Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 15: Al Badgley; From Baytown To Haines: A Life Of Service

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Episode 15: Al Badgley; From Baytown To Haines: A Life Of Service · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Doug Hask Questions.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like, subscribe.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: We're available if you want to watch us on uh YouTube or if you just want to listen to the podcast version on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: And each episode goes live on Thursday morning.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I hope you enjoy this episode, and we're happy to have you listening.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to this uh edition of Dougast Questions.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Today my guest is Al Badgley, longtime acquaintance, family friend, employee now, and just uh amazing asset to our community.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna get into Al's early life, what brought him to Haynes, and then all the amazing things he's done things he's done for our community and in our community since he got here.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show, Al.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, good greetings, everybody.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll let's just talk about.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a former Texan.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in Texas, born and raised there.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad was really in what what what part of Texas?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in Baytown, which is near Houston.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: South of Houston or it's uh east of Houston.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: East of Houston.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, my dad was in the oil business, he worked for ExxonMobil.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Don't hold us against us, but anyway.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh basically that's gonna refer later on to why we came up to Alaska, but we were there, my dad was an avid hunter and fisherman, and I was doing that when I was two years old.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: He went on an African safari, and before he goes, he says, Well, I gotta have something.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So he gave me this little uh wind-up elephant that you'd run across the floor and a little spring-loaded dart gun that I could shoot the elephant.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I'm gonna be hunting elephants while you're hunting elephants.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so that was part of the thing I got for that.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: So at the age of two, I was a two-year elephant hunting in in your house in Houston, Texas.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so and that happened.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then I even he worked for this Exxon company, and they have this little thing called a brief that talks about things that families do.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And at three years old, I had a picture of holding up a big fish that I had caught when I was three, and that was something that I still had a picture of that recently I saw, and then uh so the the whole outdoors was huge for your dad, and he passed that on to you.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: We did not have really vacations.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Our vacation was which fishing spot we're gonna go to, what hunting spot were we gonna go to, and uh you know, every once in a while we would maybe go somewhere else, but most of it was oriented towards fishing, hunting and fishing and outdoors.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So what what did your dad do for Exxon?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was a inspector, he did pipe inspections, etc., like that, and he uh worked on the in the refineries, making sure joints were done, welds were done right, et cetera, like that, which is what he ended up doing when he was working on the pipeline up here later on.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I was gonna ask.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Was some of that pipeline work then?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: So he got to see a large part of the country because was he traveling to do inspections on pipelines too, or is it all mainly?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he worked on the whole, you know, the Alaska pipeline.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: He worked in Validesborough, all the different main hubs he would be stationed out of there.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: He would work eight weeks on, two weeks off, and they would fly him back to Houston or something like that.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: How how old are you when he's working eight weeks on and two weeks off?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he started probably when I was in I would say middle school.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Middle school.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Late middle school, maybe seven or eight.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: What what was that like having that having your dad gone for two months at a time and then you get him back for two weeks?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it was different.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you would be gone for a while, but uh, you know.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because you were you didn't have FaceTime, you didn't have video chat or anything like that.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I have some cousins that, you know, I did a lot of things with my we had a quite a good family composite of people in the uh Baytown area where I grew up.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So both my mom's side of the family and my dad's side of the family.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we, you know, did a lot of things together, did like Sunday lunches or something of that nature, and you know, we did a lot of family events that way, not a whole lot of travel to major destinations, except for that did that bring you closer with your mom?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in a way it did.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: My mom worked at this, well, my mom worked as a high school registrar.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so everybody at the high school knew me well before I ever got into high school.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I could not do anything in high school without somebody knowing me.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was a well-known commodity before I had a commodity before I even got to high school.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: So and anything you did, your mom knew about it before you did almost?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: That is true.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a little different being in the South uh with a mixed uh black and white population, there was some racial tensions there.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: So high school for you, not to give away your age or anything, but people do the math.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: But what what years are that when we're talking about having that kind of racial tension still in the high schools?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: In the early 70s.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Early 70s.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So that even after the ERA and everything like that, that was going in your experience, that was still pretty prevalent down in the South.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So just this is an example of what happened.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a high school football game, away game, went on a bus, and I was ninth grade, I was a pig squeak in ninth grade.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was a little run or something like that.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I told my mom, I'm gonna be on that bus before anybody else.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I got on the bus and a person came in and said, I need some money.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't have any money.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Give me some money.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, You gotta have something.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't have any money.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this was one person and me, it was only people on the bus.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, somebody else came on the bus that I actually happened to know, and the guy said, Oh, leave that guy alone, he's good.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very glad that that happened.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a situation that was tense, and I mean there was a lot of racial uh fights, etc., like that.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: There was actually uh we had a lot of in the lunchroom.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: We I was in a big high school, the graduating class is about five to six hundred.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there was people would walk by and it would you would have to be careful when you'd walk by because people would throw tomatoes at you in the school, and apples if you were in they didn't really like you.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I've heard of food fights and everything, but throwing apples and tomatoes in the lunchroom is a little extreme.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But but you think about this, this is I mean, there's 500 per class, it was 2,000 and so this was huge, and I mean, and there would be all these people on a wad, and all of a sudden a tomato would come out of the wad of people and then at somebody.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it'd be a situation where so basically I learned you just don't go through the the gamut, which people would be walking through, or something like that.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a situation that happened in one of my younger years or something like that.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So wow.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: So how how did that shape you going forward being being involved with that kind of interracial strife and and stuff?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: Did that did that affect you somehow going forward, or you think?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: In a way, I it didn't really bother me except for the fact I was kind of naive and thinking, you know, why just don't we get along?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's just easier to do that.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because that's it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think most people that know you and Haynes or have known you over the years, Al gets along with everybody.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean you're you're you're always looking out for everybody regardless.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so I didn't know if that if if part of that was reinforced by seeing the way people were treating differently based on their skin color.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think it was an issue down there that we had to deal with, but in the South, the blacks were definitely, I guess, not treated properly.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'll put it that way, if I can be mildly.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: History has shown that that's the same.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean it's the same with the native population here.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean it's really similar.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can say I grew up in the same kind of a situation that actual the native people lived here, but what I thought with the black population in Texas.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: So pretty much anywhere you go where there's a minority, somebody's gonna be taking advantage of them and not treat them as well as we should.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so my whole childhood was uh fishing.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: We had a great fishing and hunting area.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: We had a place on a bio that across from the bio was a big duck hunting swamp area that we could hunt in.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And growing up, I mean, that was my go-to from six through college.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Every weekend I would either go back during high school, I would go on the weekends, etc., and go hunting.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, how would you did you have your own boat to get over there?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Was it a drive?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, you could drive to our cabin that we had on one side of the bio, and then you had a boat in our we owned five acres there that you could we had boats stored there, and we had a little dock, and you could just paddle across, and we owned property across the bio is where we had the hunting area.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: So we got a couple of so what what what animals were over there for hunting?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: The hunting we mainly had squirrels, rabbits, feral hogs, but mostly it was duck hunting and goose hunting.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it was mainly duck hunting, and there was an area that they tried to make into a rice field over there, and they did it actually as a tax write-off.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: They opened this one area up, cut a bunch of trees down and made a rice field, and then they kind of abandoned it.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But what they did was make a great duck hunting area right there.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we had these little channels where uh there was still woods in there, and there was wood ducks.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever heard of a wood duck, but that's a duck that just flies really aerodynamically through the woods or something, and it's and they had this really big squeal when they're coming and stuff, and that's something that's just really was fun to hunt.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so we had some great hunting, but the bio had some really neat the main fish we fished for there was catfish.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a couple of catfish stories here.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's let's hear them.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: To start with, when I went to Texas AM, one of my classes was ichthyology, study of fish.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So a guy that I went to high school with went to college with me, and one of the we had to do a class project, and it's what's called do an articulation of a skeleton of a fish.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we got to pick any fish we wanted, but what we had to do is put all the bones of this fish in a, you know, and you would just glue it all together and you had this thing.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you had to go out and get the fish.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: We had to catch a fish, and then you then you take all the meat off, and then you dry the bones out, and then you actually put the skeleton back to the fish.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: You put the skeleton together and you glue it up or something like that.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we said, what, you know, everybody had to pick a fish, and we're saying, we're gonna pick a catfish.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, We're not gonna pick any ordinary catfish.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get big catfish.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I caught a 23-pound catfish.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it was on uh Thanksgiving weekend, we had the whole weekend to do this.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we caught this 23-pound catfish, and it's like, okay.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: We spent about a day and a half to two days getting all the bones laid out.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: But what you had to do is some of the bigger bones, you had to dry them out because it just took a while when you soaked them in this peroxide or whatever, we soaked them in.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we had them laying on this table in my friend's yard, and we went in, it was this is Texas, it's hot.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we went in and got some lemonade, we came back out, and about 10 of the bones are gone.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: A cat had grabbed the bones and was gone.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, this isn't good.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: How are you gonna make up for bones of a I mean, you can't go buy a 25-pound catfish.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, we'll go catch another one.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back to the thing.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: We had to get a motor to get to this one spot.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this was we went later that afternoon and set a line out, caught a 25-pound catfish.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So all we had to do was take just the pieces, the bones that were What bones were they?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: What bones were?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was mainly it was uh the bones on the stomach, you know, where the fins are.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: That bones right there.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it would look kind of funny without having the yeah, those kind of key part of the skeleton.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they had just taken a couple of big pieces like that.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so that was to be able to catch two catfish back to back was pretty amazing right there.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well get what what grades you get on this?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: A.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a A.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: And actually Was that the biggest skeleton there?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: Did everybody else?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody had like perks and stuff.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean ours was like the hard part.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: How do you transport that?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because we were trying to figure out we had to put it in a box, and then but you can't really put stuff in it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a big box that it fit in, and then it's like you got to get it into the classroom with all the people and everything, and not so we were we got it in.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we got a great grade, but part of the grade was you actually had to identify they would point to Bones, what's his bone, etc., like that.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: So and did you tell them those are off a second catfish?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, we never the word never got out that this is two different catfish.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: So did you have that was this like a full skeleton, so like the rib bones and stuff were on there too?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Dang.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was a it was a challenge.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a long-term project to get all the bones together or something.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Then you had to put like string and stuff to hold stuff that didn't actually match other things, some of the floating bones and stuff like that.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: So wow.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what did it so after all that work, you get a you get a great grade.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Do you just throw it away or do they keep it at the school?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: They kept it?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't give it back to us.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't give it back to you.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think it's still at Texas AM somewhere?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think it probably has dumpster by that.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: They could actually uh keep it for very long.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think they didn't have a storage space.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: So what's your uh you said you had two big fish in storage?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: What's the other one?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right before I moved up to Alaska, my dad said I was trying to catch a big catfish.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: 23 pounds is a nice catfish, but I wanted a big catfish, so he says, big catfish, big bait.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, okay, I'm gonna try to catch like a perch or something like this.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I caught a three-pound carp.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I got this carp like this, yeah, and I said, okay, I'm gonna put it on a limb line.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: A limb line is a tree that hangs out over the water, and it's it was a cypress tree that just really bends like this.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you tie it on there, put a hook in the back of the fish, and you just let it sit there overnight.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm saying, okay.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: So is the fish is the so this hook and everything is partially submerged in the water?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the fish is probably about this large.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so the line is maybe six feet up, and then you know you've got a foot of water.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, foot of water down there.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the water was deeper than that, but you only put it because if you put it way down the bottom, the fish would swim under the brush and stuff.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so I said, I only had one day with this bait, and I'm saying, well, I mean, I'm getting ready to leave, I'm getting ready to do so.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I go to the tree, and the line's just moving around like this, and I'm saying, Okay, fish, I'm gonna pull you out.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I lifted that line up, and this mouth comes up.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: 54-pound catfish.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: 54-pound catfish.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: We got a picture of it here in the in their store.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's the one?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a 54-pound catfish, so but then it's like, holy smoly, and I didn't have a net or anything.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to go back and get a net to try tough to bring, you know, that's like a 50-pound king salmon.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't happen too often.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: So no.
• 16:49
  unknown: Dang.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, that's a couple of months.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: That that catfish, because it's your dad that's in the picture.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: I took a picture of him.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but that's one that you caught.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've been looking at that picture for decades.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, but my dad's biggest catfish was 91 pounds.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: 91 pounds for a catfish.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: So does it is the meat similar throughout the different size?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of people say like the real big halibut, they don't enjoy that as a smaller.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: Is it the same catfish?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is good.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I would much rather get we used to catch a lot of these small one and two pound fish, which are a lot nicer, but you know, I'm not going to turn down a big catfish like that.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Did you play any sports in high school?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I played tennis.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: You were t really?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I played it.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: I played tennis in high school and I actually got a scholarship to a junior college to play tennis.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: My but the problem was I was I never knew you were a tennis player.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: I was a tennis player.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: But this is what happened.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think when I was a freshman, I was five foot two.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a sophomore, I was five foot eleven.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Nine inches and holy.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: So my knees were really.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, they would have had to been hurting like crazy.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the issue that really kind of sprang.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was probably over a year and a half, but I had this big growth spurt or something like that.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: So how'd your mom and dad keep you in clothes?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was gonna say you'd wear it.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: In Texas, a lot of them were short.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, short, but still, you'd wear it for a week and it'd be too small.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the I gotta have your one tennis story.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me all the tennis stories here.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I never knew you were a tennis player.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I was playing doubles, and my partner and I, it's kind of like when we have a basketball tournament here, but when we play a different team, you have two singles teams and two doubles teams.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we went to this place to play, and it was about an hour and a half drive.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I was the no what our coach kind of cheated.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we could have a number one doubles team and a number two doubles team.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I was really the number two doubles team, but they wanted our number two to play the number two.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't want to play number two.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted our number one to play their number two, so they put us with the number one.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like there was no way we were supposed to win.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we're playing, and our whole the game, everybody's done except for us.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we're playing when you play tennis, you gotta win two out of three sets.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And a set is six games, you know, for people that don't know that.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so my doubles partner, and I'm my doubles partner was uh a tall, pretty tall guy, and he had a really wicked serve, but he was terribly inaccurate.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just never went in, but it was really good.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like every serve was going in, and it was like, you know, you played a six games, and everybody's they're all watches, okay.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: It got to five five games, and there's and then it got to be six five.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: That guy was they got ahead by because they were serving them, it was our turn to serve, and our team was saying, lose.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to lose, they wanted you to lose.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted us to lose, but they didn't have to play another set.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's all we do very well.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to go home.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I still remember my doubles partner was playing so good, and he just did this wicked serve twice in a row and both of them went out, and so that's how we ended up losing.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's harsh when your own team's wanting you to lose.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: You have a chance to uh upset the other top team, and yeah.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so did you play all four years then in high school playing tennis?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another one that was kind of a bizarre one.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I traveled to Corpus Christi, which is I don't know, 200, 300 miles from us, on a tournament, my freshman year, and they housed me with this somebody, a family in Corpus Christi who played tennis or something, and they were really good.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so but they came and watched me play tennis.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: The last point of the game, it was a lob.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: A lob is when they hit you're at the net and they hit it over your head, and I'm running back, hit me right on the head.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ended the game by getting hit on the head with a tennis ball.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I've I I don't think anybody that has played sports, if if they say they've never had a similar moment such as that, they're probably lying.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: At some point during any type of sporting career, you're gonna have one kind of flub that is ridiculously crazy.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: I remember being in in high school that uh I don't remember who were playing, I don't remember what year.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I stole Somebody else stole it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was up ahead.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Anyhow, I'm running down the gym.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's nobody between me and the basket.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going up for a layup.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And as I plant, my left knee gives away, and the ball I don't even think got to the rim, and I fall down on the court.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, like, seriously, I know how to do this, but yeah, knee just gave away, down the court, turn over, going the other way.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: And embarrassing as all get out.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: You're thinking you got two points, and nope, turn over instead.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my the only basketball story I can recall.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was in sixth grade.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Remember?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm five foot.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a little guy.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Little guy.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot play basketball at all.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it was an intramural, so you had to play basketball.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the coach said, if you get a foul, you get a SWAT.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, what?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: A foul is a SWAT.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: Foul is a SWAT.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, I would have been gotten beaten.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was fouling out just about every game.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so I'm sitting there, and they, you know, I just kind of just was hanging out in the middle.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: They never passed the ball to me or anything like that.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm under the opposing person's basket, and they do a breakaway, and they said, Stop him! I don't even know what I'm doing.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I just went like that with my arms and boom!
• 23:19
  unknown: Foul!
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Bent over.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you got a squat?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Dang, that's some hardcore coaching, Al.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Hey.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Could have been.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: But that's like the only SWAT I got in the whole school was because of a foul at basketball.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he did pretty good then.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you get through high school doing a lot of hunting fishing.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: You go to Texas AM.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: You're back home pretty much every weekend hunting and fishing while you're going through the street.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, just during the main hunting and fishing season.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: During the season.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: But then we go down there and fish for catfish or something like that.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's about an hour and a half, two-hour drive from college station to my hometown.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: So the rest of the time, what was what was college like at Texas AM at the time?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my dad was into, he bought an acre of property about three miles from campus, and he dug, we put a little trailer on it, and he dug a septic system and put it in there.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, What I'm gonna do is we're gonna buy this and we're gonna sell it when you're done, and we'll get your housing for free.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Which is what he ended up doing.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: So and but being off campus, I really never had any major campus.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you're just going to class, going back to the trailer to study, and that was kind of it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I spent two years in a junior college because I got it for free at playing tennis.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: So you did so you got the the scholarship to go play tennis.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: So you did that for two years at a junior college in our hometown.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then you went and then I did.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I couldn't even make water boy at AM.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that was about my tennis level was not super great or something like that.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so being in the hunting and fishing family, degree in wildlife and fisheries, I got it planned.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna get a job as a fisheries hunting biologist or something in Texas and go strong there.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: But in hindsight, my dad was in Alaska working on the pipeline, etc.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: like that.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: And what what year did he start working up in Alaska?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: Mid-60s, I think.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: Mid-60s.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so you were how old when he was doing that again?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: You said 12, 12, 13.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Something like that.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: So he was he was working on the pipeline project pretty much based on the beginning.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: From the very, very beginning.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: He was up there working on the pipeline.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: He was doing it when they were putting the pipe, just getting the pipes set up or something like that.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: So he actually had to inspect welds when they were welding them together, and he had to make sure when they stacked the pipe that they didn't dent any of the pipes, etc., when they stacked them all up.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean that pipe was really big.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: So and so that led to you said it was, I think it was 1972, is the first time you came to Haynes?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first time I came to Haynes, and it it kind of came up in the fact that I think my it was during that two weeks off when my dad could get off that instead of him flying down to Texas, I got flown up with my mom up to Hain.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we were here, and that's when they had a property sale out at Lutec.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were selling some lots over there, and he ended up buying a three-acre lot at the far end of Lutac, 10-mile Lutac Road.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: So and so did your aunt and uncle were they here before 72?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: They were here before, but they bought at the same time that but so they they came up and what because they came up, and I think that that's probably why your dad met you guys here, is because they had already been here.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: They were here.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they just come up on vacation tour in Alaska then or they knew some people from other things that they uh Peck Nelson, I don't know if you ever remember them or not.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, but but that but I mean that was probably because that's they were old when I came here when I was 12, so they probably might not have even been still around when you came.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, they knew them.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And when I came up when I was 12, my dad was only here for just part of that time, and they had a place that they were house sitting out at Mosquito Lake.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I stayed out at Mosquito Lake, and I went out there.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Guess what I got to do when it's a mosquito lake.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I bet you were fishing all the time, wasn't it?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was fishing for, and if you know Mosquito Lake at all, there used to be a little creek that came into Mosquito Lake at the far end or something like that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sitting, I mean, I'm uh so well, I'm 16 years old or something like that.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I would go to this little creek and I would paddle in there or something.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: The creek's about 15, 20 feet wide, and I'm sitting there in a like a 12-foot boat, and I look down the far end of the creek, a bear comes out, probably 50 yards away, and I'm saying, okay.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not used to bears, so I mean this I'm from Texas.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then it's like, okay, well, what do I do?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I'm saying, oh, it's just there, and he's gonna leave because he'll probably see me.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then I hear crunch, crunch, crunch, and it's coming down the bank towards me.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I look, and the next open spot where he's gonna look is like right there, right?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right at the front of the boat.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So he's coming, and it's like I can't get, I don't have a motor, I'm just like paddling.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you oars or just a paddle?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh I had oars, but it's like so anyway, I'm saying, man, I am not gonna be able to outrow him.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I got my oar.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm standing up with my oar, and it's like I hear him coming, I hear him coming, and it's like, well, I'm not gonna do anything if I hit him.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I just hit the side of the boat.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he didn't know I was there.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it scared the heck out of him, didn't it?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: He just took off and went the other way.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: So well, I'm glad you didn't have to fight off a bear with an oil.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I yeah, I might have had a less uh successful outcome if that would have been bear versus.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was that was good thinking there.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: But up a Mosquito Lake, huh?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, dang.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: So then your dad eventually built a cabin out on the property, right.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: We in the summers we would come up, and my dad did not really like winters because he had already spent enough winters.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: He retired just about oh, sometime in the 70s.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he would come up in the summertime and we built a log cabin, and then uh I would come up during high school during the summertime, and then I would leave, etc., like that.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I came up all the way till about I graduated from college in 78.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: So then it's like, okay, I got my degree, now I'm I gotta get a job somewhere.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I used my degree to hang sheetrock.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously, that was your first job was hanging.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, my first job my dad got me was working at the refinery where he worked, uh-huh.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a terrible job.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: What they had is they had all these pipes and they were all hot pipes, so you had to put insulation around them.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you would get up on a ladder and they had these two pieces, it's almost like sheetrock stuff, but it was formed to a pipe, and you would put it around there, you would wire it, then you put metal around the outside, and then you would wire the metal on.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what you did all day long.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: All day long.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Seven days, five days a week.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Five days a week.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like that's just not really my you didn't you didn't find that motivated.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was not a motivating factor for me right there.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, how long how long did you work at the refinery?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: One summer.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: You worked one summer and then you're like, I'm out of here.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: So sorry, listen, I I gotta do something different like that.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then I think that was uh the summer right before I didn't go the next year, because then I started trying to get my job out of uh college there.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, but as you guys so when you're out at LUTAC in the summers when you're still coming up here, your dad's there.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: What I remember from when I was really young with the Badgleys is it seemed like you guys were fishing every single day.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it that might have been an exaggeration, but it seemed like we fished a lot.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: You like to fish, we like to fish a lot, and we would go down the river, and I mean, back in those times we were not allowed to do subsistence netting like we are now.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and actually we couldn't because we weren't Alaskan residents, we're the residents, but we could rod and reel fish, and they did a lot of rod and reel fishing, yeah.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that was something a lot of halibut fishing, too, if I remember correctly.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: We did a lot of halibut fishing, but we didn't do as much until the summers when I was working up north, and we'll get into my okay.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when I moved up here in 1980, let's go back.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: I want to hear more about the sheetrocking deal.
• 32:53
  unknown: Okay.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: So you're you're doing the the pipe insulating for during college, right?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then you get out, you graduate, you got your degree in fish and wildlife management.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: How'd you end up in sheetrocking?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: So a good buddy of mine that we grew up together, he lived across the street from me, my duck hunting partner, my best man in my wedding, I'm best man, the people that we really worked together with a lot.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he knew a guy that says, if you want to hang sheetrock, I'll, and this was in big commercial buildings.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what you do is, you know, they would you have a concrete floor and they would lay out this and you would nail gun steel plates in the floor, and then you make up a thing like that.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: So then put steel studs and then you put sheetrock, but then we had to carry the sheet.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't using 12-foot sheetrock back then, it's only eight foot.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: But we had to most of this was high-rises, so you'd have to find an elevator, carry sheetrock in an elevator, lift it up, and then I thought that's why they got those big cranes up there and they lift all that stuff up to the room.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, this was remodeled, so they didn't have that.
• 34:03
  unknown: Yeah.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it was new, but some of it was remodeled.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: The remodels usually didn't have as much actual sheetrock.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't have to move hundreds of sheets, you only had to move maybe 10 or 20 sheets or something like that.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: So you're having to haul that into the elevator, run it up to whatever floor you're doing the stuff on, and then so but I didn't have to mud it.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: All I had to do was hang it.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if I had made a hole, I mean the mutters were cover for you.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: They might be cussing about you later, but they're not gonna know who it was.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you didn't you didn't sign your name on the holes?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, we didn't do that, and we worked, you know, but we did use screw guns.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't use a nail and steel studs, it just doesn't work.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so how how long were you doing that job for?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was one year.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I graduated in 78 in December because part of my junior high, not junior high, but junior college credits didn't transfer over, so I had to do another semester.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that for probably well a year because in 80s when I moved up to Alaska.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I I tried for a while to get a job in fishing game in Texas, and it's like there was like 30 people in my graduating class in fishing game, and there's like two openings in the state for any fish and game person, so it's it's not happening in there, yeah.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: So then I said, Well, I got a better chance of getting a job in fish and game once I get to Alaska if I go to Alaska, and we have this cabin in Alaska that I could stay at, so hey, that's not too bad.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Seems like a pretty good plan.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: So in May of 1980, I move up to Alaska, and things were good.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a situation that happened my first winter here.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Since I said, you know, what am I gonna do?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's no fishing game jobs.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't get a job right off the bat.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what I was doing, but I actually I worked at uh one of the local stores here for my first summer here, and then uh just lost my train.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh I was substitute teaching part-time, so in the wintertime.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I am 10 miles out of science in high school?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: No, I was substitute yeah in high school for Frank Holmes.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so anyway, so I get on the thing.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: First time they, you know, I they I there's no phone out where we live.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I got word that I'm supposed to be in 8:30 the next morning or something like that.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have a two and a half foot snow storm that night.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I wake up like at six in the morning, and I'm saying, how am I gonna shovel ten miles?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I started trying to shovel my car out, and I'm saying, this is not gonna work.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't gonna work.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: They canceled school.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but uh they couldn't tell me they canceled school.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: How much snow did you move before you found out they canceled school and you can go back in and rest?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I just shoveled them, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes worth, but it was like I'm saying there's no, and back then going out to Lutec, and I mean, I don't know if you remember the road going out to Lutec, that was Pothole City, Pothole City, yeah, and it was it it took a while to get that plowed, and definitely definitely weren't phone lines out there in 1980 either.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so the phone line's gonna come up here in a minute on one of my next stories here.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, how how did you ever end up doing anything in Fish and Wildlife?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're coming up on that.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, what happened the next I guess spring, spring of 81, I got my cousin, uh, was up here and also the Putnams.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember them or not, but she was a whole lot smarter than I was, so she says, I'm gonna write you up a resume for fish and game to send into the fish and game offices here.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: So she wrote me up a resume, and then they had what's called the Sioux Hydro Project.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if anybody remembers that, but they were determining whether or not they could put a hydro plant on the Susitna River.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: So they were doing a four-year study on the Susitna River, and they needed people, and when you did this study, you were out for two and a half months.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: You just went out to this place and you stayed in tents, etc., out there, and you ran fish wheels.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you would count fish wheels, count fish out of fish wheels and stuff like that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we had to tag every fish.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you heard of a spaghetti tag, but a spaghetti tag is like a piece of spaghetti, but it's rubbery, and you had a needle and you stuck the rubber part in the hollow part of the needle and you ran it through the back of the fish, then you had to do a quick tie, and then you would throw it overboard.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then they each tag had a number on it, so they knew when you tagged that fish and where you tagged that fish.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: So later on, if they found one in a spawning hole, they could say, okay, well, this fish was tagged on this day, and that's how long it took them to get to this location, or something like that.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: So my big story on that is I went to an area that's called the Yetna River, which is a little offshoot, and it was a lot less congested than in one of the other areas.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: But since ours wasn't as many fish, they took me for a week to go to this place where there was a lot of fish.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there was four fish wheels at this one place, and there was two of us just to cover two fish wheels.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: In a 12-hour shift, we tagged 1,200 salmon.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: 1,200 salmon in a 12-hour shift.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: So basically You were wore out.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: Holy cow, 1200 fish an hour.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: But what what you were supposed to do, but there's no way you could do it, is you're supposed to dip a fish out of the live well and hold it up and do that.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: But our nets were big enough.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of these were pinks, and some of them were chums, so they weren't huge fish.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we would dig, do like six, so you would have this thing of fish and you would just go.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you could get, you could do five or six in a minute, as many as you could get in your net in the net.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then you but I tell you one thing, I mean, my arms, because you have to grab the fish and you bend the fish like this so the fish doesn't flop, uh-huh, and you're holding it like this, and then someone tags does the tag on it, yeah.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you alternate who does the tagging or something like that.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then it's like some people are really good at tagging and some people aren't.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there was one person I remember the the quickest way to tag is to put that needle in your mouth between fish.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: You would stab it, put it like that, and then you could get another tag and do that because otherwise, to get the tag on, you know, you're sitting there.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a couple of people that wouldn't do it.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they would they would try to set it down.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then if you set it down, then well, it would just take too long.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could never and then some of the time the fish were coming in.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: I there's my biggest scoop.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: You guys know what a fish wheel scoop is.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Fourteen pinks in one scoop.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like man, you can't keep up with that.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to stop the wheels at times because there's just too many fish.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: 1,200 in an hour.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: That was my biggest day.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: Dang.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: So did you just do that the one summer, or how long were you up there?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was doing that for three summers.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Three summers.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then then you back in Haynes in the wintertime?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: And what were you still substitute teaching, or were you doing other things in the wintertime when you're back in Haynes then?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing a few other things besides that.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: So so and but let's we gotta something that kind of changed my whole dynamics here.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: So remember, I moved here in May of 80.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: In February of 81, my dad had a heart attack in Texas.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I left.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: We did not have oil heat, we had a little pot burner stove that kept the house around 35.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it was touch and go for a while, but my dad came out all right.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I come back in February or something like that, and to try to stay in a house that's 35 degrees, I built a big fire in the fireplace.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: I went to my neighbors for dinner, house was gonna warm up, and the house really warmed up.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: House warmed up in a big way.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Much bigger than you'd anticipated.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a total log cabin house fire, and we talked about no telephones.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: They had to drive to the ferry terminal to call the fire department.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's And back then it was not an easy drive to drive to the ferry terminal.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I see this house on fire, I grab a five-gallon bucket.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is how ignorant I'm a five-gallon bucket, I run to the bay, I bring it up, and I'm saying.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not gonna be enough.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: This ain't gonna cut it, man.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: This isn't gonna I need a need more buckets.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Gonna need more buckets.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I watched the log cabin that was really built burn to the ground.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the fire department came out, and basically I watched these guys, and actually they saved a side building that had all our fishing gear and stuff in it, because it wasn't attached right to it.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: But what was attached right to it was propane cylinders, and those started going off.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, and they would go off like a flamethrower because they would blow the end off and it would just shoot flames just like a so, and then we, of course, we had ammunition in there and it was going off and all kinds of fun things like that.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: But what had happened is I guess it's good and bad, my clothes from my trip were still in my car.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but everything else that I owned was in the cabin, except for all my fishing clothes that were in the room.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we had these coveralls and waiters and stuff like that.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I could wait anywhere I wanted to, but I could so that was a challenge right there to get that.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: But what that did is I just watched these guys, everybody worked hard, and they saved that, and it's like, man, I can do that, I can help some guys out or something like that.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had never really had any inkling about being a firefighter, didn't know anything about firefighting.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell by my bucket and how much firefighting experience I had.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, okay, I'm gonna join the fire department.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: So in April of 81, I joined as a volunteer fire department.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I said, okay, well, you know, I hadn't don't have a permanent job or something, so I can maybe learn something.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if anybody knows what happened mid-May of 81.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: My first fire, one meeting, the chill, the barracks fire.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: 14 hours on a fire hose, my first 1.5 million gallons of water.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: They used one and a half million a gallon.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they figured I used.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_02: But they I remember uh me and I don't know which of my friends, I don't know if it's the Heinrich's or it's just Scotty and Jason or whoever.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: I remember us riding our bikes over there as they were cleaning up afterwards or whatever after that fire and just watching that.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it had been shortly before that, that they had um back in the day they had what was it called?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: Where you'd have a e there's a day on the job or something.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember that, Sam?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: That you'd go as when you're in like fourth and fifth grade, you can go and shadow somebody at their job.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I I thought I marked down KHNS because I well, I thought the radio thing would be pretty cool, but uh, I got with the Chilcat Valley News, and they were their office in the printing press was in the basement of the barracks.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so shortly before that fire uh with uh um Hartman.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, Bill Hartman going down there setting type with the old printing press and everything in that in that spot in the basement of the barracks, and then yeah, it was just several months later that things up and up in flames and just seeing that whole piece of history lost.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that was your first fire that you first fire one month after one month after joining the department.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: Were you were you thinking at that time, like maybe this is more than I was thinking I was gonna get into?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: To start with, it was but I'm driving in from LUTAC, and when I get just about to the sawmill, I can see flames.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's like their flames are that high, you're seeing them at the Holy cow.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I must know right when I rounded Garbage Point.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was Tank Farm Point.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's right as soon as I could see that, I could see the the flames, and it's like, whoa, this is not gonna be a a fun one.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I thought it was gonna be fun.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, but it was a it was a long day.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that did that, but then that summer you went back up north and were still doing the fish.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first year I started doing the fish, and then actually, it was either that year or the next summer, I got a gig that was really pretty amazing.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was they were doing something at I think it's Chandelar River or something up.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Brooks Range?
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, up in the Brooks Range.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, they needed a fisheries biologist to go out there and they stayed at a lodge and they would fly you by helicopter to these areas and you set out fish traps to trap fish and to tag them, and then you would fly back by helicopter to the lodge every night.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: They paid you to do that?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: They paid you to do that.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's people who do that for free.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's people that pay to go do that.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't get the biggest job.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: The best job that I saw was there was an I think I applied for it, but I didn't get it.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: They would fly you to remote lakes and drop you off by helicopter, and you would fish for two days in a remote lake, and you got paid 16 hours of to fish for whatever you could catch in there to see what was in these lakes.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then they would come pick you up.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: So people would pay thousands of dollars to do this, and people were getting paid.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: Getting paid to go do that.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so yeah.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so I have to.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: When you're talking the Chandelar, I went my first sheep hunt was in the Chandelar area.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: That place is absolutely gorgeous.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was beautiful up there.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just to go up there with uh you know, helicopter and go see all the stuff.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: You get to see a ton of it, I bet.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that was kind of neat was the fact that this was the guy that was our pilot was a Vietnam pilot.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, You want to see what it was like in Vietnam?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, did he take you on some?
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, he would go like five feet off the ground at 120 miles an hour, and then he would come up to a row of trees and jump the trees and go right back down.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, that's good.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_02: So similar story several years ago, 20 plus years ago.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think all statutes of limitations, if there are any, if and most of the people associated with this are no longer with us.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_02: But my dad had done some kind of a trade with Doug McConan, who was a pilot for Trans North Air and Haynes Junction.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I can't remember what the trade was, but my dad needed to be dropped off at a mountain lake so he could fish for lake trout.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: That was the deal.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: And Doug had the helicopter, so he did this trade.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: Since my dad's in the wheelchair, I go along to help him in and out of the helicopter, my mom's there, and Ron Martin.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: And my dad had designed these different lures that he wanted to test out and see how good they were.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we bring our fishing rods and everything.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: We stop at a couple lakes.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: Can't really figure out a way to get my dad down to the lake, actually.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's no handicap access.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: We got the wheelchair, but we can't really.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, no, no, no.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: Finally we stop at one.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: And uh my dad's like, no, you guys just go fishing.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: He says, I don't want to deal with it.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: Every single cast, we were catching something.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so my dad's like, those lures work.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like, dad, these fish have probably never ever seen a fish you lure in their life.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think this is a fair comparison.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: But anyhow, we get back in the helicopter, we're we're cruising around, and he's showing us most of the Klawani area by helicopter.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I mentioned to him, I was like, Man, it doesn't seem anytime you're in a plane or a helicopter, it doesn't seem like you're going that fast.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, Do you want to have a better idea?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, What are you talking about?
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so we go over because we're close to the highway.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_02: So he veers over to the highway.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: We drop down and we were probably a hundred feet over the highway, if that, and it might have been even 50.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: And we're just like, okay, this feels a lot faster.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: We're right along the highway.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we come up to a corner, there's a car coming the other way, and up we go.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm that guy in that car was probably going, What the hell am I getting into?
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that was.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think we I can't remember how many hours of helicopter time we got cruising around Kalwani.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um we saw probably 80% of the uh the park by helicopter for that trade.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: Just but we did catch some lake trout too.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: Good time.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now we're we're just getting with the fire departments.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're just getting started with the fire department.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so basically, I started in 81 and then I got my EMT in 85.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: So this was so you're a volunteer.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: You're as a volunteer, you're working in the summertime, which mainly takes you out of Haynes.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like a four and a half months, four and a half months.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: Five months.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so you've got six and a half, seven months where you're in Haynes, right?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Volunteer fire department.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: Was were you doing anything else in Haynes during the I was odd job in it here?
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: I did some substitute teaching.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: I worked for Glenn Hendricks as an electrical assistant, etc.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: like that.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I just did a a few.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: Did what you could to pay the bills, kind of thing.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: But kind of the good thing about it was basically my folks didn't charge me rent.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened after the fire is they brought brought a trailer into that property and they moved a trailer in there, so we were able to stay in the trailer.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they were gone, they were only there in the summer, so I was there in the winter.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: They say, You shovel the snow, clean it up, don't burn the trailer down, don't burn the trailer down, and we'll call it uh fair trade.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was able to basically in seven years of working five months out of the year with no expenses because they paid for room and board and food and everything in fish and games.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I was able to pay for my house with cash.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which makes a huge startup difference.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we haven't got to building the house yet, but anyway, we'll get there.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting so anyway.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: So in '85, I decided, well, hey, you know, I can help people with uh first aid.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, I'm gonna take an EMT one class.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we took an EMT one class, and back then there was some really good EMTs we had.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: We had John Bruce, he was a physician assistant, Bob Atkins, Terry Chombroy, all these people that were, I mean, top-notch, and it was like this first year, it was kind of a piece of cake.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: We had everybody, and this was also the Stan Jones era where Stan Jones went on every call and helped you out with anything.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: So he was our local doctor here for the longest time, and so I got it in January of 85 and December of 85.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: All of these people that were trained had to get recertified.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: And to get recertified, you had to go to Sitka to get recertification.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, we're not gonna recertify.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we went from having six or seven super well-trained ambulance responders to three EMT1s.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: January 1st.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: January 1st of 1986.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, wow.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it was Cindy Jones, CJ, Ray Lewis, and myself.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it was and Stan who would go out with us.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I still remember one of those times, they were out of town, so I had a call, and I I drove the ambulance there, but nobody, nobody else was there.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're the only one that showed up on the I was the only one that showed up, and then eventually I think Alan Heinrich came and helped me just to put the gurney in the back of the ambulance.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: But then it's like, well, I can't be in the back of the ambulance and drive at the same time.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I think he ended up driving me back there because Alan is also uh a firefighter, but he was not really ever a medical responder, but he helped out like that.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so and it was a transition time frame from going from really high-level training to a little bit less trained folks or something like and being an EMT-1, you have limited access of what you can do.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, while I was doing that, we also had Dick Jackson.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know Stonewall Jackson.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, he was the one paid firefighter, and Dick Jackson was known, he could make a bolt or anything.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: He he was a machinist, he could make anything, but you never want him driving because uh he was wild as a driver.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, he was uh the paid fireman.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: He actually and John Jennings and stuff they built two fire trucks out of logging trucks, they converted them into it.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, and that's what he was doing uh in the mid-80s or something like that.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, in uh December of 87, Dick Jackson was gonna retire.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, Well, I'm an EMT one, I'm a I'm a firefighter that's got a barrack fire under my belt.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can probably do that job.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I was going down for Christmas to see my folks down in Texas.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: So they said, you know, the job's gonna be open January 1st.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, Well, I'm not gonna be back till the 11th.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I found out I got the job as the paid firefighter here.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dick Jackson left.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: He was not there.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't there?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: He was not there.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was nobody there.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: So January 11th, 1988, I walk up the stairs at the fire department.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: I knew where, you know, where the meeting and the desk and everything was because I had gone to the trainings.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a little piece of paper that says, Welcome to the Haynes Volunteer Fire Department.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that was that's that was your starting point.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: That was my starting point.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, well, what am I supposed to do now?
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that also happened is Frank Wallace.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, most some people may remember Frank Wallace, but he's longtime Haynes resident.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Long time Haynes resident.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was a mayor, but he was also our fire chief for the fire chief for a long time.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, he was there to help people, help me get kind of started.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: But he was kind of saying, we're gonna veer off of having a person that can build stuff.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: We need to have more community involvement, trying to get things like that, getting some more training, etc.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we said, okay, well, I'm gonna have to start learning.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to take some methods of instruction class, I had to take EMT2 classes, EMT3 classes, so I started taking all of these firefighter one classes, firefighter two, three classes to try to get organized or something like that.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a few things that got developed in those late 80s, early 90s that have really been carried on from now, because basically we have the fire prevention program, which has really gone pretty strong for that long time frame.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we've really kind of brought it in.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think people would go in for like career day and they would talk about fire stuff, but actually having people come to the fire station or go to the fire station and talk about, you know, stop drop and roll for the little kids.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then we ended up building things in the fire station where we have an escape ladder where you can actually throw a ladder out a window and crawl down an escape ladder.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: We do have a harness on the kids so they don't fall down.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, what what grades do you do that with?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: We go preschool all the way to eighth grade.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_02: All the way to eighth grade, and you do that every year during fire grade.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: Every year, but every year, every grade's got a different thing.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: We have fire extinguishers for part of the time, we have smoke room for part of the time, we have escape ladder for part of the time, and one of them is also like EMS familiarization.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: We actually do uh blood pressures and show them the ambulance and how to, you know, how to get the gurney out and all the different pieces of equipment and stuff like that.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the things that happens.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: So some of it you get duplicated, but I mean there's probably very few people that when they're in eighth grade have used a fire extinguisher two or three times to put out a real fire.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, there's probably people out there that are watching this that maybe never used a fire extinguisher.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something that we do in October.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're in Haynes sometime, come by the station and we'll set it up for you.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: Full on deal.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, because we get to see all the kids go by on the fire trucks.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that's probably gonna happen at some point in time to actually have kids ride on top of a fire truck is that's probably gonna be coming to a play at some point uh situation.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, we're small, small town, Alaska, so let's shh keep it going.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: Not very many people listen to this yet, so it's good where the words aren't gonna get out.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_02: We're not gonna have the regulators crawling over the fire department.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: But then another thing we also did was Clint Amex.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember Clint Amex.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: He's the one that got us into the grocery business.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: So Clint was in the grocery business, but he was also from the fire state of Texas.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: Texan.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: And basically he says the fire department needs to do a barbecue.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna do a 4th of July barbecue.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we started doing a 4th of July barbecue, I think either in 89 or 90, something like that.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we've been doing the fire department 4th of July barbecue for the last lot of years.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the money from that goes to the scholarship funds.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: It goes to scholarship funds, and if we have some, but we also can get certain pieces of equipment that we can use if uh you know if we got a special piece of equipment maybe we want to get or something like that.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_02: So how many people do you guys serve on that one day around the 4th of July for the barbecue?
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: So three hours that we actually serve, and I think our biggest day was 750.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: 750 people in three hours.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you guys move through.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it's mainly I would say in the four to five hundred range in that ballpark.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_02: So still, that's a lot of people in three hours.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, we've kind of got you guys got it dialed in, I gotta say.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_02: The years that I helped you with the cooking on that, and then just seeing all the stuff that you guys like you guys are planning this a couple months ahead of time.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: But we have a lot of volunteers that help out, like we make 120 pounds of potatoes in the potato salad.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's probably 200 pounds of potato salad.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: We make eight roaster ovens of beans and eight things of coleslaw.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we used to do uh and you have that, so everybody gets the recipe, right?
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: We basically for the potato salad, this is everything.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: You just cook the potatoes, peel the potatoes, put them in here, put all this stuff in there, and bring it back to us Saturday morning.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Saturday morning.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: So and it's a 20-pound bag of potatoes that you get.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: So if anybody's out there wanting to know how they can help out the barbecue.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if the fire, if you want to help the fire department, you can do that, or you can help cook beans, etc., like that, or help serve, et cetera.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's something else that works out.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's the thing too.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: When you guys, when you guys got that going, it does not take long to serve people because you just go through that line and you guys, it's just go right down the road.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have people lined up in each section, and it's like you want potato salad, coleslaw, or both.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just they just start passing the plates down, and we have the drinks used to be a big holdup because we used to have people would have the big serving dispensers, and they would go under there and do it.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: But we ended up now we just have tables that you have iced tea, lemonade, or m combo.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they're just all there, so you just come by and grab it, and then you just ready to go.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: So
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, go on over there and watch that.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_02: You guys definitely have that dialed in.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you so now so you got the job 87, right?
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_02: 88.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: 88.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: January of 88.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_02: You start the job.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: Were you here in were were you here in September or in October of 87?
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: Did you respond when my dad broke his back?
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_02: Were you here for that?
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was still working at Fish and Game.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: Fishing Game.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was gone that.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I was just wondering about that.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because it was right before you took over there when you broke his back.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: I heard about it.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I actually I saw when I came here in 72, I saw when they were building the fire station.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: They were putting the water.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you were telling me about that.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was a swamp.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was just water, and there were boats out in the water, and they were pulling up these big pilings, and it's like, what are they doing in this swamp?
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: So And now that now that building's in not so great shape.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, basically, I've crawled under that building a few times, and there's been a lot of water under there, and who knows what's under those.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of yeah, that that was not the most stable foundation that they built that building on back in the day.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a it was a modular structure, right?
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't wasn't there big sections that they came in?
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_02: Different parts they stacked them up.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really know how they built it because I only saw the part it was already built when I came back up, but I just saw them putting the pilings in earlier or something like that.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_02: So let's let's this might be in the same time frame.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_02: What year was it that you met your wife?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because you met her in Haynes, right?
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because she came up to work at the Presbyterian Church, right?
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, she came in October of 88.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of a couple of interesting scenarios in here.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're maybe off track from fire, but so basically, when I when my wife came up, she was called a volunteer in mission.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: And part of being a volunteer in mission was the fact that you would go once a week to different members of the church for dinner that night, and you would socialize with the family, etc.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, but that just but you didn't have to pay for your meal.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: So so anyway, so on Monday nights, which is fire meeting night, my cousin who was here also had Crystal over for Monday night meals with her.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: But she had me over because I was a bachelor back then, and I was any free meal is a good meal for a bachelor's.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: I hear that.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: I hear that.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of how we met to start with, and got a couple of stories with this.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: We maybe want to go ahead.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_02: Let's tell them now.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_02: We we can go, we're all over the place, Al.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have any defined story time here.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: So uh basically for a while there, she was only supposed to stay a year, and then she got talked into staying a second year.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_02: So who who talked her into staying the extra year?
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_02: Was that Al or was that the church or something?
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was the church.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it a combination?
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, it was a couple of different things were happening.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: One is the fact that she was thinking about going to seminary.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, but she says, you know, I'm not really sure what's going on.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: So she stayed a second year, and she was actually staying with the Swift family when she was here.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, and one of the things that she didn't have was a car.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I had two cars, so I let her borrow one of my cars.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Good move.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so basically, and we would see each other at basketball games with being a youth worker, she's supposed to go to basketball games, and then we would make just strange bets like I think that Haynes is gonna have five points at the end of this quarter or something like that.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we'd do all this dumb stuff.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so I was getting more in tune thinking this could be a good relationship, and I thought for a while she was gonna be that way, but then at some point in time I think she was saying, Well, I'm gonna go to seminary, and I don't want to have a serious relationship.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, so I mean, I just kind of found out that this is kind of what I think she was gonna be doing, and then somehow she was driving and got the car stuck or something, and then she calls me and says, Can you help me get unstuck?
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_00: I got I got the car you're borrowing to me stuck.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Can you help me?
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so we helped out, and this was the same time frame when uh White Fang was being filmed here.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, uh basically it was coming up on the end of her second year, and it's like, okay, are we, is this, you know, we were getting pretty close, but it's like, you know, I'm thinking that she's either gonna leave and go to seminary because she's not staying another year, or I'm gonna have to get more serious in this scenario.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So so anyway, we were probably dating somewhat, and then it's got to the point where I'm going to propose to her.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna get serious.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I get flowers, dinner, everything all set up.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I invite her over.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think she knows what's going on, and I'm just getting ready to start my procedure, and beepop, beep.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: The plectron goes off.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: The plectron goes off, and it says, I am I'm not gonna do this.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_00: But then I they say, we have a person that tried to jump from the dock to a barge at the LUTAC dock, and he's fallen between the two on the bull, I don't know, but whatever that log is that keeps him, and he's down there, and it's like this is not, and I mean, we're back to remember how many people we have?
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have many people responsible.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_02: We only have three people or something.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_02: This guy's poor decision is gonna keep you from getting married, right?
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so basically, I go to help this guy, and the guy ended up, I think he survived this.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he survived getting him out of there, but we got that.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then it's like, well, that evening shot.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So next week, another dinner, another dinner.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_00: More flowers.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, did you turn your Plektrod off?
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I we didn't turn it off on this one, but anyway, so she you know, I'm not positive on all this, but she said that first week she was not sure she was gonna say yes or no.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the second week she watched, she knew it was gonna happen.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_00: That guy did you a favor then.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that maybe was a good scenario.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: She's gonna watch this and she's probably gonna read me out when she's telling us.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's all right.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I hope Crystal does watch us, and she can come tell her side of the story too if she wants to.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, yeah, that's one of those things that I know you're you and Crystal both are both people of a lot of faith and and deep belief, and that's you know, maybe that was just God's way of uh putting somebody there that Crystal wasn't quite ready for this jump right yet.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_02: That let's give her another week to think about it and uh intervene, change the dynamics there a little bit, so all worked out for the best.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_02: So the second time she said yes.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, and did you so going back to this because you said you were you had a uh story about building your house, you'd built your house by then?
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, we haven't got so what happened is while my dad had the house out at LuTac, there was no power out there except for generators.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he bought an acre of property where my house currently is, and he moved a trailer in there and he had power in it, and all he had was ten freezers in it.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody out at Lutec put a freezer in there and he rented out at$10 a month.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: You could plug your freezer in here.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So he had this one-acre piece of property out there, and basically, and then later on, they did take power out there, so it was obsolete.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: No one out at LuTac needed the power anymore because they had power out there.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we moved the trailer off, and then I decided that was a place to build.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But how that developed in the fact that when I got the job with uh the fire department, I was 10 miles out, and they say that's too far to live.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to move closer.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_00: So in 88 and 89, I started building a house there.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that happened on the house is I designed the house and I had Russ Walton help me build it.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_00: But when you work fishing game and you're out for five months out in the middle of nowhere, it's a situation where you have a lot of time.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I drew, I had graph paper, I drew plans and redrew plans and did all of this, and I wrote dumb stories and all kinds of stuff.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so also I have some pretty neat scenarios while I'm working fishing game.
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna back up to that one real quick.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so out in fishing game.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm out.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is for the last part of the time I was working out of uh by Fort Yukon up on the Sheenjak River.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So on the Sheenjak River, we go from circle, 100-mile boat ride up to this place, and we would camp out, and we had what's called side scan sonars.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_00: You'd run this pipe on the ground and you would count fish going over, but the fish only came out at night because the water was too clear, so they only traveled at night, they would stay in the deeper pools.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we would count fish at night, and you would have to actually, you know, set up and we'd take shifts.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_00: You would do every every other hour, you would take a 15-minute shift to count fish.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what happened when you got there, fish and game would not allow you to hunt big game because fish and game had paid for you to get to that location.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can hunt waterfowl, but you couldn't hunt big game.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_00: So my boss, who had his own boat, this will come in in a little bit, is the fact opening day of moose season, we get out of our tent, there's a bull moose standing on the gravel bar right by our camp.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And before what we were also hunting, you could hunt grouse.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, most of our we had to spend about two or three hours during the day, but almost all night.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we had eight hours of daylight that in the summer, you got daylight all the time, almost, that you could do whatever you wanted to, kind of.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_00: You would just so we went walking.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was an old trapper's trail that I walked out, and I'd seen this huge bull moose in there.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I so I tell my boss that, you know, hey, I saw a bull moose opening morning.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I saw another bull moose over here.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Well, I'm off this weekend.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna bring my boat up to your channel, and we're gonna go moose hunting.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go moose hunting.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna go mouth.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're not going to, I'm going to.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So he comes up, he gets this moose.
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, Okay, I'll help you clean it.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm holding this moose up, and he just slices his hand while he's doing.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how he slices his hand.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Well, I can't clean the moose.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_00: You got to do it.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to clean his moose for him.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_02: You tell him I'm on the state payroll right now, I'm not allowed to do that.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, well, actually.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_00: You could clean the moose, you just couldn't hunt it.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't hunt it.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can't harvest it on my own for my personal use.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_02: So did he hook you up with some moose meat when you were heading home at the end of the season?
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but kind of no.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_00: He did.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, he took this moose back, and I don't know what he did, but he got bones in it.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So they ground up the burger and it had bone chips in it.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bone chips in it?
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like he was saying, uh, well, you kind of gotta chew softly because there's bone.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had like one or two bone chips.
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_00: We had burgers or something, and there was a couple, and it's like, man, I don't know if I really want to deal with a bone chip every time.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if you don't chew it right, you never know what's gonna happen with that.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so that was a side story about was it a big moose?
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, that wasn't the biggest one.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was it wasn't the other one, that was a third bull moose.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So there was three bull moose within, but it was in any bull area right there.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_00: So and also another scenario with two of my one of my trips was on by the Tusitna was uh Ted Turner.
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lodge about five miles, ten miles up from us that turned Ted Turner had come in to have a powwow with a bunch of his bigwigs, so they wanted to come to Alaska.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we went up by boat and met Ted Turner thing up there.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then I don't know if anybody's ever heard of Beb Doolittle.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_00: She's an artist, yeah.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_00: She's the one that does paintings, but that's got like trees up, but it'll have horses in there.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this couple paddling down the river, and they come in and say, Hey, you know, you got some coffee or something like that.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Sure.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know who this lady was.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, and she says, Yeah, I'm I'm Bev Doolittle, and it's like so congratulations.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, Oh, you know, I and she was not boasting or anything, so you know, but then I looked her up later on and I go, Wow.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you want to hand me a picture or something like that?
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_00: How about an autograph or something like that?
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do the portrait?
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so a couple of times you see different people out in the middle of nowhere.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, Lasky, you never know who you're gonna run into.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_02: That is true.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so back to building the house, back to building the house.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_02: So you you designed all this while you're up on the river, right?
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_00: I designed it, etc., like that, and then basically we built it, started in October, and it took us I think six weeks to frame it in.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it was, you know, the house was kind of built, and uh my actually my dad was still, he came up here and helped.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: He did a lot of the concrete work because I was working fishing game still in the summer, and he built the back retaining wall, so because it's on a slope like this, and there wasn't enough flat ground, so the only way that I could build it was to have a retaining wall and have the basement kind of stick up like this.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So he built that, and then we had we dug a well, and you know, how deep do you dig a well?
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's people that have people across the street from us dug a 30-foot well.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ours was 310 feet.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, holy cow! But the good thing about it is it's artesian, so the water comes out all the way, and we actually had to put a pipe out of it because it would just flow out the top and then just ice up completely.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so we built the house and I'm now three miles from town, etc., like that.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and to start with, I put the house in the house.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_02: And did you did you just something just came to me?
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_02: Did you start building the house before you asked Crystal to marry you?
• 1:23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you're uh so she didn't have any say in how the house was built.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Boy, because you're pretty lucky there.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Most women want to have a say in that, Al.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it she came to it was she came in October and I started in October.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you haven't met her when you started.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was just trying to get the timeline there.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, she came to the open house that we had in '89.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because it was in the summer where we had it because my dad uh was still alive.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_00: My dad died in December of 89.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know, talking about your dad and your uncle.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember where you can you might be able to help me with this.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_02: But I remember when my dad had the sports shop in the building where the grocery store is now.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that one year, because he was at that time he was collecting, he was had a lot of stuffed animals, wolves and stuff like that.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of those are over in the American Ball Legal Foundation now.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_02: So he's kind of building up a collection for that.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I can't remember if it was your dad, your brother, your mom, your aunt.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_02: One of the badgeleys comes in and brings him an armadillo because he did have it.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I brought an armadillo.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was my dad.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_02: Was that your dad?
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then was your dad the one that brought the rattlesnake too?
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think because we got the rattlesnake too.
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we have the wood duck.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_02: And the wood duck.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Those are the three things.
• 1:25:04
  SPEAKER_02: All the things is like each year it seemed like there's another thing, but we gotta have more Texas here.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_02: We gotta have more Texas here.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, the Badgley family kept bringing us, and we still got all three of the three of those in the store.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_02: They're still here, yeah.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I moved in to our house in '88.
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_00: The end of well, actually, I don't think I moved in until start of 89 because we were it was not insulated, etc., and stuff like that.
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So and let's see, starting in in December of 90s when Crystal and I got married.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So and basically, I don't know if she realized what she was getting into.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we've had some pretty neat experiences in the fact that Crystal's parents eventually retired and they actually came up and did some uh kind of work at the church as a campground host at the church.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_00: They would bring an RV up and they would park it there, and they would mow the lawn.
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Crystal's mom would do flowers around the church, and but they got free utilities or something.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they got a quite a few years to come up here and visit.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And my mom stayed with us a few years after I built my house.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: My mom says, Do you want the trailer and the property at LUTAC?
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, if you do, you're gonna have to shovel the flat roof of the trailer and everything.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, eh, you can sell that.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's seven miles from my house.
• 1:26:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really need a cabin seven miles away.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we got a couple of fire stories.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_02: Was that that trailer, is that still there?
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_02: Which pro which property was?
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're right next to Richard Buck's.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a little white shed there now that's still one of our fishing cleaning sheds or stuff like that.
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it was further down.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know if it was where the slide came down in 2020, but you're closer to the bucks on that.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_02: As you're you had talked earlier about developing a lot of protocols and everything through the fire department and the way they do training and stuff like that.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_02: When did Safety Talk come in?
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because you and Lyle Huff go every once a week on KH ⁇ S.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_02: You do 1996, I think.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_02: 1996, you started Safety Talk.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so what what brought that about?
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So fire prevention week was in October.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, we're covering the kids in the school, but if you don't have a kid in the school, you're not hearing it.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're not really going to hear it or something like that.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I Started saying, well, why don't we do a program and talk about safety once a week or something like that?
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And to start with, this was a boring as talk or something like that.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_00: First one I did, it's like I didn't know what I was doing.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, this is about fire safety.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fire safety tip number one.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh man.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've had a bunch of other people.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Another person, I don't know if anybody remembers Travis Reed.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_00: He was on there with me, and Travis was a card.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, he kind of livened a lot of things up.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_00: But Lyle's been on with me a long time, and a lot of different people have been on.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we've ended up about there's about 50 different topics that we have, a 15-minute uh spiel that we do on Wednesdays from 8 45 to 9, and talking about last Wednesday we talked about current health.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_00: What's your health situation, what you can do to make your health better, or something like that.
• 1:29:01
  SPEAKER_00: During we have topical ones like we have a snow machine safety talk right before the Alcan.
• 1:29:09
  SPEAKER_00: We have uh Thanksgiving, don't cook turkeys wrong right before Thanksgiving.
• 1:29:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have the holiday safety talk.
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have at the end of the year, we have what they call the year-end review where we cover about 12 topics in 15 minutes.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we just do a quick summary of each one to try to just remind people, you know, wear your seatbelt, etc., like that.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's another thing.
• 1:29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And one other thing that was a pretty big accomplishment is they have what's called a firefighter one class, which is a class for your fire department to become trained as a certified firefighter.
• 1:29:50
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up taking that, it was 160 hours of training for me.
• 1:29:54
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually I got the credentials with someone else that could help as to do a firefighter one class in actually in Haynes.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_00: But most people couldn't take off a week at a time because I took a week off and then they would have a month later, they have another one-week session.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_00: But so we ended up doing it for about five months or something like that.
• 1:30:21
  SPEAKER_00: But we would do like Wednesday night, Thursday night, all day Saturday for ever.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we got like nine or ten people from Haynes certified as Firefighter One.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_00: So great.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a big accomplishment for what have you seen from when you started as a volunteer in the early 80s till now, because you're you're still you're back to a volunteer now, you're limited to what you can do.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_02: But um, what have you seen in changes of equipment?
• 1:30:54
  SPEAKER_02: Is there big changes in equipment and tactics?
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_02: How is that or has it not really evolved that much over that time?
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things that we used to do that, you know, I'm can refer back to my fire on the barracks.
• 1:31:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, and you picture this if you have a window and you got fire coming out the window, everybody thinks the best thing to do is to put water in the window.
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the fire's got to go somewhere.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of coming out that window where it's already coming out, you just push the fire into another room.
• 1:31:32
  SPEAKER_00: It comes out that window, you put the fire out, goes to another, you burn the burn the whole house down.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of tactics, and now a lot of times you'll come from the opposite side of the fire and you just can push the fire right out of, and you might only have one room that has fire damage, and everything else is if the doors are closed, you may not even have any uh fire damage, maybe some smoke damage, etc.
• 1:31:58
  SPEAKER_00: like that.
• 1:31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the equipment we have uh a better PPE where you're gonna be better prepared or something like that.
• 1:32:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've melted two helmets.
• 1:32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Melted two helmets.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the main one I can remember melting was the fact that we had How big of fires were those that you were it was there were trainings.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_00: During training you melted them.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the one training was we had a situation where people were coming in down a hallway, you had to make a 90-degree turn, and then make another 90-degree turn, and there was a fire.
• 1:32:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the safety officer to make sure that if something went wrong, I could put the fire out.
• 1:32:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the goal of the safety officer is not to, if you know, if the fire starts to get big, you put it out.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that the team's supposed to figure out what are you gonna do if something goes wrong.
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this team was coming in, and somehow the hose got tangled up and they couldn't get around the corner.
• 1:32:59
  SPEAKER_00: So now the fire is getting bigger, and I'm trying to watch this team to see what are they gonna do?
• 1:33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna back out?
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or are they gonna stay?
• 1:33:12
  SPEAKER_00: What are they gonna do?
• 1:33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they're still trying to go forward, and the fire's getting bigger, and I'm saying, what are you gonna do?
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm I'm not gonna say, what are you gonna do?
• 1:33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I can't say what are you supposed to do, because you're supposed to figure out what you're supposed to do.
• 1:33:28
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, it started getting really big, and I I have a team that's ready to put it out, and they said, you know, do you want us to put it out?
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I just put my head up behind the shield to say, and it melted my helmet.
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yes.
• 1:33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yep, it's hot enough.
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and put it out.
• 1:33:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's time to put it out.
• 1:33:48
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so you just certain things like that you can remember.
• 1:33:53
  SPEAKER_02: So what one thing I want to touch on with you, Alan.
• 1:33:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I know you can't give us specifics or anything like that.
• 1:34:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I just I I kind of want to keep this broad, but looking at do you know how many fire calls you went on, how many ambulance calls you went on over your career?
• 1:34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, do you have a rough estimate?
• 1:34:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can I can tell you we were looking at when I first started in 85 as an ambulance responder, I think we had an average of about 75 ambulance calls a year.
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Last year we had 425.
• 1:34:37
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of those are Metavax, etc., like that, which we never used to have as much of.
• 1:34:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I figure I was keeping track of my calls for a while at towards the end, and I was averaging about 100 to 125 ambulance calls a year.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was on the so when I was paid for 28 years to start with, it's not gonna be that much.
• 1:35:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you average 28 years at 75 ambulance calls a year, you know, I don't know what that is, but it's a lot of ambulance calls.
• 1:35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Our fire call volume is a lot less.
• 1:35:17
  SPEAKER_02: So but uh but how and and and so I it's a lot of calls, right?
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_02: The thing that from looking at it from a distance and occasionally being on the other end of that, where you're involved with the fire department coming to your house or ambulance coming to your house, and on that aspect of it, how hard is it for you to, or is it easy to not carry that with you?
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because every time that you're doing you're going on one of those calls, you're dealing with somebody in significant distress, whether it's and depending on the severity of the fire, sometimes it might be just a yard fire, a grass fire, whatever, but a lot of times you're dealing with somebody that in a lot of distress and trauma, and you're there helping them, but you can't always fix everything.
• 1:36:14
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 1:36:16
  SPEAKER_00: How do you process that?
• 1:36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a couple of things that people have told me is one is you can't change the situation that happens before you get there.
• 1:36:27
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 1:36:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can't you you don't have control over that till you get there.
• 1:36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are trained well enough, you gotta do what's right with the equipment you have, and you gotta do the best you can.
• 1:36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you say, I did the best I can with what I had, and this is with the results, you can't you can't really ask for more.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_00: And my goal is to say I did what I can.
• 1:36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times it's how you treat people after the call as versus, and sometimes it's treating the bystanders as much as the the patient.
• 1:37:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have to treat the patient, but if a kid is hurt and you tell the parent back off, let me do my stuff, then basically you are not gonna farewell with that patient or the the parent.
• 1:37:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like if you can include them in saying, hey, you know, it's really important for you to be here.
• 1:37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me this about your child or something like that, and try to figure it out?
• 1:37:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I kind of got used to talking with people in different levels.
• 1:37:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think the most challenging ones are the situations where if I had maybe certain equipment and I don't have it now, I can do it.
• 1:37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I go on a call without the ambulance, there's a lot of things I can't do without my ambulance.
• 1:38:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like I've been on planes before where they call for medical people and I've gone in there, but there's some challenges there.
• 1:38:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to present myself as the fact that I want to train myself as best I can, do the best job I can, and have my team work together, do the best job they can, and you can't ask for anything more.
• 1:38:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what we're here for.
• 1:38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some calls that are I still recall certain calls that are challenging from long, long, long time ago.
• 1:38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, a lot of it is when you were less trained, and you know, if you wish you could do something, but I I I do pretty well with it.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of people that on our crew that don't do well, and I'm trying to figure out how to tell that someone's not doing well, even though they say they might be doing well.
• 1:39:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a situation where if you see a lot of calls, but I see so few of calls compared to if I worked in Seattle, they see more in a year than they would I've seen in my whole career.
• 1:39:15
  SPEAKER_00: And but they have backup, etc.
• 1:39:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like if we have a big fire here, we don't have backup.
• 1:39:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have Clahey, maybe they can come help us.
• 1:39:26
  SPEAKER_00: But if we have a mass casualty, we have two ambulances in our community.
• 1:39:30
  SPEAKER_00: The next closest ambulance is Haynes Junction, which is 150 miles away to a different country.
• 1:39:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, we have to, you know, train the best we can.
• 1:39:41
  SPEAKER_00: We've got some really good trainers now in our community, which are really uh important.
• 1:39:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we got Julie Anderson and Jen Walsh do a lot of training, Tim Holm, and we have a new paid chief now that's really into training.
• 1:39:55
  SPEAKER_00: So getting people trained and getting people up to snuff is really beneficial for your community, but you can only do what you can do with the equipment you have.
• 1:40:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's just always it's always impressed me that in a small town and the majority of the people that are responding are volunteers, the professionalism speaking from personal experience um for family members and stuff, that when called the ambulance and the way everybody's treated the whole way, I don't I don't know, it's pretty high.
• 1:40:36
  SPEAKER_02: They might do it better somewhere else, but I hope I don't find that out.
• 1:40:40
  SPEAKER_02: But because I I think the Haynes, the Haynes departments, EMT and FIRE do an amazing job with the resources that they have.
• 1:40:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:40:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think a lot of that goes to your leadership when you took that over and set up those programs.
• 1:40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:40:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean I've done some of it.
• 1:40:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people that have helped me out throughout the whole time, and there's people that have been instrumental in making changes, etc., like that.
• 1:41:05
  SPEAKER_00: But just trying to uh be sensible in your approach a lot of times.
• 1:41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get excited.
• 1:41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because some people just can't, they're just too gung-ho.
• 1:41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, you know, everybody wants to do something, but you know, you you know, scene safety is our first priority.
• 1:41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you run in there and the firefighter gets hurt or the ambulance person gets hurt, you can have serious consequences.
• 1:41:34
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to become a second victim, and that's a key thing that we want to work on.
• 1:41:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, and too, like you were talking about some of the names you had mentioned before with the the John Bruce, you know, your rock errands, your Al Heinrich, your Scott Bradford, and a lot of these people work there, they got their full-time job, right?
• 1:41:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yet they're also going to training for ambulance, they're going to training for fire department, they've got weekly meetings doing fundraising and everything.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I I that also is something that I don't think gets enough recognition.
• 1:42:07
  SPEAKER_02: That the volunteers, now we've we've got more paid firemen, it used to just be you and everybody else's volunteers, but the number of volunteers that are putting time, Vince Hansen, he's always responding.
• 1:42:18
  SPEAKER_02: Patty Brown, CJ, you know, the the the people over the years that have just spent hours and hours in the training.
• 1:42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't I don't think the community does enough to thank all the people that do that.
• 1:42:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really nice when you work with somebody, and you know, if they just say, hey, you know, thanks for coming out, you know, we'll get people send us a thank you note or something like that.
• 1:42:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that means a lot to the responders that, you know, hey, we are noticed, we are appreciated, and I mean, we appreciate the opportunity.
• 1:42:51
  SPEAKER_00: And working with people that you know, it can be good and bad.
• 1:42:55
  SPEAKER_00: If it's somebody you know, you know a little bit about the background with maybe the family or something, you know, like, oh wow, this person's grandmother's been sick like this in the past, and I know little Johnny gets really scared or something when we have to come in like that.
• 1:43:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we gotta say, okay, hey, we're gonna we're gonna take go check on grandma and we're gonna just see how she's doing right now and try to explain and take a little bit of time to make that happen.
• 1:43:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's kind of a way of uh dealing with lowering the stress level of a situation.
• 1:43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:43:37
  SPEAKER_02: So 28 years as the paid fireman in the Hainesborough.
• 1:43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:43:41
  SPEAKER_02: You decided you were gonna retire.
• 1:43:44
  SPEAKER_00: When I yeah, when I turned 60, I said, I'm gonna pull the plug and still be a volunteer, but then I'm gonna keep so then you then you came and started working for me part-time.
• 1:43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I worked for you part-time and then I worked as a deck handler.
• 1:44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Matt Matt Davis.
• 1:44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Matt Davis for a while.
• 1:44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:44:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got two ambulance calls I want to mention before we get into that part.
• 1:44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's hit them.
• 1:44:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is my animal ambulance calls.
• 1:44:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of them I call Batbusters.
• 1:44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Batbusters.
• 1:44:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we get a call from someone that says, I got bit by a bat, and I want you to catch the bat so we can find out if it's rabies or anything.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, so how do you catch a bat?
• 1:44:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we got how do you know it's the right bat?
• 1:44:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 1:44:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 1:44:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we we're going in there with dip nets, we got all this gear on or something, and it's like, you turn the lights on, what happened to the bat?
• 1:44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's gone.
• 1:44:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's gone.
• 1:44:52
  SPEAKER_00: We never found the bat, but now we're opening up every cabinet in this house trying to see if we can find the bat.
• 1:44:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway.
• 1:45:01
  SPEAKER_00: And another one was at the ferry terminal, there was a couple that had a really high-priced dog.
• 1:45:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they were throwing a ball for their dog, and they threw it towards the end of the dock.
• 1:45:22
  SPEAKER_00: The dog didn't see the ball and splash.
• 1:45:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the water.
• 1:45:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they called the fire department to try to get the dog out.
• 1:45:33
  SPEAKER_00: But we got a little bit of a problem because the ferry is getting ready to leave, and they don't want to leave their dog.
• 1:45:41
  SPEAKER_00: First off, they don't leave the dog in the water, and secondly.
• 1:45:44
  SPEAKER_00: So were they on the ferry?
• 1:45:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, they were getting ready to get on the ferry, and they were exercising their dog, and then the dog jumped into the water.
• 1:45:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I have, since I live right out there, I have a little John boat, a little 10-foot John boat, and it's not calm out there, but I didn't have time to get a big boat.
• 1:46:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I paddle out with my John boat, and they're up on the top of the dock, and I'm paddling towards this dog, and the dog's paddling away from me as fast as I can.
• 1:46:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't love what this guy's offering.
• 1:46:15
  SPEAKER_00: So then it's kind of like we're chasing this dog all around, and then you know, they're yelling, go with the boat.
• 1:46:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like, no, no, that dog doesn't understand what's going on.
• 1:46:27
  SPEAKER_00: So finally we just grab the dog by the collar and reef it in.
• 1:46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then it tries to jump back out, but we were able to eventually get it back.
• 1:46:34
  SPEAKER_00: So they were happy about that.
• 1:46:36
  SPEAKER_02: But uh so speaking of ambulance and the ferry, I don't think you were there.
• 1:46:42
  SPEAKER_02: No, but wasn't it in the 70s that we had a ferry, we had the ambulance for the bird?
• 1:46:48
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't an ambulance, it was our uh, it's kind of like a it was a station wagon that they used for a gear rig.
• 1:46:53
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the other one.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, it wasn't the ambulance.
• 1:46:56
  SPEAKER_02: Put it on the ferry, somebody didn't set the parking brake or something, and it went off the other side.
• 1:47:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is in the middle of the is it still attacking it.
• 1:47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is it still in the middle of the attack inlet somewhere?
• 1:47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:47:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that got lost.
• 1:47:07
  SPEAKER_02: Anybody that wanted to know about that story, that was true and correct.
• 1:47:10
  SPEAKER_02: But it wasn't an ambulance.
• 1:47:11
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't an ambulance.
• 1:47:12
  SPEAKER_02: Different fire department.
• 1:47:13
  SPEAKER_00: They went to Skagway for a training there, and they had a bunch of equipment.
• 1:47:17
  SPEAKER_00: And for the turnaround, is they feel that the ferry opened the gate too fast when they made the turn, so they should have had to the thing closed.
• 1:47:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't, and so they ended up replacing some of the equipment that we lost, which was obsolete with brand new stuff.
• 1:47:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to throw more stuff off the ferry.
• 1:47:42
  SPEAKER_02: We won't tell the state that we'll just figure out how we roll more stuff off of there.
• 1:47:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:47:46
  SPEAKER_02: So after, so then in your retirement, you had more time to do fishing, to do hunting.
• 1:47:54
  SPEAKER_02: So your summers, when you're not here, you're either volunteering over at the fire department still, you're over there quite a bit, or you're subsistence fishing.
• 1:48:03
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 1:48:04
  SPEAKER_00: We do a I mean, actually, I have some friends of ours that had a nice fishing boat that they ended up moving out, and I ended up buying their fishing boat, which was good in the fact that I had been fishing with their boat because they didn't have all the gear.
• 1:48:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you want a subsistence fish, you've got to have a net, you've got to have pots, you've got to have long lines, and all of these different things.
• 1:48:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they had a boat, but they didn't have any of that stuff.
• 1:48:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the good thing about when it was their boat is they paid for the fuel, they paid for the maintenance on it.
• 1:48:38
  SPEAKER_00: All I had to do was bring my gear and put the stuff out.
• 1:48:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I mean, that is currently we have five freezers in our house.
• 1:48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Two of the freezers are just for bait, yeah, for baiting the crap, shrimp scrabots, and all that kind of stuff, and halibut long lines.
• 1:48:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have one that's specifically for fish and all of that, and then I have one that's for the basic normal stuff.
• 1:49:06
  SPEAKER_00: So and then we have just a little freezer for other stuff.
• 1:49:11
  SPEAKER_02: Did you with your garden and that you you and Crystal live, you try and get as much of that from the land as possible, right?
• 1:49:18
  SPEAKER_00: Our garden's been kind of slim.
• 1:49:20
  SPEAKER_00: We get pretty much our carrots used to be really good until the bear decided he likes carrots too.
• 1:49:26
  SPEAKER_00: And for two years straight, right before we would go to pull our carrots, there wasn't a carrot left in our and our patch wasn't very big to start with.
• 1:49:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we have potatoes and carrots for On behalf of the bears, thank you for providing good carrots.
• 1:49:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, you know, we gotta feed them too.
• 1:49:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's important.
• 1:49:44
  SPEAKER_02: So now let's uh move ahead a few years.
• 1:49:48
  SPEAKER_02: And you you were well, maybe it was about the time you retired, you started going hunting up north with the Jones family.
• 1:49:54
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 1:49:55
  SPEAKER_02: With Craig and Stan.
• 1:49:56
  SPEAKER_02: You go what what river do you guys go on?
• 1:49:58
  SPEAKER_02: We go on the Tanana.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now is that something was that an area that you um worked on for fisheries?
• 1:50:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you guys go up there, and how many years ago was it now that you fell out of a tree?
• 1:50:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was in 2022.
• 1:50:15
  SPEAKER_02: 2022, so six four years ago.
• 1:50:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:50:18
  SPEAKER_02: This fall now.
• 1:50:20
  SPEAKER_02: So give us a little bit of a chance to give a give us the story on that.
• 1:50:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:50:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we have areas that we hunt in this remote area.
• 1:50:28
  SPEAKER_00: We set up a tent camp, and the one area that we hunt, there's a big long swamp, and it's notorious that you don't climb cottonwood trees.
• 1:50:38
  SPEAKER_00: But this cottonwood tree had been spiked.
• 1:50:41
  SPEAKER_00: We had nails all in it, except for those two branches and then a big branch you sat on.
• 1:50:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I was up about 20, 25 feet, and I was on the first branch holding on to the top branch that I'm sitting on, and I pushed off that, and I was putting my foot on the second branch when the first branch broke.
• 1:51:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I fell about 25 feet and landed on my rear end.
• 1:51:11
  SPEAKER_00: But to precursor this is basically we have a people get dropped off at like seven in the morning, they get picked up at 10.
• 1:51:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I was climbing up, so this is seven in the morning, and it's like I fell, and it's like first thing I I mean, being a medical person, the first thing you do is I can breathe, which started, it kind of knocked the breath out of me.
• 1:51:38
  SPEAKER_00: That first breath was a tough one.
• 1:51:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was like then I could breathe.
• 1:51:43
  SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, that's good.
• 1:51:45
  SPEAKER_00: Breathing is important to start with.
• 1:51:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good starting point.
• 1:51:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's like I can move my fingers, I can move my toes, but my back really hurts.
• 1:51:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like, oh, well, what am I gonna do?
• 1:52:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm trying to say, well, you know, I'm just kind of sitting there for a little bit, and then I'm saying, well, can I I'm sitting out with my legs out, and it's like, okay, well, can I even try to stand up?
• 1:52:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying, or should I try to stand up?
• 1:52:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, so I couldn't stand up, so I said, you know, I just bruised my back because my feet were fine, everything was fine, so it's like, okay, it's now 7.05, they're coming at 10 o'clock.
• 1:52:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, hmm, this is gonna be a long three hours.
• 1:52:45
  SPEAKER_00: So then it's like, after about 7:15, I said, Man, I need to try to figure out a way to get help.
• 1:52:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, Well, how do you signal for help?
• 1:52:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we didn't really arrange for anything.
• 1:53:00
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have radios, it's illegal to use radios to communicate.
• 1:53:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, Well, I'll try to do three-shot method.
• 1:53:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm saying I couldn't put the gun on my shoulder because if I shot it would be not good on my back, so I put it on the ground.
• 1:53:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay.
• 1:53:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I just shot straight up because I thought it would be easier to shoot straight up than putting it at an angle towards that.
• 1:53:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I shot and then it's click, click, click, click, boom, click, click, click, click, boom.
• 1:53:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the people that were hunting with me were about two to three miles away.
• 1:53:45
  SPEAKER_00: They heard, they thought a shot, but then they said, Oh, well, they didn't hear three.
• 1:53:52
  SPEAKER_00: So then it's like, well, maybe he's got a moose or something like that.
• 1:53:58
  SPEAKER_00: So 15 minutes later, when nobody came or heard anything, or actually it was like 30 minutes later, because I said it's gonna take them a while if they're out in the field to come back in.
• 1:54:08
  SPEAKER_00: So now it's eight o'clock and they still haven't come.
• 1:54:10
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's try it again and angle it a little bit more.
• 1:54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Three shots.
• 1:54:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I only had, I think, nine shells with me or something like that.
• 1:54:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying, so it's like, okay, now I've only got three shells left.
• 1:54:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if a bear comes up, I want to have something left to protect me.
• 1:54:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sitting there and wait and wait and wait.
• 1:54:33
  SPEAKER_00: Ten o'clock, they show up, and it's like, and what has happened in the past is sometimes you will walk back towards them.
• 1:54:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're just tired of sitting in the stand, you just walk back that way.
• 1:54:47
  SPEAKER_00: So they drive up to my spot and I'm not there at the river edge.
• 1:54:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like they start to leave, and then they go, Well, he would have probably, and actually, I had my float coat there, so I think they saw my float coat.
• 1:55:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, he wouldn't leave his float coat, so they walk up and I'm telling him, hey, I'm hurt.
• 1:55:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, so anyway, so now they say, Well, can you walk?
• 1:55:11
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I can't walk.
• 1:55:13
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually Craig was able to kind of like carry me piggyback and get me to the boat, and I was laying sideways in the boat, and then we went back to camp.
• 1:55:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's like, okay, well, I need ibuprofen.
• 1:55:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I usually don't take a full dose, but I needed a full dose.
• 1:55:36
  SPEAKER_00: And but they say, Well, you think you broke your back?
• 1:55:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I don't think so, because I mean I can move everything, but it just hurts.
• 1:55:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, I figure if you fall 25 feet, it's probably gonna hurt.
• 1:55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:55:49
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually I took ibuprofen and I said, like, you're supposed to wait two hours and 15 minutes later, and it says, Is my next dose ready yet?
• 1:56:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, no, we need to make a call.
• 1:56:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're 40 miles from any town or something like that on the river.
• 1:56:09
  SPEAKER_00: On the river.
• 1:56:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it's gonna be a bumpy jet boat ride to get you back home.
• 1:56:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then it's like, okay, well, that's probably not super ideal.
• 1:56:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you go that way, you're gonna have to go another 75 miles by truck or by ambulance to get you back home.
• 1:56:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be bouncing.
• 1:56:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they call the trooper and Craig, and Craig has to get up in a tree to make the call.
• 1:56:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he calls the trooper, and the trooper says, Well, we'll try to send Coast Guard out, but then they said Coast Guard's unavailable, so we're gonna send a military helicopter out.
• 1:56:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, but they say, you know, you can't land in the woods, so we had to find a sandbar that they could land at.
• 1:56:56
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, they made arrangements that I'll be taken to this sandbar, and then the helicopter would come and land.
• 1:57:03
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, so the helicopter comes in, I'm still in the boat, and this medic comes in with this hard backboard and a sea collar and says, I'm going to strap the sea collar on you, I'm gonna lay you on your back on this backboard, and I'm gonna strap you down.
• 1:57:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, you're not.
• 1:57:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, That's how we got to secure you.
• 1:57:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying, I can move my head.
• 1:57:33
  SPEAKER_00: See, I'm moving my head.
• 1:57:34
  SPEAKER_00: You don't, I can ruin my head, you're not gonna put a sea collar on me.
• 1:57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I said, the only way I can be moved is on my side.
• 1:57:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:57:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you lay me on my back, it's not gonna work.
• 1:57:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up, so basically they laid me on.
• 1:57:52
  SPEAKER_02: So did did did you explain to him that you have EMG training at this point?
• 1:57:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a medic.
• 1:57:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Well, I'm a medic too.
• 1:58:02
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I said, what I could really use is some kind of pain management for my back.
• 1:58:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Well, we don't have any morphine or anything like that.
• 1:58:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have what's called ketamine.
• 1:58:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I I've heard of ketamine, and I've never had ketamine until that day.
• 1:58:21
  SPEAKER_00: I never want to get ketamine again.
• 1:58:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, but basically, he gave me this ketamine, and I didn't know what that effects were going to be.
• 1:58:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sitting there, and then all of a sudden, it looks like things from the helicopter are coming at me.
• 1:58:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I sure hope that's a sure hope that's a ketamine because I don't, this doesn't feel right.
• 1:58:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then kind of it kind of knocked me out because they flew me from that area to Fairbanks, and then I went in to Fairbanks and got checked out there, and they didn't CAT scan and x-rays and found out that I had shattered my lumbar vertebra, and then I had to go to uh Anchorage.
• 1:59:12
  SPEAKER_00: So Craig ends up calling Crystal to let him know that I'm hurt and they don't know what's going on, and told them that I was being Medevac to Fairbanks.
• 1:59:25
  SPEAKER_00: So she's saying, Okay, well, what should I do?
• 1:59:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Well, I don't know where he's gonna go from Fairbanks, if he's gonna stay in Fairbanks or is he gonna go so basically, so she ends up calling our son, who happened to be in the Seattle airport going on another trip, and he says, Well, I'm gonna cancel my trip and I'm gonna set up, I'm gonna go up north, and he goes to Fairbanks.
• 1:59:56
  SPEAKER_00: But then he goes, but Craig got the number of the doctor in Fairbanks to find out what's gonna happen.
• 2:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: So my son was able to call that doctor, and they said he's being medevaced to Anchorage, so basically that gave so it would have been terrible for him to fly to Fairbanks to find out already.
• 2:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so they flew to Anchorage, and I was ended up getting there sometime that evening, and then the next morning I ended up having a nine and a half hour surgery.
• 2:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nine and a half hours.
• 2:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nine and a half hours.
• 2:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had to have two 10-inch rods and an artificial vertebra at L1.
• 2:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: So from T10 to L5, I have rods with screws into the wings of the vertebra to secure that.
• 2:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of limited my ability to respond to fire calls.
• 2:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I spent a week in the hospital, a week in rehab, and then walked off the ambulance two weeks later, kind of slowly, but um I remember I was uh when the ferry dock that you were on, you and Crystal coming back, we had a refrigeration guy coming to work on our refrigeration equipment next door.
• 2:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I was out there to pick him up, and he came off the ferry, and uh he's like, Alright, I'm ready.
• 2:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, hang on a second, I got somebody I gotta meet out here.
• 2:01:25
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Al's coming off the ferry, I gotta wait.
• 2:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: And Crystal walks up and and I was like, okay, they're taking him off in a van or they got a car or something like that.
• 2:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then pretty soon, you're you're doing pretty well.
• 2:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: You you might just but for a guy that was just a couple weeks off of back surgery, you had your your cane or whatever, you're cruising up that ferry ramp.
• 2:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, it was apprehensive, you know.
• 2:01:49
  SPEAKER_02: My dad having a back injury, being in a wheelchair for 38 years, didn't know what was gonna happen.
• 2:01:55
  SPEAKER_02: But to see you come off the ferry like that, like I'm I'm not sure where this is gonna go, but I think Al's gonna be all right on this.
• 2:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was pretty amazing.
• 2:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the challenge was before they did the surgery, is like you got two options.
• 2:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can take the surgery, or you can lay in bed for six months on your back and try to let it heal on its own.
• 2:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, it would be less surgery because they'd only have to actually do the surgery for the ruptured vertebra, but it says, or you can get all these rods in and then you can be up and at them in a day or two.
• 2:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like laying on my back six months.
• 2:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that would be oh, yeah, I think you made the right choice.
• 2:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 2:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: So but I also remember when you first got back for a while, for a few months, yeah, you were really nervous about whether you were still gonna be able to go fishing, whether you're still gonna be able to go hunting, shoot a rifle.
• 2:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: How did how did that wear on you over that time?
• 2:02:56
  SPEAKER_02: Or just the not the not knowing and when did you feel like all right, I'm gonna what was the sign for you that I'm gonna be able to do this again?
• 2:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, basically in my rehab, it's like before you get a rehab, you need to be able to climb stairs.
• 2:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying, well, if I can because basically we have a three-story house and my bedroom's on the third floor.
• 2:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: If I can't climb stairs, it's gonna be a challenge.
• 2:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I started like day one, I did a shuffle to the bathroom almost, and then day two, I would be able to walk a little bit more, but then like day four, I was doing laps around the corridor there, but then it's like stairs.
• 2:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: I had to climb ten flights of stairs before they let me out.
• 2:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: So once I figured I could climb strairs, plus I had to be able to get in and out of a car.
• 2:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: So they just see if I could do that.
• 2:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, walking is different than able to bend and to try to get, and it's still hard for me because I'm so used to being able to bend like this, I hit my head all the time on the side of a car because I'm used to being able to duck down and I don't bend like that.
• 2:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: Half of my back does not bend like it used to.
• 2:04:14
  SPEAKER_02: So what but when you got back, because there were you were worried about lifting and things like that, being able to fire a rifle at a moose, whether you're gonna be able to pack a moose.
• 2:04:23
  SPEAKER_02: What what was kind of the key for you?
• 2:04:26
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing that I could see that was good about it is the time of year because I don't hunt in November, December, January, March, April.
• 2:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you had till the next hunting season.
• 2:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I had that, and fishing is a lot more dominating in my so it's like, okay, I've got to be able to figure out what I can do.
• 2:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I figured if I can climb that, and they said you got a 50-pound weight limit, and I'm saying, to start with.
• 2:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm saying 50 pounds, that's that's most situations.
• 2:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of the stuff, some of the crab pots might be a little bit more than that, but then it's but the thing is it's got to be positioning.
• 2:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I used to be able to reach over and grab a box and do that.
• 2:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's not wasn't gonna happen for a while there or something like that.
• 2:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had a lot of exercise I had to do, so that was a thing.
• 2:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's a whole lot easier to do exercises when you're motivated because you want to go fishing or something like that.
• 2:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: So good to have a reward at the end of it.
• 2:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: That was pretty neat.
• 2:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, and you know, the town was phenomenal.
• 2:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody was bringing food, people would come over and haul firewood in for us, and there was just a lot of people that really helped us out during that time.
• 2:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I can't thank people enough for stepping up and making uh getting back to Haynes memorable.
• 2:05:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for the number of people you've done the same to over the years, I think there's probably still a lot that's due to you if anything ever happened again.
• 2:06:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's uh it's a two-way street out.
• 2:06:07
  SPEAKER_02: You're always one of the you and Crystal both are usually at the top of the list if anything bad's happening to help people out.
• 2:06:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's kind of like I like the phrase neighbor helping neighbor.
• 2:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's a kind of the ambulance thing, and that's what Haynes does here.
• 2:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really nice if Crystal gets stuck in the side of the road.
• 2:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not really worried if if we have a toe strap for her, somebody's gonna pull you out.
• 2:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: People help out, and people will do things for you.
• 2:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I still remember we had a neighbor moved in across the street from us once, and they were unpacking their van.
• 2:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I said, Hey, you need some help?
• 2:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Well, how much per hour are you gonna want?
• 2:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't want anything, I just want to help you unload.
• 2:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, what do you want?
• 2:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just your neighbor.
• 2:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we do here.
• 2:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: We just help people, and it's like he just never got it.
• 2:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's and I mean that's what you know, small community life's like.
• 2:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's people, there's a lot of disagreement here in Haynes, but when somebody's in need, people come together and help out.
• 2:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do you miss Texas?
• 2:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, I have two good friends that live down there, and I go down probably every other year or once a year or something.
• 2:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: The guy that I hunted with a lot down there, he's got a nice ranch down there that I can go down.
• 2:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, here's a story from his ranch, which was kind of bizarre.
• 2:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: I went on a dove hunt at his ranch.
• 2:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: I shot a dove, and it fell into a pond.
• 2:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, oh man, how am I gonna get this dove out?
• 2:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a little bit of wind, so I said, Well, the dove's gonna get blown to the side, I'll get it there.
• 2:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I was watching doves and I look out there and it's gone.
• 2:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not there anymore.
• 2:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, I guess it maybe blew over to the side, ended up shooting a couple more doves, and another one fell in the thing, and I said, What's going on?
• 2:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then yeah, it's big catfish in there.
• 2:08:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, is it catfish getting the doves?
• 2:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: Catfish eating the whole dove floating on the water.
• 2:08:24
  SPEAKER_02: So, how how big a catfish was that?
• 2:08:26
  SPEAKER_02: Did you just go in and try and put your catfishing skills to work?
• 2:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we did fish for there.
• 2:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest one we caught was like five pounds out of there.
• 2:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, there might be bigger ones.
• 2:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how big they are in there.
• 2:08:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's it's a stock pond.
• 2:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: Stock pond.
• 2:08:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, feeding the catfish.
• 2:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, million catfish.
• 2:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: They get they go along pretty well.
• 2:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, uh so what uh any any unfulfilled things in that you trips you want to do, hunting places you want to go, what are well a lot of what I just potentially want to do is gonna be limited now.
• 2:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't really I mean I've got five goats, ten moose, or something like that.
• 2:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: A goat hunt for me is kind of out.
• 2:09:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't climb or something like that.
• 2:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: And moose hunting is a little challenging unless I have people to help me.
• 2:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't pack a moose, I mean, and things like I used to do.
• 2:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm kind of limiting myself, but fishing is kind of my go-to right now.
• 2:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoy the halibut salmon, shrimp, and crab, and taking people out and enjoying that, it's really fun.
• 2:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we saw some national parks with uh Crystal and I went to a bunch of parks, and uh we've got a girl uh one granddaughter.
• 2:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: We have a daughter that's getting married this summer, so we have some adventures here.
• 2:09:55
  SPEAKER_00: Crystal's parents currently, right now, her dad is not doing well health-wise, she is in Pennsylvania, so we'll probably have to go back there sometime soon again.
• 2:10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, we'll you know see a little bit more of America.
• 2:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've made a couple of nice trips.
• 2:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: We went on a uh river cruise in Europe, we went to Italy recently, we went to Israel.
• 2:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So in the last five or six years, we've had some pretty neat trips.
• 2:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So and I think we're gonna try to do more of that.
• 2:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully my wife's got to list a few things where she wants to go and we'll see where life takes us.
• 2:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I with all the all the work you've done and the good things you've done in our community, I think uh you you've earned you've earned some trips, Al.
• 2:10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we'll keep plugging.
• 2:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still planning on going for a little bit longer.
• 2:10:53
  SPEAKER_02: We'll well, yeah, I'm not saying this is the end of the story.
• 2:10:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's still still chapters to be written, but I hope they're they're more fun chapters were than work chapters.
• 2:11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:11:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, we might have to have a touch up here in a few years and catch up on everything you've done in in between.
• 2:11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds good.
• 2:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I appreciate the opportunity.
• 2:11:11
  SPEAKER_02: No, thanks for joining us and sharing your story.
• 2:11:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I uh yeah, I it it it in my mind it it doesn't seem like it was that long ago, the 70s.
• 2:11:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it was.
• 2:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um but just families like yours that came here just as a vacation, you see that quite a bit with different people.
• 2:11:36
  SPEAKER_02: They come here for one thing, and then all of a sudden, one family member or several family members, they move here.
• 2:11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's just for a couple years, sometimes it's for s 50 years, 60 years, or whatever.
• 2:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: You you never know.
• 2:11:49
  SPEAKER_02: But kind of that's that's why I've been having fun with this is just learning of everybody's background stories and what what brought 'em to to Haynes and why they decided to stay here.
• 2:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, we need one thing that's still amazing to me, there's kids that are four and five years old that come into the shop and look at the animals.
• 2:12:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's no parent anywhere.
• 2:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're at the grocery store, or they maybe just walked over from school.
• 2:12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where they came from, but they're here having a good time, and it's like there's not a whole lot of places in the U.S.
• 2:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: where you're gonna have you know kids under 16 by themselves anywhere.
• 2:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes kids under 16 get themselves into more trouble.
• 2:12:30
  SPEAKER_02: That but anyway, so that is interesting that you the the little kids and we're will be looking around, it's like there's somebody else coming with them.
• 2:12:39
  SPEAKER_02: And and when they're but here by themselves, they're always really well behaved, and they just they're just browsing through, take a look at the animals, take a look at different stuff, and then sooner or later either mom or dad will show up or they'll go get them and come back.
• 2:12:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and then the best part is when they're like, I want that.
• 2:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I need that lure.
• 2:12:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's the one that's catching the dollies or whatever.
• 2:12:59
  SPEAKER_02: So now it's pretty cool to have that engagement with right.
• 2:13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, this working here, this is actually when I retired, it's like I would like to have a position where I can be involved in hunting and fishing.
• 2:13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's not a guide service to speak of here, and it wouldn't be year-round anyway if you had a guide service.
• 2:13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, this is kind of a dream come true to have this kind of position where I can talk fishing and be involved with the community and uh help a few people catch fish now and then.
• 2:13:33
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it was kind of it's kind of crazy how that came about because Mike Ernie, Mike and Zita were working for us, and uh he knew because I was by myself over here, and uh he said, So uh are you are you looking for somebody part-time over the sports shop?
• 2:13:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, Yeah, he says, I think I know somebody.
• 2:13:52
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, Who's that?
• 2:13:53
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, Al Badgley.
• 2:13:55
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Al's working, he's got like a full-time job.
• 2:13:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think Al's gonna be working.
• 2:13:59
  SPEAKER_02: He says, No, no, no, he's retiring.
• 2:14:01
  SPEAKER_02: He told me he's looking for he's gonna be fishing, he's not gonna have time to come in here.
• 2:14:05
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, No, Doug, I think he he he's looking for a job.
• 2:14:08
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, well, tell him to come.
• 2:14:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think he saw you at a at a dinner party or something shortly thereafter, and then you came in.
• 2:14:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, hey, pal, whenever I think that was the deal.
• 2:14:18
  SPEAKER_02: You said, Well, I'm not sure when I want to start.
• 2:14:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, you do whatever, I'll take you whenever you can, whenever you want to show up.
• 2:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's been a great opportunity for me.
• 2:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that opportunity.
• 2:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome to have you here.
• 2:14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, anyway, because I know any if I hurt myself while you're here, I'm I'm covered.
• 2:14:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, anybody else gets hurt here.
• 2:14:38
  SPEAKER_02: But the one thing on that though is this probably I remember a few years ago, it was in the winter, I was hauling some shelves out of my house, and I slipped on the stairs outside and fell down.
• 2:14:49
  SPEAKER_02: And when I I I thought that I'd really screwed something up because I couldn't see.
• 2:14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Everything was just really blurry, and then I realized my glasses fell off.
• 2:15:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then it took me a couple minutes to find my glasses in the snow, but then I was like, okay, I can at least see.
• 2:15:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I come down, go to the clinic, and everything.
• 2:15:06
  SPEAKER_02: We come back, and you're like, I was over here why did you stop?
• 2:15:10
  SPEAKER_02: That probably shows you that I did hit my head pretty hard that I didn't even think to stop to see the the medic that I had working at the store and ask him what was going on.
• 2:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, there's been a couple of situations I think people slipped on the ice and stuff around here.
• 2:15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So always nice to have somebody around.
• 2:15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, we had one trailer catch on fire across the way we use a fire extinguisher from here once on it.
• 2:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you never know when uh situation's gonna come about.
• 2:15:35
  SPEAKER_02: So and the the other thing going forward here, too, is uh we're gonna we're gonna kind of take off on the safety talk.
• 2:15:44
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't talked to Al about this yet, so this is a surprise to him.
• 2:15:47
  SPEAKER_02: But we've done some of you guys know that we've done this the shorter videos at the store, but I want to do more long form stuff too that's a little bit more in depth, and I want to get Al to help with that and do more on your marine safety, what we need for your boats and first aid and your hiking and things like that, and just have a people that are here in this area for the first time, what it takes to be prepared to encounter what they might be coming up with.
• 2:16:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're gonna rely on Al and get those taken care of sometime this spring and get those recording online for people to share as well.
• 2:16:22
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks again, Al.
• 2:16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
• 2:16:24
  SPEAKER_02: All right, well, you enjoyed it.
• 2:16:26
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for watching this episode of Doug Cat's Questions.
• 2:16:29
  SPEAKER_02: Just a reminder if you've enjoyed the conversation today, please like, subscribe, and we're available on YouTube if you want to watch us, if you just want to listen.
• 2:16:38
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• 2:16:47
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• 2:16:51
  SPEAKER_02: We appreciate your support.