Episode 32: Charlie DeWitt; A Life Built In Alaska

You can hear a whole era of Southeast Alaska in Charlie DeWitt’s voice: Salvation Army roots, moving from post to post, then landing in Haines and deciding it is home for good. Charlie walks us through the early days, from small boats and cannery rhythms to the way a town shapes you when everyone knows your family and your work ethic actually matters.

From there, the conversation opens into the Alaska outdoors as a lifelong classroom. We talk guns and hunter safety, learning to reload, trapping and fur handling done with real pride, and what hunting becomes over time when it is less about taking animals and more about competence, respect, and time with family. Charlie shares the stories that stick with you, including the kind of cold, wet “goose hunt” that can end a kid’s enthusiasm in one afternoon.

Then we get into the work: trade school, diesel mechanic life, and the North Slope and Prudhoe Bay years where you learn fast or you fall behind. Charlie explains how major road and construction projects run, what it takes to keep iron moving, why he tried teaching shop class, and how he ultimately built his commercial fishing boat, the Tiffany Lee, piece by piece. We also dig into shooting sports, range etiquette, and king salmon management, plus why local knowledge should never be dismissed when runs are struggling.

If you care about Haines Alaska history, commercial fishing, king salmon, the North Slope, hunting culture, or how people build a good life through skill and responsibility, this one is for you. Subscribe, share it with a friend who loves Alaska stories, and leave a review with the part of Charlie’s journey that hit you the hardest.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Charlie DeWitt

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions. Today my guest is Charlie DeWitt, the man, the myth, the legend.

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome, Charlie. It's good to be here. We'll see how many of the legends have some truth behind them.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

Oh, they're sure they all do. Good, bad, or whatever. Good, bad, or indifferent.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

We're gonna find out. Yeah. So what let's let's start off like we do with everybody else. Where where did Charlie's life start?

Riverside Beginnings And Alaska Calling

SPEAKER_03 0:31

I started in Riverside, California. Riverside, California. Born in Riverside. And I spent two years in Riverside, and my parents decided, you know, my dad was from Alaska. My mother was from California, and she was from Riverside, and and she came to Alaska in 1942 with the Salvation Army.

unknown 0:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

At 17 years old. And her and Dolores Rivet came to Alaska together and they served in Wrangle and Juno. Okay. Yeah. And then my my mother went back to Wrangle, and that's where she met my father.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

And you know, they they he was a fisherman, you know. My grandfather gave them a fishing boat for their wedding present. Yeah. The Leaf H was the name of the boat.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Like a gillnet boat or a troller?

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Okay. It was it was, you know, not really big enough to be a Seiner, you know. It was kind of a troller combination, halibut boat, you know. And they towed a scowl with the net on it. And they set the net off of this scowl that they towed and set it out and pursed it in, and then they pursed the fish into the leaf H and they'd pretty much leave the scowl anchored, you know, where the openings were. Just leave it scow. And they'd run into the cannery where, you know, whether it be, you know, I think they were fishing on Prince of Wales most of the time then. Okay. And yeah, that was pretty interesting. Yeah, and so then they'd just go back out to the They'd go back out to the scowl and you know, get their net and you know, go fish another opening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yeah. So even though it was a little small for a siner, they figured out.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Well, you know, I gotta figure that most of the saners at that time, you know, this was in the forties, Doug, you know, were pretty small compared to what they are today, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Yeah, you know, a big seiner back in the boat in the day, my dad told me they had a boat called a Sanko, and it was like a 45 foot. And I think the leaf H was right at 40 feet.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Well, that's pretty small now.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Yeah. And I don't they they made a living anyway. He trolled and halibutted and did everything like that. And then they had some really bad years in the late 40s, and you know, they just couldn't make a go of it. So uh my my my mother's parents were elderly, and my her mother was not doing very well at all. And in fact, she deceased during that time. Anyway, she went back to help, you know, take care of her. And my dad went and he got a job working for the city of Riverside, and he was a tree trimmer, he or treetopper, you know, he'd go up to these trees and really eucalyptus trees, palm trees, you know, they'd climb them and cut all the limbs off and do all that stuff. And it was him and he had a bunch of Mexican friends down there. And you know, he was telling me that, you know, the first time he met these Mexicans, you know, they you know, my dad was pretty dark colored. He'd, you know, start talking to him in Mexico and in Mexican, and he'd say, you know, Capasa, or not Capasa, you know, I'd clink it, he'd say, What are you talking about? And they'd go.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

I would thought you were one of us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

But they got along real good. And I mean, we went back in 1964 when my dad graduated. He was going to seminary school in SAC in San Francisco, the Salvation Army uh school for officers training. And we went back and and we went through Riverside and he, you know, sh we reunited with all his friends, and you know, that I never, you know, I couldn't remember him because we left when I was about two or three.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

And yeah, you know, the they just treated him like he was one of their brothers, you know. It was really great. He had a great time.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Anyway, we left in uh So was it be when your dad, um when your dad and mom got married,

Salvation Army Moves And Finding Haines

SPEAKER_01 4:30

is that what your got your dad interested in joining the Salvation Army? Or was he already?

SPEAKER_03 4:35

He was already in the Salvation Army, but you know, when my mother came there and she was the officer, you know, in charge there. Yeah, that, you know, and then they went, you know, they served all over the place, you know. They went to Saxman, you know. When we uh when we went back, we went to Catchcan and they took over the Saxman Corps. There was a little Salvation Army church out there at Saxmon. And mostly, you know, uh native people that, you know, had been in the Salvation Army forever, you know, and my dad knew them all, and my mother knew them all, and we took over the corps there. And then when my dad uh decided that he was going to become an officer, and I think it was in 62, you know, he started going to the officers' training, and my mother stayed in Ketchkan because we had a home. The old school in Saxmon, uh, my dad and her had converted into a some like a retirement, not a retirement home, but a old folks home. You know, we had you know 16 or 17 people there. Uh-huh. And you know, they basically they did the same thing here, Doug. You know, when we had over in Portuguese, we had 36 people over there. Where was that at in Portuguese? In the officer's row up there. Uh oh, I don't know that I don't remember the number.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

But it was one of the officers' houses.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

Yeah, it was next to Ted Gregg's house. The one uh when when was that, Charlie? Uh 1969. We we had six people. You know, the reason why we came to Haynes was they uh the Salvation Army sent my dad here from Cake uh to build a new church. Really? Mm-hmm. He was the one that built the one off of Union here. And it was a Lindell Cedar, and I ain't so sure that they didn't buy it from you guys.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

I was gonna say my dad probably had something to do with that about that.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Because I I worked for your dad quite a bit, you know, off and on, you know, he'd buy, you know, like he'd get a Lindell Cedar home, and you know, that's what my job was. I'd go unload it all, take it out of the van, and and do that stuff. But I don't know, you know, where this one came from, but I knew that you know your dad did a lot with Lindell.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yeah. Yeah, there's several places in town that Matthews's old duplex up here. You know, Dr.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

Feldman's house or was Herb Gulliford's Herb Gulliford's, yep.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:55

Yeah, I oh Marty Cummerford's yeah. All of them were Lindell Cedars.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

So you came here in 69 or you were 67.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

67. I was in seventh grade.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Okay. Yep. And I was and you'd been in Cake before that?

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Yep. We s we went in Cake and and as soon as we got my dad got done with officers' training, they shipped him to Cake. And we stayed there till 67.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah. So you've had you've gotten to live in quite a few different places in the southeast, starting in Ketchkin, then Cake, and then to Haynes.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

And that's it. I found Haynes and I said, I'm not leaving.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

But it did that become an issue then? Because usually with the Salvation Army, they move their officers around.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

That's why my dad got out of it. They wanted him to move to Prince of Wales or somewhere else, and he said, No, my son's in high school. He likes the school, we like the people here in Haynes. Yeah, we're gonna do something different. Because as soon as we graduated, you know, uh, in fact, I graduated in 73, and my sister graduated in 77, but in 75 they said, Well, we're ready because uh, you know, the home they had over here, uh, you know, they bought it from Carl Heinmiller, and they were paying Carl Heinmiller and they had paid quite a bit, but you know, the fuel bill, I remember burning 3,000 gallons a month.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

What?

SPEAKER_03 8:16

Yeah, to heat that whole big building.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Well, yeah, because they they weren't very well insulated for the airport.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

You know, I remember working and working and working, you know. We tore out all the lath, you know, because that north side, uh-huh, we tore out all the lath and put all sheetrock, you know, and insulated all that. I remember painting, Doug, you know, painting for days and days and days, you know, on ladders, you know, to paint that house. But no, that was uh that was and you know, that was the really cool thing about it was, you know, when I would go playing a basketball game, my dad sometimes he'd have to make two trips, you know, because all these everybody that was everybody would come. I had my own section, you know. They would go into the they were all stayed in the balcony, you know, up above the in the old gym dug, you know, they had the balcony up and then, you know, because it was easy because you came in off and you didn't have to go down, you had to go downstairs to get down in the bleachers. And usually that was so plugged that you couldn't find so they all stayed upstairs, and yeah, they all it was pretty cool. They'd all yeah, good job, grandson. You know, there was Fritz Willard, you know, from Kluckwon and John H. Willard, and you know, there was a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

So how how long did they do that for?

SPEAKER_03 9:32

They did that from well, like I said, in 68. You know where Mitch Clayton lived, the old log cabin out at the end of Mud Bay?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Yeah, we had uh we had six people in there.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

And then when we when we we moved out of there in 69 or 70, Doug, I don't know the day exactly, but we went in, you know, and we started into that place, you know, just you know, it was we we only had acquired half of it. The okay the northern half of that uh from Carl. And and we we renovated and you know, got the Bud Sandstrom came over and worked on the furnaces and you know, and then and then when we bought the whole thing, we actually put new furnaces in both sides, and that was a major job to get everything down through the, you know, almost had to disassemble the furnace to get it in there. But you know, it was they were cool places, you know. I I remember I had, you know, like upstairs in the attic, you know, they were I don't know, 60 or 70 feet. I had pellet gun traps, and you know. Of course you did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

It was it was uh I it was a heck of a life. Yeah. So when when uh how did you meet my dad and mom?

unknown 10:49

Were they?

SPEAKER_03 10:50

The first time I went to high school here, I walked in and there was your dad. And I mean he treated you so well, you automatically liked him, you know. You know, if you if you worked hard, and you know, I'm one of them guys that likes a pat on the back, and he would, you know, give you a pat on the back and tell you you were doing a good job. And I don't know. I just, you know, I he was a great guy. I mean, you know, plus he loved guns, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

So where did

Guns, Reloading, And Early Hunting

SPEAKER_01 11:20

where did your love of guns in the outdoor start? Was that something that when you were growing up, did your dad take you hunting and fishing as a kid?

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Not a lot, Doug. I remember I shot my first deer in cake. We were going to get a Christmas tree. And Daniel Paul and my dad were sitting down, and I was we were all sitting down, and my dad always had a lunch, you know, and we had a sandwich, and you know, we were sitting there drinking, you know, they had a thermos of coffee, and I never, I never, you know, nobody drank water back then, you know. They were drinking coffee and I wasn't, I was young, you know, and and Daniel sat down and he, you know, had his deer call and he was blowing it, and he'd be BSing and blowing his deer call, and here comes a buck, you know. And my dad had a my dad had my uncle 30 M1 carbine. And that's what he was carrying, and he handed it to me, and I shot it right in the head.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Boom.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

You know, it was only 40 feet away. Uh-huh. Yeah. And, you know, that we never had much for guns, you know. We I had an old Stevens 22, you had to pull back the bolt, and I mean you couldn't. I remember when I first got it, I couldn't hardly pull the bolt back, you know, to make it fire. It didn't cock, you know, like a regular gun. But yeah, no, I I started liking guns, you know, because you're, you know, we s we did that hunter safety with your dad, you know, in the Port Chilcoot building over there that burned.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

That was where we did the Hunter Safety, and that was pretty much my first experience. And then I remember going into Study Hall, and in this school, they had a subscription to the National Rifleman.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

So you'd get that and you know, because back in, you know, '67 it was still legal to buy guns, you know, directly from whatever company, you know, Hunter's Lodge or whatever, and you'd look in them books and oh my god, look at it's only 12 bucks, you know. $12 for a 308-6 Springfield 1903 or or whatever, you know, a little martini cadet or Remington rolling block or whatever. It was pretty reasonable, you know. And I remember, you know, going in the study hall and oh my god, you know, looking at them magazines every new, you know, you'd always wait for the the new month to show up, you know, and oh, what's new, you know?

SPEAKER_01 13:37

So as you're getting more interested in that, were you visiting my dad's shop in the old A-frame up at the house where you own it now, but yeah, he kind of had his little spot up there where he was doing anything?

SPEAKER_03 13:48

He's the one. I, you know, I said, I want to learn how to reload, you know, and he goes, come on up, I'll show you, you know. And we loaded shotgun shells, you know, and you know, I remember I had been reloading for maybe six months or whatever, and he says, Hey, there Norm Blank needs some 300 H's. He can't find them anywhere. I have the dies, and I have the uh, you know, he's got the brass. Could you load him up some shells? And I go, I get. And Norm goes, oh, it worked great. It killed the moose, killed the moose. Perfect. Yeah. No, I I don't know. I owe a lot to your dad. I remember the first gun that I bought from him. I was in seventh grade.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

And seventh grade, you bought a gun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

You know, I just pulled it. It was a it was a Seiko, uh 222 that Austin Hammond had, you know, traded to your dad or sold to your dad because he, you know, traded it for something else. Anyway, I I got it and I meant, well, I'm I'm all set now. Because you know, there was you were getting they were paying $7.50 for a sealed nose. Just for a bounty. For a bounty. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Seven dollars and fifty cents.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

That's how I'm I mean, I mean, I trapped out at Mud Bay when we lived out there in 68, and uh I don't know how many coyotes I caught, Doug, but I you know that was fifteen dollars. That was a lot of money for me.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah, yeah. But so is that is that was that kind of the trapping and everything of the coyotes? Was that your first thing? Yeah, I had never had a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

I had never trapped anything before then, you know, and I just put out snares, you know. I read the Hobaker's book on trapping, you know, yeah, okay, it's got to be this big a hole and this high off the ground, you know. And I didn't, you know, I that's about the only I never even caught a mink, I don't think. I remember putting mink traps on the beach and not having anything, you know, because I didn't really know what I was doing and uh until in '69, I think, I got involved with with Snuffy Smith.

Trapping Lessons From A Fur Artist

SPEAKER_03 15:54

Snuffy and I became very good friends, you know, and and then I started going with Squeak and him, you know. He'd say, hey, we're gonna go out behind the lake today. You want to go? Yeah, oh yeah, you know, and so Squeak didn't just train Stuart, he trained Stuart's dad, too. He trained me too, and I mean he was an artist. That man, I have never seen a man take care of a fur like him. I mean, you know, Stuart, I always, you know, told him, I said, you make them, you know, when you when him and Ryan, you know, trapped after that, and I would go, you know, I had snowmobiles, and we'd go up behind the lake and you know, pretty much everywhere that was not being trapped by somebody else, you know, up the highway, porcupine, and and you know, when they got fur, I'd, you know, Squeak was still alive then. Yeah, and he would take them in there and he would, you know, he was like, Boy, you better do this right. You know, he was uh, you know, he was a real stickler about his fur quality. And and uh that one year, Stuart and him, I don't know if he said something to you or not, but he got that one Martin that was the top lot of the whole sale, you know, North American fur auctions, it you know, was six hundred and fifty dollars for a martin. He was telling us about that. And you know what? You know, because Hobb or the they wanted their foot feet chopped off. Yeah, and I would never, you know, and Squeak wouldn't either, you know. He wanted them things. If you wanted to mount them, they were mount ready, and you know, I mean, the splitting the toes and doing all that stuff and the ears, you know, and uh he was, I mean, his fur was the finest.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah, he was pretty, pretty adamant about it being done right.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

And he had all of his knives, you know, and he he when you catch an otter, you know, I remember one day, one year, Tim Twiliger and I were trapping down towards Battery Point. We caught six otters that year. And God, it took us, you know, ten hours to do an otter, you know, to flesh out the tail. And I remember the the first time I I uh went over to squeak when they were doing an otter, you know. It was like they skin it out, you know, had a and they had a pole that this thing fit on, you know, it was about this big around and it tapered up to the shape of an otter. And he took these chic razors and he ground the safety off of them. And I mean, he would shave them things. I mean, he could do an otter in an hour. And I mean, the whole thing, have it stretched, yeah, it was amazing. You know, because their tails, you know, they're you know, they're flat, you know, and they have the fat pockets on the side. They're so difficult to get the fat out of there, you know. But squeak the man, he could shave them. Yeah, and Ryan and Stuart, they both, you know, they learned a lot from him. He was a true artist when trapping. You know, that's how he got here, you know, came up here to trap with really with Alex, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Ed Alex. When was that? Because they were Ed Alex, I guess, was in the 40s. Yeah, after the war, you know, he served in the war. Yeah. And after the 40s, you know, Ed said, I'm going to Alaska, and Squeak, you know, is single and I'm going to Alaska with you. That's how they ended up here. But yeah, he was a he was an artist. I mean, there isn't anybody that, you know, and he's still Ryan still has all of his stuff and it's all in the same spot. Yeah, it's good. Pretty cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

So what what else were you doing through so you started having this love of outdoors and that turned your trapping, your hunting, your fishing?

School, History Class, And Fitness Pride

SPEAKER_01 19:30

What was what was school like for you? What were you interested in school? P in history.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

I tell you, your dad, you know, you know, everybody thinks of all these history items, you know, and you know, I I mean it just sunk in the way he taught, and maybe I don't know why, but I really paid attention and I did really well in his classes, you know, better than all the other classes that I was taking. And yeah, it was, it was, I don't know. He was just a very, you know, because I think he actually cared about history. You know, I mean, you know, he would tell you intricate parts of it that made you, you know, and your assignments wouldn't be this dull, you know, whatever. It would be, you know, some particular thing about, you know, what cannons did they use, or you know, what rifles did they use? What where did this where did the South get their rifles from? And you know, you talk to Henry about that stuff, you know, because Henry's quite a history buff himself. And yeah, it I don't know, I've got books and books, and you know, uh, when Carl Ward died and they had the garage sale at his place, yeah. I uh, you know, they said, oh, he's got a bunch of gun books. So I went up there to look at them and it was all from the Civil War, and I bought all of them. I mean, and I, you know, consumed quite a few of them, but not all of them, because I mean they're 800 pages, you know. Oh, this this Snyder rifle, you know, was you know used by the South, you know, because they didn't like, you know, yeah, it's it's you know it was probably the best gun of the whole Civil War, you know. Yeah, but yeah, it was a I don't know. I I like PE, you know, because your dad got me started in on the presidential, you know, and oh presidential fitness war. Yeah, I I was the presidential for six years. I did it, you know, when I didn't have PE, you know, I just took the test and yeah, I was proud that you know I I could do it.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

So that gets that gets us to one of the legends of Charlie DeWitt.

The Solo Track Meet That Started A Team

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Was it your senior year where you go to the track meet in the Southeast Regional Track Meet, and by yourself you took second place?

SPEAKER_03 21:44

No.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

No? When was it?

SPEAKER_03 21:45

My sophomore year. My sophomore year. I said I'm going to the track meet. Uh huh. You know, I had run around and I was throwing a shot, put a little bit, you know, nobody really did anything about it, you know. Uh so we did there wasn't a track meeting. No track team. No track team. Yeah. And I said, Well, I'm going to the meet. So I go to the meet and I go in and sign up. And they said, Well, are you unattached? And I go, No, I'm Haynes. And I didn't know what they meant by unattached. I thought, oh, you know, you know, because basically, if you went to unattached, you knew you never made any score. All you did was do your running. I said, No, I'm Haynes. And they didn't think they didn't say, Where's your where's your coach or anything like that? You just went down by yourself? Went down by myself. In Juneau? In June. In Juneau. Yeah. So what what events did you compete in? I competed in the hundred and the two hundred, uh, the shot put and the long jump. Long jump? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

And you got first?

SPEAKER_03 22:43

I got I got third in the long, or I shouldn't say that. I got I got third in the shot put.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 22:51

Uh, and then I got I got second in the long jump and fourth or fifth in the in the hundred, in the two hundred.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:59

Yeah. And, you know, I remember somebody saying, huh, I didn't know we had a track team, but we're in second or third place or something like that. And I got home and Carl Ward comes up to me and he goes, thank you. And after that, you know, we they Carl said, we're getting a track team together. And uh we did. We got a track team together, and you know, from then on, I think we were the closest team. Well, I shouldn't say that. I coached track, you know, for five years, but we were the closest team to Juno. We'd only lost to Juno by like five points our senior year.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 23:41

And we didn't have pole vault. Uh-huh. And you know, they'd get one, two, and three in pole vault. So yeah, we we had a heck of a track team.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

Yeah, I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

You know, I I think I was uh so you were the you were the reason we started a track team. And wasn't Stuart the first member of the Haynes Dolphins?

SPEAKER_03 24:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

So carrying on the legacy. Now what one of your grandkids, what are they gonna start?

SPEAKER_03 24:07

I don't know. Gotta see what they come up with here. I have no idea. You know, I working on Lucas, you know, I don't know. I think he's a fisherman. We just I know he's we went down to the we went down to the dock today and he goes, Papa, can you know, can you take me and Liam to the dock? And I go, Yeah, okay. So we went down there and the Nash kids showed up, you know. And so I'm jigging herring, you know, and I'm I got, geez, I had six on at one time, you know, flipped them in the bucket, and another, you know, you had to wait for them. They were like in surgery, you know, they were just going and milling around and you know, and you go for 30 minutes, wouldn't have a herring, and then you'd get five or six, and then I couldn't keep up. You know, using the bait faster than going, oh my god, this is you know, they were the perfect size for trolling, you know. We have trolling coming up, and I'm going, I'm gonna take these home and salt them, because I figured I'd get a half a bucket or something, you know. And I like I said, I couldn't keep up. They're over there, can I have another herring? I'd go, a dollar a herring, and the kids are reaching in their pockets, you know, and pulling out dollars. I'd go, get out of here, take a herring, you know. And yeah, because I had them in the bucket and they were just swimming around in the bucket, you know, and they were like, ooh. Mmm, good bait. Yeah. And then I mean, I don't know, and they must have caught 20 or 30 dollies, you know, and they just turned most of them loose.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Yeah, those kids I I see them all summer long coming in looking for fishing lures. Yep. They they love it. You know what they love the best? What's that? Cast master.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

Yep, they're the best hook for them, or at least they think, you know, because of the of all the kids down there, Liam had got a tackle box for Christmas or his birthday or whatever, and he had all these lures, you know. They were just the stamp, whatever. And everybody else, all the rest of the kids, the regulars all had cast masters.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Yeah. Well, Lucas last year he came in and told me, he goes, You you don't have the right color. And so he told me I need to get a new color, and so I got it this year just for her, just for him. So I told him the spring. I said it's it's uh it's kind of like a brown trout looking. And uh I was like, Lucas, I got your and his eyes got big, and he's like, Oh, all right, and I think he's got a couple of them.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Well, I think he's lost them all already. Probably, yeah, probably because he was using Liam's hooks too. Yeah, and I mean, he had some, you know, and they must have been 24, 25 inch, just big monsters. Oh, yeah. In fact, he goes, I'm keeping one. I go, for what? I'm gonna eat it. And they go, really? Who's gonna cook it for you? He goes, somebody.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

I haven't figured that out yet, but I'll find somebody that's agree.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

You know, they them kids, I they have a wonderful life. I was talking to a guy today, and he goes, God, wouldn't you like to be 10 again? And I go, yes, that was the funnest. You know, well, I was in cake when we'd do that, and I remember we'd go down on the dock and we'd spend hours and hours down there. I mean, the highlight of my whole, my whole uh early career, you know, 10, 11, 12, we were sitting on the cake dock, you know, looking, and we saw this halibut must have been eight foot long. It just came right up over the the dock thing and went right under the water, you know, and everybody out there kind of what are you gonna do with that if you catch it? You know, because back then the kids, you know, none of the kids in cake had a fishing pole. They all used hand lines. Handlines? Yeah. You know, and I mean it was all Saint Wine. They used the same thing, you know, when the humpies would come in and the crick at Gunnut Crick Darren Cake. You know, that's what they would do. They'd give them the old, there was an old gal, her name was Gunatine, and uh, you know, that was her Indian name. Uh-huh. Uh, Mrs. Friday, if I remember right. But they'd take and, you know, catch humpies out of the crick, you know, with a they called them a jigger, was three big halibut or halibut hooks, you know, wrapped together. Yeah, and they'd, you know, you'd throw it out on the bottom, and then when you'd see a fish go over the line, you know, you'd try to snag it, you know. But I remember taking her fish and because she used to make these salmon eggs, Doug, that were smoked, you know, the whole skein. Smoking them, huh? Oh my god, were they good?

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Just a light smoke on them or no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

They were smoked for a week or a week or longer. I mean, the eggs were just minute, they had shrunk so much. Oh, they were it was like eating cheese, you know, like smoked gouda cheese.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Have you ever tried to replicate that?

SPEAKER_03 28:46

No, I never have.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Oh, she did that.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

She just brined them in salt and then just hung them up, you know, on in her smoke house and just pretty much forgot about them. Until they were done. Yeah. Well, I don't know if they ever, you know, weren't done, you know. I mean, yeah, they were fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

I've never heard of that before.

SPEAKER_03 29:06

Yeah. He'd smoke.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

I remember speaking to fishing as kids, we'd go down to the docks, and then my dad would take us out to Letnikoff every once in a while looking for flounders. But um, for a couple summers, I'd go out to uh on Sawmill Road, you know, the culvert there right before you get to the cemetery. Oh, big time with uh Frank Shull and Larry in there. Frank Schull and Shane Martin, man. We'd just we'd

Early Jobs And Learning From Old-Timers

SPEAKER_01 29:30

spend hours casting out in there and catching fish.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Well, I when I was young, you know, I started, you know, working at the hausing land, you know, in in uh 67. Okay. I'd go haul bags, you know, that's all I basically did, you know, and I worked for Carl Heinmiller through the the youth program they had, you know. I could work 30 hours, but I would go over and haul bags, you know. I'd go haul bags, you know, we all did bags at five in the morning, so we'd go over there and do that, and we'd be done by seven. I'd go to work at Heinmiller's for eight. You know, I worked on the for Oli Erickson over at the Chilcat Center when they were remodeling that. We put the theater room in there.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 30:13

And I remember working for Oli on the we had ladders going up because some of the slate tiles were were gone, you know, and Oli sent me up there. I am 13, you know, had a rope tied around me, and he was on the other side, you know, and ladders going up there, yeah, changing them plate tiles and running a chainsaw. I never do what a chainsaw. I didn't know a chainsaw won't cut rocks. You know, holy this thing won't cut anything. And he goes, it won't cut rocks. Yeah. The old guys that were here are pretty, you know, Oly, I worked for Oly quite a bit after that. You know, I worked on the sawmill, and then when I lost I got my finger screwed up, I was supposed to go to work on the new school when they built the new school over here. But yeah. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Yeah, that was what, 76 when they built the school?

SPEAKER_03 31:05

Yeah. I came and stayed at the Aframe.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Do you remember that? I do remember that. Yeah. I was thinking 'cause uh um oh crap. There's there's been several people that have stayed there over the years. Don Phillips was there. Robert Burlette. Robert Burlet, you were there. Then a couple, there's a guy from uh when they were building the breakwater down here, uh there's a guy that was staying up there, and he was a he was a trucker, and I distinctly remember he got fired, and he was he was complaining about it, and my grandpa hub asked me, so what happened? He goes, Well, I was just sitting there waiting to be loaded, a rock came down and hit my fuel tank, and they blamed it on me. And my grandpa's like, Well, he shouldn't have been parked there. Yeah, it was with him, it was like, if you're in the truck, it's your fault, doesn't matter what happened. But I remember that guy, I wasn't that old, but I remember him just looking, he's like, wait, wait, you're supposed to be taking my side. I was thinking, good luck on that one, dude.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

No, it's always your fault. You know, Hub, Hub, I don't know. I you know, Hub and I go way back too, you know, because I worked with Hub when I I worked for your dad when I was uh 15 years old on the garbage truck. Guess who was driving the garbage truck?

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Grandpa Hub.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

Yep, and I mean, yeah, he I remember we went to the food center, and that's when fresca and tab, you know, I all had that. I forget what the sweetener was that was supposed to kill you, you know, and they they had we loaded the whole back of the garbage truck up with the food center's stock of fresca and tab. And I go, You want me to crush it, hub? And he goes, No, no, no, we're not going far. We drove down the road over here, took it all out of the back of the garbage truck and stacked it in there. And I go, hub, that stuff's supposed to kill you. He goes, When? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

So that was over, he put it in his place over drinking here.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

You know, we had the big shed out inside. Yeah. Paul Nelson and I were the ones that were working on the garbage truck. You know, we both were on the back, you know, because we'd go to the fog cutter, you know, every every every other day it was two dumpsters full of beer bottles and cans, you know. It was crazy the amount of beer that flowed through this town.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

That was the mill days, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:38

That was in two mills and logging going on in the woods and fishing, and yeah, it was so at 15, you're the back of a back of a garbage truck, hanging on the back end, pulling up, you know, dumping cans, you know, and politic one side, I'd get the other side, and Ubside in there, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Yeah, Lizzie.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

That's still uh that still amazed me the way he was able to drive a stick shift with only a left arm.

SPEAKER_03 34:04

You know, and and he had his leg. I don't know what was wrong with his leg. I don't know if it was neuropathy or what, you know, because he was diabetic. Uh, you know, I don't know if it was something to do with the the incident that caused his, you know, I don't know. It it but God, that guy could work. I tell you what. I mean, he never stopped, you know. He yeah, he was a I loved Hub because you know, after I went to school, you know, and you know, Hub said, What are you gonna do? I said, I'm gonna become uh our diesel mechanic. He said, good choice, you know. And and after I'd, you know, gone to school and went to work and stuff like that, hub would call me up, you know, come over here. You know, I'm building a new stove and my eyes ain't as good as they used to be.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Can you help me weld this?

SPEAKER_03 34:55

Yeah, I can, hub. You know, I you know, and then I was talking to Hub about, you know, I we were working on, we had all these Euclid trucks, you know, up on the North Slope, and the only way you could, the only way you could get the brakes freed up, they'd get frozen to adjust the brakes, is you had to get a long punch, you know, and I got, man, I don't have a long punch. And Hub sits there and walks through the shop and there and he comes out with this big long punch, and he goes, I got this in 1942 or whatever. He said, I had the blacksmith make it, you know. And that was the best punch. I still have it. You know, it was the best punch I ever had because they had little star wheels, you know, and you had to tap them to turn them to to adjust the brakes on these big Euclids, you know. Yeah, I he gave me that punch, and you know, that was pretty a good treat.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

So my I remember my dad telling me that he tried to get you to go to the University of Minnesota to play football. Do you remember that? Yeah, he had you a walk-on spot.

SPEAKER_03 35:57

Yeah. Well, he did, and then I had another walk-off spot at uh at uh well actually it was a kind of a scholarship at Chico State. Yeah in California through RV, you know. Okay, RV got that and it was with Coach Realman and man, I just, you know, you know, I had, you know, I hadn't I didn't have any money. I mean, you know, all of my life, you know, I never had, you know, if I wanted anything, you know, I'd have to go work for I remember days where, you know, you'd what I do with, you know, because you get $30 a week, you know, and if you had a car, you know, that was a couple Phillips, and you know. Yeah. And I yeah, I mean, I liked guns so much that you know I would spend most of that year, that year that I in 1970 uh 74. I worked for your dad when he built the sports shop. And I my my paycheck was like eleven hundred dollars and my gun bill was a thousand and thirty-eight. Uh he he knew who to hire. He knew he was gonna get it all back. Yeah, I bought a Remington, you know, because I had been down there the year before, and uh my my auto teacher, because I went to school to be a diesel mechanic. And where'd

Trade School And Becoming A Mechanic

SPEAKER_03 37:18

you go to school? Port Angeles, Peninsula College. And right off the bat, I could I could tell that they had a new instructor in the diesel program, and he just, you know, I wasn't impressed with him. And this Doug, Doug Gillilan, you know Doug. Yep, yeah, anyway, you know, he just seemed more outgoing. And I mean, you look, you walked into his office, you know, and he had, you know, not a big office, you know, probably 12 by 16 or something like that. And the whole wall, all the way around, was covered with uh certificates from General Motors. I mean, he had, you know, he started working for General Motors in 1953, uh-huh. And he had every certificate that General Motors had. Had yeah, and I mean, and I mean he knew his stuff, and he had worked in Alaska, Doug. He came up here in 1948, you know, and did log and stuff, you know. And you know, mostly he was your main instructor down to college? He was he was the automotive instructor because I went and signed up as a diesel instructor class, and uh, you know, I didn't even go, I think I went once one semester and I transferred to the automotive program because I could tell you know just working with Doug. Working with Doug, he was just his general knowledge of everything was way, way better, and he conveyed it a lot better than this kid, you know. The other guy was just he went to Oregon Tech and he had only been out of school like a year.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

And Doug was, you know, just the you know, we could just look at it and tell yeah, that's you know, that's what's wrong with it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

And so where did where did you get all your diesel training then? Because that's a lot of the mechanics you've done since is all in diesel cycles.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Well they I keep telling these kids today, Doug. You know, I worked for Kiwit, I was in supervision with Kiwit. And I go, all you have to do is show up with an attitude that you want to work. And they'll train you to do everything.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Anybody that has a can see that you're a good employee is gonna train you. You know, that's I worked, I started out working.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

I came, I uh so you're in you were at Peninsula from till 76. Was that a two-year program? Yep. And so after in 76 you came back to Haynes then?

SPEAKER_03 39:36

I actually was 75, Doug. 75? And I went to work right away. I went to work for Morrison Knutson out of Tonsina, and I worked with an old guy that was a welder. And he would just, I don't want to train you nothing, because you're gonna steal my job. And you know, I worked there for six months and was one of the last guys that they laid off, and I figured I'd go right back. Well, I I uh went to uh, you know, I came home for Christmas, got married, went on a honeymoon, and did whatever, and I went back and said, Hey, I'm ready to go back to work, and they said, We don't have anything. So I went to the hall, and the hall said, Well, okay. So they sent me to Valdez as an oiler. And I worked on a on a as a rig oiler on a backhoe in a crane with a couple guys from Minnesota. And you know, they they uh treated me really well, you know. The the guy that was the oiler boss down there was one of the Knutson kids, and sadly he was killed down there. You know, that that year that year that I left, you know, was still would have been 76. Yeah, 76 in the spring. The snow slid off of one of them big storage tanks down there, you know, probably six, eight feet of snow, and he was going by in a pickup and it crushed it. But anyway, I I'm working in Valdez and I get this call, you know. Hey, my my wife says John Jennings wants you to call him. So I called John Jennings and John says, Hey, we're looking for help, you know, you're gonna be right at home, and we know we got a couple year job. So that's when I worked, I said, okay. So I gave him my two weeks' notice and came home and I went to work for AIC, you know, with under John and you know, Chauncey Craig and real good guys and learned a lot there too.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

What project was that?

SPEAKER_03 41:31

That was the Haynes Highway project.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

We were doing that in mid-70s.

SPEAKER_03 41:34

We did it out the four mile out at a ferry terminal, and then we did uh three miles right there at the Musk or Mosquito Lake Corner. They did uh three mile or three sections one mile long of friction course, you know, to see which which uh course of asphalt gave the the best friction, you know, for driving for traction. Yeah, we did that in November.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

You're paving in November.

SPEAKER_03 42:04

Yeah. And I didn't tell you the story anyway.

Running An Asphalt Plant By Surprise

SPEAKER_03 42:09

So I'm working for I'm working for AIC over here, and they said, oh John says, You're going to the asphalt plant. Okay. So they had they had this guy that knew the asphalt plant real well. He had run it before that. Anyway, this this guy named Freeland was running it, and and Lloyd Schillings was the superintendent. And one day I'm there at, you know, because I had I go to work at five and I'd have all the oil flowing in the whole plant and have everything circulating and all that stuff, you know, start the generator, check the generator, do all that stuff. And seven o'clock comes and there's there's 20 trucks out there, you know, sitting there waiting to get asphalt. And, you know, 7:30 comes and no operator, and eight o'clock comes and no operator, and Lloyd comes up to me and says, Can you run this thing? And I go, I don't know, Lloyd. Maybe. So I remember uh, you know, I had, you know, I I had watched him start it, you know, and knew how all the procedures to do it, pretty much, but a couple things I didn't know because uh, you know, I didn't know how to, you know, you had to have the fans to draw the material through, you know, had to have them set at a certain place. Well, anyway, this plant had issues, it wouldn't start, so I'd have to go out there with the butane torch and start it every morning, you know.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 43:40

And I remember I'd go, well, I'm gonna need some help, you know, to get it started. And they go, Well, send Jerry Frederickson over. So here comes Jerry and he goes, What do you want me to do? I said, put that torch up there and start it. You know, put it right there and I'll hit the burner button and it'll start, you know. And okay, so he gets up there and I hit the Burner button and woof the flame comes out the back, singes all of Jerry's hair off because I didn't have the oh I go crap, I gotta have the damper open. I turned the damper open and you know ran the plant the rest of the day. And you know, Freeland showed up about 10 o'clock and and uh he goes, What are you doing in my seat? And I go, I guess running the plant. Well, Lloyd saw him pull in, you know, and pulled in behind him and goes, Freeland, you don't work here anymore. Oh, gee, you already cost us. He said, and that kid, he's only been doing it for six or eight weeks, and look at he's already doing it. And he shows up.

SPEAKER_02 44:46

He was here on top of the trucks.

SPEAKER_03 44:48

Yeah. So yeah, after that, you know, I ran the asphalt plant for him for three years. I ran it, you know, down in Gus Davis. We did a paving job there, and then went to we went to to uh King Salmon. Mm-hmm. Oh, excuse me. McGrath. Well, we did King Salmon too, but that was a different type. McGrath when we paved that runway.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:10

But it's been an interesting life.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

So after after AIC, did you come back to Haynes

Teaching Shop Class And Leaving It

SPEAKER_01 45:16

for a while? Because when what years were you shop teacher here?

SPEAKER_03 45:19

I was there from 80 to 85.

SPEAKER_01 45:21

80 to 80.

SPEAKER_03 45:22

79, 80, 80 to 85.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

So what brought what brought that on where you wanted to?

SPEAKER_03 45:27

Well, I was gone all the time, you know. I don't know. My poor wife, you know, she was trying to raise kids, and I go, well, I have to try this, you know. And you know, I was working for AIC, the same company that was I'd worked for them for 19 years, I think. Mostly on the slope, you know, and I got all the remote jobs. I mean, if there was a remote job, they were sending Charlie. Because, you know, I didn't have a problem. I could live wherever they put me. If they put me in a, you know, a wannegan, you know, for whatever, it didn't make any difference to me. I was happy to be there working. And yeah, it uh it was pretty crazy, crazy way to go. But anyway, like you said, I I said I wanted to spend some more time with my family, and you know, because my kids were growing up, you know. And they said, okay, you know, whenever you want a job, you call. So I worked every summer, Doug.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

So you'd teach in here, and then as soon as I left here, I'd go to Prudhoe Bay or wherever they sent me.

SPEAKER_03 46:32

Yeah. You know, uh little Diomede,

Little Diomede And Remote Alaska Work

SPEAKER_03 46:35

you know. That's what I was gonna ask.

SPEAKER_01 46:36

Is that when you went to Little Diamede? What was that like out there right next to the Russians?

SPEAKER_03 46:41

It was pretty cool, really, you know, because you know, you could they had a little uh National Guard, a little shed up on the hill, and they had these binoculars that were like this long, you know, and you could they had a pedestal out there, you know, they sat on a pedestal out the building, and this uh Roger uh Iapan, you know, he said, Hey, come up here and check this out. You know, they had guns, you know, M14s all the way around, you know, boxes and boxes and boxes of ammunition. And so, you know, he comes up here and goes, Look, it let's go look. And he goes, We go look, and you could see over to Big Diamede, and there was, you know, like these towers that you know the Russians had there, and you could look over there and you could see them, you know, looking at you. They're looking at you, we were putting in we were putting in, I think they were 15-foot uh corrugated metal pipes, you know, and we would we would go all the way down to hard ground, uh, and then we'd fill them all the way up with rocks, you know. We'd first of all, Doug, we'd pour a two-foot solid concrete foundation in them, you know, and had rebar and everything else in them, and then we'd fill them full of rocks, you know. Some of them were probably 18, 20 feet. And we'd haul all we had all these Eskimo guys, we didn't have anything really, you know, we had a dozer, we didn't have a loader or anything like that. And we'd put pallets on the, you know, on the front of the dozers, you know. I'd I made a couple little forks and fill them up, and then we'd take them, drive them up there, and throw all these rocks into these big, huge uh these uh culverts, and then we had to fill them to two feet from the top, and then we had to fill them full of grout. We had a little one yard for foundations. That was the foundation for the whole school. Oh, okay. You're building the school.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

Yeah. So how deep were these things?

SPEAKER_03 48:39

That's what I said. Some of them depended on the bottom, but Ernst Olson was out there and he'd dig till he got to bedrock.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:45

And then, you know, we'd put this thing up there and then we'd pour, you know, dam it up as best we could, pour the grout in there, and pour two feet of concrete in the bottom. You know, we had these super sacks of concrete.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:58

And yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Holy cow. How big a school was that?

SPEAKER_03 49:02

Oh, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't anything huge. There was, you know, 135 kids. 135 kids. And going.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

Dang.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

They already had a school there, but it was a one-room school. You know, it had a kitchen on the right, and then the schoolroom was out in front, and it took 1k through 8, you know. And what years was that 81, 82? That was in 81. 81. Yeah, or excuse me, 82. 82. Yeah. In 82, and we that's what we did. We just did the foundation, and after we had the foundation, you know, they sent me to I think I might have even come home and went to work because that's when Tiffany was born. I came home and went to work for uh Rudy Ballardi up here in Cluckwon. They were putting in new water and sewer up there.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 49:48

Yeah. And but I worked every year, you know. That one year I worked 24 hours a day. I got, I shouldn't say I worked, I got paid 24 hours a day. Because we were doing the sea lift. I had a shift for three weeks. I had a shift of uh we did the approaches when they brought a barge in. Where was this at? This was at uh Prudhoe Bay. Prudto Bay, okay. Yeah, we had to we they bring these ships in or these barges, and they'd bring them in, and you know, we run a grater barge up there that smoothed the bottom out so that the barges could sit without any obstructions or rocks or whatever, which there wasn't any rocks up there at all anyway, but we had this grater barge that went back and forth. They brought the barge in, sunk it on the ground, and then it was our job to build up the ramp so they could roll these. I had uh, I don't know, 10 or 12 labors. I had a roller or a couple rollers, a couple of blade operators, and we built the ramps up to the ship so they could just bring them off and bring them off. Yeah, that was a pretty cool job. But I did a I was a mechanic foreman on a on a dirt job they had going at the same time, so I just slept in my pickup and you know they had spike rooms out there. Yeah, it was 24 hours a day for for three months or excuse me, three weeks.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

Three weeks, yeah. What looking back at that now, look, I mean you'd see what Prudhoe Bay's become, you look at these different places. Does that give you some kind of appreciation that you were there kind of at the start of some of that? That we built you you you built the the footprint for what the we built the bridge and the first road into the caperic. Into the caperic.

SPEAKER_03 51:26

Yeah, one of the hugest oil fields in North America, you know. At the time it was, but now North Star and Endicott and all these other ones are I think are out producing it. But uh that North, we built we had to go across in an R 35 to cross the river. We'd all jump in the had ladders and get in the back of an R35 because there was no bridge. And we, you know, once it froze up, I remember Jerry Frederickson and and Ed Irwin. Ed Irwin was our superintendent, and Jerry were testing Ed Auger, you know, we're testing out the ice, and Ed went and dunked the pickup. Too far. Yeah, yeah, no, it was, you know, AIC was just getting started, you know. John Ellsworth was the was my our uh mechanic foreman. Okay. Yeah. But does that I mean Yeah, you go up there today, and I mean When was the last time you were up at Prudhoe? Uh I've been back up on short terms, you know. I went up and and did a uh a batch plant. John wanted all new admix pumps and rebuild this batch plant, you know. And I think that was in '91 or '92, I think. But that was the last time. Yeah. Pretty much I didn't, you know, I went to work for Kiwit in '97 here. Yeah on the highway again.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

Stayed with them until I retired. So before we get to the Kiwit, and the years that you were teaching, did you and did you enjoy teaching?

SPEAKER_03 53:03

Yes, I did. I really enjoyed it. And you know, I liked I was the basketball or JV basketball coach and and I really enjoyed all of that, you know, but you know, I I this the class that they had, I didn't really like it. You know, I'd go, God, we're not teaching these kids, you know, how, you know, I said a lot of kids, so I did a survey, and there was 97, there was 97 kids that went into fishing and three that went into mechanics. So I made a presentation to the board and said, you know, we need to change this, steer this program more towards fishing. I said, we need to have fiberglass work, you know, we need to have net mending and you know, marine electronics, and you know, diesel, maybe some small diesel projects, you know. Because I already had a diesel engine in there that I'd got from Bill Thomas. Came out of the came out of the Bantry. Anyway, I had it in the in the school shop, and I go, we need and Mr. Henderson was on there, and I think Jerry Clifton and some people, you know, showed some support, but when it got down to voting, they said, no, I'm sorry, Mr. DeWitt, we're gonna cost too much. And I go, well, it's not gonna cost you anything. I said, everything we have here, I said, we have piles and piles of net. I said, we have, you know, fiberglass stuff. I said, it's you know, it's not any more expensive than wood.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:33

You know, and I said, you know, it would be just to, you know, just do some simple layups and you know, so you know how to mix it and how to deal with the temperatures when it's hot and how to deal with the temperatures when it's cold, and when you can't do it, and when you can do it, you know. But they didn't see that. And so I went up to Prudhoe that year, and they I was the I was the uh master mechanic on a field shop they had up there. I had 16 mechanics working for me in the shop, and then seven or eight in the field. We had we had a hundred and fifty haul units working. I mean, you know, 10, 11 loaders in the pit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

That's a lot of iron to get it.

SPEAKER_03 55:20

It was it was uh it was overwhelming, and you know, we I had did a pretty good job, and they said, Okay, yeah, you're doing good. So and I I was really enjoying myself, and I called my wife up and I said, call Gary and tell him I'm not coming back.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

Yeah, because I think your last year teaching was my freshman year. Yeah, because I remember I took the second half of the year, I took introduction to welding with you. That's the only time I've ever welded. Yeah, I haven't done any, I haven't, I haven't done anything with it since. There's a couple of times my dad said, Well, he goes, Would you buy that welder? I was like, what for? He says, Well, didn't you take welding with Charlie? I was like, Yeah, he said, so you know how to do it. I said, Dad, that was like 20-something years ago. I did welding pads on a I said, I don't know if I still got it. Well, you'll figure it out. I was like, No, I don't think we need a welder. If I need something welded, I'll take it to Charlie.

SPEAKER_03 56:18

No, I I uh I did that job, you know, and then they said, Hey, we want you to come up and run the block

Prudhoe Block Plant Production And Pride

SPEAKER_03 56:25

plant. I go, what's the block plant? And they go, well, we're making uh three foot by three foot, nine-inch thick concrete blocks for slope protection. And I go, what what happened to the guys you had? And he said they never made production. So I go, oh, okay. So I go up there and and pretty much had the same crew. I had but I had Larry Jurgolite and Don Johnson.

SPEAKER_01 56:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 56:51

You know, they were my night shift guys, they took care of all the materials. I had I had uh seven guys work. Chauncey was running and working in the plant for a while, and he was the flipper guy. Ran a gave him a railroad hat, and you know, he drove this. It was on a railroad track and it was a flipper machine. You went off, you know, you got these blocks off of these tables. They were four by eight tables, and you know, they set, you know, then you after they dried, you had to bring them over, and then you turned them over and you sealed the other side. Well we did uh that was a really, really good job because you know they said, well, if you get over 250 blocks, you get an hour, you get an hour of overtime.

SPEAKER_01 57:41

250 in how long a time period?

SPEAKER_03 57:43

In a in a 10-hour period.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

Wait, you're you're making 250 of these blocks in 10 hours? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:50

We're not that's not it, Doug. They said if if you made 250. If you made it. We had days where we almost got 500. We averaged about 430 blocks a day.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

400 and how many guys were working on this again?

SPEAKER_03 58:10

There was seven guys running the plant, and then Don John.

SPEAKER_01 58:14

They're just constantly feeding that mix out of there, then, aren't they? Yep. That's got to be a big plant that you've got all that.

SPEAKER_03 58:21

It was a little pancake mixer, it did one yard at a time. Really? And it was the plant that we bought, or they got, was out of Wisconsin, the Weezer plant. And it was a dry casting plant. So you had these forms that came down and they folded up underneath to make the bevels, and then the top press plate made the bevels on the top, and then it lifted, lifted the form off, and then you had these tables with two blocks on it, and the forklift came and moved, you know, and you had the finishers that, you know, if there was any screw-ups, you know, they moved the mud around and fixed them up, you know, and put them on these tables. But we had this shop, Doug, that was I don't know, seven, eight hundred feet by 150 feet. One of them sprung structure buildings. Yeah. We had everything in there because we had to thaw all the gravel because that was Johnson's and Jurgolite's job was to take to thaw the gravel in order to give it to the game. We had to thaw the gravel, put enough gravel in there for the whole day's production.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:19

And so the night crew would be about 110 in that place because as soon as I took it we'd get done, I'd crank the temperature up. And Johnson and, you know, they did all the maintenance on the plant. Yeah. And Larry, you know, they they would haul all the gravel in, you know. Yeah, so they were were pretty busy. They'd have to rip it outside because it was in a stockpile, uh-huh, and they'd have to rip it loose and then bring a loader and haul it inside. And we had the uh the thawed section and the unthawed section, you know, because we had to have enough to start with. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

So they wanted, they were hoping you'd get 250. The previous crew couldn't get that. And so you guys ended up doing 430, averaging around 450.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:01

We got an extra hour overtime for every hundred blocks over 250.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

So you guys are we worked a 10 hours a year. A couple hours overtime pretty much on a yeah, every day. Every day. Yeah. The crew must have loved that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:14

The crew, well, they were a wonderful crew. I mean, uh Pat Oseth from Washington, and geez, I just so how long do you guys keep that up for? We did it until uh I left in. I left in June, I think. But they had we had done the big there was 36,000 of the nine foot by nine foot.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

And we had the thousand of them.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:45

We we could leave them inside, you know, you only had so much room. We had these tables, and there was two rows of tables on the right side of it, you know, because they had to stay inside one day, but after the after the 24 hours, we could put them outside. And we had Alaska Tent and Tarp build these sacks that were them insulated bubble stuff.

unknown 1:01:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:08

We'd put that over the top of them, and then we had to have three heat probes in them, and they couldn't they could not get over or under freezing. As long as they for seven days. For seven days, yeah. Yeah, then after seven days you had to go pull all the sacks off and start over again.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:25

36,000.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:27

That was only the one form, but there was 203 forms, different shapes.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:33

And what where were all these going? These are bank stabilization.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:36

They were going to the North Star Island. North Star for stable slope stabilization. You can't find any riprap in Prudhoe, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

Yeah, you gotta make it all.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

It comes, you know, the nearest riprap is uh mile 117 or pit 117, you know, probably 200 miles from Pluto.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:54

So you're making all the stuff for yeah, holy cow.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:57

And you know, they had these, they had these Manitowaks.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

Which is massive.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:01

Yeah, well, they should stick them together. They'd they put 15 of these blocks together, and then they'd, you know, be whatever it took to get down to the toe of the you know, the ocean floor.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

They had these 4100 Manitowaks and they'd put them over, and then they had to lay them up the beach, and then they had to have somebody go down there and shackle them together.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:22

So they had divers under there shackling everything together. Holy cow.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:28

They're still there.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:29

That's a just just a square footage of car.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

That's just an amazing thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:37

We had we'd get two trucks a day of of you know, the tankers of no of uh just dry concrete. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:48

Yeah, it was a it was a lot, it was a lot of fun.

Commercial Fishing Roots And Boat Life

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

So it with all of that going on and working on all these big projects, what made you decide to get into commercial fishing?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:58

Well, I started when I was 12 or 13. Yeah Tim Twillerger and I had a setnet site at the Catzaheen Flats. Really? Yeah. So you guys go over there, camp out, and catch fish? Yeah, we'd go over there and camp out for the opening, and you know, we had a we had a boat that Tim Twiliger and 12. Huh? At 12. Yeah, 13. 12, 13. Yeah, but he had a 16-foot boat that Tim Dad built under the church over there. Okay, you know, down in the basement. And that was our boat, you know, and we had a six-horsepower Johnson. Six horsepower Johnson, a little bit of catsy. And we went all the way to the catsy, you know, like a two-hour trip, you know. They they say, well, your boat's slow, you know. They talk about the Tiffany Lee. It's a slow boat. You shouldn't have been on that. It's really fascinating. You know, it's loaded, it's got nets in it, and you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

Yeah. So how many fish were you guys catching?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:53

How you know, sometimes it would be really good. Uh huh. You know how that corner is. A lot of times it'd be a whole shitload of humpies. Lots of humpies, and you know, and I know about catching humpies with you. Yeah, I know. Anyway, we'd go over there and I mean, God, that one year we'd had this horrible storm. You know, it just nasty. And uh I remember I was Tim said, just take it out and we'll tie it to the buoy. So I was on it, you know, underneath the front, you know, with a tarp over me, and you know. Anyway, the next morning I got up and I said, no. No. I went, we it was high tide, so I went way down, and there's a behind where we had our camp, there was a little like a river bed, you know, and was out of the wind. So I put it in there and I said, I ain't going out there anymore. But it, you know, I remember Stang come in on the Pacific Queen. Yeah, and he goes, on the bullhorn. You guys okay? And we go, yeah, we wave to him. He goes, Don't worry about your fish, they'll be fine. Off he went, you know. God, that was a nasty storm. But no, it was a lot of fun, you know. I remember Tim telling me, you know, he reached over and slapped my hand, you know, and I go, What the hell did you do that for? And he goes, You're playing with my hair. And I go, I am not. And he looks around and there's a mouse. You know. Yeah, it was quite an adventure for a couple of kids, you know. I think Tim was 15 or 16.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

So, how many years did you do that? Was it just the one summer?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:45

Just that one summer, Tim, or Doug, and and uh because the next year is when they eliminated the set nets. You know, Tim would go off to school or whatever, and I bought the boat and all the nets. And everything else, and I you know, the year before, and I'm gonna go do it. And and it uh you know, the next year they said, Well, you you can't subnet or you can't uh sit net setnet anymore. You have to drift net. So my dad said, You ain't doing that. You know, I go, I got the boat, you know. I went to work for Frank Wallace.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

So how how uh did you do any other commercial fishing until you got the Sitzmark then? Do you ever were a deck deck hand or anything?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:30

Oh, I was a deck hand for Arnold Bennett. Really? Yeah. I halibut fished with him a couple years. Uh-huh. Yeah. We took all of our fish to Skagway. Everyone we ever caught. And I mean, it sold like hot cakes.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:44

Did you sell them off the dock?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:46

Yeah, most of the time it was the restaurants that bought them all. Okay. Uh, what the heck was that? Car what was that guy's name? He was uh owned one restaurant. He was a basketball guy. Carlos or I don't remember his name, but they bought most of it. You know, I think the one trip, uh the one year we had seven, eight thousand pounds we sold over there. But yeah. And we used the same octopus for the seven days, you know. We Arnie he said that octopus is the best bait. He was a true believer. I mean, he had it flown into Haynes. Really? Yeah, I think he got like ten cases of octopus.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:25

You know, it seems uh the the few times I've been halvifishing, it stays on the hook really.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:29

Well, that's what I was telling you. We had, I know that we had one, because I, you know, Arnie had floats on his, you know, he had these floats, you know, and I don't know, I've never seen them since or before, or but they were supposed to float the bait off the bottom so the sand fleas and stuff, but I I can't believe that, you know, because the chunk of octopus that we had on there was, you know, that big chunk of meat. And I remember because there was an orange float and it had that same chunk of octopus on it for the seven days that we fished. It was crazy. You know, we do, and we never went past we never went past Elder Drock. You know, and this was in April.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:10

Yeah. Jeff David was out fishing at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:17

So what year did you bid when when did you buy the Sit Smart? In 75. 85. Yeah. Okay. And then you fished that for three years? Two years. Two years. In 87 you got the Tiffany Lee?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:29

Uh, I didn't get the Tiffany Lee to, because I went to Arizona,

Arizona Projects, Big Iron, And A Fire

SPEAKER_03 1:08:32

you know. I got to work, I was working for AIC, and they had that.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:36

What project were we working on down there?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:38

Central Arizona project, 33 miles of the big ditch. Never done any of that before. You know, here we are, Alaska company that's used to hauling dirt, and you know, you say, Oh yeah, you gotta pave this ditch, and well, okay, we're you know, we were lucky that there was a lot of paving equipment laying around. Uh-huh. Because Ball Ball and Brosmer were the people that were doing it all, and they go, How the hell can you guys get this job? You know, and I go, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:06

I didn't bet it didn't bet it. I'm just down here.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:08

As that the engineers did. I'm just down here to do it. And they go, well, here we got some equipment, you guys can rent it from us, you know. Uh-huh. Yeah, so it's what we did. We rented equipment, you know, paving equipment and truck unloaders and all that stuff. You know, I had I had seven Holland loaders from from uh Montana that, you know, put the first D11 on one of them Holland loaders, and it can load 238,000 pounds in 35 seconds.

unknown 1:09:39

Dang.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:39

Yeah, it was an amazing piece. You know, it was it was the seventh, I bought the seventh D11 off the line. Really? I bought it from the P or the Phoenix training or not training proving grounds before they moved it to Tucson. That was a pretty interesting task. I had a welder named Bob Chapman that was an artist. He was a you know, he came from Oregon, Brookings, Oregon, and he was the probably the finest welder that I had ever seen. He was an artist. I mean, you know, him and his brother built boats in Brookings, you know, like 58 foot and bigger stain boats.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:22

So how'd you get how'd a guy building boats in Brookings, Oregon get down to Arizona when it was?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:26

He didn't he came to Prudhoe because back in the days, you know, all them guys that worked in the pipeline, you know, when it first started, you know, they didn't get enough hours to get vested in the 302.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:39

So Bob was up there working and they would come back and get their hours. They uh they had a shortage, and you know, because I don't know how many. We must have had three or four hundred people working on that project we were on. Maybe even more than that. I don't know for sure the total number, but they were short of mechanics, you know, because the Teamsters that year uh didn't sign with the with the rest of the Alaska Unions, so we didn't have any Teamsters, so we had operators in every one of them trucks. That was even worse, you know. But you know, Bob came up there and I had a couple guys from uh Bob Jekke from uh Cedra Wooli and his son. They all you know they all showed up there when I got in there, and God, they were great people, you know. They they were all just trying to get enough hours to get certain to get you know to get the retirement.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:37

Anyway, but Bob, when I found Bob, I kept Bob busy all the time that I could, you know. He came and worked in the shop in Prudhoe, and then when they transferred me down to uh Arizona, I took Bob, was one of the first guys that I took, you know. We had to rebuild all them trucks they had been on that big project, and they were just beat, you know, and so they sent me down with the intention of rebuilding these 26 trucks because plus we had a big fire, you know. We had three trucks that were completely burned to nothing, you know. But weird, the fire, it was such an updraft, Douglas, that the tires were burned from above six feet. There was not a burn below it, and the paint and all that stuff.

unknown 1:12:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:24

What caught what started the fire? What caused the fire?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:27

Well, it was a uh a door opener. The ice had built up underneath the door, so the door came down and it kept trying to shut. Okay. And it caught it on fire, and they had, you know, all them buildings up there were foamed. And most of them had retardant sprayed over them, but you know, I don't know if if the retardant had failed or in that one area or whatever, but the motors were right next to the ceiling and caught that ceiling on fire. I remember we were in eating dinner, and uh somebody came and said, the shop's on fire. So we ran over there, and I mean the whole, you know, I looked in the door and the whole half the, you know, the one end was completely engulfed in flames. And they go, What do we do? I said, Well, I don't know. I said, I used to belong to the Haynes Volunteer Fire Department, and they always told you not to introduce any air. It'll, you know, self-regulate. Well, we did we didn't tear the doors open or anything like that. We should probably should have to get the equipment that was in there. We had there was a brand new 245 backhoe, and three of these B-70s were in there, and you know, just I got a couple of dozers out. There was there was the main room and it in the middle, and then there was a warehouse that went this way, and you know, the weld our welding bay was next, and then the wash bay and and then the tire room. I got, I don't know, two dozers out, I think is all I got out. But I went to get an air pack, you know, because I had been trained, you know, in air packs with the Paynes Volunteered Fire Department that I was gonna get an air pack. Well, they brought me an air pack, but there was no oxygen in it.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:16

They don't work nearly as well without oxygen, do they?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:19

No, I go turn it on and I go, this ain't gonna work.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:24

It's not gonna be much help.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:26

No, so yeah, I just it was pretty devastating for our company because we had a we and this uh we had a warm storage for the oil, Doug. There was 40,000 gallons of Dello 1540 and 10,000 gallons of hydraulic oil and 10,000 gallons of transmission oil and all this stuff, and that stuff burned for a week. It had a vent line coming off the tank that went out through the it just shot out of there. Yeah, it looked like one of the flares from around Prudhoe Bay, you know, from a well.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:03

Holy cow!

SPEAKER_03 1:15:04

Yeah, it was, and I mean it took all of our inventory. You know, we had four or five million dollars worth of parts and inventory. It was really devastating because we had a big project coming up in the winter. Yeah, and then all the mechanics tools. I had luckily taken my tools out two or three days before and moved it into the block plant. So mine didn't get burned, but all the other guys is, you know, they all got fifty thousand dollar checks for tools.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:38

Can't imagine that kind of loss of equipment and everything in just one.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:42

Yeah, the worst thing was that brand new 245, you know. That was oh my god, we got a new one. You know, we've been working on them old ones. We had that, you know, every time you look at it, it's spring leak or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:54

Finally a new one.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:55

Yeah, we had to, you know, we had, you know, up in Prudhoe, they're really particular about oil leaks. You've got to, you know, you stop your equipment, you've got to put these pads. You know, they've got these pads that go, you're not pads, they're actually plastic containments that got oil absorbent pads in them. And you had to put them underneath, you know, all the but them, some of them old hoes, you'd have to have them all over, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:25

Well, but really it was a lot of fun.

Building The Tiffany Lee From Scratch

SPEAKER_01 1:16:29

So do you when you had the Sitzmark before going to Arizona, that was that was something you enjoyed, and so you decided to buy the Tiffany, get the Tiffany Lee?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:37

The reason why I had the Sitzmark was again, you know, I I worked so many hours at Prudhoe Bay that I wanted I was looking for some way that I could spend, you know, some time at home. Some time at home. Yeah. And I thought, well, fishing would be it, you know, and I bought the Sitzmark and and it served me for a couple of years, but then as you remember, it tipped over. Tipped over. Yeah, that came off the hitch and it slipped backwards and came off my white truck and ran down a hill and flipped over. Well, I went to that's the year that I went, you know, I I was always done by the first of September. That was always my rule. I would come and start, I'd fished the 15th of June till the first of September, and that's what the guys in Prudhoe knew I was gonna do, so they hadn't have a problem. And it was, you know, I was pulling out to go go to work, you know, in Prudhoe and flipped over. And so I got down to Arizona and I was getting paid very handsomely. And I said, I'd like to get a new boat. And Tony goes, Well, why don't you? And I said, Oh, I don't have a whole lot of money. I said, but so I've been looking, I was looking at boats, and Bill Thomas was having one built. And I think I even swang or went by there on my way to Arizona to look, you know. I go, Oh, okay, yeah. So I I bought the I bought the hull and cabin. It was $18,000 is what I paid for it. So I gave Jim the money and I said, I want a hull and cabin. And I said, Jim, I don't know, you know, how much money I'm gonna have to uh put into this. And I said, if it's a problem, uh it's no big deal. And he goes, No, no. He said, Well, just build your hull and cabin and set it outside, and if you get any extra money, you know, just send it our way. Well, while I was down there, I built a motor for it. Okay. I built uh Detroit diesel and you know, I shipped it up to Seattle and they put that motor in, you know, and transmission, and I uh, you know, I'd come up with some money and you know, I'd say, okay, you can do the fishholds, you know, and they'd pull the boat in on the trailer, you know, and do the fishholds, and or you know, put the fuel tanks in, you know, all the stuff that I couldn't do. And and then uh, you know, they had the engine in it, and uh none of the floors were in it. And when I went down, I went down in January of 1988. And Dean Walsh was him and I had been talking, and I he was working for Nordic Tug in Seattle. Anyway, he says, well, he says, I'm not working much, they don't have much going on. He said, if you want, I can go start working on your boat. And I go, Okay, yeah, okay, Dean. So he started just after Christmas, I guess, and I showed up after after the you know New Year's and and we slapped that hole inside of that boat, you know. Jim Lindell let us use his shop, and you know, I put the exhaust and you know everything else and had it pretty well ready to go. I didn't have the hydraulics and stuff all in it yet, and but they ship I had it shipped up here on AML.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:07

And went out there and I put it in the water and towed it to the harbor and finished it out, you know, put the hydraulics and all that stuff in it. Yeah, yeah. That was a great, so she's still a great boat.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:20

I was gonna say that's 40 years, almost 40 years now.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:23

1988 was its first year of fishing.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:26

Yeah, yeah. Still going strong. Yeah. Yeah, good investment.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:31

She listened to Tony more often when she tells you to go ahead and do something.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:34

Yeah. I have been. Yeah, no, it's it's been an interesting life. I you know, my wife has always thought that I enjoyed my work too much, you know, and I always tell you have to love your work to be, you know, to make your life any kind of anything, you know. If you don't love your work, if you're doing a job that you don't like, you know, you're gonna be miserable all your life. And I've very seldom been miserable. I'm getting miserable now that I'm getting so old. Feeble, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:15

I don't I hardly think you're feeble, Charlie. I think that's one of the one of the least likely words somebody would use for Charlie to win.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:22

Yeah, well, I can feel it, Doug. It's coming. It's coming.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:26

So how that had to be, you've mentioned it a couple times, just that you want to get back for your

Marriage, Family Sacrifice, And Gratitude

SPEAKER_01 1:21:32

family. Um that had to be really hard the amount of time you were spending. Well, you're leaving Tony to raise two kids and do all that work here.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:43

You know, she might be finished, but they must made they must have made s saints in Finland too. Yeah. You know, because you look at, you know, all the people that you know, I had a friend that, you know, he sent every check that he made up on the North Slope, you know, he was making way bigger money than I was, you know, he was on a different job and they had no problem with the hours that he put in and and bought his wife a new Corvette and a new house, and he goes down there, you know, he would spend six months before going home.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:14

Holy cow.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:15

Anyway, he went home, but he didn't have a home. The Corvette was gone, the locks were changed. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, she is a saint.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:30

You know, because you know, I'm sure she probably wasn't as happy as I was, you know, because you know, having to deal with all this snow and you know, raising two kids and changing poopy diapers and you know, she was a good mother. There's no doubt about it. She is a saint. And that's why why I guess we've been married for fifty some odd years.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:56

That is, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:59

You don't hear that very often.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:00

No. No? Yeah, so that's and I get talking about Tony, you know, she comes she comes from a pretty cool family, too. I mean, I I knew Dorothy when I was younger, but she passed away when I was still pretty young. But the time with Clifford stopping by the store pretty much every day after he retired, getting to know Clifford, he was one of the all-time greats for me. Yes, I I absolutely loved it.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:30

I tell you what, I could not ask for a finer father-in-law. Well, even mother-in-law, you know, Dorothy. Dorothy loved me too. I mean, she was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:38

She wasn't with us long enough. No. But she was an amazing woman.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:42

And then Clifford was you know, there's so many things around this town that they don't remember that Dorothy did, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:48

You know, like the first the third-class borough who wrote it, Dorothy Fossman. Dorothy Fossman.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:53

Who got the money, or you know, Bill Ray was the guy that got the money, but was coerced by Dorothy to get the you know, the fairgrounds.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:03

You know, that's who built. I remember working up there building corrals. And, you know, I think did your dad build that?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:09

I I remember him building um Harriet Hall and then also the barn. Yeah. I I don't know who was working with him. I don't know if that was the North Star construction, but I I distinctly going over there watching him with the construction, and I remember a couple nights being over there after work here, and he had that old busy B, some kind of paint spray or something. Oh Binks. Binks, no, yeah. And he was just spraying away, spraying away, spraying away, and then some you'd hear this weird sound, and then he'd be cursing and he was all mad about something. And I I was young enough, I had no idea what was going on. The Binks playing in the dirt and everything like that, and then he'd get it figured out and he'd go back to spraying, and then something would go wrong again. But yeah, no, that was my first memories at the fairgrounds is being out there watching a little bit of the stuff that they built.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:03

I don't because I was working with Bud Hooker and Wayne Hooker, and you know, Dorothy and Tony, and we were building the corral, you know. We dug the poles and put that first corral in there, and then bud the barns and stuff like that. Yeah. That's what I remember. I, you know, it was probably home for two weeks or something, and uh she coerced me into doing that, you know. Or I don't even think we had kids then, you know. Yeah, it was that long ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:31

Yeah. And then she was, I mean, with Little League and everything, Dorothy was a big big sponsor of the Little League and organizing that back in the day.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:41

Well, Tony was too. I think she had it too because you know, they didn't have it, and she goes to Terry Seeley or Terry Frisky and says, Hey, these kids need to play, you know, they were playing softball, and you know, and yeah, they they had pretty good talent, you know, Andrew and Stuart, and you know, the Henry, you know, Grand Slam Henry. Yep. He hit a grand slam in one of their games to beat Wrangle, you know. Yeah, it was, yeah. And you know, and then Terry had to leave with Andrew because Andrew, you know, his lymph nodes were screwing up in his legs, and he had to leave, so there's Tony, you know. But she loves it, you know, and all she still has her ball with all of her kids signed in.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:26

With all the kids' signatures on it. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:30

Well, yeah, and Clifford, I just, you know, this the different stories with Clifford over the years was uh Oh, I've learned so many war stories about Clifford and different boxing stories, you know, when he was a professional boxer, you know, and yeah, it was pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:47

Like six, seven years old, he'd be in there telling me, working on my jab and everything. Gotta get your hand up a little bit more. You gotta get your hip into it. And uh and that the the one I remember the most is I forget what you because we'd have a TV in the store all the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:05

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:06

And we had we didn't have cable, but we had RatNet and price is right. Yeah, and he would come in and we watched it earlier in the morning.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:15

You guys were on RatNet or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:17

We're on RatNet, and he's coming in and he's making these on the and he was like within a dollar when I think he just put it off a little bit on like the showcase donut.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:27

We're like you and this were gone.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:31

How'd he do this? And then uh I think it was about a week or so before he finally fessed up, but that's what he was doing. But yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:39

I'm sure he was just jumping at the big tool, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:43

His price is right, and then Wheel of Fortune, both of those, and we're like, man, how in the heck is he doing this? This is he's he's a genius. Oh god. Then he finally he finally fessed up with that smile of his.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:00

Yeah. Oh God. It was a pleasure, I tell you what.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:09

I mean, you know, you you'd always come up with something that Oh he had a yeah, and it was I don't remember him ever complaining. No. He always had just he might have complained. Just positive no matter what was going on.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:25

No, the only time he wasn't positive is when Tony would say, Clifford, you need a shower.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:33

I don't need a shower. I ain't done nothing to think.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:39

You know, and that was, you know, in his latter years, you know, it was yeah, I was he was a great guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:45

I when I I remember going back after my dad had had his accident, he had the office in the back, and he was helping me clean some stuff up. And in his one desk store, he had this small jar of pennies. I was like, Dad, what's with the pennies? And he just got this big smile, and he's like, That's my winnings with Clifford. Because they would when it was football games and stuff like that, they'd always bet big ones. You know, it was five big ones where there was five pennies. Yeah. And so that was he was ahead that many pennies on Clifford, and that was like big for him that he he was winning more than a penny.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:18

Hey, some of them might be some wheat pennies that are good.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:21

I think we got anything that were wheat pennies. I think we've already high graded those things. Yeah. Yeah,

Goose Hunting Regrets And Trap Shooting

SPEAKER_01 1:29:26

yeah. No, those were those were all gone. So another thing I want to mention with you is I don't know if you remember this, but you can't you were along on the trip where I lost any desire to go duck hunting ever again. Do you remember that? Uh beginning of my freshman year of high school. My dad's like, hey, skip, you're skipping cross country. Charlie and I are gonna go, and you were gonna go duck hunting. And we took your boat, we went down below wells, couldn't find anything. We went up.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:56

We went to Flossman Flats, is where we'd been a bunch of geese down.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:00

There's been a bunch of geese right along the backwood, Stump Lake there, right along the back side there. And you're like, oh, I know a place. And so we come in the backside, we hike through the woods, and then we're gonna hike out through the marsh to get to these geese. And they weren't there. Well, not only that, but we're getting a little ways out there, and I was like, Dad, the water's about to the top of my hip boots, just a little bit longer, don't worry about it. Pretty soon my boots are full of water. This is September, it was cold water. I remember by the time we got out there, I'm I was shorter than I am now, but it was like chest time. I got the shotgun over there.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:34

I I didn't remember that day.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:36

I was like, I'm freezing my ass off. And it was just a little bit, just a little bit. We get out there and no needs, they're all gone. Well, and then the road trip back on the back, because it started getting dark, and we're coming down, and then we hit a sandbar. We hit like three sandbars on the way back.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:53

I wasn't very good at running the rivers then.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:55

Well, it was dark too. I mean, you couldn't see anything. I think my dad had a flashlight, and he was trying to shine ahead of you to see where the river was. By the time we got back, truck, I was so freaking cold. I was like, this duck hunting sucks.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:07

Well, you know, I took my wife in there, you know. I bought the gun for her 16th birthday from your dad. Yeah. $137. It's a Remington 870 lightweight, you know. I go, this is the perfect gun for her. So I said, okay, I'm taking you goose hunting. I said, we're going to Fossman Flats and going in the back. So we go up in there because we used to hike all the way from the Chilcat Lake Road. Okay. You used to go down along the edge and you'd end up and you'd have to hike across through the trail. You know, we snuffy and I had a trail in there. And you crossed the river and we got over there, and we're going over there, and you can just hear them talking, you know, honk, honk, honk, honk honk. And I go, okay. I said, on three, one, two, three. We stand up and I go, bam, bam, bam. Shoot three geese. And Tony's standing there like this, and I go, What's wrong?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:02

And she goes, They mate for life.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:10

Oh, so that was pretty much the end of Tony's no more than a little bit. Her 870 lightweight turned into a trap gun.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:18

Turned into a trap gun.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:19

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that would that would make sense. I can see. And that that's the other thing with Clifford, speaking of trap shooting, the way he told the story is he went out one time trap shooting, he shot the first clay bird, and he stopped.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:36

No, here's the way it works.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:37

Okay, because he he said 100%. He said, I I can never beat that.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:42

He shot, he shot 10 shots.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:46

And he BAMO'd nine of them, you know, and he missed the tenth one. And he goes, That's it, I'm done. I'm a 90% trapshooter. Yeah, I was down on the beach road down there. You know, we just had a little hand thrower. Yeah, it was a lot of fun, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:07

So look looking back on it, anything

Mountain Hunting, Moose Meat, And Meaning

SPEAKER_01 1:33:10

you would have done different?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:11

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:13

Any trips you would have taken? Anything you would have?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:16

I'd like to have gone sheep hunting, but I think my sheep hunting days are over. I mean, you know, I killed I don't know how many goats I killed a lot, Douglas. And I mean I really enjoyed the mountain hunting. You know, and you know, I hunted most of the time with Chauncey Craig, and him and I had about the same speed. He was he was faster going up, but I was faster coming down. So it averaged we shot a we shot a lot of goat. And our favorite spot was Chilcoot. I mean, we've shot deer and everything, you know, all over Alaska. But that goat hunting was my favorite, you know. I mean, you'd get up there and try to sneak, try to figure out where they were gonna be. And I remember being up there in snow this deep, one oct or one November. Last, you know, the last day used to be December November 30th or 31st or whatever the last day was. And we're up there, and I mean, we could see these goats, you know. I mean, God, they were you know, we got up there and we shot a couple and God Doug, we drug them all the way down, you know, and it was perfect weather, you know. They didn't, you know, it was in between, you know, 35 and 30, you know. It was we hung them and hung them and hung them and we took and cut them and you know, we Chauncey goes, Hey, I'm gonna cut some back straps out. And he goes, You gonna come over? I go, Yeah. So he cuts these back straps out, you know, look beautiful, you know, butterflies them and sticks them in the pot. And as soon as you stuck them in the or in the in the frying pan, and as soon as you stuck them in the frying pan, you go, Oh my god. So you'd taken we took in uh, you know, oh let them hang some longer, you know, and maybe that'll get rid of it. Well, that didn't fix it, so we go, well, we're gonna grind it in the sausage. So we ground it all in the sausage and put just tons and tons of of uh spices. I mean the meat didn't taste bad, but just that smell. Oh, the smell of it. Yeah, just you know, the both of them were billies too, you know. And yeah. But we ground them in the sausage and that's the way we ate them.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:34

Yep. Yeah. So what what is it about the outdoors? You you love to hunt, you love to be out fishing. What is it about the outdoors that get is it just that peaceful feeling of just being out there away from people?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:50

No, that you're that you're smarter than the animals.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:52

Smarter than the animals?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:54

Yeah, and that you really you probably think about it, you know, you might only see the stupid ones because I think there's a lot of them that get, you know, because I can't figure out, Doug, you know, we've been bear baiting. And you know, my you know, I enjoy it just watching the animals, you know, what they do, you know. I don't have to kill another bear. I've killed two bears in my life, you know. I never really saw any great, you know, I didn't need to hide, you know, I didn't need to meet, you know. I just, you know, but I really enjoy just watching them, what they do, you know, when they're in there and you know what sets them off, you know, when you know they know the big boy's coming, you know, they're all you know what I mean. You've done it. You're still nervous, you know. You know, they want to get that last bite, you know. They really get excited, you know. You know, they push more food there before they're kicking me out of happening around, yeah. And you know they because then the then something will happen to the big boy and he'll back off, you know, or do whatever, and he'll go, they'll go back in there and you can just see him just like trying to gorge themselves. Yeah, it's it, you know, and I I mean I enjoy all you know aspects of watching wildlife. You know, I mean, I don't have to kill anything, Doug. I mean, I do like moose, you know. It's probably the you know, we survived off of it for 50 years, you know. I remember the first moose I shot when Tony was with us. We shot in the back in the corner and we stayed in your dad's camp. We shot it over on Murphy Flats, and and she was with us, and my dad and I, she or she wasn't, she was with us, but she wasn't in the field with us. Okay. Because I uh I had shot a moose, you know, out of the eagle tree over there. So except it was too windy to shoot it out of the eagle tree, so I got down and shot it, you know, because the eagle tree was moving pretty good. Anyway, so I'm going back and and I told her, I said, you know, if it gets dark, you know, fire a shot every five minutes or something. Because, you know, I said, you know, because we shot it just right at dark. And, you know, we had to build a little island out there where it was because my dad and I couldn't move it. So we, you know, got a bunch of sticks and rolled it around to get it out so we could gut it and dry it out, you know. And it was dark and we were heading, and and Tony said, I and no, I said, well, I told Tony to shoot a shot every you know, 10 minutes or whatever, just so we could. So the first thing she does, you know, it gets dark, she goes outside and shoots the shoots the gun up in the air and shoots a stick off and it crashes to the ground and scares the heck out of her.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:53

She didn't appreciate that. You know, us coming in late. She still doesn't appreciate us coming in. She's not coming in late. Oh, yeah. She'll call the police department or whatever if we're uh, you know, an hour late or whatever, you know. She takes good care of us. But yeah, she's a wonderful woman.

A Scary Medevac And A Father’s Fear

SPEAKER_01 1:39:12

Stuart was telling us about when he got encephalitis when he was a kid. Well, what was that like for you as a dad having to medevac your kid to Seattle? And it was just not. You don't know anything, Doug. That was the thing he was saying, nobody knew really what was going on. And we had to be scared to tell getting it.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:29

You know, Stuart and I uh he was fishing with me before he, you know, two days before that. Yep. And we were down on Sullivan, and lo and behold, there's a buck on the beach, you know, bent it down. So I pulled the Tiffany Lee in, and you know, probably was illegal, but maybe might not have been then. But I shoot this buck, and I said, No, Stuart, you gotta go get him. So he jumps off the bow of the boat, you know, and go takes a rope with him. And you know, it was a sandy beach, so I just had the nose and had the boat and gear just sitting there, you know, idling. And and so he gets the rope and pulls it in, and and then, you know, he just didn't seem like it was something was wrong, you know. And you know, and it just seemed like it got worse. You know, I had to go fishing and you know, on Sunday, and it just, you know, it just he didn't, you know, he just was lethargic, you know, and we thought, oh, it's just something going on, you know, and I didn't think anything of it. And I get out fishing and after I think the harbormaster called me, you know, because Tony didn't have a VHF at home, and Harbormaster could got a hold of me, and I had Bob Smith with me, and we were going fishing, and geez, I came back in and I said, Yeah, there's something, you know, he was having grandma seizures, and I go, Oh my god, you know, what's what's gonna happen to my poor son, you know, is he gonna die or what? It was really stressful. And I'm very thankful that it worked out. But I can't I couldn't imagine, you know, losing your son ten years old, eleven years old, you know. It'd be hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:28

I was thinking when he was when he was talking about that, yeah. I was just I was thinking of you and Tony of just uh not knowing at the beginning for a few days there what was going on what was causing this.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:39

Well, see, I was I don't I had to I had either was doing something or when he was pitching the ball because Tony or you know uh Stuart mentions about hitting and being in the kids, you know, and laughing and Tony was saying, you know, geez, I you know, I did not like Stuart, you know, and you know, because Stuart's a pretty caring kid or a person, I should say. Uh he cares about a lot of people and a lot of things, and you know, we don't think about it, but he does. And you know, he's always been well liked because you know, he he doesn't have any opinions on, you know, whether you're good, bad, or whatever, you know, everybody is just a person. But yeah. No, we it was really scary because you know, I didn't get to ride in a Medevac plane, and I probably would have killed the pilot or the whoever the Medevac nurse was because they ran out of oxygen, you know, and had to bag him all the way and he was so doped up, you know, that you know, he couldn't breathe, and you know, it's we're just so fortunate. So did you you flew down I flew on Alaska Airlines and I landed almost the same time they did. In fact, I got in just right behind the ambulance that picked him up at the airport. Okay. I got to children's hospital. Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:59

That was scary. So what's in the what's

Range Etiquette And Cleaning Up Messes

SPEAKER_01 1:43:04

in the future? Right now you're spending you're splitting your time between Arizona and Haynes. You go down to Arizona and go shooting in the desert.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:11

I don't shoot in the desert, I shoot at the range, Doug. At the range? I give up on the desert. In fact, I brought my side-by-side home with me because you know that's what I used to do was go out there, but it got so crazy in the desert with all the people shooting, you feared for your life. There's that many people heading out there. Oh my god, you'll go in spots, there'll be piles that, you know, you know, like, and it they're messy. You know, they don't, you know, I take a nice target standout on the back of my four-wheeler and set it up, you know. Because I was I was when I first started going out in the desert down there, John Shaw was talking to me about they have a shoot down there where they shoot at these uh silhouettes, turkey silhouettes at 200 yards. And I go, Oh, I think I could hit one of them. So I bought an Anschutz on they have a white thing called a white sheet. It's like a used section of town, you know, and everybody puts their it's free to put them in there. And I bought this Anschutz, and I go, Oh, I think I could hit something at 200 yards. And you know, that's when you really learn about wind and 22 bullets.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:18

Yeah. And we're doing that here, you know. We shoot uh two days a week. Here we shoot on Wednesdays and and Saturdays.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:25

I thought it was Thursdays and Saturdays.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:27

Or Thursdays and Saturdays, and we uh it's a lot of fun. We have six or seven, eight guys, you know, that shoot pretty regularly.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:36

So one of the things when you were talking about people making a mess down in the desert, that's one of the things that really bothers me. A lot of places, Haynes is no exception. The people that go out shooting that don't pick up after themselves, even at the range here, it's it's a shooting range, but pick up your brass and pick up your cartridges when you're done. Take your targets home with you. Don't be shooting garbage and everything and leaving it out there. It's just like I know it's in a lot of different segments of society where nobody cares, nobody wants to clean up after themselves, but like come on, because I know Mike Binke, you, and Davey, and Ron, and there's a group of you guys that are out there cleaning the range all the time. I know Shane does a lot with the shotgun range and everything down there, but it's ridiculous. Yeah, the number of people that go out there, and you're paying a membership to be a part of this and you don't take care of it. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:42

I because you know what, Doug? The biggest thing that I the biggest objection, you know, I don't mind the brass so much. You know, the shotgun brass I mind, but if you notice there's a new sign up there, no shotguns on the hundred-yard range.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:57

We got a we got a sheet up at the counter too that we're letting people know when they sign up.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:01

Yep. And you know, the thing that I have the problems is, you know, they don't, they won't, you know, they want to shoot short range, you know. Yeah. They'll shoot. Why don't you just go to the pistol range? There's four stands down there. You can shoot all you want, you know, at short range. You know, you don't have to bring, you know, there's rocks and uh propane tanks and just junk, you know, TVs and you know, and then they never, you know, if you want to shoot a TV, go shoot one in your backyard.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:32

Or if you're shooting a propane tank, when you put a hole in it, take it to the landfill.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:36

Yep. Well, that's more than one hole.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:39

Well, yeah, but I mean I take when we'd have empty refrigeration bottles, you know, they have to be, they either have to be certified or have to have a hole in them. Yeah, and so I'm like, well, I'll take those out to the pistol range and shoot a hole in them. Shoot a foot shoot a bunch of holes, like you say, and throw them in the back of my truck. Then I can take them to the landfill and have them recycle them because it's all material that they ship south or whatever with the metals.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:01

It's good number one metal, it should be good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:04

Yep, but it needs to have a hole in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:05

And it's like can't have any refrigerant.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:08

It's it's one of the and by the time I'm done with them, they can pretty much guarantee there's no refrigerant in them. Yeah, there's a hundred holes in it. I I make sure that the techs have them empty beforehand, but for them to they have to put a tag on them and all that. I was like, don't worry about that. As long as you put it all in our system, I can make sure that they're they know that they're fully empty.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:30

Yeah, and yeah, just they didn't vent into the environment. Yeah. Well, that's a guy with the CFC certificate supposed to put a tag on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:37

Yeah. I did I tell the guys that have that certificate when they're working on our system, any tanks that you're done with, you just make sure that they're 100% evacuated. You don't need to put a tag on it. I'll handle that. And then one guy asked me, he goes, What do you what do you mean? You can't put a tag on it. I said, No, but I can make sure that they know that it's fully evacuated. He's like, How do you do that? I said, nine millimeter. He's like, What? Instead, I take it out to the range and take my Glock 19 and put a bunch of holes in them. Then I can take them to the landfill.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:08

That was that was another thing. You're talking about a Glock 19. Yeah. When Clifford would be in the hospital, he'd say, Where's my Glock?

SPEAKER_01 1:48:19

Was he worried about the nurse's motherfucker? He wanted that damn Glock 19.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:26

But then, so I think he got that from you or Will. Probably Willsburg.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:32

I think it was with Will Albersburg.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:34

When he was working here.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:35

Anyway, my my niece, uh Tina, turnable? Yeah. She comes up here and goes smooth hunting with us, and she's telling us about how she's going to the range, and you know, she's got this instructor, and she's really liking shooting, you know, she's thinking about getting a gun. I go, well, what kind of gun are you gonna get? She goes, I really like the Glocks. And I go, Oh. Really? Yeah. And I go, Well, I'm sure your grandfather would love you to have it. Yeah. And, you know, because I had some of the guns, Steve had some of the guns, and Sydney can't have any. Uh so I just give it to her, you know. And I go, here you go. And she goes, What do I have to do? I said, Well, go down to Douglas's and buy a box, you know, it's gotta be locked. You can put it in your suitcase. Your suitcase doesn't have to be locked, but it's better if it is, but as long as it's locked in that case. And they go, Oh, okay. So anyway, she calls me up this last uh fall, you know, in October and November. And you know, we we're talking and clipped uh our bill says, Come on up for Thanksgiving. And I go, okay, we went up here for Thanksgiving and we go have a big fancy, you know, 27 course Chinese dinner, you know. And Tina tells me she's sitting next to me and she goes, Uncle Charlie.

The Glock Surprise And A Wild Valuation

SPEAKER_03 1:50:00

She says, guess how much my Glock's worth? And I go, Oh, 600 bucks. You know? And I go, she goes, no. She said, I took it to the range, and this guy goes, Oh my God. And she goes, what? She goes, that's a Glock Gen 1. There's only 50 of them in the United States. You know how much that gun's worth? I wouldn't shoot it. She goes, No, how much is it worth? He goes, between 15 and $30,000. Yeah. Holy cow. And I go, God, and I gave that away. But she, I when I was down there. When I went down there the last time, she said, we're going to the range. So we go to the range, and you know, I she goes, she goes, bam, bam, bam, bam, and shoots the shoots the target, you know, the man silhouette targets, and I go, bam, bam, bam, bam. I put I put eight of them in the head. And she goes, Wow. Because she had a 43 also, you know, she's you know, thinking that would be a better, she knows the concealed weapons, and you know, she uh she's she does uh dogs that uh bomb sniffing dogs. Seriously? Seriously. She started out, Doug, she had a Melano and she trained it to do bed bugs. Really? Thinking that going into hotels and finding bed bugs? Well, she got involved in that, but then this is quite a that's quite a leap between bed bugs and bombs. Well, I know, but this guy that, you know, one of the dog handlers or whatever that, you know, because you you just because you don't, you know, you work for a company, you know, you got your dog trained, and they have to certify that the dogs and anyway, but one of the handlers said, Well, why don't you come over here and work with us? You know, they can smell bombs. But she has a different, not her dog, but she has another trained dog that's trained that's smelling dogs or bombs. Well, dang. Wow. I did not know she was. But so she had to get a she had to get a a license to carry, you know. So she's doing that now. But she's carrying the 43, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:19

That's one I would carry as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:21

Yeah. No, I couldn't believe it when she told me it was $30,000. But then I go, I look it up and I go, holy crap, she's telling me. She's right, she's right. Yeah. Dang. And I just don't know where Will would have got that from because I don't know what it's put. Because they said that the people that got him were police officers or security.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:44

And I don't know what Will's background was, you know. Yeah, he'd he'd been in the Marines, but it'd been a while, and it could have just been something that he got off of somebody else. You never know how some of those go. But yeah, that was one I'm I'm quite he didn't get it off of me. That was one he had to have gotten it off of Will. Yeah, because he was all proud of that. Oh, and that and knowing the conversations between Clifford and Will, yeah, if both of them were still here and Clifford was able to get over, yeah, that gun you sold me for $400 would have worth $30,000. You know that would have gone on for months. Oh, yeah, I know. That would have gone on for months with Clifford and Will.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:25

Yeah, he was a wonderful man. I mean, God. I remember when we'd fish in the Derby, we would screw with him so much, you know, because we had this when we first got the Bay liner that we sold to your dad. Yeah, I remember, you know, Clifford would fall asleep over in the corner and he had that pole that was about 13 feet long. Anyway, I'd have to go around and get the gaff hook and pull the line in, you know, then I'd put a uh swivel on it, and then I'd go and go back around the front of the boat and let the line go underneath, uh-huh. And then I'd sit on the other side, you know, Tony'd be driving or whatever, and I'd just I remember I remember one time we were trolling over by the glacier over there, and I got in a little bit close. Well, Clifford was sitting there sleeping holding his rod, and you know, we get by it, you know, and I said, Hey Cliff, you might want to check your line, you know. So he reels it up. He's got a seeing enemy and a Dolly Bardin on it. He never felt any part of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:37

Well, I think I've only fished in the Derby twice. Yeah. Once on the Bay liner with you guys, and then once it must have been on the Tiffany Lee. It was one of the last years of the Derby. I just moved home. I was always working during the Derby at the store, and you guys called me, I think it was Sunday, it was the last day of the derby, and you're like, hey, Alex caught a fish. We got an extra rod for the afternoon. If you can be at the dock at one, we'll pick up we'll pick you up. So I was at the dock at one. I forget who I got to cover the store. It's probably my mom came and watched the store for me so I could go fish in the derby. We get to the other side, had what was it, 20 minutes, half an hour? Fish on. I think I got like fourth place in the derby in 20 minutes. Yeah. I was like, I don't know why. I don't know why you guys make it that's a first place. Everybody talks about how hard it is to catch a fish in the derby.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:27

Well, that was a good year for us because I think we had I think we had five or six fish that last day. Yeah, it was the bondage. Mm-hmm. It was a year bought a few in the morning, and mine wasn't the only one that afternoon either. It was good, good fishing at that time. Oh, that was a good one. I'm hoping it'll be on the 15th that I can catch one because I have my old buddy's ashes, Lawrence Willard. Okay. And I'm gonna catch a king salmon and I'm gonna dump his ashes over and let him go. Let him go. Yep. Because that man loved fishing.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:04

Oh Lawrence loved king salmon fishing.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:08

He was a great, great friend.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:10

No, that'll be that was all we talked about, you know, from about March on, you know. Derby's coming up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's so sad that we haven't, you know, but and you know, I always attribute the loss of king salmon to that Juno Anby or

King Salmon Decline And Management Frustration

SPEAKER_03 1:56:30

that that uh spring derby they have down there, Doug. You know, that's prime time for and you just, you know, unless you catch a big fish, you're not gonna turn it in. I just wonder how many fish that are bound for Haynes get caught during that derby. Yeah. Because, you know, there's you look at the Golden North Derby, there's you know, 2,000 boats or you know, I don't know, I might be exaggerating, but I think a lot of boats. Yeah. And that spring one, yeah. I think you know, if you follow, you know, the runs, it it's down it started its downward trend about that time.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:05

Do they still have that?

SPEAKER_03 1:57:07

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:07

I was gonna say I haven't heard about it for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:09

I think it's Clinken Heide, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:57:10

Is it Clinton Heide that did that?

SPEAKER_03 1:57:12

I don't know, but that's it's to me that was the beginning of the decline of our run.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:17

My dad always tells a story of Hugh's dad, Hugh Reetz's dad, coming in when he was a biologist and really upset about what they were doing at Tanini up here and just uh milking the eggs and the sperm out of them and sending them off to someplace else. Send them place somewhere else and just leaving the carcasses on the bank. He was my dad I he told me that story several times about just if nothing else. That uh yeah, that he was he hadn't seen anything like it and just really upset with that.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:51

Well, Doug, I went up there one time. You know, the river was high, and I'd never been up past Harold Belleschi's cabin. And I'm gonna get going, you know, check it out. And I get up there where they have that pen. There was I don't know how many male king salmon and female king salmon, but the males, you know, they got a big nose and there were just nothing left, you know, from hitting the fence, you know. It was and that was, you know, for how many years did they do that that we really didn't know? You know, because they never put one egg, you know. They said, Oh, these are for the pens. Well, they only did the pens for about five years.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:32

And that wasn't in a continuous row, you know, that they had them, I think, three years out at Chuk or out there, you know, by the ferry terminal. I think it's only two years. Yeah, well, it it you know it it made some fish come back to the choke. I mean, they're gonna be able to do it. But as far as, you know, there and I could never figure out, you know, why they didn't put them in Tysanke. Yeah you know, because they always had the wind issues, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:02

I think probably it's just it was it wasn't on the road system, it was gonna be harder for them to monitor it or have somebody over there. But the level of success coming back would have been much greater. I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:12

Oh yeah, because they pay, you know, you look at DIPAC, you know, they pay somebody down here to feed all them all them dogs in Boat Harbor.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:21

You know, they feed, they pay them, you know, what the heck? It's gonna be six weeks. You know, but now they got the zero checks. You know, they got them king salmon that they're raising in sitka that, you know, never they never spend any time. You know, they're hatched, and you know, I don't know at what stage, you know, that they release them. But they don't spend any time in the hatchery, you know, they just let them go. And they seem to be doing real well.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:47

Yeah, without Pulling Creek over in Skagway, without them doing that or anything, it's bleak for King Salmon up here. I'm interested to see in two weeks what's gonna happen here.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:57

Not if you talk to the charter boats. I heard of one charter boat caught and released a thousand fish.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:02

And I don't have issues with that.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:05

I do too, because you know that you're probably gonna have twenty to thirty percent. And you know, when back when you know the real smart people that were that cared about fish in the fishing game, you know, this one talking 40, 50 years ago, you know, they said that these fish up here reared, you know, and the chill cat seemed to rear just you know, inside waters of southeast. So, you know, I don't know. It's just really sad. Because you you know, I've been out in the Derby there where trying to catch a fish, you know. We went through twelve dozen herring one day. Yeah. I mean, with the twenty-six to twenty-seven and a half inch shakers, you know. I mean, you just there you couldn't even get down through them. There were so many. It was just horrible. Because you know that, you know, a bunch of them are gonna die because, you know, and we try to reel them in as fast as we could because, you know, they weren't they weren't, you know, they didn't we didn't want to stress them any more than we had to, you know, get them in the net and get them out, you know. But sometimes you gotta weed through them to get to the big ones. And I think we did get some big ones, but I just I just wonder about fishing games sometimes. It's I just think that their whole staff has changed and their whole outlook on the fish have changed, and you know, I don't know if the board of fish, you know, because you know, they I don't, you know, it seems like us Alaskans that live here year round, you know, we just don't get the opportunity. I had to go to Sittica to catch King's Am. Went to Sitka three or four times.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:47

My my take on it right now is like with the regulations they have for king fishing, and it's gonna be open for a little bit before people see this, but it's when you have the fishermen saying you need to be more conservative, when the people that are managing it are less conservative with the people that want to catch the resource, that should be the opposite. The people that are managing the resource should be more conservative than the people that want to catch it, in my in my view. And when you have pushback from the people that have been itching to get out there and catch a king salmon, when these people like yourself that haven't been for was it 11, 12 years now, like love to catch a king salmon. And when those people are going, I think you guys are going too far on this, and like, no, no, no, it's all good. That leads me to wonder, like, no, I think you probably if if that's the way this is playing out, I think you guys are on the wrong side of this.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:44

Well, I think that it's because they don't know anymore, Doug. They don't know what these fish do here. They won't they won't take anything of people like myself that I'm not gonna say that I'm a genius or I know everything about king salmon, but well, you've been fishing them for 60 years. I know that every year, you know, they say, well, there ain't gonna be any fish out there, you know. It seems like every, you know, since when I first started, you know, used to be by June 10th or whatever, you couldn't hardly catch a fish unless you were in Pyramid Harbor or Anchor Point on the other side, you know. They were all balled up up there, but seems like, you know, Gilnet, and then, you know, you seem like all of a sudden, you know, you holy shit, you know. And I everyone that I catch, Douglas, that is not dead, I slip in the water. I mean, I do the same thing with the steelhead. You know, I don't know where they're going, but you know, they're uh to me, they're a sport fish, and that's what, you know, that's where I enjoy the fish is, you know, on a rod and reel, or I'd love to see my grandson catch a steelhead, or I'd love to see my grandson Lucas catch a king salmon, you know, and Liam, you know, they're young, and I mean I remember the first one I caught, and it's still with me. It's it's you know, something that I really, really enjoy. And I don't know if it's the fact of trying to catch them or actually catching them that I like the most, you know. Do I, you know, because I'm a guy that, you know, I look at all these lures, you know. Well, you know, sometimes I'll fish ten, fifty, you know, I know what's gonna work, you know. Go-to, but you know, you know, Stuart's.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:29

You would have to cut that part out, Marty. We don't want everybody else to know what Charlie's go-to is.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:33

Stuart's gonna be fishing a fly, or you know, he does a lot of other stuff too. But you know, you talk to all these trollers, you know, and up here about, I don't know, ten years ago, they all talk about the Black Death. You know, it was a hoochie, and it had a it was a black hoochie, and it had a like a feather thing in it, you know, underneath it. And God, we went to we went to excursion inlet one day or one year. We were going to Gus, we were gonna go halibut fishing, and weather got so crappy that we made it across from so from uh from uh Pleasant Island because we were tied up to that dock that uh used to be at Gus Davis and that now it's back at Gus Davis. Anyway, we were tied up there and it was six, eight foot, you know, and tied up to the dock and you know, and I said that ain't gonna make it. So I started idling, you know. Uh Lawrence Willard was with us and uh and Greg Richmond. And I started idling over to go. I was gonna head for Excursion because I knew the dock was protected in there, but getting there was no fun. I mean, you know, every wave over the it was nasty. And Chauncey was, you know, white knuckled hanging on to the seat. But we made it, and so everybody made it, you know. Lawrence, he gave up and went in and anchored up, you know, right next to Pleasant in a little cove there. And you know, he came a couple hours later, and but we went into excursion and we had these black bugs that I got from Andrew, and I think we caught six fish in about two hours on that thing. It was it's amazing, but you know, but you get all these, you know. My wife, you know what she fishes a herring aid. Yeah, and I mean she has fished them since the first day that she went fishing with me, and that's all she'll fish. And she catches as many fish, if not more. And you know what, Doug? I think it's I think it's you know, she never uses a flasher. And she always catches bigger fish. So I think that them flashers must do something to the bigger fish or whatever, because I always catch them there always 23 pounds, you know. But you still keep using the flasher. I know it because I catch fish. Because you catch fish.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:59

Yeah. And that's I don't know. Well, I think there's something to be said though, is as much as I like that first king salmon in the spring, uh it's hard to beat that for fish. But being out there on a nice day, just slowly trolling whether it's on the slowly.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:16

Now, that's a you've got to get a boat that'll go slow.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:19

You've got to get a boat that'll slow, but uh whether it's on the far side or you know, going through twin coves or whatever, and just you're looking around and just enjoying it all amazing. And then when you get that little thing, and then you just get that and your heart rate goes up, and and then it's could be a false alarm. You'll be right awake in a moment. Uh-huh. Yeah. No, I think it's the King Salmon, it's the fishing forum is just as much of a deal as actually catching anything. Because usually you're some people go out by themselves, but usually it's two, three, four people out on a boat. Well, that's the thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:01

And yeah. You know, my my my granddaughter, Brooklyn, loves to catch king salmon. Tiffany, you know, loves to catch king salmon. You know, that's what's really funny though. You know, back when the derby, when we first started getting involved in the derby, they didn't want enough to do it. They didn't want anything to do with it? No. It wasn't until Stuart, uh you know Alex Denoi?

SPEAKER_01 2:08:25

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he was the one that caught the fish. That's how if he hadn't caught one in the morning, I wouldn't have been out there in the afternoon with you.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:31

Well, Alex, Alex was out with Stuart, and it, you know, Stuart was out in a jet boat, I think. My jet boat, or I don't know what jet boat it was. I think it was mine. And they were trolling around Cannery Point, and Alex catched this big hog. You know, because before that, Stuart, yeah, you know, was hit or miss about it. But after that, now I mean he's a dyed-in-a-wolf king salmon fisherman. You know, it's gonna be hard for him to go now. Yeah. Because, you know, crabbing starts the same day. Yeah, yeah. And I bet he may I bet he finds a way to do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:08

He's gonna find a way to get out there with dad and do some trolling for King Salmon.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:12

He goes, When are you gonna set the boat up? I go, Well.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:17

Uh soon. Yeah, one of my uh favorite memories with King Salmon is when Gary Lathan was working at the store. Um, and it was the first year or so after my dad had bought that bay liner from you. And we'd had it was this time of year, end of May, beginning of June. I think it might have been right after the Derby or right before the derby. And it had to be after the derby because it was I was out of school, and uh he came over to me and said, What do you think the chances are your dad lets us use the boat tonight? I don't know, let's ask him. He says, There's a lot of people saying there's king salmon out there, we need to go fishing. And I was like, Well, let's go ask him. And so we asked him, he goes, Yeah, sure, go ahead. And so we go out, and it was Gary and his wife, and I think Tara Heinrich went with us. And letter from the cannery dock to the point, going back and forth. I think with this eight of us, I think it was about an hour and a half, and we had seven keeper king salmon. It was just what we'd hit the same spot, it's like, all right, let's go back, let's do it again. That was the most fun. It was just like boom, boom, boom, they're all nice size fish. And yeah, I think I ate king salmon all that week.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:29

Oh, I'll eat it for till it's gone. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I love it. I mean, Tony can cook it so perfectly that you know the skin. I the the best part that I like, Doug, is the skin. When it's fried just right. Yeah. I peel that off and I oh man. Just eat the skin, huh? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:47

I've never been able to eat the skin off of salmon. I was even smoke salmon.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:50

Yeah. I can do it. I was gonna tell you, you know, Hub one of the first times I I uh was fishing, or I shouldn't say it was fishing, hub said, Hey, what are you doing? You know, I was in high school yet, you know. And I think it was uh did your mother have a a sister that was married to a Minnesota police officer?

SPEAKER_01 2:11:18

That's what I'm aware of.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:19

Anyway, it was one of one of your kin. Yeah, and because Hub had a boat. I don't remember. I didn't have a boat. You had a wooden boat.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:28

I remember there was a boat in our old garage before it burnt down. I have no idea. I never I think I remember going out on it once out at Chilcoot. I never remember going out in the salt water. Yeah, but as a kid, I was like, my God, this is a huge cabin cruiser out there. But looking back, it was a little bit more than a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:43

Well, this was just an open skip, like a 16 foot skip that I didn't have a boat, you know, when I was in high school. Anyway, Hub says, Hey, can you take my I don't remember who it was, you know? That was 16. Years ago, it does. And he goes, Can you take him fishing? He said, I heard you catch a couple fish. I said, Well, I don't know much about it, but so it we go out and geez, he caught like four fish, you know, just wham, like that. I mean, it was, you know, and he was the most ecstatic guy you ever seen. And I mean, it just around Canary Point down the point and back around, you know. God. Yeah. I I was some kind of a kin to sh your mother. Okay. No, whether brother, she doesn't have any brothers. No, just the two sisters. Yeah. It was one of her sisters' husbands. Okay. I thought he was a Minnesota police officer.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:42

Was it when was it about 68?

SPEAKER_03 2:12:45

Uh 69 or 70.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:47

68 or 78. Yeah. Because I remember Scott came up with his sister and Scott Patterson.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:53

Well, they I took Scott Armigan hunting.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:56

That was in like 68 or 69.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:58

No, that was in 70. That was later when he came up.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:01

Okay. But I remember they came up with uh Jan and Dick, my mom's younger sister and her husband. Okay. But I don't Dick was out of the military, but he wasn't a policeman. No. So that was.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:13

I don't know. I don't know. I know is, you know, we went out and it was like easy peasy. I mean, you'd just go around the corner and wham, and you'd go back the other way, wham, go back the other way and wham, you know, and he was just tickled pink, and so was Hub, you know. Perfect. Because he'd arranged it.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:30

Yep. Yeah. Yep. So what what have we missed? What else is there about Charlie's story that we're not touching on?

SPEAKER_03 2:13:39

I don't know, Doug. I like to shoot, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:42

What is it about because you you have when I was younger, you're always into guns, but the last few years, you're trying to get like the tightest group you can, right? You're just really focused on precision as much

Precision Shooting And Ballistics That Work

SPEAKER_01 2:14:00

as anything.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:00

I started shooting, I started shooting down in Arizona, you know. I got into the club here probably eight or ten years ago. And I was having, you know, I bought that Anschutes, and I mean it wasn't a bench rest gun like everybody else had, but it was, you know, a really good shooter. And, you know, them guys down there, you know, they they talk about, you know, I know that, you know, the Roy, Roy Hibbert is uh, you know, the probably the best shooter down there. You know, I mean he shot silhouettes, you know, across the course, you know, everything. And he holds most of the course records down there, but you know, just trying to do that, you know. And I, you know, I I win some and I lose some, you know. I've been, you know, I'm usually in the upper three, you know, there's usually up to 10, 12 guys that shoot there. And, you know, but the big lesson I learned was when I went to the Burger Nationals, you know, over in Phoenix, and I was shooting a 223. Everybody else was shooting a 308. And when you first sign up, you know, they have the high master class and then the master class, the master class is 90 some odd percent. Well, I shot sixth out of all, you know, there was uh 400 shooters at that shoot. 400 shooters. And I shot sixth in that class. Yeah. You know, and the FTR, which is factory target rifle. Uh-huh. And it's only two guns you can shoot, a 308 or a 223. Yeah. And I was, you know, it was so weird because, you know, I didn't know how to adjust the scope right, you know, for that. And I I knew where I was hitting, you know, when I was shooting, I was off the target, you know, that far.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:51

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:52

The wind was blowing so hard there, and geez, I had really good, you know, compared to the rest of the guys. You know, there was a guy from there was uh was people from 11 countries, and I was shooting with a guy from Scotland. Really goes, What are you shooting? I said, a 223. And he goes, Holy crap, because I had I had beat him in that round. You know, in fact, I think I beat him in the whole yeah. I only shot the 600, you know, because that's all I was really ready to do. But I mean, the accuracy, you know, I think it was who was it? Uh one of the great gun people said only accurate guns are interesting. Yeah. You know, and and just recently, it, you know, I I shoot, you know, at Arizona, I shoot every weekend, you know, sometimes twice a weekend. But the 22s have got a grip on me, like, you know. Because we've been shooting this uh 200-yard, you know, uh metal plate shoot, you know, and stuff like that. And Ralph, your brother-in-law, you know, he's been doing really well, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:59

I'm well the guys when I was back at um, who was it that was telling me this? Vortex or Vortex, I think. The guy that I was shooting with, I was telling him about your guys' 22 shoot, and he said the ballistics for a 22 at 300 yards are similar to a 6'5 Creedmore at 1200 yards. So he said if you want to practice for your Creedmore, shoot your 22 at a quarter of the range, and you're basically in the same way.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:26

Yeah, because the you know, I just I you know, I've had an issue with with ballistics, you know, on how much to hold, you know, because I've tried the LaPua app and I've tried, you know, the Hornity app and everything else, but I just found, you know, when I was down there, and I shoot once a month in Kingman. They have a 200-yard, very similar to what we have here. But Larry, the top guy that shoots that, you know, I asked him, I said, what ballistic software are you using? And he goes, because I I see him look at his phone, you know, every time he, you know, he's looking at his phone and and he goes, Straylock. And I go, huh. I I never thought anything of it. Uh-huh. And I because I got the Lapua app and you put in, you know, you put in all of your, you know, your velocity and your, you know, your sectional density and all that stuff in there, and and I've got, you know, like six different ones to try to match my velocity that that day because the other uh last time we shot Davy's velocity had dropped 40 feet per second just because of the temperature. Temperature, okay. And you know, so you have to match that. So I had six of them loaded. Well, I got out there and the app wouldn't work. Uh-oh. So I didn't have any because I had I had got up that morning and I had written down everything in my book, uh-huh. But when I left the house, when I was putting my shoes on, I set my books over on the corner of that entryway. There was a cabinet in there, you know. I just set it there and you know, took off and got to the range, and oh crap. Well, too late now. Though I didn't, you know, I had some stuff on my stock, but that was for CCI and yeah. So now I'm gonna be deadly. Deadly. Yeah. Straylock.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:22

Straylock.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:24

Russian.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:26

So that's the is it just do they have for all calibers, or is that just no, it works for all of them. You just put in all your thing in there. Yeah. What makes what makes that one so much more accurate together?

SPEAKER_03 2:19:38

Oh, it's just I mean the the Lapool one, you I I can't even describe there's only 17 pages, but how do you get from this page? Because out at the range, Davy and I both had the issue. We both loaded it the day before at our house with good signal. You go out there, don't have a difference. You know, it you know, mine went from MOA to mills. Oh, that totally still I am going I can't even, you know, can't even use it. I don't have a mill, you know, you'd have to figure it out. But the straylock is works without uh service. Yeah. Yeah, it's much better. Yes, much better. Yeah, no, that's what I enjoy right now.

Grandkids, Moose Camp, And Closing Stories

SPEAKER_03 2:20:21

I mean, I still look forward to moose season, you know, because it's a family thing, you know. The there's three families there now, you know, there's Bean and Stuart, you know, and his family, and me, and sometimes Tony goes, you know, but she's got these little dogs, and she's afraid that the dogs are gonna run off.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:43

And when Brooklyn's in town, she's usually up there too. She usually drives the boat for me. Yeah, she's always up there.

SPEAKER_03 2:20:49

And she is uh I don't know how she figured this out, but Doug, you can she can just take that old, big old clunker of a boat that I have and just sail right up the river, just like it's you know. And I mean, granted, you know, she's sat by my side since she was probably six or seven, you know, and she paid attention. Yeah, you know, because you tell her, well, stay on the side that's got the steepest bank. You know, if you see a sandbar, stay on that side, you know. And I said, look for the riffles, you know. If you see a riffle, that means it's gonna be shallow, you know. And something just went on in her head that you know, I would I would feel that, you know, she could take the boat up by herself from Choket, go to our camp.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:37

You know, and I don't know if she could fix it if she screwed up, but I've never, you know, um I've never she'd never had to do any of that.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:50

That was always my issue with boats, is the motor stops running. I don't have any experience trying to get it back over. I've no other start paddling. I've my grand grandpa hub, he was always doing the maintenance on all dad's mechanical stuff, but other than that, I've I've I was never over there helping him work on engines on the bobcat or anything. It was just I was never that age or at that time, and that just always scares me to be up someplace and have a mechanical issue and not be able to get away.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:21

Well, I scared Charlie the other day.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:23

Did you?

SPEAKER_03 2:22:23

Oh, when we when you when you guys when we quit twice in the river, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:29

I'm not so sure about that.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:30

I don't know if I want to go up there to the bait stand.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:34

My grandpa's supposed to be this great mechanic and the boat engine won't even run.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:38

Yeah, well, it's the grandpa's fault too, because he left the key on. I hit the kill switch, you know. It's got a kill switch on the tide of the tiller and it shut it off. And I forgot about, you know, I had put the put the uh master switch in there because Stuart twice he burned up the whole electrical system, you know, because uh something in that leaving the you know because it was direct hook direct to the battery. Yep, it did something, then it shorted it out and melted the whole wiring harness down.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:08

Uh so you put the kill switch in there.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:10

I put a kill switch or a disconnect switch in there. Yeah, but then I didn't do it. And then you forgot to getting senile.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:19

I'm glad, I'm glad I'm not the only one that does stuff like that, Charlie.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:22

Yeah, well, I don't know. It's pretty tough.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:27

Uh-huh. No. Well, I appreciate you sharing stories with us, Charlie. Yeah. It's been good catching up with you. Yeah. And I hope you catches King Salmon.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:36

I hope so. And let it loose with Lawrence's ashes on the Lawrence's ashes on him and let him go up the river and take them back to Klukwan.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:43

Yep. Yeah. Yep. No, that'll be pretty cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:46

Well, I I don't know. Lawrence was a dear, dear friend of mine, you know. We go way, way, way back, you know, in the high school when he used to play for Klukwan, you know. He used to when I was still in high school, you know, he'd rustle me around and you know, you know, because I knew him, you know, I knew who he was, you know. I I spent quite a bit of time in Klukwan when my dad was with the Salvation Army, you know. I'd go up there, you know, and Fritz Willard, I remember that. You know, Fritz Willard, that was, you know, they don't make people like him. I remember when he was in his 70s.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:24:19

He'd be, he'd had a a big sled, Doug. A sled with a G-pole and a harness.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:24:27

And he'd pull it up right by the Presbyterian church and he'd go all the way up the highway, you know, about where that, about where they got the plant set up there, you know, the 23 mile or four mile or whatever. And he'd go down and he'd, you know, with a friggin' whipsaw and cut wood, pack it up and fill that sled up, and then he'd drag it, you know, and he said, I said, isn't that hard work, Fritz? And he goes, It's all downhill.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:55

Once it's loaded, it's all downhill.

SPEAKER_03 2:24:57

I guess I just went up 70 years old. He's there with a with a harness on, you know, like the sling around and add that G-pole on that sled.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:25:06

God. Tough amazing guy. And I mean, there wasn't a man that made finer smoked fish than him. Yeah. Yeah. My dad said, I'm going to Kluck one. Okay. Okay, but you let me go. Fleritz knew that I loved smoked fish, dude. He knew what you were coming for. Yeah, he'd go down and this one's done over here, grandson. He called me. I guess he was related to my dad somehow. Okay. I don't really know how for sure, but Stuart has his native name. Does he? The Watts, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:38

Nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:25:40

But yeah, I spent a lot of time in Kluquan when I was a kid, you know, with helping Fritz. You know, we'd go up and help him catch fish and cut fish and you know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:51

Yeah, I spent a lot of years up there in my early thirties with John and Tom Cat and Uncle Smithy and down in the smokehouse, and usually it'd be John telling me what needs to be done, and then it'd be Smitty and I doing the fish and doing all the work. Till John would come back and check on us again. And then Tom would come by like, So John's got you working again.

SPEAKER_03 2:26:11

I tell you what, that John, I don't know. I've I've had a lot of smoked king salmon, but them king salmon strips that he made, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:19

That's something else, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 2:26:21

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:21

Yeah. I love eating that stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:26:24

Yeah, I haven't. You know, Stuart does most of the smoke. I haven't even smoked anything. I built the smokehouse about 20 years ago and it's full of gas cans and downriggers and stuff like that, you know. But Stuart smokes quite a bit of fish, you know, in the summertime when he gets a chance, you know. But yeah, he does does a good job, but he learned from some old uh what the heck was her name? Uh she was from Klukwan. Lived up next to her, Link Fannon and them on that loop. Uh oh God, I can't remember her name.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:58

I can't either.

SPEAKER_03 2:27:00

But yeah, but she he learned from her, you know, with the Fannon kids, you know, they were all buddies, and she was Mary. I think her name is Mary, I think. But uh yeah, she taught him how, and it was good.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:14

Anything else we missed?

SPEAKER_03 2:27:16

No. I think we're good.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:19

I look forward again, I look forward to hearing that you caught a fish and sent Lawrence on his way back up to Clawland. That's what I'm looking forward. Uh that'll be good.

SPEAKER_03 2:27:29

Yep, that's my number one. I've been threatening to just to go out there and do it illegally. Just do it illegally and do it anyhow. He's been in my house for ten years.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:40

It's all right. Gonna happen this year. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_03 2:27:42

It is gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:44

Better for Lawrence to be legal going up the river. Yeah. I don't care.

SPEAKER_03 2:27:49

I thought that's it. I should have got a permit for it or something, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:53

Yep. Yep. It'll happen. Yeah. Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate it. Okay. Yep.