Green coffee in the neon café sunrise after a cold three-mile walk down Soldotna Road. Changing signs, rearranging ads to read “Toke Soap” and “U R A Prune” – us all laughing giddy and high at 3AM in the vacant building dawn. Hitching from Ninilchik in the back of an open-face pick-up driven by a one-time puker, now halibut man – tall with beard and mustache, whose gold-toothed smile paralleled the sunrise. We threw the girl to the road as bait and ’course the gilthead fisherman swallowed it whole. Took us all the way up ‘bout thirty freezing miles to Kenai with a dead halibut lying next to us on a blanket staring up at the treetops and starless sky. Singing “Oh, baby”, Jim said we’d wait up at the job service all day next in order to get the work we were hoping to find at the salmon cannery. Meanwhile, feet frozen solid, the fisherman dropped us off in downtown Soldotna and we headed for Sourdough Sal’s for a breakfast that couldn’t be beat. Good ol’ green coffee poured down our throats and the sound of crackling eggs on the burner tantalizing our minds. Four cups later, lost in a sleepy liberty cap haze, we were outside again and skidded down the road heading to Kenai. Again, we used the girl as bait…
(’83)
