Who's Driving Read online

  Copyright ©2018 Mary Odden

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed

  in any printed or electronic form without permission,

  except for scholarly or review purposes.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing 2018

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-54393-749-7

  Mary Odden

  Snowshoeword

  HC 01 Box 2520

  Glennallen, Alaska 99588

  www.maryodden.com

  Cover design by Moontide Design

  www.moontide.design.com

  Production assistance from Book Baby

  www.bookbaby.com

  First Edition

  “During my young adult life, Mary Odden provided a voice of reason on many issues in our communities. It was before social media, so we relied on the local newspaper to keep us informed about what was happening in our region and state. Mary invited different voices into the paper, but she held a high standard for reporting and writing. She provided opportunity for aspiring writers like me. She refused some of my early writing, but was also the first to pay me for a submission. The check was less than five dollars, but for a writer in training the gesture meant everything. I’m not sure, at ‘two cents worth,’ what the value of these Copper River Record opinion columns came to at the time, but they gave us a look at ourselves that is still worth it.”

  - Chantelle Pence, author of Homestead Girl.

  “Who ever knew a black Labrador Retriever could have so much to say? In Who’s Driving, Mary Odden takes us back to the reasons she was a revered editor and publisher of the local community newspaper: great storytelling, honest reporting, interesting and fun reading!”

  - Matt Lorenz, Copper River Record editor-in-chief, 2010-

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  NATURE

  GRIZ MEETS MY HOUSE

  BARELY EDIBLE NATURE

  THE GUY IN THE BEAR SUIT

  HUNTING FOR WHAT

  GRUMPY ABOUT HORROR MOVIES

  TROPHIES

  BEING TAUGHT

  WHAT A SCHOOL MEANS

  COUNTRY MOUSE – CITY MOUSE

  WHERE’S THE JUG

  DRIVING THE BOAT

  ASSETS

  KID HEROES

  GADGETS

  OOPS SORRY ABOUT THAT GASLINE DEAL

  REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE

  LUDDITE, A CLARIFICATION

  GULLIBLE? ME TOO

  LOCAL DIRECTORY

  SIMON SAYS TECH HELP

  INSPIRATIONS

  GOODNIGHT GORDON WRIGHT

  ME’N THE CAT MAN

  NEVER STUMPED

  MISSING TED

  WE STILL DON’T GET IT

  HAITI

  THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

  NOT

  PICKING UP

  BRAND ’EM RAWHIDE!

  COLLECTIVE HAPPINESS

  A MIDDEST PROPOSAL

  CIVIL DISCOURSE

  SARAH-NADA

  OPINIONS AND POLITICS OH MY

  HAARP BEAMS UP

  MY NEIGHBOR THE (CUTE) NEANDERTHAL

  ORGANIZATION CHARTS

  GUNS AND NOSES

  HOME GROUND

  TOOTHBRUSHES

  SPRUNG

  WORD THIS CAREFULLY

  SAINT COSTCO OF DIMOND

  RHUBARB

  SQUIRRELING SQUASH

  THE GRIM REAPER OF CHRISTMAS

  POSTSCRIPT: THREE ABSENT FRIENDS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PREFACE

  The writings included here were selected from Who’s Driving columns in the Copper River Record, a community newspaper operated by Mary Odden and Jim Odden from 2005 through 2010. Many of the pieces chosen for this book have been revised, now that Mary doesn’t have to face a newspaper deadline. A few were alternate columns that did not appear in the newspaper at the time but seem appropriate to publish now.

  The “Fresh Until” date has come and gone for most of the political and Alaska natural gas line columns. With a few exceptions, those subjects have been left out of this collection. Included, though, is our puzzlement over the fleeing of the fleeting Governor Sarah Palin, plus a bit of poking at some other vivid people we elected.

  This volume is created with appreciation for the citizens of the Copper River Basin, our home for over 30 years. It is for people who want to learn more about life here and for the loyal readers of the CRR who know too much already. It comes with special thanks to my page-producing cohort in crime, graphic designer and dog-whisperer Karen Cline, and with a shout out to former co-owner Marian Lightwood, as well as present owners/editors Matt and Judith Lorenz. A weekly now, the CRR is fresh and lively, still holding us together and still going strong.

  The book is dedicated to the memory of Sam Lightwood, to the memory of Pat Lynn, and to the memory of Jean Huddleston, all marvelous friends and guides to the CRR when we were behind the wheel.

  - Mary Odden, Nelchina, January 2018

  NATURE

  GRIZ MEETS MY HOUSE

  We are surrounded by wildness, and wildness has been very polite over the years, always giving us a call before it comes to visit.

  Not so for our neighbors. Our friend Lee was once saved from a bear attack by a Cal Worthington Ford commercial. Lee didn’t like Cal Worthington commercials, so when Cal appeared on his TV, he turned the volume down in time to hear a grizzly bear breaking down the door of his cabin. He fired a pistol at the door and the bear ran off, apparently unharmed. Various electric fences and warning devices have been a part of his life since then.

  Others have had destructive bear visitors who broke windows and tore sheds apart. Before we had any experiences like that, we attributed other people’s bear incidents to bad luck in the placement of their residences—obviously on old bear trails.

  But this year three grizzly bears came off the nearby mountain to reclaim a bull moose our daughter had just killed in their neighborhood. It made sense, in a bear kind of way, for them to visit us.

  After the hunt, we hung the moose quarters in the woodshed. With no solid walls and no door, this was a good place for the cool breeze to set up a protective rind on the meat. The meat would cure and become tender but the air flow and the temperature in the wood shed would keep the flesh from souring. With no hindrance but cotton game bags, easily torn away, the bears started helping themselves to backstrap and rump during the night. They ran away when the dogs and Jim went outside to check out the noise early the next morning.

  You never know how a dog will act around a bear until the first time you see that dog in proximity to a bear. We had cause to celebrate the great intelligence and courage of our black lab and her geriatric yellow lab companion several times that second day, as the bears tried to return and the dogs lunged and barked—well okay, not too far from the house and with their tails tucked, but still—driving the bears back into the surrounding woods.

  We hurriedly processed all of the moose we could get to by evening. Half the big animal had already gone down the highway with our moose-packing partner, so we only had to take care of the other half. We managed front shoulder and ribs and loin. Only one bear-chewed hind quarter was left to cut and wrap and freeze. But it was night and we were supposed to go somewhere, so we moved the quarter into the tool shed and closed the heavy door—tight.

  We made a call to Fish and Game to find out what to do about the bears. They told us that shooting the bears would be considered hunting if it was an adult boar or sow, or defense of life and property if it was a sow with cubs. So if we had to kill a bear, there were two ways to not go to jail.

  We didn’t want to shoot any bears and by evening it seemed like we had managed to chase them
away. We were gone from the house for several hours. When we got home, we found the garbage can tipped over and everything scattered but no bears in sight. Jim checked the shed and we went to bed.

  Five minutes later, we heard the bears outside again, and this time we saw them up close—a sow and two cubs, young of the year, back at the garbage can. We yelled at them. The dogs barked and growled but wisely didn’t venture off the porch. The bears paid no attention, just rustled through cans and bottles and coffee grounds. They were illuminated by the yard light, silvery forms with faces intent on their plunder, 15 yards from us and the dogs and the door.

  We went back into the house and watched the bears through a window. Suddenly, they all vanished. I held my breath. Then came the sound of glass shattering, followed by the sound of our big metal toolbox crashing to the floor inside the shed. We ran to a south window, shined our lights on the sow as she broke the other shed window, climbing in and out of the building. Dimly, we could see the moose quarter inside the shed swinging like a punching bag from the raking she gave it.

  The beauty of the bears, duly noted as we watched them in the yard light, had now become violation and fear. This was a vulnerability I hadn’t felt before, in spite of living decades in woodsy places. This was Grendel or his mother. This was a Sam Peckinpah movie, and I don’t watch Sam Peckinpah movies.

  After long minutes of listening to and watching the bears trash the shed, Jim held a flashlight along his rifle barrel and shot the sow. We had given the bears every kind of notice officially required of us, but the sow’s carcass laying in the grass the next morning, with the cubs visiting it before they wandered off, was immensely sad.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are tons of bears, more than one per square mile in our country. I know that nothing is wasted if we can see it on a big enough screen. I know that the bears had to lose when they brought their wildness to us. I am grateful for the calm skill of my husband, and grateful that the bears are gone. One of them cannot come back.

  Many of us came to our love of wild places because we packed a gun into the woods. Like those words of older people you don’t consciously hear until years later when you need them, these memories are part of my treasure trove. There is an eastern Oregon desert before sunrise following my uncle on a deer hunt; there is a snow-covered Montana ridge where I walked up on elk cows and calves, clouds of their steamy breaths hanging in the air. There are different kinds of being fed.

  Those hunts were all memorable for the walk or boat ride or some goofy little girls playing cards in a wall tent. Once I found out after a hard hill climb to the elk altitudes that Jim had stuffed the cast iron griddle in my backpack. Though we’ve always lived in or next to the woods, the hunts have been travels away from home, and exquisite fun, and to our human benefit.

  I don’t love wildness any less for our scary bear encounter. But these new memories, as they come back like bears in the night, remind me that the give and take in nature is deeper than I had imagined, and not all on my terms.

  BARELY EDIBLE NATURE

  Eating a Snowshoe Hare is all strings and sticks—like I imagine it would be to try and eat a banjo. We tried and failed to eat a hare when we worked in the Brooks Range, sadly consigning the remains directly back to nature. But this rabbit is a gift so we have to eat it.

  Yes I know it is a hare and not a rabbit. But it has big ears and big feet. And the word “rabbit,” as Trisha Bruss once pointed out, just sounds more edible.

  This creature, whatever you call it, is a very Alaska thing. It lives right here; it dies right here. Prolific enough to be brilliant as a species, it is dumb enough as an individual to be eaten by me.

  This “Christmas Hare” was gifted to us by wonderful Swedish people for whom this is a tradition—bringing a dead hare to your friend’s house during the Christmas season and hanging it festively on a nail outside the door. The animal is long and white and furry. After the turkey and the cookies and even the lutefisk have all vanished into feasting guests, it still hangs—waiting.

  I pulled it down on the thirteenth day of Christmas to skin it. We soaked its spare frame in salt water for several days until yesterday, when we boiled it to loosen the meat from the bones. Minus the use of pressure cooker, tenderizing the rabbit took about eight hours. Without extracting it from the water, we carried the pot down to the water room to cool the hare overnight.

  When we lived in other places in Alaska, we learned we could enjoy very plain food with our neighbors—just boiled moose, just boiled whitefish, just berries with a little sugar and seal oil.

  I kind of get the Swedish thing. Christmas with all of its rich food and generous handing about of hurriedly-bought and sometimes unwanted stuff can make a person tired of excess, even full of regret by the time the credit card bill arrives. Cooking and eating plain food is an antidote. ’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free.

  But the contrast-providing hare was tough and lean. It had the feeling of looming starvation around it. I peeled the scant meat from the bones and put the pieces back in the broth. The taste was pleasant but thin as January wind. Still trying to honor the austerity of the little beast, I looked around for something to give the soup local interest.

  Remember the macrobiotic idea, that people of a certain latitude should eat food from the same latitude? Close as I could get on a winter day, I grabbed garden potatoes and carrots from the water room. A can of diced tomatoes wasn’t really cheating, although my own greenhouse tomatoes were long gone.

  Looking for frozen peppers, I found the frozen celery. Now we were getting somewhere, but it wasn’t anywhere this hare had ever been.

  At this point I gave up the plain-food theme altogether and went back to Christmas. I grabbed a carton of chicken broth, a jar of Indian red curry paste, some lime juice and garlic and ginger, basil, and a little cardamom for good measure. A quarter cup of butter left over from the lutefisk feast put a good sheen on the soup. It was delicious—another extravagant gift of the season. I don’t remember if the rabbit went in there or not.

  THE GUY IN THE BEAR SUIT

  After watching Werner Herzog’s intense and detailed film about the late bear-enthusiast Timothy Treadwell, I have decided I am now an expert on Treadwell. Treadwell, along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, was eaten by a Katmai country grizzly in the fall of 2003.

  I always thought Treadwell was a scientist on some kind of quixotic mission to save bears. But since the Herzog film is largely composed of Treadwell’s own footage of Treadwell talking to and about himself, it is pretty hard to escape the conclusion that Treadwell was not a scientist. He presents as a somewhat substance-damaged Malibu beach bum with a fake Australian accent—on some kind of quixotic mission to save bears. He parked his tent on grizzly main street every summer for 13 years.

  Generously funded by persons who believe his furry clients in the mega square miles of Katmai wilderness on the Alaska Peninsula are endangered by hunters and poachers, Treadwell did not so much study bears as talk to them, touch them, and try to become a bear himself. He says so out loud over and over in his own self-produced footage. The fact that the bears declined to eat Treadwell for 13 seasons pleads very well for his claim that bears are misunderstood animals.

  In the winters, Treadwell would travel the country showing his films to organizations and classrooms. This, too, seems remarkable, because his testimony about bears is devoid of content other than describing bears as nice, fuzzy humans. Also, Treadwell is such a potty mouth in the film that it is difficult to imagine anyone letting him talk to children.

  By the end of his earthly sojourn, Treadwell got crossways of the Park Service for planting his camps in the same spots for months at a time. He got crossways with bear biologists for living so closely with bears that the scientists told him habituating bears to human smells and activity would actually put bears in more danger. And many people told him that a dead Treadwell would probably result in a few dead bears, which is what eventually h
appened.

  The film was not graphic. Herzog didn’t share the now famous audio track of Treadwell and Hugenard being eaten alive, and we didn’t see any coroner’s photos, although the self-congratulation of the coroner, interviewed by Herzog, was nearly as strange as Treadwell’s own self-congratulation.

  Herzog made annoying intrusions into the film to tell us Treadwell believed in the gentleness of the world while he, Herzog, believed the world is a place of struggle and indifferent darkness—red in tooth and claw. After posing this philosophical but posthumous disagreement with Treadwell, Herzog goes on to compare Treadwell with naturalists Thoreau and Muir. I doubt this resemblance very much, but maybe if there were video cams in 1845 we’d have footage of Thoreau trying to become a trout.

  Treadwell doesn’t make a very good bear. In fact, Treadwell and the poachers he hates occupy the same ecological niche—plain old humans misusing nature as their own personal property, without respect for animals in their natural habitat or for human laws designed to build some respect into the niche-less biped.

  It is fun and easy to be snide about Treadwell, as he chants and squeals his love to bears and foxes, laments his failed human love affairs. We watch him interpret a smiley face scratched onto a rock as a death threat to himself. What else could it be?

  The film is intriguing because Timothy Treadwell was lucky and delusional enough to put himself in his own version of Eden, where he runs through the grass followed by his tame fox and talks to all the bears. From Timmy’s perspective, it’s a children’s’ story, and who wouldn’t want to be in it?

  Well the bears for instance.

  We know that many stories for children featuring talking animals aren’t really about animals at all but about humans trying to figure out how to entertain or teach their own young. In a world of shrinking forests, fields, and farms, maybe ordinary people don’t have much chance of understanding real animals, but we have Smokey and Yogi and Baloo to love and protect us.