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Yesterday Howard called me and asked me if I wanted to work with his crew at the court house. He needed someone to clean up after his workmen who were painting the main court room. I agreed to help and showed up around 12:30 p.m. Howard's son, Jed, was there, and Zee, who is what would be termed a working derelict anywhere else in the world. There are a lot of people like Zee on the island. Alcoholism is a big problem here, mostly for people who don't drink. Everyone else just goes with the flow of cash and alcohol. Howard had also hired Frank, who lost his arm in a motorcycle accident in Oregon. Seeing Frank brought back memories from last year, when everyone in town pitched in to help raise money for his medical expenses or other needs. The Elbow Room sponsored one of the fund raisers and Pete and Bob auctioned off their ponytails. Larry, who owns the Elbow Room and a crabbing vessel named the Peggy Rose, bought Bob's ponytail for $500. One of Larry's deck hands bought Pete's ponytail for the same generous price. Both Larry and his deck hand are Aleuts. Larry was content to let someone else cut off the ponytail he was buying, but his deck hand said that if he was going to pay $500 for a white man's scalp, he was going to take it himself. Fortunately for Pete, the manager of the Elbow Room insisted that a sober employee do cut Pete's hair. The ponytail was unceremoniously snipped from Pete's head and handed to the deck hand, who held the trophy up to display it as he whooped in triumph and began surveying the other long hairs in the crowd. At that point the Elbow Room manager began to consider cutting off the deck hand's supply of alcohol. I think she was wondering who else might lose their hair if the man got really liquored up. One of the things I remember most about that night was talking with "Uncle Bob", who is a local character. He retired this year from his position with the City of Unalaska. He owns a lot of property on the island and has a lot of money. As we looked over the crowd of people in the bar, he commented on how this event was an example of why he loved living on this island. "Look around you," Uncle Bob told me, "here we are in a room where millionaires and laborers are rubbing shoulders without a thought as to who they are standing next to. How much money you have doesn't matter here. This is the way things should be." Uncle Bob's observation made me think of the East Point Housing Project. Some fancy corporation had bought the old East Point Cannery for its property a few years after it closed and they had built a California style housing complex there. They wanted to sell the houses, but they also wanted to retain ownership of the land underneath them and rent the property to the house owners on a long term lease option. They sent some guy in a suit with carefully combed and pomaded hair out to handle things. He smelled of aftershave and deodorant which contrasted with the usual earthy smells of locals. Everyone here smells of fish or dust and sweat or automotive oil and grease. The corporate representative told me that people who bought the houses would have to keep their lawns a certain way. There could be no junk or battered old skiffs left laying around in the yards, and if the people wanted to paint their houses they would have to use colors approved of by the corporation, which would retain ownership of the land under the structures. His company didn't want any trashy people moving into the neighborhood. The man had taken a tour of Unalaska and he hadn't liked what he had seen. I immediately thought of Larry, who had painted his house and the Elbow Room the same shades of Easter egg purple because that's the kind of colors they use in Russia. Larry had a backyard full of plastic milk crates and fishing gear line, and a few dungeoness crab pots, buoys, and scrap lumber that was still good for miscellaneous projects. Carl, who is also our state representative, never throws anything away if he can help it. The two men hold a significant amount of the community's wealth between them. I told the corporation man that his company's ideas were ridiculous and that he was touting them in the wrong location. Some of the people who had junk collecting in their yards and a battered old skiff parked next to their vehicles were millionaires. They didn't give a damn about putting on airs, or trying to set up an elitist group for rich assholes. People in Unalaska didn't like having someone from down south telling them how to mind their personal business either. Feudalism may have found its place in California, but Alaskans still had a sense of the old freedom of the frontier. The local caretaker who was with the representative liked the way I was laying down the facts of Unalaska life to his boss. I got the impression he was ready to get another job if keeping this one meant putting up with this arrogant down souther on too frequent a basis. Frank helped me to carry the tables back into the court room when we finished painting and cleaning where they normally stood. He told me to drive, because he only had one arm and hence one hand to hold the table with. I asked him when he was going to get one of those plastic arms with all the fancy stuff at the end, and Frank told me he was waiting for a cybertronic arm. He launched into a description of what would be an anatomical version of a hot rod. We made a few jokes about the more selective features of the new arm which are unrepeatable in a public document. I was painting the area of the walls near the paneling, which meant I was bent over with a close up view of the carpet. Looking at the new carpet made me think of Mad Mike, who is a fisherman I met through my landlady. Mikey is quite a character. He fishes for a living, but has a lot of bad habits that get him thrown in jail on a rotating basis. He's not actually a danger to anyone except himself, but the local law enforcement would dearly love to hang him out to dry because of his letters to the editor of our local newspaper. He usually writes his epistles when he is in jail. He is usually out to sea, or too drunk and stoned if he is not incarcerated to write anything coherent under other circumstances. About the time Mad Mike had rented a small airstream trailer that is still ensconced behind the Elbow Room, the local magistrate had gained permission from the state to have new carpet installed in the court house. When Mike heard about this event he went straight to Mary, who was our magistrate at the time. He asked her if he could have the old carpet from the court house for his new residence, and he specifically wanted the section that lay directly in front of Mary's bench. Mary asked Mike why he wanted that particular piece of carpet? Mike told her that he had spent so much time standing on it while appearing before her in court, that it had become as familiar as home to him. He felt it would make the perfect finishing touch to turn his little trailer into a real home. Mary couldn't argue with Mike's reasoning, so she laughed and gave him permission to collect the cast-off carpet. Mike had also wanted the carpet for another reason. Most of his friends had spent as much time as he had in front of Mary's bench. He liked the way they looked at the new carpet in his trailer and then commented on how familiar it seemed. "Doesn't it make you feel at home?" Mike would ask his friends, "Now think, where have you seen this carpet before?" Most of Mike's friends realized where he had got his carpet on the first try. No one could believe the audacity that Mike had shown in acquiring his new rug. Our courthouse is a different sort of a place. It has all the elements of Judge Stone's court in the TV series, "Night Court." At one time I used to clean the place and there was always something weird popping up. They had a plastic toy called "the Wizard" which would give a nebulous answer when you pushed a button. "It's possible . . . maybe . . . the future is certain . . ." I couldn't help but wonder if they used it during trials, but I had never heard of the judge making regular visits to her chambers. They also had a toy sword that spoke when you held it and swung it around. (I had to try it out of course!) "Yo ho ho! . . . Walk the plank, ye landlubbers!" But the thing that made me wonder most was the big felt cut-out of Barney the dinosaur which was taped to the mirror in the men's bathroom. It was about eye level with a man of average height and the eyes had been cut out so that the viewer could see their own eyes in the face of the dinosaur. I always wondered what the lawyers thought when they came to town for a case since they used that bathroom? Someone sent me an email about Barney. The joke said that if you took all the letters out of the words "cute purple dinosaur" that represented Roman numerals and added them up, they totaled the number 666, which was supposed to prove Barney was Satan. Somehow it seemed appropriate to have his picture in a bathroom used primarily by lawyers and criminals. Since the guys had started several hours before I had, they went to lunch and I kept working. This turned out to be a fortunate turn of events for Howard, who had left his red van parked in front of the court house while he took the boys to lunch. I heard a noise outside and saw Jake getting ready to hook his tow truck up to Howard's van. I went outside to ask Jake why he was going to haul Howard's van away? "Jake, are you going to haul this van away?" I asked, adding, "Do you know who it belongs to?" Jake got very huffy with me. He didn't know who the van belonged to, and he informed me that the police had told him to haul it away! I suggested that what he was going to do wasn't a very good idea, and that perhaps we should call the police and see if they knew Howard had the contract to paint the court room. Jake agreed to let me call the police and verify his orders. As it turned out, there had been a misunderstanding that only an Unalaskan would understand. When Jake had asked if the police officer if he had meant the building on Broadway Street, the officer who had contacted Jake had said yes to the question. I don't think the officer realized his mistake because no one who has lived here very long actually goes by the street names for locations and the court house's upper level had held the offices for City Hall at one time. Everyone just knows where everything is. But sometimes, when dealing with stuff that has been moved around, it helps to know the street name, if only to know where not to go. The court house is on Broadway, and the officer had wanted Jake to tow away a red van from the parking lot of City Hall, which was up on Haystack Hill, on Raven Way. Jake's an old-timer, and he still hasn't caught up to all of the rearranging the city has done with its new buildings and such. I have felt quite lost myself upon occaision for the same reason. The confusion started right after they started naming the streets, and the city council and planners have been moving things around every since. As it turned out, Howard's van was also red, which had added to Jake's conviction that he had the right location and vehicle. If I hadn't interceded, Howard's face would have been red as well-- with rage, and Jake's face would have been red with embarrassment! Howard's son, Jed, began complaining about having to work his ass off on a Saturday, when he should have been sitting on it, drinking beer and watching a ball game. I told him he had better slow down, since he didn't have much of an ass to begin with, and it wouldn't take him long to use it all up. Then he wouldn't be able to work and he wouldn't be able to sit. What a fine pickle he would be in then! I told Howard that he should hire more women because we have much bigger asses than men and he could get more work out of a woman than he could out of a man. What can I say? Any chance to plug the more humorous side of feminism is a good one. And that was my Saturday. By the way, for once it wasn't snowing, which is unusual for March here on the island.
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