

### Under the Laughter of Eagles

### By

### Michael E. McQuaid

### Text copyright © 2013 Michael E. McQuaid

### All rights Reserved

### Published by Michael McQuaid at Smashwords

### ~~**~~

### Front Cover: Design by: Michael McQuaid

Photo from © Nualinelaser/Dreamtime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images.

###  http://www.stockfreeimages.com/bald-eagles-greating-each-other-thumb4344211.JPG

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

### This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedicated to:

My parents although gone, are not forgotten

For they made me what I am.

Patricia, Curtis and Sean

Because they made me the man I became.

To my God

Who gave me my greatest gifts of:

My Family,

Love, good friends and a sometime sideways sense of humor.

### Table of Content

Prologue

The Beginning

Welcome to Adak, Alaska. Birthplace of the Wind

Fishing Next to a Sneaky Eagle

Finding Ceramics Again

Fluffy Takes A Trip

Four Wheeling Down A Dirt Road

Orca and the Sea Food Buffet

Candlestick Sea Otter Nursery

The Octagon Cabin and the Landing Lesson

Fishing Tackle and Techniques, Adak Style

The Orca and the Sea Otter in the Harbor

Lake Andy and the Salmon

Spring Fling at the Hanger

The Dreaded IG Inspection

How to Buy a Toyota Cheap

Adak Water Pipe Clocks

Sea Lions on a Sand Bar

Know Who You Are Picking a Fight With

The Cook and the Engine Block

Rocky and the Sledge Hammer

Going Home and the Great Unknown

About the Author

Contact Me At:

# Prologue

"I'm not sure I can do this" I said to my wife of nearly 46 years. I was going to write a book, this book to be precise. Something I had been saying that I wanted to do for all of those years. I had also said many times that if I wrote about what actually happened with the people I met along the way, that the Library would have to list it under fiction. Not a single person would believe any of it. But it is all true. I was there.

I have always enjoyed writing, sometimes quite a bit, little short stories that I call letters back home. My friends and my wife all say that when I write for pleasure they can "read" me like I talk. And at other times not so much, those were called Technical Manuals for the Military.

I am not real sure what they mean by that. I have either been blessed by a sort of sideways sense of humor, or cursed with it.

You should be aware that I am not an English professor, and the way that I speak is quite often not like what I write, and I even get my versa visa on occasion. Ok, so you got me, I don't always use good grammar and I even misspell when I talk. But that is just me. No excuses, it's me, warts and all.

I have had several people read the drafts looking for punctuation, grammar and all that other stuff. They did a great job, at least I think so. If we all spoke and wrote perfect English I believe it would be a very constipated world. Individuals make the world interesting. And some of you are really interesting, even odd at times. You might find yourself, or someone you know, in one of my books.

Since this is my first Book, if this one works out, I'll write the rest of the stories about people that I have met along the twisted path of my life. But I must say this. Even my dogs are certifiable nut cases. My wife's Parrot is in a class all by herself, and so are most of the people I call friends. My sons are themselves "unique", but they take after their mother, uh, that is another book.

My Great-grandfather used to say "Everyone is crazy but me and thee, and I am not too sure about thee."

Mac

#  The Beginning

It was about ten in the morning. I was sitting at my desk in the Inventory Control Office at NTTC (Naval Technical Training Command, the military just loves Acronyms) Corry Station and it had been going pretty good. I just got the second of my many daily cups of coffee and was going through the morning reports and messages. Only one message was addressed to me. I decided to get to that one a bit later as it wasn't marked as important.

For a change the computers were not fighting with me,. The Command Inventory had been completed and the results were great. Over the last few months my people had worked with me like ants in the aftermath of a two year old little girl's birthday party. For months of long days and some long nights we wrote new software, and built the new procedures and worked out how to get the completely rebuilt Inventory System humming. It was everything we had hoped for and more importantly, it was completed in about two weeks with 99.998% accuracy. The last inventory my predecessor had done took over nine months and had been only "70% if you are lucky."

We had spent days and weeks pouring over old reports and receipts from years before. It turned out that somebody had sent truckloads of equipment, all on the inventory, to the junk yard. The paper chase had been a nightmare.

If I ever found the clown that probably tossed the three dollar hand calculators away in the proverbial circular file (also known as the trash can), I'd strangle him. Why they were ever put on the Accountable List in the first place I will never know. I finally got the Commander, to sign off on the fact that they had in all probability been pitched into the trash somewhere. (Since he was the one that had signed for all of it I could understand his point of view.)

The Supply Office across the hall was happy as they could be with the Spreadsheet Application written for them to do their order tracking, with Accounting with Budget Analysis built in. It had error trapping and enabled Base Supply to reconcile all the books for the base in about fifteen minutes instead of the two or three weeks' lag they had been laboring under up until then. And that alone would save hundreds of man hours, which equated to lots of money.

In the past it had taken three people two weeks to build the 'books' (records of all supply requisitions and funding account balances) to get ready for the upcoming year. Then close out the 'books' for the current year. The new program, with the use of a single Macro, the Supply Office Petty Officer in Charge pushed three keys and went to lunch. When he returned the Old Books were closed and the New Books were waiting on him, and ready to go.

The base does a lot of training for the Navy and other branches of the military; some of it was classified so the Inventory was also classified. Obviously it was important to find it all. I mean it isn't like it is NASA or anything, but it is important.

Since my surname is of Irish origins you would think that my luck would be pretty good, at least that is what people would lead you to believe. And you would be wrong, so very wrong. Do you remember that message I mentioned just a moment ago? Yup, that would be the one.

As I opened it up my first thoughts were "Oh, great. I'm just finishing two and a half years in Pensacola, Florida" which had followed after the two year unaccompanied tour on Okinawa. I had enjoyed the sunshine and semi tropical climates of both places, but this one with the family was hands down a lot better. "Now I get to go to a dammed ice box".

My wife was finally making some money breeding Registered Persian Cats and had a pretty good job that she liked most of the time. We had figured that I would finish my navy career at Corry. All I would need would be a little eight month extension of my current tour of duty assignment to put me over the hump so to speak and into what is known in the Navy as my "Twilight Tour." Which means in Navy speak, that you are frozen at that base, for reassignment purposes, pending your retirement. "Think again big boy" went through my head. "Close but no cigar on this one. Yeah Buddy, Uncle Sam's Canoe Club really loves you."

Permanent Change of Station, better known as PCS orders, is one of two kinds. White and black, good and bad, Pensacola Florida and Adak-freezing-Alaska! See what I mean? "Wow! You really peed in somebody's cornflakes this time, Fat Boy" said the Little Voice in my head. But the usual way most GIs look at assignments is that no place is as great as the command you just left, and there is no greater cesspool than the one you are going to next. Not necessarily so. But sometimes...life happens.

Over the next few months I tried to get an extension on my tour at Corry. "Nope, not happening," was the answer I got from the Navy. Because the wife suffered with migraine headaches and Adak was not going to have much in the way of medical facilities, she was not eligible to go with me anymore than she had been on the Okinawa trip. I only had twenty one months to go until retirement. Since both boys were in high school, they would be "boarded" in Anchorage to go to school. And they would only get to come home during the summer and major holidays...if we had the money for the air fare that is. You got it, just hit the flush handle on the toilet, because that was where I saw the next nearly two years headed. Getting out of the Navy after more than eighteen years was not an option, but it was the only other choice.

It did not take but about a half a Nano Second to figure out that the wife would not be dancing the "tickled to death jig" over this one either, nor would either of my sons.

I had gone to the base Library at NTTC Corry Station to get the "Welcome Aboard Package" for Adak, Alaska. It had a lot of interesting information in it and I will try from time to time to fill in the blanks, but for now here is a bit of the Propaganda the Navy puts out. Slight translation into "Mac" (that is me by the way). In the Military anyone with a last name beginning with MAC or MC, is automatically called Mac. My sons both swore up and down that they were not going to be called Mac. Guess what... they are.

~~***~~

If you have never been there, you may not know it, but Adak is an island in the Aleutian Chain which is part of Alaska. The string of islands in the chain was caused by the sea bed upheaving as he earth cooled and shrank, kind of like one of those monkey things, (you will find out what that means shortly) only a lot bigger scale. Gorilla size maybe? Tectonic plates moving and sliding up over each other, you know Geological talk stuff. Think San Francisco at this point. Can you say "earthquake?" Yes, Adak has more than its fair share.

It is also quite possibly one of the largest natural eagle nesting sites left in the world; there are several hundred of them on the Island. With large populations of huge gulls, terns, "Barking" ravens, sea otters, and sea lions, and lots of orca just off shore.

Barking Ravens are an interesting bird. The first time I went to the Navy Exchange, the only store on the island, I found that the building sits below a moderately sized hill. I had by this time seen lots of eagles, but had pretty much ignored the Ravens as I had mistaken them for the common Crow we have around Pensacola. I hadn't been close enough to any of them in the short time I had been on the island yet to understand that they were about four times the size of a normal Crow.

As I came out of the Exchange I heard what I took to be a small dog barking from the top of the hill behind the Exchange. I thought that an eagle had grabbed a puppy or something and had it just out of sight over the crest of the hill. Thinking that I might be able to save the pup, I ran like a mad man up the hill, no small feat for an old guy. But when I got up high enough to see what was actually up there I found out that there was in fact no eagles, no puppy and only a bunch of the biggest crows I had ever seen, barking at each other. I couldn't miss the smiles on many faces when I walked back down the hill.

If you look at a map of the United States you will see that Alaska looks like a dog sitting down with his tail sticking out. Or if you ask a typical Navy Squid, it looks like a dog humped up to take a ... well, you know. Anyway, Adak is one of the fleas on the tail, about half way out. It is very small and pretty chilly most of the year. Most of the time the wind blows and that is why it is known as "The Birthplace of The Winds" and it can be rather depressing until you get into the flow of how the Island works.

When you watch the evening news and weather on TV, notice all the bad stuff that comes in around Seattle, the area around Adak is where it starts. At least that is what the Navy Propaganda sheet said anyway. But, since the Aleutians separate the Bering Sea and the extreme North Pacific Ocean it is battered by both weather patterns.

While it sure does not get anywhere in the neighborhood of hot, the record high is about seventy four degrees. It doesn't get as cold as you would think it should being that far North on the big blue marble called Earth. Because the Japanese Currents, like the Gulf Stream along our East Coast, come along the south side of the island, Adak rarely ever gets down to the mid-teens or below. Yes it does snow, OK, so it usually snows sideways, and the highest mountain on the Island, wears a snow cap pretty much year around, the amount on the ground in winter is usually much less than knee deep.

But, the good part is that the Island only has two seasons, winter and August. The rest of the year is divided into pre-winter and damned chilly. The crazy dependent teenagers walk around in Bermuda shorts and parkas just about all the time. The point of them doing that is ... a damned good question.

..*..*..*..

Right about here is where I developed my theory that a lot of people are some of the original bungee jumpers as their mothers were definitely still standing up when they were born. They were surely dropped on their heads at some point.

..*..*..*..

The Army Air Corps built the runway short, because there were no jets in WWII, and a lot of cabins on the island along with gun emplacements on some of the vital overlooks coming into the Harbor.

The Navy took over the island after the war to use for a communications monitoring station, (where I would be working and living). And the Island also serves as a refueling point for the Coast Guard. You might ask why way out there? Well Russia isn't all that far away, and Adak isn't as bad as Shimia.

Shimia has an Air Force Base on the last rock that they could stick a runway on. Let me tell you friend, that is way out there and really isolated, but the good (?) part is that you can see Mother Russia on a clear day. I flew in, and thank God, out of there a couple times. No thanks.

The South end of Adak Island has an old stable because the Army once had horses on the island. That brain storm didn't work. Can you say "Military Intelligence?" Although the tundra looks like hay and if you didn't know better you would think that the Caribou lived on it, so horses should be able to eat and do well on it too. Right? Wrong! Oh sure the horses loved it, they could eat that stuff till they looked like the Hindenburg blimp while losing weight, and actually starve to death with a full stomach.

While the tundra looks like hay it has pretty close to zero nutrient values. Caribou don't eat tundra they push it out of the way to get to the Lichen that grows under it. Horses are just not smart enough to do that. It became a big undertaking to get food for the horses all the way to Adak and very expensive. During a time of war, bullets, bombs and stuff like that took priority over bales of hay and bags of oats. The horses were removed, the stable abandoned and personnel moved back to the main base.

~~***~~

So much for the Geography lesson for now.

Since we had planned to retire in the Pensacola area, all of a sudden finding a house to buy really sky rocketed to the top of the list of things to do. We moved out of base housing and into the house with a pond we bought, good fishing for bass and bream, on the 27th of February. I did manage to catch one of "MY" Bass before I left. I kissed it on the nose like Bill Dance and put it back, and caught a flight out on the 3rd of March.

Pensacola was seventy six degrees when I got on the plane. Houston was in the eighties with lots of sun. Seattle was about forty and raining. Anchorage was buried in three feet of snow, twenty five degrees, wind blowing icy knives through my light windbreaker type jacket. I, along with about fifty other lost souls, sat in the plane for a half hour waiting for Momma Moose to get herself and the baby Moose-let off the runway so we could take off on the last leg of our collective journey.

Adak? Oh it was having a heat wave at about thirty five, rain and wind. I was catching a cold. "Great, just great," mumbled the Little Voice. "Put a sock in it," I thought in reply.

I had managed to cop a window seat in Anchorage for the flight to Adak, so I could watch the Air Police vehicle try to persuade Momma Moose that she needed to get up and move her nursery off the runway. I guess she was not a morning moose or something because when she got up she was really pissed and charged the station wagon. I don't know what she had planned to do with it if she caught it, but I don't think she wanted to mooooose a love song to it.

It was a good thing she couldn't get more traction than the car did. But it was close there for a few seconds. Picture a blue and white Security Air Police, Ford station wagon streaking down the runway, Momma Moose was doing the "Smoky and the Bandit" thing in hot pursuit with the Moose-let playing like a siren, bringing up the rear.

As the plane went past her, standing just off the runway, she reminded me of my younger sister when she was a kid. Not that Vicki is Moose size -- she isn't -- but they both had long legs and looked like they were running in place when they had a real good mad going. I guess you had to be there. It was funny at the time anyway.

"And the condemned ate a hearty meal." Now just how hearty do you think a military flight sack lunch is? Cold ham sandwich, just ham and two pieces of bread, an apple and a little paper carton of no fat (really more like colored water) milk. No salt, no mayo, no pepper, no mustard... and no taste.

What it did have was a lot of "stick to," so it just stuck to the roof of my mouth like a Catholic Communion Wafer. The sandwich was followed by the milk, which didn't help, and then a lot of fingers were discreetly placed into mouths behind napkins, a lot of scraping bread off of palates, and quiet gagging going on.

About an hour later and as we dropped through the clouds and the overcast, we flew down one side of what was to be my home for the next couple years, I was not impressed. While it didn't have any snow on the lower parts of the island, there sure was a lot of it on the mountains. The flat parts were a depressing dog crap brown.

I didn't see a single tree of the Registered Adak National Forest anywhere. Not really surprising, since the entire forest was planted in WWII on a quarter of an acre, but it is a Registered National Forest. The Cedar Trees are still only at most about ten feet tall. Messing with any of them will get you a $10,000 fine AND maybe jail time. But they did take great pains to tell us that if we did mess with them, we stayed on the island until at least the fine part of that sentence was paid. Can you say "double whammy?"

Lots of streams and lakes, large and small, (all water on the island is potable) all surrounded by a white capped ocean as far as you could see in any direction except straight down or straight up.

It is really kind of funny if you think about it. Since there are no trees, except for the National Forest which you can't touch, if you wanted to go camping, besides shelter and food you also had to carry enough wood to build a good size pallet. But you could fall face first into any stream or puddle anywhere on the island and get a drink with no worries, except for yellow snow of course.

Since I had a window seat, I was looking, out the window. We flew toward the Mountains, big mountains, really rugged looking, sharp and jagged. They looked like solid Granite, you know, the really hard kind.

Then the plane began to bank over as it turned on final approach, it flew straight toward a really big mountain. At the last moment it banked over again, even farther, to miss the biggest one. I could feel it slip sideways, as all airplanes do in a turn. But this was toward the wing on my side which was pointed straight down, gravity works. More turning, and with more down slipping. As I watched the ground coming up I could just make out a narrow gap ahead. Down through the gap we went, next to the mountain we had just missed and were pointed straight toward its twin brother.

#

#  Welcome to Adak, Alaska. Birthplace of the Wind

With the tops of the peaks above the airplane cabin window and the bottom of that gap really close to the wing tip, I felt like the pilot had suicidal desires. These desire things are much stronger than either wishes or tendencies. At least we were going to be the first ones at the crash site, right when the pilot was about to achieve his apparent fondest of those desire things. The cabin pressure must have dropped by half when everyone on board inhaled at the same time; I swear my ears popped. The jet was still standing on one wing tip, my side of course. I distinctly remember thinking, "This feels weird, I'm looking straight out the window and at the same time straight down."

The Little Voice in my head was screaming "Oh great, we are going to crash and I am going to be ground into smeared hamburger in a stupid wind breaker when they find me, with a full grown jet and fifty people on top of me." Or rather "IF they found what would be left of me?"

Things happened really sudden after this point. At what felt like all in the same skinny slice of time. I took a roller coaster ride up, and came against the me side of the seat belt, hard. That was immediately followed by my stomach starting to free fall back toward my feet but it left that damned ham sandwich in my throat. As the near end of the runway flashed past my window, the plane leveled out and the wheels slammed down (we didn't land, we ARRIVED)with a pretty solid thump.

Next in the program of events was the high pitched whine of the Jet Engines fell suddenly off in intensity. I couldn't have gotten out of my seat at that moment if someone was holding a gun to my head and jammed a magnum cattle prod up my nose. My butt cheeks had a death grip on the worn out, hard as a brick, seat cushion. Why?

Glad you asked. Because, the bay outside the harbor mouth was rushing toward the plane at one hell of a rate of knots (Navy remember?) and that was only a few skinny yards from the other end of a very short runway. The next thing my panic stricken brain registered was that the engines began to spin back up to a Banshee scream as the pilot, suicidal bastard that he was, reversed the engines and slammed on the brakes. My arms, feet and everything else slammed forward. "IRK" escaped my lips as I tried really hard not to share that damn ham sandwich with the guy in the seat in front of me.

Seatbelts are a really good idea. Nothing on earth can compare with landing in a "V"!

I found out later that the approach to the runway came through the gap in the mountains, "no kidding there, Sherlock," said the smart aleck in my head. No choice, because they only had one runway.

But, then the next thought crossed my mind. What if the wind changed direction when I left...? Oh, the hell with that!

Note to self: Find out the departure schedule for Carnival Vacation Cruise Ship Lines. Yeah, that's just what I need, a ship. A really big ship and absolutely not one that has the word AIR in front of it. You can't fool me; I saw the newsreels of what happened to the Airship Hindenburg.

I soon found out that this idea was just as bad. The North Pacific and Bering Sea waves that pound all the shores around Adak average over twenty five feet high for months at a time, and more often than sometimes they were over thirty five feet, or more. Scratch that idea.

Hey! Submarines ride really smooth, or at least that is what I have heard. "Wait a minute there, Fat Boy. We have a little claustrophobia issue to deal with, don't you think?" reminded the Little Voice between my ears.

"Oh, yeah, there is that" I muttered.

Since the water temperature averaged about six degrees above freezing, year round, swimming was most decidedly not in the cards. We find ourselves with another one of those Bad News, really Bad News and Lots Worse News things here folks.

The Harbor was deep but barely big enough to get a small Coast Guard Cutter into. And since it was salt water it freezes at a much lower temperature, like around 26 degrees (f) or so, how encouraging. I guess it would sort of matter which freezing temperature you were using, Right? Nope, don't see that one happening either.

In my memory, I could just hear my wife say "Oh, this is going to be just bloody marvelous." She is British, and even after more than forty five years with me she still has a way with the phrases and words of her native England. But, then again, she was still in Pensacola, home of the "Sugar White Sand Beaches," soft warm breezes, sunshine and hurricanes. The only term of endearment I could think of at that time was...lucky bitch.

At this point the Little Voice in my head was wondering "How can I catch a migraine?"

As I walked across the tarmac with a twenty degree list to starboard (physical lean to the right), the wind whistling through my ears was doing every bit of thirty mile per hour, at forty Brass Monkey degrees, I was determined to get to a nice warm, inside-a-building type terminal. The Little Voice in my head was saying, "Hey, Fat Boy." (It always calls me that.) "Can I get another head to talk in because you are trying to kill both of us?"

"I am not. I'm just trying to get through the next two years," I muttered back.

"Try harder I'm freezing my mental butt off in here, at least stick your finger in the upwind side," said the voice, "or at minimum get a better coat with an insulated hood? Or call our Dad and have him send us a snowmobile suit from Maine. And the feet guys are whining that the loafers have simply got to go."

"Oh shut up, all of you. I'm doing the best I can," I whined back. I distinctly heard "Humph" between my ears.

*--*--*

Ok, time for a little Navy Trivia. Let me explain what "Brass Monkey" degrees are.

When you hear the expression "Cold enough to freeze the balls off of a Brass Monkey," what do you visualize in your head? Maybe a little brass figurine with pronounced uh... features shall we say? And then maybe a mental sound like "plink, plink": as the aforementioned uh... features froze and fell off?

The expression comes from back when ships were made of wood, and they used cannons to shoot round iron balls at each other. I could hear my mother telling my friends and me if we came up with a hair-brained idea like that, "Oh it's all fun and games until someone loses an Eye."

Anyway. The constant salt sea air would cause the iron cannon balls stacked up all nice and handy to rust together into one big chunk. Cannons can't shoot a chunk. So the crew coated them with a thin coating of grease to keep them from rusting.

Next problem: The ship rolled from side to side and the balls would go rolling back and forth. You can see how that might be a problem for the seamen walking around on the gun decks. Greasy slick round iron cannon balls, that weighed about twenty pounds or more, each. Yeah right? They might just as well been singing the Frosty the Snowman song "Catch me if you can."

To prevent them from rolling back and forth, the next brain storm was putting an iron plate (called a Monkey) on the deck with dents called "divots" in it to set the stack of cannon balls on. That great idea put them back where they started from, except now it was one even bigger chunk. Sounds like a typical governmental solution don't it?

Brass does not rust so rusting iron won't stick solid to it. "Ah-HA!" shouted the brains (?) at the top, "We will have the monkeys made of brass to prevent the rusting iron cannon balls from sticking to it."

Next problem: brass physically shrinks faster than Iron when it gets cold, therefore as the temperature dropped, the brass monkey shrank and the cannon balls went rolling again. And that is how we get the phrase, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a Brass Monkey." See, nothing dirty there. What did you think it meant?

*--*--*

About eleven months out of the year the tundra just lays there, brown, flat and flapping in the winds. Then at the peak of summer it grows from about a foot high, turns green, gets to about three feet tall, blooms, puts out seeds and dies back. It does all that in about a month. The wind, which blows at varying speeds, from a gentle breeze to "HOLY CRAP," does the pollinating part. The germination period for a tundra seed is about three years or more.

As a matter of fact, because the tundra grows so slowly, you can still see the tracks of trucks made during WWII where the tundra has not grown back yet. Therefore, a fine of $1,000.00 per foot can and will be imposed, per wheel if you go four wheeling across it. I don't think even Donald Trump could afford a good day of that kind of fun.

The biggest thing the island had going for it as far as I was concerned, was the wildlife. I had seen caribou in movies and on TV most of my life. You know like Rudolph the Red Nosed and all like that. Adak had a herd of about five hundred.

The little Arctic Blue Foxes were introduced after the war, with the thought that they could feed themselves and be harvested for their fur in a few years for great profit. That part didn't happen. What did happen was that many species of endangered birds that are only found on one or two of these islands became extinct. See, even the military or Washington D.C. doesn't have the market cornered on ding-bats with short sighted ideas. The price for fur dropped, drastically, and the Foxes were never harvested.

The Eagles were my main point of interest. I think I had seen just one in my life up to this point, and it was in a cage in a zoo. Even from a distance it looked pretty big but, I had no idea just how big they really are in the wild.

I saw the first one on Adak the day after my arrival.

I had checked in with the Command, got something to eat at the Chow Hall, and dropped my bags in the middle of the floor in my assigned room on my way to the bed. I pulled a blanket around me and just crashed face first into the pillow with the heater turned way up.

The next morning I got dressed in my uniform, then promptly got lost in the barracks maze trying to find the Chow Hall. The NSGA (Naval Security Group Activity) Command is pretty much in four buildings, Headquarters, Motor pool, Administration which has Recreational Services etc., and the Barracks. The Antenna Site is about a mile away, where I would actually be working. We called the circular Wulenwebber Antenna Array with it's one hundred foot towers, the Elephant Cage as that is what it looks like, but it takes about five acres to put one on. And that explains why I was never on a ship; they don't make boats that big.

The Barracks is really big, two floors in two wings and a basement. It has of course the individual rooms, but it also holds the Chow Hall, a four lane bowling alley, a small store, the gym, a library, a theater and a bar. The Barracks and the other buildings overlook Clam Lagoon, home to several hundred Sea Otters. The rest of the island is visible, on a clear day, in the distance, well as far as the first mountain about three miles down the winding dirt and loose gravel main road which follows the shoreline of Clam Lagoon. Most people on the Island call Clam Lagoon just Candlestick. It is called that because of the bridge that goes over the inlet to the Lagoon named Candlestick Bridge.

This main road then goes up over the shoulder of the mountain, it has a great place to pull off and watch the sea right there. The road continues to the Main Base of Naval Air Station Adak, about six miles away.

The Island only has about nine miles of paved road and all of that is on the Main Base, most of which is in and around the housing area where all the families live. The rest of the roads on the Island are dirt and gravel.

During the morning clearing-in process I was issued the most wonderful thing ever, well to someone coming from Florida in March it is anyway. And that was... A COLD WEATHER PARKA!

You have all seen them in the Movies, usually like the South Pole or somewhere nifty like that. GI Greenish Grey with a fur trimmed hood and weighs about a half ton.

But who cares how much it weighs, it is warm. So now that I have the voice between my ears shut up for a while about being cold, I can go to the Communications site where I will be working and finish checking in.

On the way out of the Barracks I saw a white plastic garbage bag sitting by the door and since I could see the Dumpster through the door glass, just outside and next to where I was told I could catch a shuttle van to the Communication Site, why not. I thought it had to have been some lazy person who left it. So I grabbed the bag, flipped up the parka hood, went out the door, and walked the ten feet or so to the dumpster and slid the dumpster door back.

"HOLY CRAP!" From about three inches away, I'm face-to-Beak with the biggest hooked beak and two of the meanest looking yellow eyes I have ever seen. The ear splitting scream that went with them was loud enough to hurt all by itself, and was close to being in harmony with the blood curdled one of my own!

"Ka-whoomp", my butt, the brand new parka, my back, my head, my shattered dignity, what was left of my pride and what little courage I was trying desperately to hold on to, all hit the concrete hard ground at the same time. At some point I did have enough presence of mind to cross my legs to prevent what was an imminent threat to my Fruit of the Looms.

I must have looked really funny doing the Funky Chicken or something, flopping around on the snow covered ice. She climbed up on the lip of the still open doorway, with her three inch needle sharp talons cleaving little curly strips as she carved scratches in the paint. I can only assume she was trying to get a better view of the Alien (uh, that would be me) flopping around. She took one good look at me, I swear, she just shook her head in disgust and was laughing hysterically as she flew away.

I guess I should try to describe an Eagle's laugh, as I call it. Well it kind of goes "Cheeee, chick, chick, chick" or something like that.

Little Voice was screaming "What the hell did you almost stick our face into?" I had managed to startle a full grown Female American Bald Eagle having her breakfast. The females are larger, and she looked about the size of a 747 at that distance.

I found out a few minutes later, from two guys that had witnessed the whole thing while sitting inside a nice warm van that you either didn't take the trash out in the daytime, or you pounded on the side of the dumpster to let the eagles know that you were there BEFORE you opened the damn door. Usually both of those events needed to happen at any time, day or night. Fine, now they tell me.

However to be totally factual and to be absolutely truthful, it took them a few minutes to really be able to tell me any of that because they were crying while flopping back and forth doing their own version of the Laughing Funky Chicken at the time.

Little Voice of course was saying "Oh, this is great! Six feet tall, two hundred twenty pounds and you stick our face into a Benihana fish chopper with eight feet of wings. You bring us all the way up here to freeze while you make a complete fool of yourself on your first day. Lovely, just lovely. Oh, and you scream like a little girl too."

The little jerk that lives behind my eyes can really get on my nerves. But I can't really blame him for being somewhat excited: he did have a front row seat, so to speak.

The damned day has got to get better than this..... Don't it? Well, to give you the short answer, that depends on your point of view. I could just murder a cup of coffee.

You see here is my problem. I am a Navy Cryptographic Technician Maintenance First Class Petty Officer (E-6), or CTM1 for short (don't forget about the acronym thing). Damn but don't that sound impressive! In the Navy, every job has its own nickname, most are not real flattering, and my field is known as "Spooks".

When on board ships, they load a sealed steel container on the main deck and strap it down. Then when those of my career field arrive, we work behind the heavy metal security doors you see in the movies with the cute little number pads to unlock it. Then when the "Mission" is over, they unload the container and we just disappear, kind of like "POOF."

When asked the normal question of "what do you guys do in there?" is asked. The usual reply goes something like "We can tell you what we do, but we have to kill you first." Not really, but close. We in the field, usually tell people that the CTM part stands for Count The Money. Since we are school trained to death, the natural assumption would be that we would be able to get a real high paying job when we got out. Right? Oh, so very wrong. Since we don't get a piece of paper from some college or other, it ain't worth fiddly spit.

I hold nine NEC's or Navy Efficiency (job) Codes. Between the Air Force and the Navy I have been on how to use my hands and head to repair Highly Advanced Classified Electronic Equipment for more than eighteen years. But I screwed up when I learned how to program a Spreadsheet for Supply. And then I compounded that by converting an inventory program from the Main Frame (say PDP1170) computer system it lived in, to a desk top Ethernet system complete with Bar Coding capability.

Do you know what Sailors say the initials for NAVY really stand for? Never Again Volunteer Yourself. Let's get something straight here, OK? I didn't come anywhere close to voluntarily volunteering for the Inventory Control Office at Corry Station, I GOT volunteered. There is a big difference between those two things.

I had gone to work as usual on a Monday morning. The Boss, a Chief Warrant Officer, CWO4 to be exact, said at the morning roll call and briefing, (better known as the morning dog and pony show). "I need someone to go to work in Inventory Control. Thanks Mac." All in one breath and that is how I got there. Same song and dance happened for the Spreadsheet and Inventory programing gig.

By the way, Warrant Officers are a breed all unto themselves. They are a set of ranks between the enlisted or "E" for short and the Officers or "O" grades. They usually come from the enlisted ranks, with a very specific skill set. Like accounting, helicopter pilots or electronic engineering for example.

Now at Adak, I just wanted some work bench space and peace. Reread the part about the Irish surname. Yeah you got it. Hit the handle again. I met CTM Master Chief Boyd. A Master Chief is the highest pay grade for an enlisted person, or E-9. This in my case, put him three pay grades above me and my lowly E-6. In some cases, like those slang names for different jobs, Master Chief becomes Massive Grief. And some are.

He was my new Division's Master Chief, which in Navy speak means he was my boss, and while he is not God he does advise God on how to really mess with sailors. It seems that my last command's Master Chief and my new one were big buddies. Turned out they were really damn near brothers, although not necessarily mine. But hey, you get what you got. Know what I mean? Phone calls had been exchanged between them and after the "How's your Mom and them" they started in on me coming to Adak.

"And the doomed ate another hearty meal." This time it was a doughnut and coffee. Well the coffee was pretty good anyway. I don't know if you are aware of the second half of that old saw, it goes "And Balaam's Ass spoke."

There are two things you absolutely do not want to happen at any time in a Navy Career, not if you want to continue to enjoy said aforementioned career. The first is that the Commanding Officer knows your name, never a good thing. The second is that you don't want the job of fixing the worst problem that your new command had in their last Inspection, just before the next one. We are talking about within just a few short months. I got both. "Oh lucky us" Little Voice mumbled. See what I mean about "Balaam's Ass."

It seemed that the last IG (Inspector General) inspection was a disaster. The then Commanding Officer was relieved and... well you get the picture. And lucky me, I was the boy to save the day, or take it in the shorts, one or the other. Since Inventory and Supply were the worst parts of that previous inspection. If I didn't give them the first one I was for sure going to get the second. Yup, back in Inventory Control, Supply and Accounting. Little Voice whined, "Now I AM getting a migraine." No pressure. And just think, this is day number two. Only about six hundred thirty days to go, but who was counting.

Let's all hold hands and sing "Everything is Beautiful" together.

You know it is bad when the Little Voice in your head tells you to stop singing because "you sound like a stomped on bull frog with a hernia." He wasn't really very happy either, or maybe it was just his migraine.

I explained about the work bench and peace part to the Master Chief. Then I found out there was a third thing you don't want in your Navy career. And that would be: your new Master Chief laughing at you on your first day.

That is really not a good thing. "Oh, wonderful, Fat Boy, you found a new one and managed to get it too. You are three for three! Now our stomach is hurting. You need to cut down on the doughnuts."

Did you know that you can't actually choke yourself with your own hands? The brightly colored spots before your eyes are pretty though. But hey, the sight of blood makes me queasy so opening a vein was absolutely out. And besides that, I use a Norelco.

After looking over Inventory and Accounting, I wanted to go over the hill as they say. But hell, I was on an Island, and even though there were plenty of hills to go over, where was I going to run to?

I went fishing.

# Fishing Next To a Sneaky Eagle

Adak has a couple salmon runs a year, big fat red salmon. One run is big the other is not so much. And during every even numbered year the annual runs are about half again larger than the one during the odd years. Why? Dammed if I know.

But I had heard about Dolly Varden Sea Trout, which is a member of the salmon family but is actually a Char. What the difference is, I couldn't tell you. My, being a wanna-be fly fisherman, ears perked up at the word "Trout." We don't have many of the kinds of fish people normally associated with Fly rods in Florida; I just had to try it.

Since my stuff had arrived the week before complete with my fishing equipment, why not? And I now had my parka. Clam Lagoon was just a few yards outside my door and was supposed to be full of fish, yeah why not!

Clam Lagoon is a tidal basin. That means that although the water that runs into it is fresh water from the island side, the sea tides fill and empty it twice a day. When the tide is out it is really out. The water level drops about five feet and the bottom is exposed for quite a way and is firm enough to walk on.

So here I go. It is going to be just my tackle box, my parka, my cheap 12 foot six weight fiberglass fly rod, a couple flies, the water, the fish and me. Sure sounded good to me. Oh crap! After I hoofed it all the way to the Lagoon, it was walk back to the Barracks to get the boots I had forgotten to either put on or bring with me. Damn that water is cold.

OK, now I'm all set.

As I was walking out toward the water with my knee-high black rubber boots flopping and rubbing red lines around my calves, a car pulled up behind me on the road that circles the lagoon. When it stopped two guys get out with their stuff. Well that is not a problem as we have more than plenty of room on the large crescent shaped lagoon bed which starts at the edge of where the road crosses Candlestick Bridge and where it goes by the Barracks about a quarter mile or so away. Maybe I should have tucked my pants legs inside the boots. Humm.

When the tide is flowing it really rips through under the bridge as the sea fills and empties the lagoon. But right now it is slack low tide and the flow under the bridge is very slow, the winds are light and a bright blue sky is over us so God can watch. The water, although cold, is clear as glass and you can see every detail of the rocks and swaying sea grasses on the bottom.

Did I mention that God has a sense of humor?

One the two new guys goes up next to the bridge where the edge of the roadside weeds and lagoon meet. The other fellow walks out toward me to a spot not as far around the arc as I am and therefore slightly behind me, about fifty yards or so away. We all rigged up and start fishing. It's great.

The Dolly's are not real big, maybe three or four pounds but they are really beautiful and put up a good fight. The smaller ones are eager to take the offered bait of Salmon Eggs. I get mine out of a bottle from some bait company. Fairly quickly I have a couple medium to small ones. I had pushed a stake into the ground and then tied a simple cord stringer to it so the fish could lie in the water until I was ready to go.

The guy in the middle was wearing chest waders and is doing as well as I am he has three on his stringer, a metal one with snap rings which look like oversized safety pins. But he is standing in about a foot or so of water with his stringer attached to a belt that is fairly loose around his middle. His buddy only has one fish, but he is mostly looking at us. I wondered why he is just watching us.

With my curiosity aroused I looked toward the guy in the middle. I can literally feel my eyes bug out and I can't believe that an eagle has landed about twenty feet or so behind him.

Have you ever seen an eagle walk on land? It is actually kind of comical. They put me in the mind of a really drunken Sailor just off the boat and who has not yet managed to find his land legs as they say, "Once you have seen one, you have seen them all." It looks like really exaggerated swaying back and forth as if he is walking in knee deep mud while on the brink of falling over.

Well anyway, the eagle walked up behind the fisherman who is facing away from it. The guy was absorbed in his fishing technique and does not have a clue that an eagle is even in the same zip code, let alone right behind him.

The eagle gently reaches down and picks up the last fish on the end of the stringer and eats it. Then he just as gently got the next one and proceeds to eat that one too. The next and last fish is a bit bigger and had the metal safety pin thing around the bone in its jaw. After the eagle has eaten the body part, it grabs the head and yanks hard trying to get it off the stringer.

The fisherman was fighting another fish and didn't even look around but thinking it was his friend messing with him just yells "Hey, knock it off you almost made me fall." The next tug was even harder and made the guy stumble. When he whipped around he was looking at the height that his friend should have been; but wasn't. His face was something to see as it went from displaying irritation, to mild confusion, jetted right through shock, and landed squarely on stark terror when he looked down.

There stood the eagle not two feet from this guy's leg. The bird was belt tall and with the still attached to the stringer chain fish head in his mouth. Needless to say the guy was stunned to see a full grown eagle that close to his leg and tried to run. Fight or Flight is reported to be the two strongest instincts in all creatures, since fight was not an option that only left the other one. Remember about the standing in ice water part?

Right. There he is in chest waders, standing mid-calf deep in ice cold sea water with a full grown female eagle holding the fish head on the end of his stringer as the guy tried to run BACKWARDS into the water. You guessed it? Now don't get ahead of me on this.

Over on his back he goes, in one massive splash. As the fish head tore loose, Mr. Victim Fisherman is floundering and spluttering, his waders are filling full of water and both of his panic driven flailing arms were slinging ice cold water in all directions since his head and shoulders are now lower, and in deeper water, than his feet. The eagle flew away laughing her feathered butt off. "Cheeeeeee, chick, chick, chick."

When he could stand up, with his waders brim full, he looked like one of the Twiddle twins, Dee or Dum, at Disney World. While being absolutely soaked, he started yelling at his friend. "Why didn't you tell me the damned eagle was there?"

His friend had fallen over backwards too, but he had landed in the grass and is holding his stomach while rolling back and forth, making funny little "eep, eep, eep" noises out of his nose because he was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe.

Mr. Victim Fisherman waddles over to his friend in water filled waders. In a pretty close imitation of the eagle's walk, he is still yelling. But I will give him this. He didn't lose his grip on his fly rod, or the fish that was still on the end of his line. The image did not help his friend regain any oxygen. What with Mr. Victim sloshing water with every step and the fish jumping and flopping as it was being dragged across the dirt of the exposed bottom.

I have long since fallen off the tackle box I had been sitting on.

Mr. Victim eventually saw the funny side of it and joins in the laughter. But when he sits down and puts his feet above his body up on the bank to drain his waders, insanity won again. These antics then caused another round of screams, funny noises and howls of laughter as the water drains down the cra... well you can figure that part out. "Who...who...whooie that's cold," which of course starts his friend and me off again.

Things calm down about a half hour later and we all go back to fishing in the places we were in before. The fisherman had changed his shirt and jacket to try to recover at least some body heat. I got my third fish and put it on my stringer and got ready to leave; supper and a grill are calling me.

As I looked over at the man in the middle, I watched with my mouth hanging open. The eagle has returned and is just standing behind him waiting for him to put his newest catch on the stringer. As Mr. Victim took the hook out of the fish's mouth he looked down to grab his stringer. And there with his head cocked to one side is the eagle looking up as if to say "Why don't you save us both some time and just hand it to me?"

Ding, ding round two.

I can't stand it. I have to leave him and his friend the eagle, to get him out of the water again. The eagle calmly picked up the dropped fish and flew away ... again. A haunting chorus refrain is clearly heard, "Cheeeee, chick, chick, chick. Cheeeee, chick, chick, chick."

Loud yelling and funny nose noises from the bank follow me as I struggle mightily to get enough strength to walk away. My ribs hurt for a week.

Supper was fantastic but let me give you a word of warning.

Don't try to explain what you have seen while laughing at a fresh memory, and swallow at the same time. People will beat your back to pulp, laugh at you and eat your fish.

#  Finding Ceramics Again.

It's a good thing that the Main Base has a good Ceramic's Shop. The Communications site where I lived had a small shop, but nothing close to the one on Main Base. I had been working there for a couple months when the lady that was the shop manager went back to the States with her husband and I got promoted.

"Whoopee," no additional money involved just more hours and responsibility. But the biggest benefit was that I could spend more time with people that enjoyed ceramics like I do. I held classes once a week on different techniques of painting and molding. Some I taught myself, some were taught by others.

I am proud to say that quite a few of the mostly women hobbyists were producing some really beautiful projects. And I could stay as long as I wanted after hours painting or pouring new pieces. One set of Lasagna dishes were hand painted with Iris flowers and leaves. I tried to talk Roseanna out of them but she could be really Italian stubborn at times.

One of the women I had working for me in the Ceramics Shop was a very funny Scottish lady but she was also very short. Fiona was barely five feet tall. She could really get people going in the shop when she would put on her really strong Scottish accent or Brogue as they call it.

The shop itself was in three rooms of the Main Base Hobby Shop. The biggest room was where several tables had been set up for pouring the plaster molds with ceramic "slip" or liquid clay mud, with a few tables around the edges which were used as painting work benches. A counter for selling supplies ran part way down one wall, on the left.

The next room, a smaller one was where the three hundred or so plaster molds were stored and the third room, the smallest of the three, was the kiln room where the ceramic pieces were fired or baked.

Since I worked the day shift with the Navy, Fiona, the Scottish lady, would open up the shop in the morning after her husband went to work and her kids were off to school. She unloaded the kilns and then reloaded them with whatever we had received the evening before for firing.

There were six of the biggest kilns I have ever seen. And I have been doing ceramics professionally for many years. These things were huge. Both Fiona and I worked on Saturdays, with just me on Sunday as she and the other helper Roseanna, a likeable Italian lady and good friend, usually went to church with their families.

The kilns sat on individual metal stands about a foot off the cement floor and were a good three feet across the top by about four feet deep. If we had the mold for it you could have comfortably put your toilet in one of them; they were that big. Most days we needed all six kilns operating to handle the things that came in for firing.

I, on most days, went to the shop when I got my clothes changed and was off work, at about 4:00 pm. I relieved Fiona to go home and cook for her family while either Roseanna or I would lock up at night after closing. It was a good system for all concerned. The people got served, the shop made enough to cover a bit more than expenses and a lot of really nice lamps, dinnerware and home accessories were made. But first and foremost, it gave people something to do and lots of other people with similar interests to talk to.

This one particular Saturday morning I am running a little late, but not by a lot, maybe an hour behind. I wasn't worried because I knew that Fiona had put in some things for herself to be fired a couple days before and was really looking forward to seeing how they came out. I knew she would be early. No problem, right? Oh silly me.

I drove up and parked outside, talked to the manager of the wood shop for a few minutes and waited for the two women who, I knew, were patrons of the ceramic shop and walked in with them.

We entered the shop through the propped open door. The two ladies went to the right and began setting out their paints and brushes. I called for Fiona since I didn't see her in the main room and figured she was in the mold storage room or in the Kiln room. I heard a very faint little Scottish voice call back to me but I couldn't understand it or figure out where it was coming from.

Some of the molds were quite large and very heavy, I shifted into warp drive and ran into the mold room thinking that Fiona may have had one of them fall on her or something. No Fiona.

Again the little Scottish voice called out, only this time a little louder; I could just make out "HELP." She had to be in the kiln room. Uh-oh.

Did I mention that the Kilns were powered by Electricity? Yep, with 220 volts and a bus load of Amps each, there is some serious juice there folks. Oh crap!

As I went running full speed ahead (Navy remember), the sight that greeted me turned my knees to water and I immediately went into hysterics and just collapsed in a heap on the floor. The other two ladies in the shop came running, thinking God only knows what. Then it was the three of us in our own individual heaps on the floor, tears running down our faces, just absolutely dying with laughter.

All we could see was one of those three step kitchen stool things lying on its side in front of the last Kiln, with tennis shoe covered feet and two already short legs sticking up. From just below the knee, waving frantically as their owner was yelling at the top of her now heavily accented Scottish voice.

She was a bit excited. "When ye bloody idiots 'ave quite finished, would one of ye like to gi' me self a wee 'and, to sorrrt me self out of this sodding thing, if t'would nae be too much botherrr." Don't you just love how they can roll their "R's" like that? Did I mention that I had been running a bit late that morning? She had been early.

Fiona, being somewhat abbreviated shall we say, had to use the step stool to be able to reach the bottom of the kilns, well actually to reach just about anything in the Kiln. She did this by standing on the very top of the stool and by putting one hand on the far side of the cavity she could then lean over and just reach the bottom while her feet were now about eighteen inches above the stool.

As she bent over the near edge she was then about mid-thigh or somewhere around there, at least in that vicinity. She had been in the process of emptying the kiln, and while the kiln was not hot, it was still pretty warm. She had been in there quite a while and "nearrr had been baked done ta a fair turning," as she put it later.

Well her bracing hand had slipped and ka-bump in she went, head first. But she didn't have the strength to push her body back up. While not fat by any means, she was ... well, "a bit stout" as she called it, and was now "a wee bit stuck." Vertical push-ups can be a real chore at the best of times.

The three of us began trying to pull and lift her up and then out of the kiln. All while almost limp with laughter since she had now progressed to cussing in Gaelic. My two hysterical -- though drafted -- assistants had a leg or foot each and were proving to be nearly worthless.

All this was going on, with me trying hard not to get a grip on anything tender or put hands where they do not belong on a lady, in what was now a very cramped kiln. Well, let's just say it took a few minutes and a great amount of attention to detail, to get her slightly overheated and sweat damp self upright and standing back on the floor again.

I am sure, judging by their expressions when the next people that came into the shop about a half hour later, they must have thought we had all been smoking some whacky weed, sniffing paint fumes or whatever, or had all completely lost what few brains we still had.

There was Fiona still kind of Sunburn red faced, two other ladies wiping tears and me holding my sides while the four of us were laughing and absolutely useless sitting around a work bench.

The "What the hell is going on in here" from one of the new matronly arrivals did nothing except start us all off again. I guess you had to have been there.

# Fluffy takes a trip.

Not many people had a family pet on the Island. The cost, which had to be paid by the owner, was really high to get the family dog or cat shipped up there. The limit was one dog or two cats. They had to pay the full "people" fare from Seattle through Anchorage and then out to Adak. Then when you factor in the eagles and even the little artic blue fox, which is only about the size of a big house cat but less than half the size of a regular fox, and they will all on a rare occasion attack a smaller animal. Well, most people did not figure it was worth the money

Good friends of mine, Roseanna and her husband Rick, had a cocker spaniel. He was rather chubby, and probably not the bravest that ever lived, but was a really nice friendly dog. But even he had a close eagle fly by one afternoon, as he tried to explain to the eagle that he wasn't that kind of dog, if you know what I mean.

They had a hell of a time for the next week or so just getting him to go outside in the fenced back yard to go do his business. He wanted a human to come with him. And even then he would run like hell, hump up, do his thing almost before he got stopped, and run like hell back to the side of the human, all while checking the sky frantically.

Have you seen the commercial on television where the woman has a Chihuahua on a leash and a Golden Eagle swoops in and takes it away? Well, the lady two doors down from my friends had that actually happen, nearly.

I was looking out the window of the Solarium where Roseanna and I were painting ceramics when it happened. It really didn't register what was going on for a second. My brain was on ceramics and just couldn't get a grip on the fact that the neighbor was not flying her dog kite.

So here is the picture for you. Imagine hearing a woman scream, you look out the window and there she is. A tiny little oriental lady is holding onto one end of a pretty long leash and sliding across her yard. The leash, while pointed up (?) at about a forty five degree angle, has a Toy Poodle with an eagle attached. Ok, got all that?

So it took a second to fully register, but hey, give me a break. And how many times have you ever seen something like that? It just did not register. Perhaps the eagle thought it was two for one day at the deli or something because, it was not letting go.

With the dog yelping, the dog owner was screaming in what I think was two languages. The eagle was screaming back at her and I was yelling at the eagle to just drop the pooch. I ran outside with Rosanna hot on my heels and threw the only thing I had in my hand at the time. A 10-0 detail paint brush.

Either the eagle figured that the bonus on the other end of the leash was not going to go, or let go, maybe the furry yelping thing was not worth the effort. I don't know which went through its bird brain, but with a "thud" the dog hit the ground on the outside of the fence. I am pretty sure the eagle was not all that impressed by the straw thin paint brush whizzing past him. It was my best detail brush too.

The dog owner just yanked the dog back over the fence mid-yap, kind of 'YA...irk', and dragged the yappy little cretin back in her house. She didn't even ask me how my paint brush was doing. A rude thankless woman!

For the next couple weeks after that, it was not uncommon to see an eagle perched on her fence like it was saying "Hey Fido, ya wanna come out and play? Heh, Heh, Heh." Then all sorts of stuff would magically begin to levitate out of the house and zip past the eagle. A mop, or a broom, or a vase, an ashtray and one time a dish rag. A dish rag? Whatever. All accompanied by what sounded like very excited Japanese.

I think the little oriental lady with the poodle was one of those mystics from the Far East you hear so much about. But her leash did get a lot shorter. I found out later that with the exceptions of a small cut and some minor punctures the dog was fine. It sure didn't hurt his "Yapper" any.

Of course Little Voice had to put his two cents worth in, "What did you think you were going to do with the tiny little paint brush with about one hair in it, paint that Pterodactyl's toe nails. Let me tell you, Fat Boy, I saw the nails on that thing and you didn't have enough paint in the whole bottle to do the job with a roller."

Walking back to the Solarium from the dreary, misty, over cast back yard I asked Little Voice if he ever heard the song "Home, Home on the Range?" And since he is ever with the quick reply he answered "You mean the one about the cloudless clear sky? You mean that one?"

"Yeah that one, especially the part about 'Never is heard a discouraging word.' Sure don't apply to you, does it there, mouthy?" I should have known better than to get into it with Mr. I always have a snappy reply.

So with his usual sneer, his answer was predictable. "Well, Cowboy Bob, the sky is trying to rain again so that part sure doesn't apply to either of us right now does it? Why should the rest of that lie? Suck it up, Fat Boy." I'll bet he had been talking to my wife.

#

#  Four Wheeling Down A Dirt Road

On the Communications Site end of the island, there are some small dirt roads. Well, to be honest, there are a lot of them on the island. Only one lane you understand, so if you met another vehicle coming from the other way someone has to back up. No other choice as the penalty for driving on the tundra really hurts the wallet.

A guy that I knew from work, Jon didn't have a car or truck. He lived just a couple doors down from my room. We had talked a few times and he had said that he would like to see some of the island. Since I had a 4X4 truck and had explored quite a few of the roads leading to abandoned cabins and some scenic spots we decided to go exploring.

With a full tank of gas, a couple sandwiches in a brown paper sack, and two cokes we were ready. The tundra was starting its yearly growth sprint so it was about level with the bottom of the windows. Not a real problem, or so I figured since the road was two clear brown streaks in the grass, it would be kind of hard to miss it.

Oh we stayed on the road alright and had visited several nice cabins that people had claimed and fixed up. Along with one or two that we had figured wouldn't take too awfully much to make decent and then we would have our own place to get out of the barracks for a while. Cabin Fever had to be better than Barracks boredom. One was close enough to the barracks that it would be a good walk but not impossible for Jon since I worked at the ceramic shop most evenings and weekends.

While the cabins inland were nice, what I really wanted was something with a view. I had heard about the Octagon Cabin by this time and although I didn't know exactly where it was, I figured it couldn't be all that hard to find. I had a general idea of the area it was in and I mentioned it to Jon. This was to be the day that I first went to it.

It sounded good so we sat out to find it. I drove up this road and down that one for a couple hours until we came to a fork in the road far out in the tundra. I knew that the coast or edge of island was to the left, and the Octagon Cabin sat on that edge, so to the left it was.

Since there were tracks of other trucks in the dirt I knew that others had been this way, but none recently. I didn't feel I would need to practice my backing up skills quite yet.

I had put one of those banner things on my windshield that my youngest son had given me. It was because the truck was a sort of Robin's Egg Blue with light grey primer paint freckles that the banner read "PAPA SMERF". Most people that knew me, knew the truck as the Smerf-mobile.

The Smerf-mobile was old but it went where I wanted it to go and had not got me so stuck or in a problem that the four wheel drive wouldn't get me out of. So far.

So there we were, in the Smerf-mobile, creeping along at about ten mile per hour. The grass was tickling our elbows out the windows on a nice day out for a drive.

I saw what looked like where the twin tracks went up a small embankment but I couldn't see where it went from there as the top of the bank was slightly higher than my eye level. But hey, that should be no problem for the Smerf-mobile; it had gone up a lot steeper climbs than that one.

Down shift to first, a little gas and... stalled it. Damn it. Restarted, backed up a few feet and tried again..... stalled it. Humm, maybe this is a little steeper than it looks.

Restart, back up again, a little more speed and up we go. Slam on the brakes, the front wheels slam down, bounce once and we stopped with a beautiful view of the bay and smaller rock islands ahead.

Wonder of wonders I could see the road going up to the Octagon Cabin, and could even see a small corner of its roof, straight to my left about maybe a half mile along the top edge of the cliff I was stopped on. "Hey look man, the Octagon Cabin is right over there," I said. But I got no response from the passenger side of the truck.

I turned my head to the right and was looking at the back of Jon's head. So I repeated "Hey man, did you hear me? The Octagon Cabin is right over there."

As he slowly turned his head back toward me I noticed that he had a white knuckle grip on the panic handle above the door. His face was even whiter and his voice was barely above a whisper as he said "Back up."

"Why? This is a great view. Just look at it." I said

"Screw the view, back up," his whisper came back.

"OK, fine." I backed up, which put us back down the little hump the crest of which was only a foot or so behind the back wheels.

Once we came to a stop, he proceeded to seriously punch hell out of my arm. "Hey what the hell was that for?" I shouted. He didn't say a word he just opened his door, crooked a finger for me to follow him and climbed back up that little embankment.

When we were both on top of the little hill, he was standing in the left wheel track and pointing to the right one. There in the dirt was clear evidence of what his problem was.

I could see plainly that my front tires had left the ground for a short space when they had crested the top of the hill. Then a short clear skid mark in the dirt as I had locked the brakes, which ended less than six inches from the cliff edge and a three hundred foot drop straight down. His side of the truck had been over... well basically nothing but thin air.

I still don't know why he never wanted to go exploring with me again. But I did figure that since I had seen the end if that trail, I didn't need to go there again. Ever.

And it took a while for the gossip about me being a certifiable nut case to die down too. I don't know where that one got started either.

#  Orca and the Sea Food Buffet

I drove my truck along the main road to Main Side nearly every day. I worked for the Navy at the Communication Site and worked at the Ceramic Shop in the evening and on week-ends. This meant that I made at least one round trip up and down that road several times a week for many months.

On each trip up or down, I passed the wide spot in the road where I could pull off and park to just watch the sea below the cliff. This had become a normal pattern for me once or twice a week. The gulls that lived near there used that part of the sea to find fish and whatever else they could eat. It was handy to their nests in the rookery just up the coast less than perhaps one quarter of a mile away.

These birds were really a bigger variety of the gulls we have in Pensacola at the beach and on the land fill site. Still a startling white with their black accents they would soar and dive into the water for hours on slim wings nearly as wide as an Eagle's. I was just happy to sit in the truck and watch. Sometimes I would see seals in twos and threes hunting or just playing in the waves below, close to the shoreline.

The seals would stop and just watch me for a few minutes then, while always keeping one eye on me, they would go back to their game of 'bite your tail flipper tag'.

This day was particularly nice. Clear and calm weather had started the day before and by now the sea was fairly flat. Two seals played, watched and then began playing again. While one just sort of hung motionlessly in the water, the other one took off in pursuit of what I assumed was a fish or something else to eat.

As I looked at the seal that was just looking at me, it seemed like the sea had suddenly developed a hole, and the seal fell into it. I watched in disbelief as in a moment the sea turned blood red and small bits of flesh floated to the surface. One minute the seal was there, the next it was just gone.

A huge fin surfaced and disappeared as the hunting orca came up for a breath or a burp, I'm not sure which. When the fin sank back under the surface, the ever hungry gulls, which had all been watching from a short distance above the waves, got excited and began diving for the tidy-bits of seal meat.

It didn't take very long for the gulls, who are naturally gluttons, to get greedy. First in ones and twos then utter gangs of them they began to alight and settle on the bloody patch of water.

I had a hard time understanding what had happened for a moment. I had never seen anything so sudden, or terminal, as that. While the seal had been watching me, the orca came up directly from below it and "Crunch" the seal was gone. Orcas don't play with their food much it would seem. But the gulls sure did.

Within minutes there had to be close to fifty of them squabbling and fighting over small scraps, while making a heck of a lot of noise as they complained to the bird next to themselves that the other bird was getting all the big pieces, or whatever. This went on for just a few minutes.

The hole appeared again, this time directly under the largest collection of Gulls. "Crunch," gull fingers for desert. The few that were left did the "Scramble, Scramble all flights, danger below!" I just figured that it served them right to find out that they didn't have the biggest appetites after all.

Amid much gull screaming and frantic beating of wings, the big top fin of the orca nonchalantly surfaced and disappeared again. But none of the swarming birds that were left wanted to go back for even one little feather which was now floating on the surface among the seal blood and scraps.

#  Candlestick Sea Otter Nursery

At the far end of Clam or Candlestick Lagoon, there is an area that the sea otters have taken over as their nursery area. It is now mid-summer or what should have been summer at home in the land of warm sunshine. But this is Adak, and while there may be bright sunshine and clear skies it is far from warm.

Sea otters are really funny critters. When they are playing and messing around you would swear there is not one bone in their bodies. They twist and turn to almost tie themselves into a knot sometimes. They don't of course but man, are they ever flexible!

It is rather weird if you think about it. Dogs, cats and most other land based creatures can swim naturally almost from birth yet they don't live in the water. Otters spend very little time on land. They do their hunting, playing, catch fish and with a rock lying on their chest they smash the hard shells of clams to eat. They conduct their courtship practices and even give birth in the water. But they have to be taught how to swim. Another weird thing about them is that they have more hairs per square inch than any other animal on earth. They need every one of them to stay warm as they trap a small air pocket against their skin to keep warm as they swim the waters where they live.

Over six hundred individual hairs grow on each square inch of an otter's body, and they are softer than mink. That is pretty soft. With their comical faces and a mouth full of teeth with webbed paws and claws that they use to constantly groom themselves they always look like they are about to start laughing, and they are immensely curious.

There is one other weird thing about Sea Otters.

I got out my camera early one morning, I had seen a few otters in Candlestick Lagoon and people said that if I really wanted to see some, there were hundreds, at the upper part of the lagoon, a place I had not been to before. That sounded like I needed to take a walk. No problem, it is only two or three miles around the lake. Now let me tell you that three miles is not all that far, normally. And shouldn't take all that long to walk all the way around it. But in Adak? In that wind? At those temperatures? Marathons don't last that long.

Anyway, off I go. I had a warm hat, coat, insulated shoes, gloves, thermal underwear, scarf, camera with lots of film, tripod, the camera's gadget bag to hold the extra lenses and stuff. I had bought good hiking shoes the week before, I was ready. "Yeah right, Fat Boy, you have never got that ready part right yet." I'm thinking it would have been nice to have left the Little Voice in my head back in the room, no such luck.

"So okay there Mr. Little Knows-it-all, what did I forget?" Yeah call his bluff that is the ticket. Put him on the spot for once.

"How the hell should I know? You are the one who wants to play Wild Kingdom or Jungle Safari there, Sir David Attenborough. I'm just along for the ride," he replies.

"Freeloader," I groused.

Out the back of the barracks I went with my load of stuff. As I walked past the Motor Pool, Little Voice is muttering, "Well would you look at that, a road around the Lagoon, we could be riding in a nice warm truck." Yeah right, for about two hundred yards before it went out of sight over a little hill... Oh the road is still there alright, but I don't think it is going to get me close enough to the lagoon to be able to see any otters.

Little Voice says "Hey there, Davy Crew-cut, walking over those rocks is not going to be easy, I vote for the road." Maybe not, but I wanted to get close to the otters.

There I am, climbing around and falling over rocks along the shoreline of Candlestick Lagoon. Rocks? Oh yeah, there are rocks there. They range from fist size up through Volkswagens, and everything in between. But, I don't see any otters. Twisted ankles? Oh yeah, got two of them, plus one cold wet foot.

And since the foot is whining to Little Voice about when I had almost fallen off of a particularly slippery rock, of course he is on their side. He and I are having a running "discussion." I prefer to discuss, that little jerk wants to argue. Anyway, there we are having this discussion among my selves. I am carrying all this stuff, and him too, and he wants to gripe.

About a quarter mile later, we are still fussing back and forth when... there it is. The damned road! Yup, it had curved around and came right down to the edge of the Lagoon. Oh I just hate it when he gets that sneer in his voice. "Told ya so. But it is easier ('snicker, snicker') ain't it? And just think, we could be in a nice dry, warm truck too." He just won't let up. He will get on a nerve and then just tap dance an Irish jig on it.

Right about there I wanted to get roaring drunk, just to give him a hangover. But since I don't drink, I preferred to remain aloof, suffer in silence and pretend I didn't hear him. Another quarter of a mile and there they are: Otters, lots of otters. There are big ones some medium sized ones and even babies riding on their mother's stomach. They are "adorable", as my youngest Granddaughter Elyssa would say. (I have often thought my Daughter-in-Law seemed smart enough to be able to spell Elisa, but hey who am I to judge? Ah, the drive to be different. Another friend also named her daughter Allyssia; it sounds like Elisa but....)

The camera comes out of the bag and I think I am getting some great shots. With all the lenses and multipliers that I have I can really zoom in on them. Some of them are even swimming alongside me as I walk along. Not real close you understand, they stay out in the ice water about twenty feet or so from the shore. As I go along I can see some that are on land ahead, but when I get to where they were, poof, they are gone. But now there are a lot swimming along keeping an eye on me. If I stop, they just have their heads out of the water and I notice lots of little baby otters floating along like they are all on some rafts that I can't see.

As I zoom in with the camera for a real close look at the nearest baby and Little Voice says "What the hell is going on, they are barely touching the water." I found out later that when the babies are born they have so much fat and their mother's milk is so rich they float like little brown furry corks with cute faces. That's weird, I thought. I did mention that there are hundreds of eagles on Adak, didn't I?

As I walked along taking roll after roll of pictures, mostly of a group of mothers with their babies on their tummy's, just cruising along without a care in the world. Every now and then a mother would disappear from under the baby, leaving him just bobbing along like a little fur ball. Then they would surface under the little one and 'Presto!' he is back on her belly. Wow! That is really neat how they do that, but weird.

About this time I saw an eagle coming, and so did the otters. At first I didn't pay much attention to the eagle and didn't think much of it to be honest with you. The otters start chattering to each other as the eagle got closer and closer.

As the eagle cleared the edge of the lagoon it is about thirty feet or so from three sets of new mommas and about two feet above the water. Without even breaking a sweat the eagle just swoops lower and snatches one of the babies up, one swift strike with the beak the baby went limp and the Eagle just flew away. Mom had headed for the bottom, but since otter Junior can't swim or dive, zippo he's lunch, off of a fur tray. The adults are kind of on the large side of what an eagle can pick up out of the water, but the babies are just snacks.

While nature is surely beautiful, it is also cruel.

As soon as the eagle left, the otters resumed playing and watching me... Like nothing had happened.

I said sorry to the momma, but she just went to the bottom, got a rock and a clam and continued eating like "Oh well, I'll make another one next year. Damn, these are good clams."

Damn it! That is what I forgot. Something to eat and drink.

"Oh fine! Now we are going to starve, dehydrate AND freeze while Mrs. Benihana eats us, way to go, Fat Boy." Little Voice is such a whiner.

I mutter back at him "No, we are not going to do any of those things since we are half way around the lagoon and it has only been two hours since breakfast. Like the cowboys say, Man up."

"You are supposed to be the man, there Cowboy Bob, I'm just a voice remember?" said Little Voice sweetly.

"And stop calling me 'Fat Boy', I'm forty five years old, well-muscled and big- boned" I snapped at him, thinking I have finally got him where I want him.

"Yeah right, Fat Boy. Dream on, but I will go along with the old part and well insulated." His snicker just dripping sarcasm.

God, but don't I hate it when I walk into one of his wise ass remarks. Sometimes I really wish I could punch him right in his little smart mouth. But since both of us have to eat with the same fat lip, that won't work. It sure is tempting though.

I just give up and with all the stuff I brought, continue doing the pack mule thing, trudging along the back side of the lagoon.

About an hour later, as I was coming to Candlestick Bridge, I can see this really pretty little bird standing on the side rail. His little birdy eyes are watching me walk closer, and then my heart stopped. The little bird took one last look at me and just fell over the side of the railing. Wow! Talk about being afraid of man or whatever.

I ran to the bridge and frantically looked down in the clear water. "HOLY CRAP," the bird is flying. Okay, so he is about two feet below the surface but he sure looks like he is flying. Just flapping his wings and flying along as he chased a little tiny fish. I'm thinking "I need to get off this rock before I go completely nuts like that bird."

"Too late," said Voice.

"Shut up," I reply.

"If I do that, you won't have anybody to talk to at all" says Voice. Well he does have a point there.

At forty five, I am the oldest person in a barracks full of people who average about twenty four or so. I do not like to eat alone and have gone into the bar on payday evening on many occasions and announced that I was going to go to the only real restaurant on the island for supper and that I was buying anyone's supper that wanted to go along. No takers.

"Okay, then how about McDonald's?" Silence. "I'll buy a Pizza and Ice Cream at Carvel's, I just don't want to eat alone." The Little Voice pipes up "I'll go."

"Never mind. I'll go eat in the Chow Hall." As I walk away, I can't help but think. I am not the oldest person in the command, but I am the oldest person in the barracks full of kids. Nobody wants to spend payday night with a geezer.

Although I personally didn't have thoughts along the lines of doing harm to myself, during the time I was there. I did spend several hours at times sitting in my truck, perched on the side of a tall hill overlooking the family housing, alone. Of the several people I heard about that had tried it, just one was successful. And that was far too many.

Months of lousy weather, constant cold wind and the perpetual brown landscape can get to you if you let it, and sometimes even if you don't. Suicide was the number one cause of death on the island. But I won't blow smoke at you: being alone again did cause some serious tension in my family.

# The Octagon Cabin and the Landing Lesson.

Some months later, I was at the cabin called aptly enough, 'The Octagon Cabin'. It is unique because it is in fact built in an Octagon. Duh! It took me a few minutes to figure that one out.

Okay, I'm not real quick sometimes so give me a break. "Just sometimes, huh?"

"Shut up Little Voice."

The Army had built it in WWII to overlook the entrance to the harbor and within that view was also where the Shore Battery Gun had been located to protect the harbor. The cliff right in front of where the rusted Gun Mount platform still lays drops over four hundred feet, straight down to a beach of large rocks and flotsam from the sea.

GIs had lived there most of the War and had built it well with a lot of forethought and planning. A pretty steep but rough and now weather-rutted roadway was carved into the side of a large hill leading to the top where the cabin sat. It takes either a good 4X4 vehicle or a stiff climb to get to it. I have forgotten to tell you that the term "GI" stands for "Government Issue." Which originated in WWI.

They had torn the top off of the hill that would eventually be behind the gun, and then continued to dig a huge notch -- of about one hundred feet across and about seventy five feet wide -- down into the seaward, which was also the leeward, side of the hill. This notch left a pretty high mound on the prevalent windward side to deflect the winds up over the cabin.

They had also left a berm of about three or four feet in height along the seaward edge of the notch which, when viewed from the sea, made the cabin well-disguised with only the windows on that side and the low roof showing. A ten foot wide deck ran along nearly half of the eight sides of the cabin so one could sit there in fair weather yet still watch the bay. A sort of basement or cistern was under both the cabin and the deck to provide drainage from the frequent rains. The remains of a wooden outhouse, although now gone, can still be found midway between the cabin and the clothes line at the far end of the notch, abut twenty five yards away along the top of the thin backed ridge. The end posts for it were still there. But wow! Some days the wind really whipped across where the clothes line would have been, I don't think that it would take long for clothes to dry.

Since the men spent probably months up there they had, it would seem to me, figured out a lot of things to make life a bit better. The interior was only one large main room, and a small closet or storage room. With what would be the cooking/heating stove in the middle of the main room, the chimney went through the center of the roof. Since there are deposits of coal found on the island, fuel would not have been a large problem.

It was a great place to just sit and be quiet, with perhaps a few friends, a grill and some good conversation or a good book. The view is magnificent with the resident pod of orca patrolling back and forth below between jagged little rock islands and the eagles soaring above.

Because, there are no nearby lights to interfere at night, a huge blanket bowl of the brightest stars covers the sky on clear nights. If you catch it just right, sometimes a huge bright moon rises in a gap between smaller island mountains and reflects off of the bay at the foot of the cliff.

On a couple occasions I saw timid and shy Arctic Blue Foxes playing below on the grass between the cabin and the edge of the cliff. While I make no claims of being overly religious, one can't help but feel His hand in the creation of the peaceful beauty laid out at your feet from up there.

Only God can make nights and sites like that for mankind to enjoy deep in their soul.

On this particular afternoon as I sat on the deck reading, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Slowly, I turned only my head as I listened to the call of what I think was mother eagle calling to her young as they circled so majestically over the Clam Lagoon end of the island, inland and perhaps a mile or so behind the hill from the cabin.

You can tell the juvenile eagles from the more mature adult birds by their heads and tails. The young birds look a lot like a Golden Eagle, a solid golden brown color. They are born as a ball of fluff, then that is slowly replaced by golden brown permanent feathers from the top of their heads to the tip of their tails. As they grow older they eventually begin to grow the well-known snow white head and tail feathers. At about age three they are mature and their coloring is what we recognize as a fully adult mature American Bald Eagle, the symbol of our Great Nation.

The females are larger than the males with their wings span sometimes slightly over eight feet tip to tip, perfectly made to soar for hours and with enough power to lift large fish from the water, which is their primary diet. But they can be and are obviously scavengers too. Small dogs and the family cat can also be on their menu.

This particular adult was trying to talk or coax her young to land on one of the posts that had been the clothes line supports. The young bird was not at all sure that he wanted to try it. She had gone on the leeward side of the hill out toward the bay and was now coming back pretty quickly but not having any problems as the air was calm out of the wind, junior was above her by about one hundred feet or so just watching and, I assume, trying to learn.

The adult had circled and lined up for a landing on the post of her choice which was the one nearest me, this had put her below the height of the top of the post and perpendicular to the crest of the hill. And that is when it got interesting.

Like I said before, the wind really comes ripping across the top of that part of the hill sometimes, and although this was not one of those ripping times it was still a pretty good breeze. But since I was sitting on the downwind side of the cabin which in turn was in a sheltered depression of the notch, it was hard to judge how strong the wind really was. As even the slightest breeze blows across the land then hits the face of the hill, it is compressed and therefore multiplied to a lot stronger wind as it goes up then over the top.

With what seemed supreme confidence, Mom's landing gear came down and the grappling hooks were deployed to get ready to land on top of the post made of about six by six inches of old weather beaten wood standing with its flat top about four feet above the ground.

As she came within ten feet or so of the post she began to rise slightly, to put her feet above the top of the post. And that is when the wind coming over the top of the hill hit her.

As she went over backwards, in the first half of an unplanned back flip, "CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, chick" she screamed. She rolled back over and gained some altitude, I swear I could see her glaring at the post as she regained her dignity. Back around to the bay side, junior was still in his position above. She approached a bit faster this time. Glide in, a little rise, flare out and "CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, chick" over she goes again.

Now she is really pissed. I could hear her chick, chick, chicking and hissing from her position from what seemed about fifty feet over the post. But she was apparently determined that she absolutely WAS going to land on that damned post even if come hell or high wind. Three more tries, three more failures, three more Eagle cussing sessions. Then it happened.

She circled at about fifty feet above the post and came in at a steep dive from the downwind side again, wings folded and three inch talons gleaming in the sunlight.

Like a white tipped brown streak she screamed, what sounded to me like, a War Cry at the post. As she threw her feet forward she partially opened her wings for just a fraction of a second to provide air brakes. With talons spread, wings folded hard against her body, I could see several shorter golden brown feathers wind whipping in the vortex over her body's back and sides. She sank Needle sharp points into weather aged grey wood and drew it closer by winched herself to the post in the wind. Her attitude seemed to just ooze "I have you now, come here."

Once secure in her grip she leaned into a now compressed stiff wind, she opened her mouth screamed again, bent down and ripped a big chunk of wood off of the thing that had refused and eluded her many times.

She was pissed off, severely.

For the next few moments she just held that pose, glaring at the post with the eight inch strip of wood still clamped in her mouth. She finally shook her head to get rid of the offending wood piece, threw her head back and screamed her victory cry to the heavens.

Meanwhile Junior must have figured that laughing at mom right then was probably not a really good idea. He made a sharp turn and headed back toward where they had obviously come from. And he sure was not going to wait on mom. I mean to say he really left, in a big hurry.

She stayed on top of the post for what seemed like several long minutes staring hate and promised violence at the offending post, tilting her head first one way then the other. As if she was daring the offending post to give even the slightest hint of continuing the fight by so much as the slightest wiggle.

She began releasing first one Talon tipped foot, withdrawing the hooks then resent them harder and deeper, over and over again, first one foot then the other. Each time the death hooks went in they were sent just a little harder and deeper. I began to feel sorry for the old post, as she continued to glare and stab the post that had dared to refuse her.

Finally, she spread her big beautiful wings and gently lifted in what seemed to be an effortless stalled stationary glide straight up. She sounded her war cry one last time and shot a stream of white waste from her other end as if to say; "Take that too."

With my book momentarily forgotten, I quietly sat, silent, spellbound at the scene I had just witnessed. I watched in awe as this magnificent creature arose a few feet, dipped her right wing into a slow turn only to return over the post once more.

Although she didn't attempt another landing, I could almost feel the aurora of her anger. I silently prayed that the post didn't, like people say, "get dumb as a post," and move. With almost regal presence she soared slowly away, with only the occasional wing beat, I watched as long as I could see her shape.

I thanked God to have been privileged to witness from just a few feet away the power and glory of quite possibly one of His most beautiful creations. I found myself feeling deep in my chest that we, as Americans, are also truly blessed to have had our forefathers select this creature as our nation's symbol, instead of the turkey that Ben Franklin had proposed.

I also felt a great sense of gratefulness and relief that I wasn't born to be a post on Adak, Alaska at the Octagon Cabin.

#  Fishing Tackle and Techniques, Adak Style

Perhaps this would be a good place to explain how to fish on Adak. Sure why not, it's not like I am going anywhere for the next year and a half. I might as well find out how to do it. Adak style.

Fly fishing is fun, but it takes some serious equipment if you are going after Red Salmon. Those things get really big, well a lot bigger than most of the Bass in my pond at home and certainly bigger than the bream and blue gill that live there. But since the salmon don't usually eat on their trips to the spawning pools, fly fishing is a great but pretty much unproductive exercise. Besides which, they look like zombie fish when they get to the breeding pools, big hunks of flesh hanging off and... Eeeeeuuuu! And it is not legal to fish for them when they are at the various breeding pools in the island; I guess somebody in Fish and Game must have figured they had enough problems already.

I mean really. Would you want to be snagged out of bed with a three pronged grappling hook in the back of your neck, right when you are about to get lucky? I didn't think so.

Or how about some nit-wit with a long stick and a five pronged barbed steel thing called a Frog Gig jabbing into your side or whatever else you have sticking up at that time. It sure does not sound like much fun to me. After all the darn salmon already look like they were swimming at about three hundred miles per hour when they had a head on with one of those big granite rocks I was talking about in the landing part of this story, they really have bent the hell out of their bumper. And they are actually the lucky few to be there to even try to get lucky in the first place. The girly ones don't look much better either.

Salmon are not like real folks. Once they get to where all the whoopee happens, all of them sort of make love to... pebbles on the bottom? The she ones lay their eggs there and swim off to smoke a cigarette, eat Bon-Bon's or talk about handbags or do something else with the girls and then die. While the boy ones are going "WHOOOOOOOPEE PEBBLES!" And a good time was had by all, until after those cigarette parts.

As I was driving by the sea shore during the early part of the salmon run, I couldn't help but notice that the fishermen were using pretty heavy, large-capacity spinning reels and a pretty stiff rod, with lots of heavy line. They would cast out and then it looked like they would jerk the rod back, reel like crazy and repeat. I figured that salmon must like a really fast retrieve. Ha! Not so there, Bill Dance. They were practicing what is called Fly Fishing, Adak Style.

The so-called Adak Fly is a 3/0 or 4/0 treble hook with one ounce of lead around the middle where the three hooks come together. No bait on the hooks is required or used. Just chunk it out as far as you can and rip it back on a blind retrieve, hoping to snag a fish.

Sounds simple don't it? The hook part looks like it is big enough that a pirate could use it to board somebody's boat or something, and is about half the size of your palm. It works pretty well as long as you are lucky and 'snag hook' a fish in the head or somewhere else in the front part. But, heaven help you if you didn't eat your Wheaties, and you are one of the unlucky fishermen to hook one near the tail!

Bear in mind these fish swam out to sea not very long after they are born, among the Sharks, Barracuda, Orca and God only knows what else, for about three years. Talk about really strong! Let's just say that the word doesn't quite cover it. It feels like you have your fishing line attached to a Hell's Angel's Harley tail light, and the guy on it ain't happy about it. The salmon are not real tickled about it either, they are on their way to the only blind (or any other kind) date of their lives, and you want to stick a three pronged sharp hook in his butt or head or whatever? The fish are not particularly amused.

The one and only time I tried this type of fishing, I was fishing on a sandbar about thirty feet from shore, I had one of those hooks come zinging past my ear and splashed a few feet in front of me. Some dumb assed guy on the bank behind me, without looking, and while talking to his friend, had chucked this baby grappling hook and just began his retrieve, still without looking.

I can think pretty fast when I see a white streak of bubbles from the hook coming straight back toward me and the line going zzzz across my shoulder. I grabbed this guy's line, wrapped it around my hand and whipped my knife out. The heavy line went kind of "Ping" when I cut it while it was under tension; the jerk was trying to set the hook!

Oh and the Hook? It was hanging less than twelve inches from my hand. The ex-owner of it started yelling at me for cutting his line, so I just naturally started for the beach with his string still wrapped around my fist. I had every intention of the only blood being let would be his, if he was still there when I arrived. Oh trust me on this one; I had every intention of giving his hook back to him. He tossed his rod to his friend and took to his heels.

Damn good idea there, sport model.

So I walked up to his friend, held up the hook which was still attached to the line wrapped around my hand. I pointed to the little scorch mark the line had left on the shoulder of my bright Blue Nylon wind breaker. Neither of us spoke a word. He gently took it from me, as I unwrapped the embedded line from my hand, then he left too.

Not one of the other thirty or so fishermen who had witnessed all these events made a sound. Wow, another one of those good idea things! Two examples of good thinking by idiots in one day, I found it just amazing. I never fished there again. Too damn many idiots in a small area, so I figured that if I went back I would just be one more. Nope, that prospect was not for me.

The last way is a lot gentler. It is Spin cast fishing with a pretty small metal lure, made by "Blue Fox", that actually has a little bell that rings and some people put a few salmon eggs on the treble hook. It works pretty well too.

This last way is used, with slight variations in tackle sizes, fishing for big salt water cod and halibut. The halibut part involves a boat and tackle strong enough to fight Moby Dick's grandpa. There is a relative of a halibut around Pensacola. We call them a flounder. Which when compared to a full grown halibut, is a minnow. Halibut routinely go over two hundred pounds, up to about four hundred pounds. I don't like fish that much.

Cod, while not a lot smaller could be caught from the dock or sea wall in the harbor. Again the spinning rod and reel is used with a more sensible treble hook, a one or two ounce lead weight, a chunk of bait, a toy balloon, a roll of Life-Saver Candy, and a roll of kite string.

I said the same thing you probably just said when you read what everyone told me I needed to fish for Cod in the Harbor. "Say what? A kid's toy balloon, kite string and a roll of Life-Savers Candy?" Yup, you got it. And I am not kidding.

This is how it is rigged.

Tie the lead weight to the end of your line, come up about three to five feet from the weight and make a loop about a foot or so long. You are going to put the hook on that part, a steel leader too if you prefer. Next come up about another ten feet or so and tie another loop of about a foot or so. You are going to thread and then loop back over the top of a plain old white Life-Saver onto that part. I use the Wintergreen ones because I usually eat most of them and I like the Wintergreen flavored ones. The fish don't care much what flavor you use. They don't eat them anyway.

Blow up the Balloon to about eight to twelve inches in diameter. Cut a piece of kite string off of the roll about three feet long and hold on to it for later. Tie the kite string still attached to the roll onto the balloon, then come back from the balloon about two feet and make a loop in the kite string.

Now comes the really tricky part. Tie that piece of kite string you cut off before, between the ballooned kite string loop and the Life-Saver. Be careful, Life-Savers break real easy.

You have to fish with the wind at your back or it won't work. Ease the weight, the hook and the balloon with the Life-Saver gently into the water and allow the wind to push the balloon out to the middle of the channel or whatever hole you want to fish in. Hold onto the kite string roll, duh, and allow the fishing line to run out with the balloon. The water will dissolve the Life-Savers, a sharp jerk on the Kite string will also work, and allow the hook and weight to drop. Pull the balloon back in with the kite string. Wait for a bite. You can't cast out that far, even when casting with the wind, but you can get way out with this rig.

A lot of people don't like eating cod because of the sea parasite worms in the meat. They are not hard to get rid of. Here is how to do it.

You can do this as soon as you catch the Cod if you wish, and throw the parts you don't want to eat back. But that usually means that you have more stuff to carry with you when you go fishing. When you get to the cleaning table cut fillets or steaks from the cod. Then drop them into a pan or bucket of Coca-Cola, or Pepsi, or 7-Up. Anything with a lot of carbonation will work. The worms breathe the Coke or whatever and swell up. They can't burp, so the hole they are in becomes too small and out they come. Simple. The meat is clean and you can use the worms for fishing later if you want to.

Oh, incidentally this trick also works to get hermit crabs out of sea shells too.

#  The Orca and the Sea Otter in the Harbor

Since I have already explained about how to go fishing for cod with a toy balloon, I won't go into that again.

"Thank God," said The Little Voice in my head "You must really like to hear the tactile click from the keyboard or something."

"Hey, give me a break here I'm trying to paint a verbal picture for someone who might be reading this, to see it in their mind's eye," I shot back.

"Well you have bad finger breath, they smell like an ashtray, Fat Boy." it replied. "You just better hope they don't need mental glasses."

"Whatever, now shut up and let me concentrate here" I returned, in my very best wanna-be-author voice.

I couldn't help but think that everything and everybody wanted to be a critic.

* * *

It hadn't rained all day, the wind was not very strong but it was still kind of chilly. Because of the comparatively mild temperature when I had left the Barracks, I was only wearing a jacket over my Tee shirt and jeans. It was chilly, but not yet cold enough to make me give up fishing for the evening.

I had come to the Harbor at just about dusk, and had tried a few places along the sea wall of stacked rocks without any success. I was now just past the dock and I was in a more sheltered spot. I had been watching a sea otter play around the dock's pilings for the last ten minutes, yet at the same time not really paying attention. I looked out farther in the dimly lit waters of the harbor to see if my balloon rig was far enough out in the water. Just then I heard a pair of noises I can only describe as like air being blown out of then back into something, a little to my left, but my line of sight out that way was obscured by the dock itself.

The noises had divided my attention between the balloon, which was out almost far enough, and the noises to my left and closer to me. Suddenly, in the gloom of shadows at my feet, I felt rather than saw something moving up the rocks I was standing on. Before I could direct my eyes down, a huge square-topped-sail-shaped fin broke the surface right in front of me.

I stand about six feet tall, well give or take a quarter of an inch, and was standing on a rock sea wall of about three feet in height, and the squared off top of this thing was as tall as I am, wall included.

Orca! Killer whale! Big male! Yes, I watch a lot of animal programs on television. All this went through my mind as I watched it leisurely proceed to disappear back under the water. When the last ripple disappeared, I remembered the movement at my feet from before.

"Holy crap!" I dimly remembered something had touched my foot while I was looking at the orca, and there, sitting on my left foot, was of all things a full grown Sea Otter. As I looked down, it looked up with its big curious eyes and without any visible fear of me, almost as if to say "Did you see that thing? It was trying to eat me!"

I got my head working again after the shock of seeing the orca from what had to be no more than ten or fifteen feet away. I realized that it had made the noises I had heard and while I was looking it had about two feet of its back out of the water when it came up for a breath.

The fin reappeared twice more as the Orca was going down and then back past where the refueling dock is at the far end of the harbor; the otter was still comfortable on my foot as it watched the hole in the water it had almost fallen into swim leisurely down and back.

As the orca came back by it raised its head so that one eye could be seen looking toward the shore and us. With seeming indifference it submerged and continued on its way. I eased my foot out from under the otter which was still looking where the orca had been.

I heard a scuffling sort of shuffling noise behind me as I hurried along after the orca trying to catch another glimpse of it before it left the harbor. A quick glance over my shoulder showed the little otter hustling along after me maybe three feet behind my foot. It was looking to keep an eye on exactly where the carrier of all those teeth was. I couldn't blame him really. I figured I would want to know where something that had tried to eat me was too.

My little furry -- if only temporary -- friend and I got to the end of the sea wall just in time to see the orca come up and make a lazy turn back toward us with again one eye out of the water. It passed not more than five feet from us, slowly looking us over. I could feel the otter on my other foot now, trembling. I looked down at it and for some reason said "I'll protect you."

I could almost hear him gulp his fear as he kind of nodded his head still watching the huge sail fin slide silently back under the water going away from us. The orca continued around the end of the breakwater and back out into the bay.

Both of us were frozen in place for what had to be a couple minutes then the otter quietly stood and climbed back down the sea wall and into the water. I could still see, if only barely, the black sail fin as it broke the surface one last time in the moonlight far out in the bay and disappeared into the night.

This had proven to be a wonderful night. I turned and slowly walked back to where I had left my fishing equipment, still reliving what I had just seen and felt. As part of my fishing gear I always took a five gallon plastic bucket with me, more to sit on than to try to stuff a fifty pound cod into.

No sooner had I parked my tail on the bucket, I looked down at the water and the little eyes were looking back at me. The otter had followed me back and was just at the water's edge below me. Otters are very curious but it would seem not overly brave. He stayed in that area for the remaining few hours I fished, still with no luck. But I had a friend. He didn't talk much though, but let me tell you, that is a good fishing buddy. Quiet... not like some mouthy Little Voice thing that I personally know of....

#  Lake Andy and the Salmon

I like fishing; I just don't care for eating fish all that much. Shrimp, yes but fish uh, I can take it or leave it. I like to catch them, but most of the time I just put them back. I have caught Brown Trout and one Rainbow Trout while I was visiting my son when he was stationed just outside Seattle with the Army at Ft. Lewis.

Andrew Lake or Lake Andy as most people on the Island called it was at one time a small Lagoon as Candlestick is. But at some time in WWII the Army closed off the channel from the Sea after the salmon run had finished. This, or so they thought, would provide a constant source of food and recreation for the men.

Then after the war was over they took a lot of munitions such as bombs, cannon shells, bullets and explosives and dumped them into the Sea just off shore. Needless to say a lot of it didn't want to stay on the bottom. So the tide and currents bring them back to the Island from time to time. There are big signs at each end of the Sea Dam saying that live Ordinance may be present and to not walk on the Dam.

As for the Lake itself, did it work? Well, yes and no. Yes the Salmon did hatch, and yes the dam prevented their return to the Sea as they would have normally done before the channel was closed off. But there were a few little problems.

No one seemed to take into account that Salmon are only born in fresh water lakes and streams, and when they return from the Sea back to fresh water they die. Add that little detail to the other fact which was; since there were really no predators in the lake to keep the fish healthy and prevent inbreeding, they over populated and mutated.

Instead of being the two plus feet long and several pounds that they should have been, they were reduced to about one pound and about ten inches long. But they were and still are true Salmon, and that is where the other problem comes in.

The state of Alaska has a limit on the number of salmon you can have, unless you are an Eskimo or one of the other indigenous Indian tribes. Under those conditions, you can have all you can catch. The limit was five fish for everyone else.

It seems that this sailor had only been on the island for a couple days and was waiting for his family to arrive in a few days or weeks, as soon as housing became available. Nobody had told him about the Alaskan Fishing License he would need and the laws and regulations that govern it. Ignorance of the law is no defense.

But some dear soul had told him about Lake Andy and all the fish that lived there. After he borrowed a fly rod, a couple flies and, with a five gallon bucket to sit on, he went fishing. He was having a great big ol' time catching a fish with almost every cast he made.

I had talked to the Game Warden who frequented the area around Lake Andy several times, but since I never kept any of the fish, he was just a nice guy with a job to do. He would stop and talk to me for a while, check my license and go on his way.

However, Alaskan Game Wardens take their jobs very seriously. And really don't have a lot of what you might call patience with people that want to tell them that they a) don't know what they are talking about and b) need to go somewhere and eat doughnuts or c) do something else that would be physically impossible even for a contortionist. In short buzz off. The Sailor might have been one of those big frogs in the pond he came from, but here he was barely Frog Spawn.

Well, needless to say things went downhill from there. Not an easy thing to do when you are standing on a flat shoreline, but this sailor managed to do it. The game warden let the guy borrow his stainless steel bracelets and then, while the fisherman sat in the nice warm Mr. Game Warden Truck, the warden proceeded to count the guy's fish. It should be noted here that the sailor had neglected to put any water in the bucket, so all the fish died pretty quickly once they were put into the bucket.

"Okay, these five I'm setting over here are yours. But the rest of these in your bucket are dead too and so I can't throw them back." The warden said. When he got to thirty five he calmly said that that was enough then choosing to ignore the rest, led the young man back to his truck, put the bucket in the back and they drove away.

The court and the Warden took pity on him, and his new attitude, I guess. I learned later that those extra fish cost the young man $50 each. But that was only part of the headache. Caribou court as we called it was in Anchorage. So while the young man could prevail upon the Navy to fly him back and forth for free, and use leave time to cover him being gone, it was not so with the Game Warden. The ticket to Anchorage on the same plane, the warden's motel room once they got there, his meals and the ticket back were all paid for by the "Offender." That and the $50 per fish can put a real dent in a family budget.... Quickly, it could have been a lot worse.

Sometimes, it is just better to shut up, be nice and do whatever you can to dig out of the hole you are in. Not see just how much deeper you can dig... a coal mine to China from a pimple sized Island on the backside of the world is not a fun hobby.

#

#  Spring Fling at the Hanger

I am pretty sure that you have figured out that Adak didn't have a heck of a lot going on, if you are not interested in fishing, photography, woodworking, or ceramics or the odd caribou hunt.

The cost involved to do woodworking was a bit steep for my blood, since all the wood had to be shipped to the Island. Although there was a photo lab in Recreational Services, it had been pretty much abandoned and lay dormant since an earlier incident of people going in there and having wild touchy feely parties. After all, a 'dark room' really is one. I am pretty sure you can fill in the rest.

That was really a shame because, when the Exchange did it, the film had to be shipped all the way to Anchorage where it was processed and printed, then shipped back. Two weeks were about the normal processing times.

GIs being what they are, the bars did a booming business. It was surprising to me at least that there were not many young single people doing the couples thing. Most of the time, it was either people by themselves or in groups, rarely just a couple off by themselves. Of course I can't speak for what may have been going on behind closed doors. I do know that it darn sure didn't go on behind mine.

Being a Naval Aviation Station it would follow that there would be airplane hangars on the island. And there are... These buildings are huge domed affairs with really heavy "Blast Doors" that weigh several tons. These doors are mounted on a suspension track above and a rail on the ground. Even so it still took a few people to open one of them. Of course there is what is called a man door where a single person can come or go through.

These buildings stood off to the side at the end of the only but short runway, which by virtue of location provides a clear shot to the bay for airplanes. Now there is a happy thought for you. Most of the year, the hangars are unoccupied by planes as this is not a fighter or bomber base, but mostly it is just a way for people and supplies to arrive and depart Adak. On rare occasions it can be and has been an emergency landing strip for commercial airliners going from Seattle or Anchorage to Japan or Korea and China.

Due to the many earthquakes and smaller tremblers that the island experiences from time to time, most of the base housing for families are built on a roller system so that the houses are able to move with the earth rather than fight it. Good idea. Although it does leave a few butterflies in the tummy when you experience one, it is really not all that bad.

On a certain Saturday, the main hanger is used to house the Spring Fling. This is one of the only two major social events of the year. The Annual Navy and Marine Ball is the other. Normally the Marines would have their own, but since there is only a handful of them at most, ever on the island, it makes sense to combine the two and just have one.

But there are a lot of Navy CBs or Seabees there. And they can be a rowdy bunch too when they have a blowout. Since I don't drink and don't do large crowds very well I decided to not participate in the Navy Ball; I baby sat for Rick and Rosanna so they could go.

The girls, aged about 12, and I had fun anyway. As a bonus we enjoyed not having a headache the next day. However, tummy problems are not open for debate. Cake and popcorn are not a real good supper for most kids, but what the heck. I guess I am not a good cook either.

"Charcoal hotdogs are about the best you can manage, Fat boy." Said the Voice.

"Nobody asked you." I reply. "Besides, it wasn't my fault. Rosanna had baked the cake the day before and the girls made the Popcorn before I got there. What else was I supposed to do with a small wash tub of Popcorn?" So we watched DVD movies and ate.

Well now it is time for the Spring Fling and everybody on the island goes to it if they can. Most of the work on base pretty much comes to a halt, and families bring out stuff that they hadn't seen since they unpacked their shipping crate when they first arrived. Those of us that did ceramics or woodworking brought things to sell, and it turns out to be one hell of a yard sale, or a party.

The Ceramics Shop was only open until about noon, I had sent the things I wanted to sell with Fiona and Rosanna. So when the time came I had no problems closing the door as I had been the only one in the place all day anyway.

I locked the door, and went to my Datsun pick-up truck to drive to the hanger. Just as I got in and shut the door, I looked to my left and saw an eagle gliding toward me about a half mile away. It wasn't in any big hurry and was just loafing along. The truck started to tremble a little, and I subconsciously put it down to engine vibration, not really paying attention to it.

But when I looked back at the building that was an entirely different thing. The various chimneys and wires that you could see were swinging and swaying pretty smartly. All the chimneys are made of just metal pipe and have guide wires attached to them and fastened to the roof at various points. They were doing their own Hoochy Coochy Dances and trying their dead level best to break free of the wires. That is when I looked down and guess what. I still had my car keys in my hand. Earthquake!

When the world stopped dancing, I drove down through the base to the hanger. From outside it sounded like everyone was having a great time, laughing and shouting back and forth. As I walked up to the table that Fiona and Roseanna had set up, they each turned to me and handed me $30. The busts of an Indian Man and Woman had made sold for $30 each.

As I took the money I thanked them and asked the two grinning women "Did you feel the Earthquake?"

"OH sure, we had to grab stuff so it wouldn't fall and break." Ceramics does not do the bounce off the concrete thing very well. "No big thing, only about a 6 or so."

"ONLY?" The Little Voice said.

The day progressed, I sold a few more pieces and so did the ladies. We were doing pretty well. At one time or another all of us had taken a break to get something to eat from one of the people selling food and Coffee or soft drinks. Everyone was having a great time. But you could feel some tension in the air. Then someone shouted "Let's have all the Polar Bears outside."

"Polar Bears? What did they mean Polar Bears? Have you been lying to me all this time? You said the biggest animal on this Island was a Harbor Seal. Now they are going to bring out the fragging Polar Bears!" Little Voice can be a bit excitable at times.

"That is what they told me in the Navy Propaganda; let's go see what's up." By now, although I didn't quite know what to expect, I didn't think it would be real big white Bears, well I sure as hell hoped not. Although the mainland of Alaska does have them, it would be one long swim to Adak.

I had just bought a "Sugar-Daddy" candy thing on a stick and was sucking on it since they are too hard to just bite off. But I do like them, a lot. So there I was, my worker friends and their husbands on either side of me as part of the herd walking across the parking lot toward the short dock in the bay. There must have been over a hundred people standing on the dock, WRAPPED IN BLANKETS! What the hell is going on now?

It was the Annual Adak Polar Bear Jump. With the guys in Speedos and cut offs and the girls in cut offs, abbreviated "T" shirts or bathing suits ("bathing suits?") when the blankets fell to the dock someone yelled "JUMP." And I'll be damned if all of them didn't jump off of the dock. This was immediately followed by a four foot drop, right into the world's largest waste deep ice cube tray.

It didn't take this old farm boy long to figure out that there were a lot of just plain nut jobs on this Island. Nope about as long as it took all those people to leave the dock and hit the water.

I honestly think that some of them were trying to do the Jesus Christ thing and run across the top of the water to shore. I would have been willing to bet that there were a lot of guys in that bunch that were now the laughing owners of three Adam's Apples.

I nearly spit my Sugar-Daddy out, but reaction took over as I bit down and saved it from a trip to the dirt. Everyone was laughing and pointing as the "Jumpers" clawed their way back to shore. The blankets were recovered and people were re-wrapped in their personal varying shades of bright pink or blue, (all the blankets were GI Green.) I took the Sugar-Daddy out of my mouth and turned to the folks with me. "Damn but that looks like it was a bit cold in there." I said. Then immediately thought what the hell are they looking at? I know I haven't drooled down my chin or something, well I didn't think so anyway. Then I wished that that had been my problem.

They were not looking at me, they were staring at the Sugar-Daddy. There, standing proud and erect, like the only man at a crowded nudist colony volley ball tournament, was the bright white Dental Cap off my front tooth, stuck in the candy.

So there I am, with my face hanging out. Holding the stick on an almost new Sugar-Daddy with a tooth stuck in it, and with a big gap in my self conscious embarrassed smile. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop, for about as long as it takes to take a deep breath. The supposed women 'friends' screamed, people turned and looked then they screamed too. Then everybody within site burst out laughing, except me of course. I was just standing there looking really silly.

It is kind of like that saying "What do you say to a naked lady?" Hell, I don't know. I couldn't even think of anything to say to a naked tooth. But when I sucked in that breath of cold air, the tooth stub sure began talking to me.

An hour later, an 8.4 Earthquake hit. It was strong enough to swing those heavy (tons) of blast doors out and slam them back against the building several times.

Why didn't somebody tell me that I was standing right next to that damned reporter? He did apologize, not to me you understand, but to the rest of the people that were reading the paper. He was sorry that he was laughing so hard he couldn't hold his camera still. Nice guy. At least I wasn't immortalized or is that mortified? Naw, it has to be the first one because I damn sure was the second.

However, I am proud to be known as the "Highlight of the Event" the next week when the "Adak Tattler" came out. The tooth? No problem, a little tissue to dry the stub and a drop of super glue in the hole and bingo. Good as new. Well everything except my ego.

I knew how my dad had felt when he tried on a pair of slacks in the Lazarus Department Store in Columbus, Ohio when I was a kid. The changing room door turned out to be the door to the front display window. I don't think that that was what my mom meant about being sure to always have on clean underwear. But then again, I didn't ask the crowd in front of the window glass either.

As Dad ran past mom, he threw the slacks at her he yelled "Pay for them, I'll meet you in the car." He then proceeded out the back of the store as mom, with her hand between her crossed legs, draped herself over a clothes rack as the slacks gently settled over her head.

Who knows, I swear she could sometimes speak in tongues. But that is another story. Usually involving something I had done.

# The Dreaded IG Inspection.

If you have never gone through one of these things, you can take my word for it that they are not the most fun thing that the Navy has figured out to do.

I was ready for the IG inspection; the software had been installed and was working like it had done before in Pensacola. The new Inventory Procedures were in place and several people said that it made finding things a lot easier.

My only helper, a Supply Clerk or SK, was so pleased and had been bragging to Base Supply so much about what we had accomplished in such a short time, that the Commander of Supply had called me to talk for a while. He had a couple small glitches in their system and we worked with him to fix them.

The Command was happy because we had found and recovered over $125,000 of duplicated supply requisitions and now they had money to spend again. So, being unaccompanied did have its advantages, sometimes.

During that time we found out that if a FSC (Federal Stock Code number) was just one or two numbers off, you had actually ordered a Surplus Airplane instead of the meter that you wanted. Little things can really mean a lot, sometimes.

My office was in the basement or The Dungeon as we called it, down a flight of metal plate stairs which sounded like a herd of turtles were marching on them whenever anyone came to or went from my office. In an all concrete building the noise just bounces around in the stair well. Who needs an alarm system?

As you may have guessed, I am a coffee drinker. I had bought two Mr. Coffee things within minutes of going through the doors at the Navy Exchange the first time. One was in my barracks room, the other was on my desk at work. A third one joined my personal inventory when I went to work at the Ceramic Shop. The doctor, much later, during my pre-retirement separation physical nearly had a cow when he asked me if I drank coffee. I figured he was new to the Navy, everybody drank coffee. Didn't they? It would not seem so.

When I answered the question of how much do you drink in a day. He nearly passed out. "Seven cups a day?" he said loudly.

"No, Pots." I replied.

"POTS! Jesus, Petty Officer, do you ever sleep?" He yelped.

"Sure, but waking up can be a problem at times. But I just suck up the left over cold coffee still in the cup I take to bed with me, and I'm fine," I replied.

Then I explained about what my Great-Grandfather, Pappy Coy, had told me when I was just a little fella. I had asked him why he only ever seemed to drink coffee, or beer. I never saw him drink water. To which he said "Boy, do you know what fish do in that stuff?" Well that made me start thinking, and I pretty much gave up water too. He had also said that he only drank water after it had been run through a coffee pot or a brewery, and everyone knew when they were little, that old people didn't lie or pull a kid's leg a little.

It made sense to me since he was in his eighties at the time. He had to be lie proof, right? I think I should probably have stock in Pepsi by now too.

The appointment with the psychiatrist was the following week.

Anyway, sorry I get side tracked sometimes.

The Command had been like a fresh kicked Fire Ant hill for weeks. Getting the Publication Library in order, cleaning, painting and going over the books so to speak. The maintenance logs had been reviewed, supply orders gone over with a fine toothed comb and my inventory was rechecked. We were ready, do or die, good or bad. Survive or get put on a cross and then get hung by our... uh.... Whatevers.

The head of the IG team was a full Bird Navy Captain, which is a Colonel in all the other services except the mud puddle navy (Coast Guard to civilians or non-Navy people), with him were a Lt. Commander (Major) and a Master Chief. They checked in with our Commanding Officer and went through his Headquarters stuff, no really big problems there, but that was pretty much to be expected.

Now it was our turn. Our Commanding Officer had lost a few more hairs which he couldn't afford since the Communication Site itself had badly flunked the last inspection. But I must say with pride, the entire bunch at the site had worked hard to get everything in shape. Besides, everyone knew how nit-picky these inspector types can be. "I's" and "T's" are not the only thing to get looked at.

They checked in with the Marine Lieutenant who had only recently taken over the Maintenance Division, and with Master Chief Boyd. Like Jacky Gleason used to say "And awaaaay we go."

The Lt. Commander was going on about the fact that they had just left Corry Station and the Inventory Control and Supply Departments, were using a system that was so great that they were going to recommend that the Navy's Technical Training Command should adopt it Navy wide. Which they later did, it was adopted and still has several parts of it in operation today.

Anyway, Master Chief Boyd let the Lt. Commander go on for a while and when he took a breath, he asked him if he would like to meet the Petty Officer that had set all that up.

"I sure as hell would, if I knew who he was." It seems that the Civilian in charge of Corry Station Base supply was a little miffed as they say. Since I had started with no knowledge, a book on Quattro Spreadsheets and just his basic application skeleton, then made it sing. But, he didn't say who or where I was.

With my now grinning Lieutenant and Master Chief leading the parade it sounded like the building was falling down my metal stairway. "Attention on deck"" and handshakes all round, then MC Boyd introduced me to the Lt. Commander. I was about to crap a brick. Talk about gang up on a fella. Scheesh.

With the seven additional bodies crammed into an office space that was only meant for at most two, there were more stripes and brass than on an all Full African Zebra Marching Band on parade. Between file cabinets, storage racks, book racks, computers and bodies I was beginning to fear for my coffee pot.

The Lt. Commander turned to the Captain saying "Captain, if you and the rest of the team want to go on, I'll handle this and catch up later." Everyone but him, my Supply Clerk and me, trooped back up the stairs. A cup of coffee was offered and accepted. The inspector walked around a bit, opened a couple drawers scanned through a Publication or two and sat down.

"Show me how this computerized system you built really works." I nearly dropped my coffee. That was all he was really interested in?

Two hours later as he was leaving. I asked him when he planned to do the inspection on my area. "I just did" he smiled and walked out.

My Supply Clerk tried to kiss me, but I fought him off. I was in the Navy, but I never had the Navy in me, if you know what I mean? He didn't really, but we both did breathe a sigh of relief.

The rest of the Inspection went really well. The Command passed with flying colors as they say. Looking back now, it is a shame that Adak closed just a few short years after I left. There are probably only a few Fish and Wildlife Game Wardens there with a small Navy caretaker crew left on the island to man the fuel dock and the runway.

As I understand it, they opened the Caribou season with no limits just prior to closing the Island since there would no longer be hunters to keep the herd from over populating their food supply. Then helicopters were brought in and the herd was eradicated.

I don't know for sure if this is correct, but that is what one of the Game Wardens told me was going to happen. I do know that the hunting season was opened with no limits the week before I caught the plane out.

But since hunters are the only predators on the Island large enough to take a Caribou down, it would seem logical. Not real good or nice if you were a caribou, just logical.

#  How to Buy a Toyota, Cheap

There was a young Sailor in the barracks that owned a light blue, less than one year old Toyota pick-up truck. I think Toyota called the color something goofy like Diamond Blue, whatever. Nice truck, 4X4 with an extended cab, long bed and wheelbase. Pretty, and nearly new. He had bought it brand new just a few months before he got sent to Adak and he had not been there very long. I had looked at it in the parking lot of the barracks several times.

My little Datsun was a kind of light blue too. Old and... well with grey primer paint freckles. It was known locally as the Smerf Mobile. It was dependable and never got me stuck. But like all good Rednecks, I always looked at the pretty trucks. Mine didn't get jealous because it knew that I was too broke to even kick tires on a new one. But I did look... a lot.

The young sailor, while far from stupid, sometimes like all young sailors did not exercise the best judgment. He and his running buddy liked to drink, sometimes a bit too much, not often, just once in a while. As young sailors, are sometimes prone to do.

The two running buddies and I had sometimes driven to Lake Andy, or the backside of Candlestick Lagoon fishing. Even a couple times up to the Octagon Cabin for a cookout and, with a few friends we had a small party on occasion. We always had a designated driver as the SP's or Shore Patrol (better known among the troops as "Squid Pigs"), had a really zero tolerance for drunk driving since drinking and suicide kind of went together on the depressing rock.

Since I didn't drink, but did have a problem letting people drive my vehicles, I always took my truck. Like I said, it took a pretty good 4X4 to get up to the cabin, and neither of our trucks had a problem with it. His just looked better while doing it.

I'll call him Jim and his running buddy Bob, that isn't their names but well you know how it is: If you tell a story on someone, they may not like the whole world to know that they made a slight miscalculation, once.

Jim and Bob, started out just having a few beers while they were shooting pool in the barracks bar, called the Ptarmigan Club. Well the little two man pool tournament was all tied up. First Jim would win then Bob, back and forth. But neither of them could win two games in a row to be declared the winner.

Well, one thing led to another, time went by and more beers went down. They were just having fun between two friends, while several other friends and workmates were pulling for first one then the other. And of course a lot of what we called 'chain jerking' was going on too. That is really heavy duty harassment, to civilians.

The problem was that our bar closed at Midnight. But the bar in the Main Base Petty Officer's club didn't close until 2:00 a.m. Simple solution, drive the roughly ten miles to the other bar and finish the pool tournament. Remember about the winding dirt and gravel road around the edge of the Lagoon and up over the shoulder of the mountain? Yeah, that road.

Well, since they were responsible Petty Officers in this man's Navy, they got one of the young girls in the bar that had not been drinking to drive the two of them to Main Side as we called it. I'll call her Jane.

The only snag in their plan was that Jane had never driven a Manual "Four Speed Stick" transmission before, or a truck for that matter. But that should not be a problem since Jim would be in the truck with her and he could tell her how to do everything, from the passenger's seat. An additional small glitch would be that Bob would have to sit in the middle of a very narrow bench seat. It was a little more than cramped but not jammed, if you know what I mean. Riding in the back was thankfully strictly forbidden.

Things were going pretty good. Jane got the Truck backed out of the parking space between the wings of the barracks. She had managed to drive it around the end of the building, while only stalling it a half dozen times. But, I must give her credit; she didn't run over anyone and had not even hit the building, even with the two drunken guys giving her a ration of crap about having stalled the engine a few times. Not too shabby.

It is cold and the windows are rolled all the way up to keep the heat inside. Since the truck had only been running for a few minutes, the windows are a little fogged up, but clearing. It is darker than the inside of a black cat eating Licorice in a coal bin at midnight on a moonless overcast night. The only lights anywhere are just the truck's headlights once they drive away from the barracks area, at the legal speed.

As the cab of the truck began to warm up, a couple facts made themselves known. Not right away, but soon.

The winding dirt and loose gravel road was doing what it normally did, just laid there and waited for someone to not pay attention, before it showed them that sometimes loose gravel can slip. Like maybe trying to drive on greasy BB's.

The road made a fairly sharp left bend as it came around the last part of the lagoon and continued on toward the place where I often pulled off and watched the sea lions and orca play their games of life and death from the top of a pretty high cliff. There the road makes a slight bend to the right and starts up over the shoulder of the mountain where it comes through a notch which only clears the edges of the road by about three feet on each side, with shallow drainage ditches running along each shoulder.

Here is where the two facts come in. Fact one: Flies go into suspended animation when they get cold, but are good as new when they warm up, wake up and start flying around. Texas can't hold a candle to the size of insects in Alaska.

Fact two: Young Jane, who was driving, was also afraid of flies. She said later it was big enough that it sounded like a wasp, and she was allergic to bee and wasp stings. That little fact was multiplied by the details of: the interior lights were not on and the fly was buzzing around her head.

Jane freaked out and started swatting at the fly with both hands, as she ducked her head and screamed. This in turn, freaked out the two drunks with her in the truck. Both of which had promptly stopped giving her driving instructions and began screaming too, because they remembered the cliff, without any guardrails, they had just passed and the truck was now on auto-pilot with her foot jammed on the accelerator.

The truck made a serious bid for freedom from phobias and drunks and decided to try going up the side of the mountain. This bid for freedom was judged later, by the insurance company, to not have been the wisest choice for the truck to have made. It was a good thing that it went to the right, the left turn idea would have certainly involved flight school, a submarine or both.

It hit the mountain with the right front fender and wheel; that part did in fact start up the mountain. But the rest of the truck was still either in the drainage ditch next to the road or still on the road itself. Something had to give. Gravity surrendered, for a little while anyway.

Bob said later that he "Just knew they had gone over the cliff" when the truck jumped up into the air he felt weightless and realized he was going to die. Jim, Bob and Jane were all trying to change places inside the cab. Not by choice perhaps but as the truck, now airborne, decided to go into a tight roll with a full gainer to the left. It almost made a half roll, bounced off the roof, and thankfully the engine died when the other half of the roll put the tires back on the road. But the truck was now facing back the way it had come, and the cliff overlook.

Like Tiger Wood's strongest drive off of the first tee, they rattled around inside the cab like a brand spanking new set of three Nike professional grade golf balls in a small tile bathroom.

The Fly? It was the only fatality. The corpsman found it in her hair at the aid station. A new set of screams followed shortly thereafter. Minor scratches and scrapes were enjoyed by the humans, but the truck got the hell beat out of it.

The windshield and both side windows blew out when the roof caved in, both front fenders and the hood were badly bent. But it started right up and Jim drove it back to the barracks, nobody even cared that he was pretty well toasted.

Lucky.

The Insurance Company was not all that thrilled though. Since the truck was in the middle of nowhere, they were not going to pay to have it shipped all the way back to Seattle to get it fixed and then pay to return it. So they just wrote a check to pay it off and didn't even ask for the title to the truck. They just told Jim to junk it or give it away or whatever, but not to call them again... Sounded fair to me.

After the financial dust settled, I asked Jim what he was going to do with the Toyota junk pile that he was now the proud owner of.

"I don't know, scrap it for parts probably" he said.

"Well since that one is the only one like it on the island; I don't see that working for you. How much would you want to sell it to me for?" I asked. OK, OK, so I have been known to get the cart before the horse sometimes. Big deal.

"How about $2,000?" he said hopefully.

"Come on Jim, I have to pay to have it shipped back to the states and that ain't cheap. Forget it." I said as I held my breath and crossed my fingers.

"OK, how about $1,000."

"Done" as I stuck out my hand and we shook on it. A quick phone call to my dad and I had the title in my hand two weeks later.

The Navy had shipped my Datsun to Adak from New Orleans for me which was the nearest sea port to my last command. This arrangement was the same one they did for everyone that had a vehicle up there. And they would ship it back for me too. That took care of my Datsun. But what about the Toyota?

It obviously was not really road worthy with the glass all busted out like it was, what to do?

Rick and Rosanna were good friends for me by this time and I talked it over with Rick. He informed me that he already had a buyer for his car when he left and would ship the Toyota under his orders for me. Problem nearly solved.

I would pick up both trucks in New Orleans when they arrived. Lucky for me I still had one son living at home since the oldest one had joined the Army and was in Germany. They take after their mother and don't listen to me worth a hoot. But ARMY?

Anyway it was a done deal.

So with a hydraulic bottle jack, a couple stout timbers and a piece of scrap Plexiglas out of the dumpster, I raised the roof back up high enough to get the Plexiglas wedged in where the windshield used to be, on the driver's side anyway. With that done I drove it to Rick's house and into his garage. And that is where it lived, all toasty warm and dry, while I spent the rest of my time on Adak.

Once I got it home, I paid yet another good and long-time friend to fix it back up and drove it for several years after that. It is hard to kill a Toyota.

The Datsun? I brought that back home too, and gave it to my youngest son.

That taught the older son not to leave home when free Trucks are being passed out. I called it a teaching moment. And he called me a cheap skate. Well, that was better than "Fat Boy" at least.

#  Adak Water Pipe Clocks

As I am sure, by this time you have figured out that the Army had done a lot of building and construction on the Island during the time they were there in WWII.

Part of this construction period involved bringing fresh water to the Main Base in the middle of the Island. The source of the water, or reservoir was a few miles away in the mountains. A small lake was enlarged and the main runoff stream was damned off to raise the water level and thereby the water pressure to the pipes. The system was all gravity fed, but when I was there was more demand for water due to the increase in population, pumps and more pipes had been added.

The pipes that we use today were not invented or developed at that time, or at least were not readily available in a war zone. Remember, that everything had to be shipped in by supply ships that were badly needed for what would be considered 'war supplies' and deck space was not only critical but very expensive.

You must remember that this was during the early 1940s and people with skills that are nearly gone from our day to day lives were common back then. Barrel making was one of those skills, and coopering is now a nearly lost art. Construction of wooden buildings was common back then, and therefore carpenters were on site on a daily basis. People were often known by what they did.

Carpenters and Chandlers were builders or cabinet makers and sometimes ship makers. A "Boatwright" made boats. Baker and Butcher are obvious, and Fletcher was someone who made and put the feathers on arrow shafts. Originally everyone was known by what they did or possibly where they were from. Like last names, or surnames to be correct, such as French, English, England, Scott, Irish, Ireland or Welsh are of the location variety.

Do you know any families with a last name of "Cooper or Coopersmith?" A Cooper is someone who makes Barrels.

In my case, part of my family history is carried in the Normand surname Pitts. This is usually thought to mean they lived in a valley or a recessed hole such as a gravel pit or stone quarry. So the proper name term may have been "of the Pits." Pitts, was originally spelled phonetically Pyts. Genealogy is another hobby of mine. I can and have traced my blood, so to speak, back to before 1607 in this country.

Variations of this way of naming or saying something is still prevalent today and can be heard in our English way of telling time. For instance, 7:00 of the clock uses an apostrophe now and it comes out 7:00 o'clock. Timothy O'Sullivan, would have been correctly said as, Timothy of the Sullivan. The first man in this case would have been the first head of that particular family or just Sullivan. The "O" part is used today to denote them as being 'the grandson of' whatever family. Just as Mac or Mc in a surname means 'the son of'.

"Sir Robin, Earl of Loxley" was the proper name of a man who was a titled land owner or Lord, before he became a highwayman or outlaw, if you prefer. The family name Outlaw were probably decedents of a known type of individual whose origin should also be obvious. This type of individual was also known as 'one wearing a Hood' or Hoodlum, therefore Sir Robin became known as Robin of the Hood, which History has shortened to Robin Hood.

At the time of my story (some might call it oral history), any good carpenter could cut the angles required for barrel staves to fit together properly. Then steel or Iron bands were made by metal smiths or blacksmiths, with the ends of the metal strips overlapped and connected together with rivets. These hoops or bands were in turn fitted around several individual prepared staves to hold the barrel together, or coopered together. Then the barrel would be filled with water and the wood was allowed to swell, thus making the barrel water tight. It was then drained and refilled with whatever is was required to hold.

Once the barrel was put together, with a top and a bottom firmly clamped in place with grooves cut in the ends of the Staves during the final finishing process, it would be fair to say that a barrel of any length, diameter or height could be made using this method. I am sure that all of us have seen the huge barrels that are in all distilleries and wineries around the world as shown in various movies and television programs.

By using longer pieces of wood and carefully fitting together not just the edges but also the notched ends of several pieces, the same principles could be used to make a structure that could be used as a pipe about twelve inches or so in diameter and the outside then coated with tar to seal the seams. The individual pieces were usually made with oak or other hard wood, in something slightly over a half inch thick.

These "pipes" were made not with bands around them, which would be impractical for pipes that would eventually be several miles long. The obvious answer was to wrap solid wire around them to spiral along the outside of the pipe to hold the 'staves' in place. The wire, shipped in large rolls, was then 'stapled' in place to keep it from slipping and therefore losing the shape of a pipe.

Over the many years since the pipes were first constructed, several pieces have been replaced and then the replaced pieces were just laid aside. But even so, quite a lot of the original pipes are still in use today. However GIs, especially those in the Construction Battalions, or CBs for short, are pretty inventive. They took the discarded lengths of pipe, cut them into shorter lengths of about three inches, and these shorter pieces were mounted with a clock works and face, some were dressed up with decorative brass fittings and other accessories.

Nowadays the clock movements are battery powered and can be bought for only a few dollars almost anywhere. The outer plastic case is discarded and the so called guts of the clock are then mounted into the pipe pieces. The original ones were made with mechanical wind up clock works, and they are now quite rare.

The clocks are unique as they are all made individually and the 'Adak pipe' is only found on Adak. But now there is a problem, or a blessing, however you want to look at it.

The Navy or the State of Alaska, I'm not sure which, has made it punishable to have any of the Adak pipe harvested after a certain date. I can only assume to prevent people from stealing the water supply lines. So no more clocks can be made except by a very talented woodworker, but then it won't really be authentic. Therefore if you have one, it will someday possibly be worth something, provided obviously, if you can find someone that wants an Adak Clock.

Sadly, I was not able to obtain one of these unusual clocks since the ban was already in place when I first got to the Island. And the people that did have them did not want to part with their reminder of Adak, Alaska, "The Birthplace of the Winds."

#  Sea Lions on A Sand Bar

Just at the mouth of the inlet which feeds Candlestick Lagoon there is a tidal sandbar. I found this spot while out walking with my camera along the coastline of the Island. I hadn't known until then that there were sea lions in the area.

The usual seals that one would think of are pretty much smaller than sea lion but most people use the terms interchangeably, or so I have been told. They are usually grey from a distance but are actually most often dark golden brown or almost black when their fur is wet.

While they are true masters of swimming in the many waters of the world that they are found in, they really are not terribly mobile when trying to move around on land. About like a really fat earth worm, with teeth and kind of grouchy. Wouldn't you be if at any given moment in your life you were either the "eater" or the "eat-ee". It just might make you a bit grumpy.

When you top that off with the fact that in any usual group of seals, there is constant gossiping going on, very loudly, this is not good if you have a headache. With constant bickering for space, the males always fighting and pup abuse that goes on daily, it is easy to see why some are just downright touchy. It ain't easy being Sandy The Seal.

The sandbar is about probably a hundred yards long and only about ten yards wide. When the tide is out and the sandbar is exposed, there can be anywhere from one or two of the animals, to probably about fifty or so, depending upon how the local fishing for them is doing.

At first I didn't recognize them for what they were. I thought that they were perhaps logs that had been washed ashore or maybe rocks. As I looked away, something struck me as being odd. There are no trees in the area that grow to that size, and rocks are not long and rather tubular looking. Duh. Not ones that are about eight feet or more long. I looked back again, just as one of them raised its tail during sun bathing.

I was only about twenty yards from them and since their heads were pointed away from me, they hadn't seen me yet.

I thought to myself "Oh wow, real wild seals!"

The Little Voice smart mouth in my head replied "Well Einstein, other than the Christmas and Easter kind, is there any other types kinds of Seals that you know of?"

I figured that if I just ignored it, it would go back to sleep. Yeah right, like that was going to happen.

We have otters in Pensacola, but not seals. Well, none that I am aware of anyway. So, the only ones that I had ever seen were in a show in Sea World. And they were not anywhere nearly as big as these things were.

As I froze in my tracks, one of them raised its head and made a noise like "aark" then lots of heads came up. Nope, not logs or rocks. They kept their eyes on me as I did my best imitation of "Seals? What seals? I see no seals laying on a sandbar only a stone's throw away." I strolled along like a typical blind walker would.

That is until I got around the edge of the hill. Then I ran like a mad man, up the backside of the hill and dropped down to do my best imitation of Hiawatha the Indian Boy, on my belly, in the wet grass.

It took me almost ten minutes to make it to the crest of the hill. As my eyes peered through the grass I could just make out the seals about fifty feet below me. Beautiful, really beautiful, I muttered to myself. I laid there for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes until I remembered that the thing trying to crack a few ribs under me was my camera. Oh yeah, take a picture.

I don't know if I made a noise. I didn't think so, but I did have to raise my head a little farther to get the lens above the grass.

"Aaark!"

Dammit! One had seen me. All the heads came up, and it amazed me that they didn't have to look around to find out what the first one saw. They were all looking right at me.

Wouldn't it be great to have one word or just a sound that meant everything from "there is a man behind us" to "some stupid wanna-be Indian kid is on top of the hill with a camera".

I looked down to turn the my camera on, for just a split second, and when I put the camera to my eye all I saw was ripples in the water and an empty sandbar. Humm, maybe they are not so terribly immobile on land after all.

I tried to get a picture of them like that again several times. The best I was able to manage was of two animals and they were blurry. I think that they had figured out that they needed to keep one of themselves with a close watch on the top of the hill. I never could sneak up on them. Camera shy I guess.

#  Know Who You Are Picking A Fight With

The day was warm, all things were relative, relatively speaking, and it was about fifty five or so. Early summer or late spring, whatever you want to call June. I had been out to the little hill that overlooked the sandbar where the sea lions liked to sun bathe.

I had long since given up trying to drive out near there. My truck, although not loud, it did seem to make enough noise for them to hear it coming. Or at least that is what I told myself, actually I was grasping at straws in the wind. I had no idea how or why I could see them through the grass, but let me raise my head even a couple inches above that and with a huge combined splash they are gone.

It only cost Steve Austin $6 million to have eyes like that. The government could have just swapped a couple Herring and one crab. And the tax payers would have been a lot happier.

Those noisy big gulls were soaring and diving just over the next hill; they had their hatchery over there. I like birds but those gulls didn't like me. Since I had tried getting within camera range twice, and had to walk back to my truck smelling like vulture vomit the last time. The chicks were hatching. And ..... well you figure it out.

They are not only masters of riding unseen air currents, but they could teach the strategic air command a few things about strafing runs and mass bombing techniques. I didn't want to get any closer than I was, two strikeouts in one day would be more than I wanted or could take.

But I did enjoy watching them perform their ballet to some orchestra that only God and the gulls could hear. I didn't mind not being able to hear the music, but did they really need to do a sing-a-long? None of them could hold a tune in a lead lined bucket, with a lid. And even from a couple hundred yards away, they were loud!

I suffer with Tinnitus; you know the constant high pitched ringing in the ears, caused by sustained loud noise over a long period. In my case it was a couple hundred cooling fans on electronic equipment. And I had been a cop for about five years during a break in military service. Lots of firing range time during this period and ear plugs were for girls. I was beginning to wish that I had carried a purse with cute pink fluffy ear muffs or something back then.

Anyway, loud, high pitched noises really hurt my ears now. And the Gulls had both of those things going strong.

One of the gulls was considerably larger than the rest. It stayed above the others and had the loudest call. I assumed it was a male, because I didn't know any better. He stayed above the rest and would chase any other gull back down if they began to soar up close to him. Gulls like to argue, evidently, they sure do enough of it.

While my attention was divided between watching the Gulls and trying to not break an ankle by tripping over a rock in the road, an eagle came soaring along the coast from my left and slightly behind me. This would be from the end of the point where the sea lion health spa was, the eagle was apparently on its way back toward the mountains beyond the Main Side base. I knew a lot of eagles perched on the crags and cliff faces there.

Although the eagle was much higher than even the largest gull, I guess the guard gull figured he was still too close to the nests or something. The eagle saw the gull climbing up toward him but chose to do the 'I choose to regally ignore you' thing and just kept to its course, unperturbed and aloof.

That also seemed to piss off the gull; it would seem obvious that it didn't take a whole lot to do that either. Once the gull got to the height of the eagle it went into fighter jet mode and attacked. Not a problem, the eagle flipped the switch on his B-17 mode and rolled over on his back and showed the gull fighter his guns.

The gull made several passes, the eagle countered each time. But I could tell by the eagle's scream that it was not amused or impressed. This aerial display continued for probably five hundred yards until the gull broke it off and started back to his guard post. He should have looked back.

The eagle was at that time in a spiraling climb of his own and had become a small dot much higher than the gull, and it started back toward the gull nursery.

When the gull got back, he was busy telling his adoring fans how he had not only chased a mighty eagle away, but had in fact kicked its butt. And the crowd went wild, as they say. There was just one small brown problem high above that none of the gulls were paying any attention to.

Suddenly the brown dot tipped over and became a brown spear. Nearly straight down and with wings folded neatly against its body, the eagle waited until a mere fraction of a second before impact before sounding its War Cry.

"CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, chick!" then the sound of flesh against flesh from within a cloud of white feathers. The gull crumpled like a Dear John letter from an ugly lover in the eagle's talons. The eagle circled once and dropped the limp and very dead gull into what looked like the center of the gull nesting area.

As this bringer of death from on high, circled once it just laughed "Cheeeeee, chick, chick, chick" as it flew away like nothing had happened. Almost as if to say "Learn your place and station in life, or die peons."

#  The Cook and the Engine Block

During my time on Adak, I had witnessed many times how the individual sailors and sailor-etts too, took care of each other.

Adak with its weather, mostly dreary landscape, lack of things to do and availability to alcohol, isolation and lack of family, could and often did get depressing. Sometimes you could see it building in someone. I don't know how you knew, you just knew.

But it always seemed that someone would do or say something to snap a person out of the doldrums and everyone would be fine again. I saw it over and over. It wasn't usually the same person either giving or receiving the help each time. Call it providence or just good ship-mates.

Whatever, it was always appreciated, perhaps not at the time but usually soon afterwards. Quite often the persons that did the cheering up part didn't even know that they had done anything.

Sometimes it was just a stupid joke, a smile or even just a passing pat on the back and a friendly word. But it worked.

Not many months after a young, attractive and single mess cook arrived on the Island it was determined among the young males that she "was really friendly". She was more than willing to share her company.

Then she went home again for a month's leave time. Sometime during her leave she had hooked up with the wrong man and some months after she had returned she found out that she had been blessed with HIV.

And that is when the trouble began, as they say.

It seems that one of the other cooks was having some marital problems at home between himself and his wife. There were two children involved, and he had been having an affair with the friendly younger female.

The man was known to be a quiet but likeable guy. While friendly he was not overly so. He kept to himself mostly and was pleasant to be around, but had a good sense of humor and made a heck of an Omelet. He was also a pretty good auto mechanic in his off duty time and could be found in the Auto Hobby Shop most evenings.

When the HIV infected female found out about her situation, she did the right thing and told the command who she had been with while on leave. Since the man involved was a civilian, the Navy couldn't do anything about that, except to insure that the original carrier was advised that he had in all probability infected this young lady with a deadly virus and for him to go to a doctor for further tests.

He basically told the Navy to go fly a kite and that he had been aware that he was HIV active, but didn't care and in fact was still enjoying an active sex life. A real prince among men there.

She had also told the Navy that she had been having an affair with the married cook in the months since her leave, and he was called in for testing. Bingo. He was infected also, and he in turn had possibly infected his wife but it was too soon to tell.

All Navy personnel were tested before they arrived in Adak, he and his family had tested negative for the Virus at that time. No jokes or smiles or pats on the back were going to make this better, and he knew it. The young female cook was sent home and was separated on medical grounds from the Navy a few months later.

However, the male cook began to show signs of depression and that progressed to a state of profound depression, for which the Navy, after initial interviews, was going to send him to Anchorage for psychiatric care and continuing care and treatment the following week. His wife and children would follow him as soon as he could make arrangements either in Anchorage or back in the States.

That week-end both he and his truck disappeared. The command was notified. Security conducted a search of the accessible or usable areas of the island. The U.S. Marine detachment set up a search and rescue team and they spent days looking through the tundra for him or any signs of his truck. All efforts turned up nothing.

The forestry department and the Navy brought in helicopters to help in the searches. Nothing.

About two weeks went by, with absolutely no signs of the man. His wife and children were frantic. Every day, people were seen looking in culverts, down cliff faces and in unused cabins during their off duty time. Nothing.

Then word came slowly through the grapevine that he had been found.

Someone from the Ship Refueling Station had been standing on the end of the main dock and by chance had looked down at the water just as what appeared to be motor oil bubbled to the surface and left an oily rainbow slick on top of the water.

The Security people thought at first to ignore it as there had been a boat tied up at the dock the day before. But since nothing else had born results, a Navy cold water diver was called in.

Twenty feet out and sixty feet down, the cook's pickup was found. The cook was still in it. He had driven over the bumper at the end and off the dock, pretty fast. It was decided to bring him and the truck up together to preserve whatever evidence there might have been inside the truck. A crane was brought in on a barge from one of the neighboring Islands and the truck was lifted aboard the barge.

An examination was conducted and it was determined that because of the cold water, tests could be run, and with the results of these forensic tests it was determined that his blood alcohol was about twice what the limit would be to drive. Plus residue of over the counter sleeping pills was also found.

The pathologist was able to determine that he had drowned. He hadn't given himself a choice as he had put a four cylinder engine block in the passenger's seat and then had chained and padlocked himself to it. The keys to the lock were found in his dresser at home.

Stress, depression, and love for his family and obviously many more emotions were probably running rampant in his head. We will never know. But it hit the community hard: several people made appointments with the Chaplin's offices, counselors were brought in and many sets of leave papers were approved.

We were told later that help had been available, and provided. But even they could not help someone that has made up his mind to not seek help or accept it when offered.

He was missed.

#  Rocky and the Sledge Hammer

I must warn you. Don't try this at home. There is a trick to it (which I neglected to tell Rocky, oops) and you can get hurt... a lot.

With all Communication Sites like ours there is something called an Emergency Action Plan, in it we use Thermite to melt down equipment to a slag heap and then use sledge hammers to break up what is left over. The sledge hammers are in basically three sizes. Eight pounders, twelve pounders and the big boys are sixteen pounders.

A lot of the men that worked in the site were young, well almost everybody but one or two others and me. Anyway, the "Kids" as we "old Geezers" called them were always ragging on us old guys trying to get us to go to the Gym and lift weights with them.

Now I may be dumb, but I am not plumb.... If you get my drift there.

I may be old but I knew that just about any of these guys could out-lift me any day of the week. And one of them, Rocky, was big enough to lift me and the weights. The trouble was that he knew it.

We are talking as in his muscles had muscles on their muscles. Big boy, real big boy. Some said that he could easily bench press over four hundred pounds and I believed them. He and some of his weight buddies liked to find something heavy then act like it was light and hand it to one of the other kids that didn't lift, just to watch them drop it. Then they would laugh like it was the best joke they ever heard.

I was raised on a large dairy farm so I ran more to thighs, back and forearms.

I didn't like braggarts and I didn't like bullies. Rocky, sometimes could be both, but otherwise he was just a big kid and pretty much a nice guy. Most of the time....

The supply truck had delivered some parts and equipment that we had ordered to the rear receiving truck dock so my supply clerk and I went up to get them. As we went through the message center, where Rocky worked, most of the people were just standing around not doing anything much.

But Rocky was holding a sixteen pound sledge hammer in each hand by the handle up near the business end and was sure impressing the girls by doing what is known as curls with them.

Now sixteen pounds isn't real heavy and most people can do curls with the weight. Not a lot maybe, but some anyway. But obviously the girls didn't know that and they were oohing and awing like he was playing with a couple tons.

"Hey old man, come play with the Hammers," Rocky said to me.

"Sure Rocky, but since I am not as young as you, I'll just do nose touches" I replied. I didn't much care to be the butt of the joke, age should merit some respect.

"Whazat?" he asked

I took one of the twelve pounders (I told you that I wasn't plumb dumb) by the end of the grip part of the handle and gave it a swing so that it now stood straight up from my hand with my arm at full extension in front of me.

Now let me tell you friend, a twelve pounder is heavy in that position but it was too late to back up now. My dad was one of the most naturally strong men I've ever known, and he showed me the trick to do a nose touch with a sledge hammer. Believe me there is a trick to it.

I tipped the sledge back toward my face and touched the tip of my nose with it, then pivoted it back to the original standing position. I switched hands and did it with the left arm.

I handed the hammer to Rocky and said "You can do that to build your forearms." Knowing that he was not going to let an old man like me, who was at that time forty five, show him up.

He stood the hammer up like I had, tipped it back toward his face and at the last second ducked his head out of the way and promptly broke his collar bone with the hammer head. I felt bad about it later, well a little bad anyway. But he never asked me to play with a sledge hammer again.

Oh yeah, the trick.

The hardest part is holding the hammer so it stands straight up from your hand with your arm straight out in front of you parallel to the floor. Well maybe that would be the second hardest part. While it does not require as much strength as you might think, the next part does rely on a somewhat strong wrist and forearm to do the trick. But be careful. Sledge hammers don't bounce off of bone real well.

As you tip the hammer head back toward you, at the same time lower your hand and arm slowly, most people won't notice and it looks like the hammer head is still rotating toward your nose, which is the part they are watching anyway. You only have to tip the hammer a few degrees back as the handle makes up the difference. Then as you raise your arm rotate the hammer back to vertical.

Simple.

I have done it with a sixteen, but let me tell you it ain't fun.

I guess they are right when they say:

"Old age and treachery will overcome youth and talent nearly every time."

#  Going Home and the Great Unknown

My time on Adak, and being in the Navy were both rapidly coming to an end.

I was at the end of my twenty year career, and hadn't made Chief (E-7), which would have been my next higher pay grade but because of that I was not eligible to reenlist for four more years.

Actually what had happened was that I didn't want to be a Chief. I enjoyed working with my hands and I think I was pretty good at it. The next rank higher would put me in the Middle Management Ranks and behind a desk, right where I did not want to be. It is kind of funny looking back now, the last nearly five years I had been behind a desk anyway. Oh well, life happens.

I had taken the Chief's test once, and passed it but not with a high enough score to get promoted and was passed over. And never took the test again. This got me in a lot of hot water with the Master Chief at that time, who was CTMCM Gist.

By either claiming to have forgotten what day it was or I had been too busy to go over to personnel and sign my sheet or some other lame-brained excuse, I didn't take it again after that first time.

I know that Master Chief Gist was really ticked at me a couple times when he came by my office on the morning they were giving the test, and there I would be working at my desk.

As they would say, I was on the carpet in his office and on a crash weight loss program, as my tail was getting thoroughly chewed about my responsibility to the Navy and my family which obligated me to do my best. Well I am sure you get the picture. I had had my tail chewed once, personally, by the very best (A two star General, while in Vietnam) so this, although not fun coming from a man I liked and respected, was bearable.

Every year, for the next four years it was the same. They only give that test once per year.

Most of the Chiefs that I had known in my Navy career were really good sharp people, some were just good test takers. I liked the pay grade I was at and well, frankly just flat did not want to be a chief. Besides which I would have had to obligate an additional two years on my enlistment to accept the promotion. I had had enough by this time and so I didn't want to do the extension thing either. But it would have meant another $75 per month in my retirement checks. Anyway.

The Military I was retiring from was not the Military that I had joined in 1965. Discipline had become more nit-picky in some areas, and completely absent in others.

Racial issues were used as a club against supervisors. If the junior person just flat did not want to work there was basically nothing that could be done to encourage compliance. Instead the Supervisor soon found himself on the carpet for being prejudiced, or didn't like working with women. And it didn't matter how many others of the same race or gender worked for them. It only took one to put the Supervisor in deep crap, quick.

It didn't matter that the others with the same training, working in the same job had to pick up the slack so to speak. The one individual would just laugh and read a paperback book.

I was told point blank by an Air Force First Sargent, "Mac, forget about it. Our hands are tied, we can't make him work if he doesn't want to. And if we continue to push it, we will all be civilians, damn near overnight with a black mark that will follow us all forever."

He continued by saying "I have talked to the rest of the guys in the shop and they all say that you are in the right, and freely admit that if they had tried to do the same thing that this Airman was doing they should be Court Martialed. And they would have been."

I had just returned from Vietnam by then and a few months later my enlistment was up after almost eight years. So I got out for nearly eight years, I was a cop for five of those years, but I missed it. I had to consider my family and I didn't like the direction I saw my life heading. My Grandmother Iddy often said that I was born old and relapsed on a regular basis. Maybe so, but I have had a problem looking at a situation, seeing something that was not right and then not at least try to do something about it.

Times got bad for us and I went back into the Service, this time in the Navy.

Going through boot camp for the second time was... well different. Trying to keep up with teenagers in the morning exercises was not fun at age thirty-three. Taking the full battery of shots for the fourth time was less than pleasant, but I did it again.

Now after twelve more years, in the Navy this time, I was going to do the hardest thing I had ever done. After more than twenty years of a very organized life, I was going to step into a world I didn't know anymore, with only a vague promise of a job and questions at home. I was going to Retire.

As I said in my address to the command during the Retirement Ceremony: "If anyone tells you that changing your lifestyle, giving up your friends and facing a total career change overnight is easy, they are a pathological liar and are not to be trusted."

I had my Retirement Ceremony in the gym of The Communications Command at Adak. I did it there, since I didn't want to say goodbye to a way of life that I knew I was going to miss, not in front of strangers on some other base. I had originally planned to do my final out processing in Seattle, pick up my Datsun and sort of just disappear. I was having some serious problems at home too. But now I would do my final out-processing at NAS Pensacola, Florida.

Good friends cannot be overrated nor over-appreciated. And I had two of the best. Rick and Roseanna had spent many hours on many days talking to me and they had finally managed to convince me to at least go home and tell my family goodbye. I really didn't want to, but because of them I changed my plans and went home.

Now many years later, the Grandchildren still love their Grandma. And after three years on the road installing computer cable, five more years plus a year in Iraq driving trucks, I'm home. Back to Pensacola, Florida, where we still live in the house we bought before Adak. I have spent many of the intervening years trying to fit in with the family and civilian life again. I was right, it hasn't always been easy, but I am home.

But, do you know what? Now at age 66, I still sometimes miss the time I spent, with the people I knew. "Under the Laughter of Eagles" on a small, cold, rocky Island.

Oh, by the way! The damned wind did change on my way out of Adak. I had thought landing there was hair raising. I wanted to avoid having the same view that I had during my arrival, but in reverse. I had changed sides of the plane from when I had arrived, and now I was pinned to the seat in a drag race to oblivion, I looked out the window. All I needed now was another of those Military sack lunches to make it perfect. You don't have to be real smart to be me.

"That is certainly true. You have managed to be you for years with no more brains than you have. It ain't crowed in here." Little Voice was going home too.

As the plane lifted from the runway and once again pointed straight at a huge grey Granite Mountain, we zoomed back through that narrow gap with the plane now standing on the other wingtip which again was on my side. There was a collective and very descriptive phrase said in chorus by the many people; "HOLY CRAP!" More or less...

###

#  About the Author

"You are never too old so try something you have always wanted to do."

I left my time to write a book until well into my sixties. But I am very glad that I have at least written the first of what I hope to be many books. You should try it, it's challenging fun.

I come from just folks as they say. My father, just newly home from the Navy, he had three ships sunk out from under him during WWII.

My Father was a long haul semi-truck driver. My mother was a waitress when they first met. I was raised on farms of various relatives and later, after my mother was divorced and remarried, I was rattled around in an Air Force packing box. Perhaps not really that literally, but it did take me fourteen schools to complete the first twelve years of schooling. My Step-father adopted me, when I was nine, and that is quite possibly the best thing that ever happened to me.

I am proud of my Ancestors, back through Pocahontas. Genealogy, ceramics, guns, archery, RC aircraft and Bonsai trees are hobbies.

Although I have a good relationship with my Birthfather's side of me, I am grateful that I got to see the places I did with my new family. I got to explore Guam during two tours of dad's, and Miami where I joined the Air Force after graduation from South Dade High School. The AA in Criminal Justice came later.

Following in both of my father's footsteps, I joined the Air Force in 1965 and after more electronic training than I ever thought possible; I was stationed at RAF Chicksands, in Bedfordshire, England. I worked part time in the Airman's Club, where I met the woman who was insane enough to be my wife. I still love her accent. Our first son was born in England a year later, and three years after that came our last son, in Miami. I am a Vietnam Vet, and proud of it. I served when called. Most of my Ancestors and both sons have done the same since before 1607 for this, MY country.

During an eight year break in service I was a laborer in a Cement factory, a cab driver and anything else that would legally feed my family and finally a Police Officer for five years in Homestead, Fl. That was a rough town then, it still is. I joined the Navy in '81 since the Air Force said I was too old at thirty-three for them, and finished my last twelve and half military years from Spain to Okinawa and a lot of places in the middle.

This is where most of my books will come from: People and places that I have enjoyed meeting and seeing with some of the best people. And a prized collection of some of the greatest nut cases that I am honored to call my friends and family members. Now besides writing Spreadsheets for fun, I want to write books, for you.

Reviews of my work are welcome; I will read every one. The people in my life have taught me so much, and perhaps you can too. But most importantly, enjoy my work, and see my world through my eyes. You might even see yourself, who knows.

Thank you for reading my book, you can find me at any or all of the places below.

Contact Me at:

Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MacM

Email

mailto:http://Greywolf8047@yahoo.com

Twitter

https://twitter.com/mcquaid_michael

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/mike.mcquaid.739
