It's Not Like I Remember Much

My last meaningful stretch of time up there was in the summer of 1981. I was gone before Weird Al Yankovic kicked off a tour there, before Hickel got elected on the secession ticket, before they found oil at ANWR.

A funny thing about memory - the more you access it, the more it gets modified, altered, re-encoded. So the more you remember it, the less it becomes it and the more it becomes something else. But it's a special occasion, so...

Driving the Jeep home from work late on a snowy night and, with the advantage of a rolling start and four-wheel drive, blowing away a Corvette at a stoplight. (Really: who buys a Corvette in Alaska?)

Covering a basketball game at Service and sitting by the scorer's table. A stern, lean man with thinning hair and taut neck muscles sits at the table, filling no apparent function. Without prompting he turns to me and says "they call me The Whip."

No one believes me on this, but I saw a movie at Chugach in fifth or six grade where Pinocchio goes into space and meets Astro the Space Whale. (HOLY MOLY - they re-released it on DVD last year - check it out. This reviewer seems as perplexed as I was at the time.)

My Dad and a family friend driving me to the hospital in the middle of a snowy night. It must have been November 1972 - Hubert Humphrey talking on the radio - rapidly and endlessly.

My first movie without parents along: The Boatniks (which makes this 1970). The young Stephanie Powers made a particularly vivid impression, if I recall.

On a camping trip in the 60s a friend and I go wandering down a beach. He gets stuck in a mud puddle. I run in to help and get stuck too. Our parents hear our screams and come pull us out of the quicksand.

The last day of old Chugach (must have been 1973). I'll be going to junior high, and the school will be torn down over the summer and replaced with a shiny new one. Everyone goes home, even the teachers and janitor. I stick around. I go out to the playground by the old swingset, with its view of the Chugach range. It's a sunny day with blue skies and a mild wind, and life is just fine.