2012

29 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by Naomi Gaede Penner in Soldotna

When I was 18, my father decided I need to get a job. He had connections with everyone – including someone at the Columbia Wards fish cannery. I wasn’t asked if I wanted to work there. Dad informed me I’d been hired.

The cannery was about four miles from our Gaede-80 homestead, down Kalifonsky Beach Road. I drove an old blue pick-up, which didn’t go very fast, and which later I discovered was not really attached to the chassis. All the same, it got me to work.

It was common for college kids from Outside to come work for the summer, so I had peers of sorts. Japanese worked there, too, with the salmon eggs. The cannery was a 40,000-square-foot warehouse. No heat. Cold fish. Fish smell. I wore several pairs of wool socks in my tall black rubber books, a winter coat with a clear plastic apron that wrapped around most of me, and a bandana kerchief on my head.

My job was the assembly line where cans of fish traveled past me and my job was to use a kind of pliers to flip and twist any exposed skin downward or to the sides. The purpose was so the eager purchaser would open the can and find an attractive round of meat.

Working along the conveyor belt took some getting used to. It never stopped and our work was done while the cans traveled in front of us. The constant movement caused a kind of mild motion sickness.

The work was monotonous. The work was cold. We stood all day – or all night – depending on when the fish had come in. To break the boredom, someone down the line, just in front of the lid-stamper, would accidentally flip a can over. Of course, this jammed the lid-stamping machine and we’d all have to take a break while the mechanism was unclogged.

In 2007, the cannery was recognized as a historical landmark and several buildings were put back into use. All the buildings had signs designating their previous use and there was a map with walking tour available at a visitor center. What a step back in time for me! I was so excited to re-walk back into my past. It made a wonderful field trip to take guests.

Just this week I learned that the warehouse is being torn down. I was shocked. On July 13 and 14 timbers from the building will be available for purchase. I plan to be there.

Columbia Wards fish cannery

http://peninsulaclarion.com/news/2012-06-27/deconstruction-of-kenai-landing-warehouse-under-way

What did you do for summer work as a high school or college student?

Was it your idea or your parents?

What are your memories?

Prescription for Adventure: Bush Pilot Doctor – or – Alaska Bush Pilot Doctor?

19 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by Naomi Gaede Penner in My Books

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You may have noticed that Prescription for Adventure: Bush Pilot Doctor, published in 1991, has gone through a few revisions. Even though the book keeps getting better, the various editions have caused a bit of confusion. Let me help by breaking down the differences:

Second edition Prescription for Adventure: Bush Pilot Doctor

original text used for the Alaska Unit Study Guide.

Third edition Prescription for Adventure: Bush Pilot Doctor

Cover updated
Four new chapters
Footnotes added
Index added
Suggested books and websites included

Fourth edition Alaska Bush Pilot Doctor

Title changed
Cover updated
Size of book changed to match other books in the series
Two chapters removed
Footnotes changed to endnotes
Index updated
Suggested books and websites updated
Reader’s Guide in back of book
Lower price than third edition

I love the new cover, the airplane page breaks, and over-all feel of the book. I think you will, too! To examine it more closely, go to http://www.prescriptionforadventure.com/bushpilotdr.html Let me know what YOU think.

If you haven’t read this book, be one of the first to purchase it. The official release date is not until September 1, 2012, but you can purchase it now from my website.

My Father, the Avid Adventurer

08 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by Naomi Gaede Penner in Holidays and Special Occasions

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I grew up listening to my father’s supper table stories. He was a doctor; more than that, he was a bush pilot doctor in Alaska. Never knowing when he’d be called out, these stories were told after he’d gulped down his food. Told after he’d spread yellow mustard on the reheated moose roast, or after he’d swallowed that last bite of cauliflower – fresh from Mom’s garden and smothered in thick Velveeta-cheese sauce.

We heard about the fly-in housecall when a distressed woman tried to crawl out of his Piper PA-14 airplane and go home – when he was 2,000 feet above the Yukon River. We listened wide-eyed when he described how the low brush on the suitable mountainside strip grew, but he’d committed to land and thrashed down among the eight feet tall saplings. The polar bear hunt on an ice flow along the Arctic coast was supported by his 8 mm movies.

A miscalculation.

All these stories came from a Hillsboro, Kansas farm boy who had grown up shooting jackrabbits, catching catfish with his hands in a muddy creek, jolting on a metal tractor seat across crop fields in the humid-thick Kansas heat, and picking June bugs off the back porch screen door on his way in for supper.

Just a Kansas farm boy.

As a young man he wondered what lay over the horizon. He yearned for adventure. After trading his suspendered over-alls for a graduation gown from K.U. Medical School, his eyes turned north. He found adventure in Alaska.

I learned from him to reframe amusing, annoying, simple – or terrifying – incidences into stories, rather than leaving them as coincidences, aggravations, or unwanted crisis. They weren’t hard-luck, depressing, self-pity stories, but humorous, “would you believe it?” stories; the kind told around a table-clothed Midwest table that tickled the fancy of listeners while they forked in fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and strawberry shortcake; or on a drizzly Alaska evening with halibut, cranberry nutbread, and rhubarb pie. These mini-dramas elicited teasing, arguments about real facts, and left the listener in a good mood, or at least challenged to see life in a fresher way.

Dad and I turned his oral stories into written stories. They showed up in Alaska Flying, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Christian Medical Society Journal, and other publications. I thought writing a book wouldn’t be that more difficult. I was naïve. I was uninformed. I was determined. It seemed appropriate to name the book: Prescription for Adventure: Bush Pilot Doctor. This book is now into its fourth edition as Alaska Bush Pilot Doctor.

*****

Learning doesn’t need formal instruction. It comes from following someone around, listening in the shadows, working side-by-side, and observing interpersonal interactions and personal reactions.

What did you learn from your father?
How did you learn it?
What are people learning when they watch you?

*****

Published in the June/July issue of “The Country Register – Kansas,” a delightful publication for stitchers, crafters, and all people living in, or driving through Kansas.http://www.countryregister.com/kansas/currentissue.html

*****

Naomi Gaede-Penner is the author of the non-fiction Prescription for Adventure series: Alaska Bush Pilot Doctor, From Kansas Wheat Fields to Alaska Tundra: a Mennonite Family Finds Home, ‘A’ is for Alaska: Teacher to the Territory, ‘A’ is for Anaktuvuk: Teacher to the Nunamiut Eskimos, and The Three Boys. To browse or order her books and to see her own adventures, visit www.prescriptionforadventure.com. Find her on Facebook: Prescription for Adventure.

Galena, Alaska – IV

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by Naomi Gaede Penner in Alaska - Galena

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The mud was still frozen when I walked to KIYO Galena radio station at 9:15 a.m. on April 25, 2012. Frosted-stiff grass poked through the icy puddles-turned-lakes. Jeremy wanted to interview me. Jeremy was a newcomer disc jockey from Washington, not the state, but D.C. How he’d found his way here was a mystery; furthermore, how he’d acculturated to this village without Starbucks, light rail transit, horns honking, bright city lights, and a sea of suits and ties was beyond me. To me, everyone is a story. I interviewed him first. The interview with me was a fun conversation. I appreciated the opportunity.

Guest teaching was up next. I arrived at an aviation class with a power point of plane crashes – mostly my dad’s – and excerpts from Alaska Bush Pilot Doctor about flying situations: bobber gas gauge, wobble pump, broken ski cable, and so on. I wished my brother Mark was there. He’d actually know about all this aviation stuff; I just collect pictures, stories, and facts —and write about them.

The journalism students interviewed me for the school paper, “The Hawk.” They asked good questions, such as “What do you hope to accomplish while you’re here?” Uh……have an adventure? Nope. Better answer: to find out about Galena Interior Learning Academy. “Do you mind telling us how old you are?” Yes.

The day raced on. Language Arts class kept me hopping with Five Senses Writing, journalism WWWWH applications, and Personification. Two girls joined me in the cafeteria. I wasn’t going to starve for conversation or food in this village. The Fox (missionary) family invited me to share supper with them in their home. It was my pleasure. I’d brought gifts for their girls – little Naomi and Ruthie. Names just like my sister and me.

Genny hadn’t missed a beat. With only a weeks’ notice, not only had she organized my shuttle services and lunches stops, but she’d put together a Meet and Greet at the library.

When I opened the library door, there was a man standing with his back to me. He could have been any man; any man in blue jeans and a baseball cap, but he wasn’t. He had graying red curls edging beneath his cap. Could it be? I walked slowly around him. His big smile and twinkling brown eyes confirmed it. Chris Sommers! He’d been the cutest little Athabascan Indian boy in my Tanana Day School class. Tanana, a village upriver from Galena, had supplied me with plenty of life-long memories, and he wasn’t the only classmate I’d heard about over the decades.

My sister, Mishal, works for Tanana Chiefs in Fairbanks, and flies up and down the Yukon River and keeps track of people’s where-abouts. She thought Chris lived in Galena, and was even the chief of the village.

I’d bumped into one of his younger sisters when I was in Tanana in 2009.

I certainly surprised her when I saw her walking down Front Street and called out, “Are you a Sommers”?

“How do you know?”

“There aren’t that many red-haired Natives up and down the river; and, in Tanana, back in ……….the only red-heads were from the Sommers’ family.”

“Yeah.”

Well, that started a conversation and she, two men, and I sat down on a backless wood bench facing the Yukon and talked about that year’s river breakup that had flooded Tanana.

Then there was their sister Marie. In my estimation, she’d been the prettiest girl in the Tanana Day School; prettiest of all in grades 1-8. Her smile can be seen on the cover photo of ‘A’ is for Alaska: Teacher to the Territory. (First girl on the left.)

I wished I could have talked to Chris longer. Didn’t he have three girls? Didn’t they all graduate from college? Colorado? Ah…..success stories I would have liked to have heard.

My time in Galena ran out. The memories won’t. I’m already thinking about next year’s jumping off trip from Fairbanks. Hmmmm…..Tanana? Again? I hear the school teacher graduated from the school there and went back to teach. Why? What drew him back? I’m sure there’s a story.