Busting balls and taking shit is a sign of true friendship.

Top of the morning gents,

I never hear anybody yell curses and foul names at me anymore. I moved so many times that nobody knows who the fuck "Karl-n-bun" are. 

I used to hear it from my mates on the swim team early in the morning picking me up for turnout. Me and Cully'd be milking the goats or delivering newspapers and my chlorine stinker dudes would honk the horn or yell friendly obscenities at me to get my shit together and hurry up. Some mornings I'd still be sleeping and Cully would nudge me awake telling me Larson was out front. Honk, honk "Hey Pewing! Hurry up, we're gonna be late." 

Being a team player meant busting balls and taking shit off of your only friends in the universe. From the age of 6 all the way into the College Masters Swim Leagues I took shit off those funny fuckers. Wouldn't trade it for the world.

I used to take healthy shit offa fellow workers too. I had a job restoring a hundred year old building in Seattle's University District called the Campus Apartments est. 1889. It had 40 units (4 floors, 10 units each) that were originally hotel rooms then converted into apartments. After Kennedy Real Estate bought the building I was hired to work with Donald Heupel and Earl Tenley, better known as D-Hypes and Skeeter. We spent years going through every apartment hauling out trash and old iron radiators, sanding and varnishing floors, painting walls and trim and replacing faulty lights and plumbing. After we pulled out the radiators, we installed electric baseboard heaters and also cut up and hauled away the old boiler downstairs. Gutting the old shit and hauling it out we built 2 apartments in the storage and boiler rooms, then converted the larger apartments into studios and added 6 more apartments which gave us a total of 46 units to rent.

These old hotel rooms had cupboards in the hallways for waiters to remove dishes from each hotel room. "Dumb waiter" is the official term but I got the impression that stinky niggers hauled the dishes away at night, out of sight, out of smell. Of course those were removed and patched with sheet rock and textured over to conceal any seams. We also removed an old rickety iron elevator and installed floors at each level creating space for 2 washers and 2 dryers on each floor. 

On Fridays we pulled tape and tarps with D-Hypes and Skeeter wiping and cleaning the new apartments to a level of cleanliness that I dubbed "cruel and unual" because no tenant could ever approach the original sparkle and shine these guys achieved prior to occupancy. On Fridays I was directed to the apartment at the high end of the hallway on each floor and performed tool and hardware clean-up. Since sewer drains run downhill, each hallway has a high end and a low end. My job was to report to the apartment at the high end and clean all the paint brushes, rollers and extension poles, brass door knobs, hinges and fixters with gallons of solvent, paint thinner, TSP and jugs of Dawn dish soap.

D-Hypes used to yell into the designated apartment "Hey Dummy! We got buckets of bar soap scraps, shampoos and dish soaps for you to dump in the bath tub." On clean-up Friday my job was to run the bathtub, bathroom sink and kitchen sink on full hot water for couple of hours while I cleaned all the tools and trim pieces. We're talking scalding hot water. After a hundred years of poop, grease and hair in the drains my job was to dump buckets of bar soap scraps, shampoos, laundry left-overs, Tri-sodium-phosphate and gallons of paint thinner down the tub and sink drains. No kidding, straight boiling hot water for hours at a time. To insure that I move more poop sludge, hair and grease products downriver, I was instructed to also flush the toilet after each and every tool and piece of hardware I cleaned. 

I'd scrub each tool and piece of trim in the kitchen sink with gallons of paint thinner and jugs of dish soap while the tub, bathroom and kitchen sink were steaming chimneys gushing every kind of soap and cleaner known to mankind down the drains. I scrubbed paint brushes, rollers, spackle and putty blades and every old brass hinge or crystal glass door knob to brand new condition. Imagine the loads of paint thinner, grease sludge and human goop I was flushing out of the old building and into Seattle's sewer system. 

Near quitting time each Friday D-Hypes and Skeeter used to yell "Dummy, coffee and bong hits!" at me to book down to the basement for a 420 safety meeting, chug down beers and bong hits and snarf bags of blow. We'd also pull the drain clean-outs to inspect the results of my half-day sewer douche and were amazed how hot the pipes got and clean they were. I'd brag that I was a one-moron poor man's Roto-Rooter squad with those guys still busting balls and slinging friendly obscenities at me. I sure love team abuse.

When me and bun lived in the 29-unit and 41-unit apartment buildings I followed Sandy Huss's advice for the community of Kotzebue to flush toilets hourly to move solids and frost to prevent freeze up. While I vacuumed, mopped and washed dishes I ran the bathroom sink and bathtub faucets on full hot water for about an hour a day with all kinds of abandoned laundry room soap in the tub for a foamy scalding drain douche. Jeff Skinner thought I was nuts until he was assigned by KIC to clean and inspect the clean-outs under the 2 apartment buildings. He laughed and shook my hand and told me the drains were hot as hell but super clean. Apartment dwellers frequently dump cooking oil, grease and food waste down the drain which catches toilet paper and snags hair balls plugging shit up. Jeff Skinner didn't call me Dummy but he abused me in his own way. I sure miss that guy.

During my tenure at UAF I earned the moniker of "Soldier." Jay Gardner was in the same business/econ program as I so he always ragged my shit to go over the reading and lecture notes with him. Did you know that the UAF Pub was a damn nice to study for exams and oral presentations? Jay Gardner was a Captain in the US Army on leave to earn a bachelor's degree on the GI Bill and over the years became my friendly abusive squad-leader. His common insult was "What's yer major malfunction soldier?" I sure liked that guy. He and another GI Bill scholarship soldier from the Navy was a black gentleman named Chermaine Fullinck and the 3 of us dominated the top slots in the high grade point average game and stole the tuition and housing scholarships away from the fatty white bitches.  Gardner and Fullinck also badgered me to apply for the computer lab jobs so that I could catch up to the 90's and leap across the digital divide that kept rural Alaskans sucking dirt and eating shit a century behind the outside world. I also learned to avoid using the term "nigger" when I was around such educated chaps. One time those two told me that killers make that best soldiers and they sure coulda used a hunnert guys like me. Compliments like that echo throughout our minds for decades.

In Finland I got stuck with the stupid name of "Uusi Suomen" which means New Finn (the implication that I was a cherry to silent Fino/Russo warfare). Timo Aristo was in the Helsinki School of Economics MBA program and stuck that tag on me. Three other MBA students were Dwane Welleschuck, Paul Quinn and Marku Kuusinen that dogged me that title, so I guess I was on another team of sorts. It became a code, because when I got out of jail my boss gave me a card with Uusi Suomen scribbled on the envelope with welcome back and get well soon cards inside it. Flipping shit and busting balls can sure make a guy feel like part of crew. Us old men can only smile through watering eyes when we hear old insults from our few remaining friends. 

The 15 years I was in Barrow I was a nobody until I got attached to a rather attractive Eskimo woman and from that point forward we were called "Karl 'n' bun." Even little Eskimo kids would yell from across the street "Hi KarlnBun! Can we come over and play?" I used to let the neighbor kids come over and sit at the computer station to play games and drink tea in exchange for sleds heaped with muktuk. Those kids would watch me trim the pink and black whale candy, box it up and label it for the elder councils and schools in Selawik, Noorvik, Noatak and Kotzebue. Those kids had no idea where these shit-hole villages were located but they practiced these names and reported back home to their parents what "KarlnBun" were doing with so much fresh kilt whale. 

At Cape Smythe Air a freight clerk named Alice Hopson worked in tandem with Solvieg Naylor to ship 2 tons a year at no charge from Barrow to the elder councils and school districts all over the NANA Region. Every morning Alice Hopson would greet me with "Hello Karl Ewing" trying to sound overly professional and non-native. That greeting still breaks my heart because one morning I was lugging in a batch of heavy ass boxes heading to Fairbanks for a big Knickipaq Patrick Octuck was putting together for the natives of his peers. That was when Alice told me that Solvieg Naylor had gotten too drunk, sat down on her front porch and froze her ass solid. Poor Alice cried my coat wet years before Patrick Octuck also went off the great seal hunting ice flows in the sky. 

Eskimos use nick-names far more than real names. I've heard in-laws called muk-muk and goony-goo and my pals still living on the North Slope will forever call me stupid shit. Percy Pikok called me on the phone and greeted me with, "Karl. You fucking nigger." Felton Sarren calls me "Stupid fucking white man" with a follow-up clarification that "you're probably more native than my ass." Beat that.

Down here in God's Waiting Room I get "Come on old man, lets go to the gym." Yup, just like Kotzebue and Barrow, bun still drags my sorry ass to the gym EVERY fucking morning. 35 years ago we walked to the Kotzebue Rec Ctr and lifted weights every afternoon when bun got off work, then we'd go home, eat dinner and I'd sleep until my grave-yard shift at the old jail. This morning she did it again and repeated "Come on old man, let's go to the gym", so I drove all the way out of Nikiski into Kenai to the city rec ctr and we did all the machines. They got free weights up the fucking ass, but I still prefer the machines. It only takes about 45 minutes to an hour to do all the different lifts and presses. I go back over to repeat some machines while bun hops on a exersize cycle for a spell. 

A tragic fact of life for elderly men like ourselves is we enjoy fewer and fewer dudes, buddies and pals. Or in white man language we suffer smaller peer groups as we age. If I lived near all ye cops, I'd be out front of your houses every morning honking the horn. Yup, it'd be me dragging yer sorry asses to rec ctr to lift weights. I may not be able to force y'all into the swimming pool, but I'd likely get you gents to the weight room and sauna. Busting balls and friendly obscenities are good for both young men and old cops and just for your benefit and team spirit, I'd probably yell something stupid at you too. 

Something like "Hey asshole! Hurry up, we're gonna be late." 

Karl.