always been a neutral place, and now I could feel the subtle, quiet anger of a lot of ghosts and spirits. They don't like what is happening and that place is going to be very unlucky for whoever builds on it. Unless they don't mind living with angry supernatural guests. My friend Verla says that the old people are afraid of the Iddy Giddy people living on that little island, which is in the middle of the bay and connected to Unalaska by the big bridge. They used to hunt and fish at Hog Island and Ballyhoo, but no one liked to be around Amaknak Island. The Iddy Giddy people are like the Boogeyman in the white culture. Anything scarey and unexplainable is an Iddy Giddy. Maybe they're just the people who lived before. Remains of Aleut Culture are being found that are 7000 years old, or so they now say. But I think there was a people who lived here before them, and I think that those people are the Iddy Giddies. But until they find the remains of an earlier culture, I can't prove what I believe.
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