Richard Jernigan -> RE: Photo for the season (Feb. 21 2015 18:44:44)
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ORIGINAL: estebanana Book Richard, you need to write a book. Not trying to carbon date you, but how old were you then? I'm guessing about 8 or 9? And did you get the wolf mittens ? Yes. Best mittens I ever had. The stories I tell on the web are from relatively sunny and pleasant periods. I have been in one of those for many years now. But there were other times: the Army, the loss of my first real love, paramilitary experience in Central America. The resultant disillusion and anger led to a period of life as an outlaw during the 1960s. After that I went straight, fell in love, got married and had kids. After ten years or so the marriage began to go bad. We stayed together for far longer than we should have. I stayed in a bad job far longer than I should have. After the divorce I set up my own business. Things have gone pretty well since then. These days there is only one other person who knows the full outline. I have written about the death of my first love, Central America and being an outlaw, but at present, my feeling is that if those accounts ever see the light of day outside a small circle of close friends and a very small fraction of my large extended family, it will be after I am gone. I was 11 when we went to Alaska in July, 1949. We drove from Oklahoma City, where we had lived while my father was overseas during WW II and on the Berlin Airlift. It took twelve days to get to Anchorage. We all enjoyed the adventure, including Bubba, who must have been one of the most well traveled Boston Terriers. Alaska in those days was paradise for a kid my age. My best pal Ivan was born and raised there. We hiked all over the hinterlands of Anchorage. In a couple of hours walking we could be in a place where there was no sign any human had ever been there before us. Ivan'a dad worked for the Public Health Service studying mosquitoes, and for the Coast and Geodetic Survey doing geological mapping. When school was out Ivan and I hiked with him further afield for a week or two at a time. There were no roads on the Kenai peninsula at the time. Plenty of virgin fishing and other wildlife, including the huge brown bears. We came back via Military Sea Transport Service ship, first to Kodiak and to Adak out on the Aleutians, then across the gulf of Alaska. It was mainly a troop ship, but we had a stateroom just under the bridge with a nice view forward. We passed through a pretty good three day storm en route, nobody allowed on deck. The departing Skipper of the Kodiak Naval Air Station and his wife came on board with a pair of Siamese cats. The cats stayed in the kennels on the fantail with the dogs. After the storm my job was to go check on Bubba, who had been without food or water for the duration of the storm. The cats were still seasick, lying on their sides and screaming. All the dogs had barked themselves completely voiceless, yelling at the cats. When we got to Seattle we picked up a new car. Passing a grassy park, Dad stopped to let the dog out on the grass. He ran in circles for what seemed like minutes, then stopped and rolled in the grass over and over. A couple of days later we drove onto the ferry that crossed the estuary of the Columbia River to Astoria, Oregon. We were still in the shed at the dock, but you could feel a slight motion to the vessel. The dog was in the back seat with my brother and me. He put his paws on the back of the front seat, and with his nose almost in Dad's ear, whimpered very, very softly: "Please Boss, not another boat!" RNJ
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