After a short, 3-week salmon season, I'm back from Naknek, Alaska (a humbly proud, self-described "drinking village with a fishing problem") with severe long-term sleep deprivation, a disappointing paycheck, and a slew of silly new friends, even dearer old friends and some pretty worthwhile memories. Two-thirds of the time at the cannery actually spent working (16 hours a day as a quality control inspector- a job I was lucky to have courtesy of a friend and fellow QC) all blend together in the memory as one uniform blur of raw salmon temperature taking, can rotating, bone clipping, and digital number oscillations on hyper-sensitive scales for the inconsistent "quality control" of mass canning the shittiest salmon of the day's catch. But that one-third of the time...those one-thirds of the days that made the monotonous hell a digestible monotonous hell are distinct, individual recollections that ultimately overshadow the work and becomes how I'll choose to remember the entire experience. Every moment off the clock is the last moment you've got before you're back on the clock. You better savour it.
Whiskey? No fish for a couple hours means sunrise at the water tower? Oh where are you guys from? That bitch doesn't work for shit. Fireworks at the lake? Let the harmonica speak for you, the universal language of knowing a hard day's work. Shanty sauna? Donut breaks! Holy shit they have Cocoa Puffs at the galley today! Beach? No bear yet. Why sleep when there's hitch-hiking into "town" for over-priced beer at one of the THREE BARS in this pop. 89(a generous guess?) metropolis that apologizes to no one for their $7 bag of Funyuns and devastatingly out-dated jukeboxes. Fuck yes we'll sleep when we die while we kill ourselves not sleeping if the cough that's been going around since we got here doesn't first. Oh, we're going home in four hours.
"...a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream...the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps..."-John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Steinbeck understands.
