I recently found out that I REALLY like sweet potatoes. Not the traditional super-sugared-up, marshmallow-coated, neon-orange side dish of Thanksgiving. But, rather, just baked. No melted marshmallows, no brown sugar gravy - just the natural taste God gave it.
If I do season my new favorite veggie, I simply add a few red pepper flakes. I like the contrast between the heat of the pepper flakes and the sweetness of the potato.
Saturday we took an impromptu day trip to Rockport to watch the eagles along the Skagit River. We arrived just about dawn. It was almost dreamlike as morning broke and we watched the fog dance on the surrounding hills.
We were lucky enough to see about a dozen or so eagles. Some glided past us on the still morning air. Others sat in tall, bare trees - keeping stately watch over the misty river. A few sat on gravel bars, resting and watching.
We were lucky enough to hear two of them chatter back and forth - as if they were arguing over the tree they both sat in. It was a wonderful, refreshing experience. Unfortunately, all of the birds kept their distance, and I wasn’t able to get any good photos.
One bit of advice - if you decide to go, get there early. The crowds start to show up around 10:00 AM. Plus, if you’re there early you get to see the beauty of the river, and the wildlife it supports, awakening.
We took a really cool road trip this past spring. We visited Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, and drove part of Route 66 in northwest Arizona.
One of the most memorable experiences for me was hiking the Navajo Trail and Queen’s Garden Trail at Bryce Canyon. The Navajo Trail is only about 2.25 miles long, and drops about 500 feet in elevation. It meets up with the Queen’s Garden trail to form a loop at the parking lot at Sunset Point.
We hiked into the canyon along the Navajo Trail. It was cold and windy at the top, but after we moved down in elevation a few hundred feet, the temperature was actually quite pleasant. Along the way we saw a lot of amazing scenery. The most incredible part, though is shown in the photograph below.
As we climbed back toward the rim along the Queen’s Garden Trail, we came to a series of switchbacks that allowed part of the clear blue sky to be framed by the towering red limestone. The color of the sky was absolutely surreal. It was the bluest blue I had ever seen. For a time I thought that maybe I was hallucinating, that perhaps a lack of oxygen to my brain due to hiking at an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet was causing me to see the sky as something it was not. That’s when I stopped and shot this photo - if for no other reason than to prove to myself that the nearly cobalt blue sky that I was seeing really was there.
All I can say is that I’m still amazed at what I saw. It was almost like a scene from CS Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” - so real that I’m nothing more than a shadow.
I really like the new Magic Mouse from Apple. It feels good in my hand. I like that the roller ball is gone and I can scroll around in a window just by sliding one finger on the mouse. Way cool.
It’s time for something new. In 2010 I plan do create a series of pieces based loosely on Roman cement.
I’m thinking 18″x24″ hanging panels, coated with a natural plaster. Maybe bas- relief carving. Maybe rough drawings inspired by cave art. Maybe a form of fresco? Maybe all of the above.
Of course, the theme of the series will be the Washington state environment. Right down to the materials I use.
Stay tuned, this should be pretty cool.
I like a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning.
As I’ve said a number of times, the Ocean Shores Marina used to be a bustling place. There was an active fleet of charter boats and a decent sized fleet of commercial fishing boats that called the marina their home port. All of them where in pursuit of salmon. Kings and silvers are what they chased. What they really wanted, though were the dollars the fish brought in. It was a tough way to earn a living. To make a go at it, you had to be on the water from sunrise until near sunset - seven days a week. And if you chose the wrong fishing ground you’d lose your shirt big time.
The charter boats carried sportsmen for hire. Each fisherman was allowed 3 salmon per day and all the sea bass, ling cod and flounder they could catch. The only limit set for the commercial boats was the number of fish they could deliver to the fish buyers’ dock.
The photo above shows the remains of the fish buyers’ dock today. Actually, the dock itself no longer exists. It used to float at the base of the pier, running from the left foreground toward the center background. It was long enough for two or three kelpers to dock at a time - say 50 or 60 feet or so, and built from sun bleached 2 x 12 planks. And there were large scales hanging from the ceiling of a roughly made shed. The buyers would wait in the shed for boats to arrive, the whole time smoking and telling dirty jokes.
Part of my summer job at the Marina was to staff the fuel dock, which was adjacent to the fish buyers’ dock. Every evening a swarm of small boats would circle nearby, jostling for position as they waited to unload their catch and fuel up for the next day’s trip. From time to time larger trawlers would also pull in to load up on shaved ice before heading out for extended trips. These were 40 - 50 foot boats with large holds to carry several days’ catch. They might be out on the water a week or more before returning to port to unload their catch and take on fuel and ice.
Two buyers shared the dock. One, Bill, was the older brother of a guy I went to school with. He bought for the local cannery - Kustom Klam Kleaners (affectionately known to locals as the KKK). The other buyer, Elvin, was from the Seattle area. They seemed to get along fine - for competitors. I don’t know what kind of agreement they had, but it always seemed like they were working together rather than competing.
Today the dock is gone, and the planks are missing from the pier. All that remains of this once busy hub of the salmon economy is the small rusty crane that was used to lift loads of fish from the dock to the waiting cargo truck. Also gone are the huge runs of salmon that once supported not only this fish buyers’ dock, but others in Westport, Ilwaco and other west coast ports during the late 1960s and 70s.
But if I close my eyes and let my mind wander back in time, I can still see the boats cruising to the dock while exhausted, sunburned fishermen haggle over the price for their catch, and the smell of fish and diesel hang in the air. I know - these are odd memories, but they’re the stuff my childhood (and therefore, my art) is made of.
Sometimes the things you think you remember have changed so much that you aren’t sure that they were at one time real. And yet, there are times when you find a tangible sign that your memory is not playing a cruel trick on you. The anchor in this photo is one of those artifacts from the past that let me know that even though I’m in the heart of middle-age, my memory hasn’t faded too much.
I’m not sure where the anchor came from. I remember someone saying it was from the SS Catala, the ship that ran aground near the marina in the 1960s. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I do know where it was during the 1970s. It sat next to the Ocean Shores Marina’s restaurant. I clearly recall running past it as a 10-year-old, on my way to go fishing on the docks. I pulled weeds from around it when I tended the landscaping beds as a teenager. And I went passed it countless times when I went to the restaurant to have lunch.
The restaurant was a place where the charter boat passengers could get breakfast and a box lunch for their day fishing for salmon. In the late afternoons the “kelpers” (commercial fishermen who returned to port each day with their catch) would gather in the Chart Room for a drink before heading home for dinner. In the late fall and winter there was a cast of regulars who would gather at the restaurant to drink strong coffee and swap stories.
One summer, when I was 10 or 11, someone kept tying their dog to the porch by the main entrance. For some reason the dog took a dislike to me, and every time I came anywhere near the door it would bark it’s fool head off at me. It scared the bajeebers out of me. One time the dog surprised me as I stepped onto the porch. It barked like mad, and I froze. The dog’s owner apparently was watching the whole thing from the Chart Room and started yelling at me through the darkened window - for teasing his dog! All I wanted to do was go inside and use the bathroom. I was more than happy to let the sleeping dog lie - but noooooooo! Anyhow after a few weeks the dog was gone, and I was able to freely roam again.
Today the restaurant is gone. There’s an empty field where the building once stood. Judging from the size of the field, the building must have been a lot smaller than I remember. But the anchor is still there. So I know that those carefree days of fishing and exploring actually did happen. That’s a relief for a middle-age guy looking back over his shoulder at his childhood.
In my last post I mentioned that I had a job at the marina. Actually I spent a good part of my childhood at the Ocean Shores Marina. This picture is how the marina looked during the summer of 2007.
When I was growing up, the marina was a busy, vibrant place - full of all kinds of characters. If I remember correctly there were 16 charter boats that used the marina as their base. Each boat would carry 6 - 22 passengers. On a typical summer morning upwards of 200 fishermen would board the boats to fish for salmon. The dock pictured here would have been “The Main Dock” which served as the mooring berths for the charter boat fleet.
The dock in the photo is a replacement for the one I remember. The original seemed to be quite a bit wider than the one pictured. It was built from 2 x 12 planks, with logs underneath to serve as floatation. It extended quite a bit further into the boat basin - at least it seemed like it to a 10-year old kid.
My dad used to run the bait shop at the marina. It was a floating shack that was situated just outside of the photograph, in the lower left corner. The charter boat deck hands would come to the bait shack every morning to pick up their allotment of herring (bait) and any fishing poles their passengers had rented for the day. I’d help out now and then by scooping shaved ice into the bait buckets and counting out a dozen and a half herring per passenger.
The deck hands were usually bleary-eyed and ragged. After all, departure time was 6:00 AM - or as soon as everyone was on board and it was light enough for the skipper to safely pilot the boat out of the marina. My dad always had the shop open by 5:00 AM. Sometimes I’d sleep all night in the back of our station wagon so I could catch a bit more sleep.
A cool feature of the bait shack was the hole my dad cut through the floor. He did that so that we could fish for sea perch - and still mind the store - during the slow times. I can’t begin to count the number of fish I pulled up through that hole in the floor.
There are dozens of posts I could write about the time I spent at the marina. I’ll put together a few and upload them over the next few weeks.
I’ve been spending some time preparing for this series of posts. As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to spend some time relating my memories of growing up in Ocean Shores. I thought that a fitting place to start would be the place where it ended.
This photo is the last house I lived in at Ocean Shores, Washington. In fact, my parents had the house built in 1980, when I was 15. I remember the contractor was Larry Locke - one of the major home builders in town at the time.
I do have to say that whoever owns the house now has done a fabulous job maintaining it. Since my mom didn’t have much money, she was never able to keep up with all the maintenance. The wind, rain and sand make keeping up a house at the beach a constant battle. But, I really do appreciate the work that it has taken to make the house what it is today.
There used to be a climbing rose growing in the front yard. Dad bought it for mom shortly after we moved in. If you look at the picture, it would have been pretty much where the small shrubs in the foreground are. I’m amazed that the thing was able to survive the harsh environment there, but it did. When my mom moved out of the house in 1994, we dug out the rose bush and planted it in the courtyard of her apartment complex. Surprisingly, the bush survived the 3 hour trip from the beach and thrived in its new home. A few years later, after my mom had to move to assisted living, we transplanted the rose to our front yard. That thing must be indestructible. It has not only survived, it has nearly taken over the flower bed under my daughter’s bedroom window.
When we moved in, the area was pretty remote. I remember one Fourth of July I had to work until midnight at the marina store. The owners thought that there would be lots of foot traffic that night - but there wasn’t. Anyhow, I had to ride my bike from the marina to the house. It was SO DARK that I kept running off the road! There weren’t any street lights, so I pretty much had to ride by feel. It took a long time, but I finally made it. Also - we were so far away from civilization that we didn’t even have cable TV. We could have had the cable run down the street, but we would have had to pay $1200 - plus the monthly subscription fee. We didn’t have that kind of money - so we got by without TV.
Winters there were awesome. During the many storms that would batter the area, we could see the spray from the waves breaking over the North Jetty. Pretty impressive, given that the jetty was 2 - 3 miles away. The wind would be so strong that you could see the front windows bowing in and out. Eventually, the windows ended up cracking from the stress.
My dad died in this house on July 18, 1982. He got up early every day to get ready for his job at the marina. During the spring and summer, he would be at the marina to sell bait and help get the charter boat passengers ready to board their boats.
On this morning - I guess it must have been before 5:00 a.m. - he was sitting at the dining room table with mom. He said to her “I don’t think we have enough frozen herring at the bait shop.” A few moments later he fell out of his chair and never regained consciousness. I performed CPR until the medics arrived, but it wasn’t enough.
After I graduated from high school and went off to college, I would come back to this house and spend summer and holiday breaks with my mom. During the summers I had a job with the City of Ocean Shores. Mostly I helped patch the thousands of potholes that plagued the roads at the time. I hated doing asphalt work. It’s hot, smelly, dirty, backbreaking work. But - it gave me enough cash to hang out with my friends and bridge the gap between my financial aid package and my college tuition.
There was a gravel road on the other side of the city road running in front of the house. The gravel road was put into aid in the reinforcement of the North Jetty. Barges would bring loads of rocks to the end of the road - at the tip of Damon Point, where the boulders would be transferred to large dump trucks. The trucks would carry the rocks to the jetty along the gravel road. After the project was completed, the road was allowed to return to its natural state. That took a number of years, though. While I was in college, I would run along the gravel road to prepare myself for football season.
Just beyond the road is a salt marsh that was known as “The Sink”. I spent countless fall and winter hours in the marsh hunting ducks. On my visit this past summer, I found that the marsh has changed dramatically from the way I remember it. The marsh is actually being eroded by the surf and current from the harbor. It looks like it won’t be many more years before the marsh is replaced by sand beach. I guess nothing stays the same forever. Sigh…