AFN. Alaska Federation of Natives. And one Finn.

Top of the morning gents,

I undertook a long drive last week. Bun wanted to attend AFN since it was the first in-person convention in years. She also wanted to visit with friends and family from way back, stating that she, "wanted to go see natives." I'm cool with that. I miss seeing and visiting folks from both Kotzebue and Barrow. At this convention, I only saw a couple souls from Barrow because two large native corporations were a no-show. ASRC and Doyon both declined their attendance after a tiff with the poorer native corporations and tribes over global whining and sea level rising finger pointing from shit-poor, soggy diapered coastal and river rats.

At the AFN convention a couple years ago, the delegates overwhelmingly voted to divest all of Alaska's native business activities away from mining and fossil fuel extraction. Yup, real dumb. Doyon has numerous mining, shale oil and hydro-logical fracturing start-ups in the works and ASRC is the largest revenue earner and oil field operator in the state. The mining Doyon is working in similar to NANA's hard-won efforts opening the Red Dog Mine.

We all remember the doom and gloom letters to the editor of the Arctic Sounder, and you may recall numerous suits from under-toilet-water villages like Kivalina taking NANA and Teck Cominco to task. None of these efforts succeeded and Red Dog has in turn paid our property and school taxes and employed thousands of our friends and children for decades. God loves a borough that works with resource extraction and creates a PILT (payment in lieu of taxes) scheme that saves it's residents of burdensome residential property taxation. Very few boroughs have achieved this. All my homes in the Mat-Su and Kenai Peninsula boroughs were billed a painful property tax bill. If our Barrow house was a single residency, I would've been spared a property tax bill, but duplexes are a dead giveaway rental real estate and taxed heavily.

In the lobby, me and bun ran into Cheryl Edenshaw and chatted with her about the two big native corporations that didn't show. She wasn't pleased seeing the seating sections empty and I made the comparison that it's like Tiny Tim's empty crutch abandoned in the corner. We sure miss those member delegations and we miss their gold standard sponsorship. I rudely pried Cheryl why AFN voted to divest away from our life's blood resource and hydrocarbon extractions. She dodged my pointed question, but stated that politics requires letting nay-sayers get their point across. I mentioned the battle to open Red Dog Mine and she wholeheartedly agreed that in any venture, you'll get non-participants on the sidelines throwing stones. She further stated that we have to let all these non-producing combatants lodge complaints, file frivolous lawsuits and after all their impeding efforts have failed, they'll turn-coat and reverse course, and step in line to receive a piece of the action in the form of larger Native Corporation Dividend checks.

I'm rather proud of the native corporations and their independent operations in mining, oil drilling and gas frak werks. Hell, I've enjoyed employment at numerous native owned companies, treated at native hospitals and even see a large savings account balance from my pretty wife's frugality, thrift and savings. But the ANCSA corporations have had some real fucking stonewalling to overcome and some stone-throwers came in the form of executive corruption. You older farts might recall the DOJ and FBI corruption investigations that occurred in Juneau. These corruption endeavors were all efforts by Bill Allen, the CEO and largest share owner of VECO. His scheme was to thwart the native corporations from creating their own independent business concerns, and hamstring their competing head-to-head in securing contracts with the big oil firms operating all over Alaska. Mr. Allen was convicted and jailed, alongside his cohorts in the legislature of felony bribery and legislative corruption. VECO was dissolved and bought out, in pieces by CH2M Hill, and years later, the remaining scattered carcass bits were bought by HillCorp.

Over the last few years, there is a collection of tribes and native corps that want Alaska's Federation of Native members to formally withdraw from fossil fuel, hard rock and open pit mining, shale oil excavation and frak gas drilling. Insofar as to disallow membership to AFN if ASRC and Doyon don't conform to these wishes and divest out of high-carbon industries. High-carbon is code for high-profit, and 70% of all the native corporation earnings are put into a profit sharing, slush fund pool for the poorer, dysfunctional corporations to use as a scheme to prop up un-sustainable, silly, green new deal business models. Remember when ivory art was going to sustain native corporations? Shit. Now all the social media and on-line sales sites ban any mention of ivory and fur. Even the Anchorage downtown native art stores are boarded up with the only carvings, parkas and dolls sold at AFN and small-scale native craft fairs statewide. Yup, that indigenous business plan and economic panacea is now dead in the water. That is, if you have water and sewer in yer fucking village.

In the last 50 years of AFN and ANCSA, oil and mining has paid all our bills. With state and borough governments in Alaska spending an average of approximately a billion dollars every month, I shudder at the tax bill we'd receive without such an avalanche of oil and mining resource dollars flooding our state. Do the math, a billion divided by 700,000 Alaskans, works out to $1,428.57 per person, per month in taxes we'd have to pay. With a confiscatory tax penalty like that, nobody'd have any children. No matter how you slice it up and spread it out with income, sales or property taxes, that's one fucking big tab. If you think Alaskans will voluntarily cut or eliminate high-budget programs we already enjoy, think again.

NANA has some promising opportunities inside the Ambler Mining District. The United States Geological Survey has completed decades old soil samples and rock formation analysis and published some of the country's most promising results. Talking with Nush, he mentioned literature suggesting the gold seam and rare earth metal deposits just upriver from you goombas, may be the largest in the world, dwarfing even those located in Africa. Reading the NANA Hunter magazine, I saw the time line of 10 years to wrap up, restore and re-purpose the Red Dog Mine. I say, it's time for a Gold Rush on NANA lands, and right fucking now. Keep in mind though, Gold Rushes are impossible to slow. Besides, if you read your America and Alaska history books, you can't let guys like me have anything to do with your impending stampede all the fuck over native lands, upriver to the Ambler, Kobuk and Shungnak triangle.

If I had my druthers, I'd set up a chain of hotels, casinos, brothels, crack houses, opium dens, bars, massage parlors and weed shops. Keep in mind that Gold Rushes attract free-loaders, carpet baggers, card sharks, prostitutes, drug merchants and brothel keeps. Only a very small percentage of the tidal wave of crooks and con-men will be doing any real mining, the majority will storm into the NANA region merely to separate fools from their money in the same fashion as Wyatt Earp and Soapy Smith.

No shit, if I could play God and design the facilities layout and architecture, I'd do another combination of Ketchikan, Skagway and Nome circa 1865-1905. I'd build modern facilities with spectacular neon lights similar to Indun Casinos, but in this century of diversity, inclusion and equity, staff the entire facility with Eskimo mobsters. The access road should have parallel train service with deluxe first-class train cars from Manley to the mine, but also connected to the railway system allowing wealthy gambling and prostitution tourists to catch a train ride off a cruise ship in Seward and ride in comfort all the way through Anchorage, Mat-Su, past Fairbanks and hang a left to the NANA Gold Rush Inuit Casinos. The road in and out of the mine would be strictly limited to industry freight truckers and company cars for maintenance and security. NANA Purcell Security can perform this task handily. Just like Deadhorse.

Never forget the Alaskan mantra: Mine the Miners. And all the visiting dignitaries and government officials. I don't think we should go so far as Epstein and secretly video everybody, but pamper the high rollers from all over the world with top shelf liquor, high grade cocaine, real expensive hookers, hotel suites with hot tubs, cigar humidors and premium marijuana shops that'd make round-eye mud racers permanently chinked. NANA has proven successful in the hotel business, the bar business, the mining industry and best of all, Professional Security Services. Now consolidate all these business models, take yer fish net out of the water, put it into a hotel/bar, mining, tourism, gambling and prostitution super native corporation and harvest big buxsh dude. It's no stretch of the imagination to sell seats on this train of debauchery to the likes of Bill Allen, Jacob Adams and Byron Mallot. What the fuck, I'd build special super premium luxury train cars for our former presidents, plus Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin too. Those tiny cookoo motherfuckers pay top dollar for beautiful girls to tell them they're sexy studs. Feel a puke coming? Wash yer barf down with giant NANA corp dividends.

In addition to hotels, mining, food services and bar operations, NANA will need specialized training in drugs and sex slavery. This is an opportunity to add my expertise in brothels, cocaine and green bud. We're talking crystal bud so strong, you'd label it Ghost Bud and let patrons see and speak to the dead. The cocaine I'd probably fetch directly from corporate Methican cartel distributors and ship only the blow that's fresh enough to give you kick-ass cat-piss diesel flavored snot, flammable phlegm, sweaty butt cheeks and a drippy chemical dick. The prostitutes would have to come from Ukraine, Romania or Estonia. These girls are naturally prettier, slimmer and taste better. Plus there poor and work hard for silly Indun beads. Over the life of a clean, well-tuned and maintained call-girl, the NANA Corporation can pull down roughly a million dollars. I'd advise against hiring colored, low-budget minority prostitutes. Even niggers won't pay to fuck dark meat, but dictators from Africa and South America will happily pay for slender girls with big eyes, pretty accents and lightly scented premium white pussy. I recommend sending the skanky nigger jelly rolls, jalapeno pepper belly poontang and rum soaked native biscuit back home to the projects, Mexico and the vil. Ain't no money there. That shit's free.

These income forecasts are historically proven. My great-grandparents shipped opium, liquor and children sex slaves purchased at auctions from orphanages all over the Pacific Northwest, up to the brothels of Ketchikan, Skagway and Nome. With a handshake and a wink, each child prostitute, at $10 a hump, could guarantee $10,000 in gold and silver backed brothel proceeds over the life of the product. With a 100:1 money devaluation, across 150 years of currency exchange, you have a million dollars in today's highly inflationary paper fiat money. The product being humans of average marital age. In 1890, the age of marriage was 12-15 years old, so stuffing the ships' hulls with cute little boys and girls that age didn't offend American Western cultural norms dictating the prevailing ages of consent: 150 years ago. Today neither. Epstein kept brothels full of children for his clients. He also kept secret video cameras running 24/7 and filmed dignitaries such as President Clinton, President Trump, Prince Harry and even Bill Gates gittin' some itty bitty titty and micro cooter biscuit. When children choke yer chicken with their tiny little hands, yer junk looks fucking huge.

Back to last week's AFN convention. I booked over to the North Slope seating section to look for my dudes. The fucker was entirely empty. So was the section set aside for Doyon, so none of my Indun buds from UAF were to be seen. The NANA section was sparsely populated too. We sat near Chuck and Marie Greene, chatted briefly, then watched the speakers. Looking around for familiar faces, I found Billy and Linda Lee sitting behind us. During a pee-break and coffee refill, Billy showed us photos of his house they're building outside of Shungnak on Linda's family allotment.

We discussed village alcohol policy since the 1986 Alcohol Restriction Vote and I explained the $100 a year liquor permit the City of Barrow required, the annual record check for any alcohol related domestic or driving convictions, which automatically prohibits me from ordering any liquor. Billy laughed and described Kotzebue's system as fucking insane. I told him that in Barrow, you fuck up, you lose your ability to order ANY booze for years and with a population of 5500, there's only 800 liquor permits. We agreed that the city liquor store in Kotzebue was a money-making scheme, not a public safety nor a public health initiative. Your city administrator butt-fuckers got a special place in Hell waiting fer them, rotating on a spit with forked tines anchored way inside their screaming mouths and way too far up their shredded rectums.

During our walks and chats out in the lobby, we ran into Josie and Ron Brower, friends of ours from Barrow. I should also explain that Josie's maiden name is Johnson and her dad is bun's grandmother's brother of the Kiana clan. She's been living in Barrow since fucking forever, just like Charlotte Brower, who's a Skin from Selawik, married to Eugene Brower. Lots of native women departed the NANA Region's stink fish, booking northward for tastier whale muk.

I worked on the Brower Whale Crew every year and as smart as my writing, working whaling, I'm only a size 40 shirt with a size 2 hat. I've been called worse, but for a crew member's share of muktuk, I'll take "dummy" or "tunnik" any day of the week. As far as Barrow whale harvests go, all the crews combined pulled in 15 Bowheads this season. Ron Brower even inquired if I was gonna be way up North this Spring and help out. He punched my bicep and told me I needed to eat more whale blubber.

The empty seating sections for Doyon and ASRC was statement enough, but to see their company trademark logos missing from the banners listing all the powerhouse sponsors, sadly explained the overall low-budget tone, ambiance and quality to this year's AFN convention. Pretty skimpy digs nigger. Event planning can be pretty dismal and cheap when the decoration expense accounts are reduced by a couple hunnert thou. Ana Hoffman looked rather shabby, all the dance groups are relegated to the evenings and Julie Kitka's retarded rat face can suck North Slope ass. Okay, she can suck Doyon pockmarked Indun ass too.

My advice is to ignore the shit-ass poor tribes and lightweight corporations that do little to contrib to the ANCSA revenue sharing piggy bank. Caribou and Fish will never pay for our schools, VPSO positions nor replace the honey buckets with white man toilets and showers. Put yer shoulder into efforts to expand native oil drilling, gold mining and shale-gas fracking. What the fuck, cops got bigger shoulders than brains anyway.

I'm allergic to silly environmental blather and violently defecate hearing human rights barf speeches. All native money in the ANCSA bank accounts is good money, especially mining, oil and gas proceeds and royalties. After hearing the annoying greenie weenie renewable resource nigger jive, I quickly pulled out my nose plugs and inserted them into my ears. This year, instead of bleeding ears, I left this year's AFN with watering eyes. Some of them loud wrong-headed environmentalist spewing Indun salmon crunchers sounded dumb, smelled like inverted vagina and when hugged, left marks on me from their distended leaking ani.

Don't fall for the bogus end of the world claims. If Alaskans want to build their own monster Hoover Dam, let's use our larger rivers like the Kobuk, Selawik, Noatak, Susitna or Yukon and rock out with our cock out. Hydro-dams produce the world's cheapest and cleanest electricity. We won't have to pipe North Slope Gas to all of our native hubs, spin turbines and run wired electricity to every remote village. On the other side of the green energy coin, we could install micro-nukes like the Toshiba Reactor that produces more power than the entire NANA Region consumes, yet fits in a Connex container.

Turning off our 3-D GPS directional drills, pipelines and oil derrick rigs won't reduce energy costs to rural Alaska, only skyrocket them even higher, but dams and nuclear power sure as shit will. I don't see any consensus on which avenue to pursue, so delivery of stove oil for electricity and heat seems to be the only viable option for the next decade or two. Maybe even more. The reason I omitted wind turbines and solar panels is due to the non-existent instant on/off capabilities rural native arctic communities require. When it's cold, dark and calm across rural Alaska all winter, an energy source will be needed that can be turned on, fired up and engaged with a throw of a massive switch for heat, lights, 4-wheelers, boats, heavy equipment and trucks.

I've ridden in electric buses, trains and trolleys, and they kick ass. I've never ridden in an electric car, wheeler nor truck. Yes, I've motored around with an electric troll motor on a boat, but to move across Kotzebue Sound with a boat loaded with fish, lumber and building supplies for camp, you'll need a least a hunnert horsepower boat motor. Electrics? Maybe, but today, boats, wheelers, fork lifts and loaders will need energy-rich diesel fuel and gasoline. Regardless of the price of diesel or gasoline, they're still the cheapest options today.

Like the Tesla car or Toyota Hybrid, I'd install a big battery across the floor of my boat, but my payload will be cut in half. On a wheeler, forget it. My forecasts for the future are optimistic, but pound for pound and dollar cost averaging, fossil fuels still win the Pepsi challenge. Ask any elder native how much weight in a boat or sno-go sled can be compromised for fuel, batteries or a nuke.

Instead of educating stupid Alaskan children to merely graduate gladiator training, fighting and hating, like I did, let's give 'em engineering and physics degrees and cut 'em loose. You'd be surprised at what's possible. Some abused, violent alcoholic, drug addicted children may wake up, grow a brain and a dick, and impress us with creative ways to power rural Alaska with hydro-dams and henceforth, electrifying all or our tools, vehicles, homes and heavy equipment. Imagine a shell-shocked native boy in foster care inventing a small 5-pound battery that could heat and power a cabin for an entire winter. Fuck that rocks my shit hard. I'd be even happier if that same battery powered my sno-go and warmed my plug in parka all the way out to camp too. Give a native kid a shop full of cool tools, give him a goal, and get the fuck outa the way.

What the fuck. I'd pay a couple grand for a micro-nuke that could power and heat my cabin for 50 years, and also charge my wheelers and snow machines for hunting all around camp. Fuck, I think I'm turning Japanese. Or God forbid, native.

As far as airplanes, I'll stick with good old diesel powered turbines like all of our jets and gasoline powered piston engines like all our bush pilot airborne limousines and taxis. Batteries won't fly this year, electrics can get dodgy in the Arctic and flying a nuke powered airplane sounds way to futuristic. Imagine an atomic bomb pointing out the back of my Lear Jet, that's some acceleration there niggers. Grab yer dicks, strap in yer seat belts and punch it. Just pray we don't vaporize like my brother Tim's neighbors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Wait, the mechanic failed his drug test and while stoned on Karl's bud, blow and acid, installed our atomic jet engine upside down and backwards. I think I smell burnt shit. Oh, fuck, that's me.

You need to remind yourselves of something, I'll never speak at an Alaska Federation of Natives Convention. I can only kick you in the cranium with the sharp edge of my word-scythe. Despite the thinly veiled autobiographical references to beaten and battle-scarred children that grew up beyond their meager origins, UAF taught me to digest whole libraries of economic data, perform quantitative analysis with stacks of servers all the way to the ceiling AND write like a soulless, demonic, temporarily drug-free motherfucker. You see, I got nowhere else to go. Alaska is the end of the line for me. I can't seem to keep my siblings from dying horribly. And boy, are they dropping hard. A broken heart don't help the deceased and I can't go back to a fictitious home that no longer exists. What hurts most is I can no longer hold my coworkers, best pals, and my brother's hand and walk them into a rehabilitation clinic. As of most recent news, I may have to reach into dirt to hold anybody's hand.

I can't even show up for family burial services. If we ever return to where we're from, we die too. I hope you see my thinking. As long as I pay attention to Alaska's energy policy, the speakers at AFN, compose synoptic prose, and push you to think beyond your careers and neighborhoods, we win. Plus, by writing hours a day, I don't die alongside my coworkers, little brothers and childhood pals. With you coppers reading my shit, writing means living.

Aside COVD fatalities that killed far more elderly natives, AFN put on a pictorial slide show with photos and names of the deceased over the last few years since we had an in-person meeting, that part soaked us all to tears. I spied around me and behind me and saw lots of Siberian Eyes leaking and tiny Inuit noses running. As far as burying little native children, we've been to enough God-awful, gut-wrenching funerals for tiny wooden coffins. And since I'm leaking out my eyes, and just like you coppers, I believe inside every injured native child, adopted out of a family of incarcerated parents or sentenced to foster care, I still think we've got a hunnert sneaky genius Inuits that might crack our simple problems of remote arctic power, rural electrification and motor vehicle fuel delivery, without the fucking shipments of a million barrels of stove/diesel oil every goddamned barge season.

Don't encourage your offspring into public safety. What the fuck, maybe your grandchildren are smarter than a bunch of goddamned cops and narcs. I suggest you give them a tool shop and play room filled with hydro dam structure and function theory, miniaturized nuclear parts and pieces and super compact battery diagrams. Them smart little fuckers just might build something we'd all be darn proud of. We just gotta live long enough to see these dreams to fruition.

Simple. I'm asking you coppers to stick around a couple more decades. Our siblings, best friends and coworkers are dying in agony from the vices we all enjoyed many, many years ago.

So stay with me and keep breathing God' air. I know, with our historical alcohol, tobacco and chronic drug consumption, that's gonna be a real hard motherfucker.

When any of us needs a lift to rehab or recovery, phone me. I'll happily hold yer hand and walk with ye.

Karl.

Don't cry over spilled muktuk. Pussy neither.

Top of the morning gents,

Life can't be all shit. Bun was telling me about suicides that caused her a lot of pain. I had no idea what the fuck she was talking about, so I asked. She was talking her native jabber about some guy that I talked to on the phone. I shook my head. I had no clue. Besides, sometimes I have to decode NANA Regional Retard Dialect, which pisses me off. She got a million buxsh worth of teeth and still regresses to Front Street Languages. Meaning, normal stupid nate-lick no-teefer shlag-chalk (slag talk).

"You remember when you sent Bella (Clark) Woods those boxes of muktuk?" Of course I remember that mean old crippled lady. I'd phoned her to rent a house from her and she advised me, "I don't rent to no whites. They always gets me troubles." Fucking racist old dirt bag didn't remember who KarlnBun were. I wanted to walk over to her house and punch her old fossil head and crush it like a cardboard box filled with spaghetti. After phoning her, I dialed Bob Douglas for an apartment to rent. That turned into a real goddamned picnic. Folks get real creepy and grabby when I pay them to be the boss of me. We bounced from 894-D over to Jim Rood's duplex across from the KIC gas pumps, then finally came to a rest at 628 Fifth (of bourbon) Avenue. Finding lodging, housing and utilities in native communities has become such a piss off, I've forbidden our return. For ever.

Back to bun's lost native story. She was telling me about a native girl that'd killed herself. And her baby. I mistakenly thought she was talking about that Salazar chick that OD'd and let her baby die laying next her of starvation and dehydration. Shit still pisses me off. I had to clear my head and let my pretty wife explain that no, this was a different native woman that killed herself. And her baby. It was Bella (Clark) Woods' niece and Norman Clark's daughter. We'd shipped the family mondo muktuk tonnage and Norman was awestruck at bun's generosity (she got white man that kills many whales). Okay, back to the suicide and here's the grisly part. Norman's daughter first killed her own infant girl, then herself, with a kitchen butcher knife. I think. An ulu would've been a real workout sawing back and forth. I know, I've tried. What touched me was bun's eyes got real wet and shiny. I never learned to handle other men and women crying. Fucks my shit up. Life ain't all shit.

History is circular and confusing, so pay attention and follow my flawed memory. You've gathered from previous postings, memories can become corrupted from way too much hearsay, gossip and intentional bullshit. Far away from the vil and out here in the real world, me and bun have heard some real stink piles of bogus rumors and plain stupid made-up garbage about news, happenings and tragedies back home in rural monkey Alaska. So if my reporting and alliteration seems far-fetched or just dumb and wrong, call me on my repetition of whispered crap untrue.

Way back, many decades ago, I was sending tons of whale muk to the senior centers in Selawik, Kotzebue and Noatak, all free on Cape Smythe Air with Alice Hopson at the Barrow station and Solveig Naylor at the OTZ end, greasing the wheels for me. No charge. What the fuck, I was helping the Brower, Itta and Bodfish whale crews clear trails out on the ice, butchering giant 50 ton stinky black slugs, and shooting pesky, stubborn polar bears trying to kype chunkage from hard-working nuggers. In violation of the Lacy Act, I was punching .338 inch holes in 'em. I was instructed by bun's uncle Edward Itta to use full metal jacket ammo or even armor piercing if he had any on hand and shoot the bears through the neck. Nowhere else. The hide and skulls are too valuable.

In the middle of the butchering and hauling away whale sections, Edward would whistle, get my attention and point at an approaching polar bear, hold my fire with his hand held in the air until it was close enough to pose a problem, then he'd bark orders to shoot it. Polar bears always sniff the breezes from right to left, so my profile shots had to be timed just as the bear turned from one side or the other. Neck shots only. On whale kill sites, the whaling captain has complete control and everybody follows his strict orders. While dozens of locals disassembled his whale, he'd walk the perimeter with a couple seasoned old comrades and look for faults in the ice shelf. If any suspicious fractures appeared, he'd yell for men manning the block and tackle, to winch the monster further inland. I've watched as the Brower Crew finished loading and hauling away the last of the meat and muktuk with their snow machines as the stripped whale carcass and the ice under it, sunk slowly below the surface.

My front and back yard were stacked with frozen native foods but I refuse to eat the shit. It's gross like soul food chitlins (pig intestines), seal oil, stink flipper and smashed gook insect shit paste. Plus, I ain't yellow, black nor brown. I ain't red neither. So bun suggested I start a charity shipping big ass tons of pink and black whale candy to smelly old red farts, I mean proud, wise, ancient native elders back home. See? Life ain't all shit.

Mind you, despite my lobbying and soliciting all the air carriers in Barrow, only Cape Smythe volunteered to haul all these sawed whale blocks so that the smelly old farts, I mean cherished wise elders got their freight shipped for free. Cyrus Harris was the contact back at the Kotzebue Airport, he picked up the whale products with the NVOK truck (native village o' Krotchebue), sorted and shipped the boxes to the appropriate billage. I mean village. As appreciation for our whale generosity, he shipped me dozens of burlap bags filled with frozen Sheefish in return. These big fresh-caught monsters were the shit. Shrunken head Injuns at the Barrow Senior Center had never seen such big donkey sized frozen fish in their entire short lives.

Remember, native years are twice the normal, meaning 50 native years equals 100 of your sorry ass Euro-trash years. Regardless, I was quite popular with the old gals at both ends of my stinky freight gig. And no, I didn't tap that shit. Old biscuit is detachable, and I didn't want to awake, hungover like a great-grand-motherfucker with old pussy still wrapped around my fat bat and gray curly pubes tickling my nad bag.

The Northwest Arctic School District got wind of all this bowhead whale pussy stacking up in the NVOK freezers (white man sigluks) and Elmer Goodwin phoned me and asked how he could get in on it. I told him that Alice Hopson and Solveig Naylor are the freight bosses and you gotta ask them. He phoned me back and said that Cape Smythe wouldn't ship food to the school district for free, so he went and got TR's (transportation requests) for the muktuk. He was in charge of a native foods program for the elementary school and wanted as much as I could send him.

I smiled at that challenge, little old native men are so cute and adorable, so are they're midget flat head children. Like John Wayne, I went out front in -40 below temps and dragged 8 foot sections of premium skin and blubber on top of a large sheet of plastic, then slid the whole motherfucker into our apartment. In an hour, the Paul Bunyan 2-by-8 foot sized planks had warmed and softened enough for me to cut them up into manageable squares. That's when I went to town.

I shipped 625 pounds of rich and rare, fresh kilt whale blub to Elmer Goodwin at the elementary school. The TR numbers didn't specify a weight limit, so I tried to bury Elmer with more than he could handle. I was also secretly hoping to get his puny ass in trouble with the bill for $3.00 per pound. I didn't hear a peep. The school district simply paid the bill and fed a shit load of Mongolian descendants, giant blocks of cholesterol rich, greasy, smelly Inu-Pac Man candy.

Bun reminded me that we got stuck with some seriously expensive freight bills too. Denise Norton dug into her native secret down-low information directory and phoned bun at the Ilisagvik College and told her that Frank Norton had passed away and could she put in a request for muktuk to be shared and handed out at Frank's funeral. I don't know half these folks, but bun explained her brother Charlie always popped by Poppa Frank Norton's house, walked right in, yelled hello, and put on coffee for the old man. Every morning for years. Some things beyond my awareness are real important to Eskimo families back home in the neighborhood and old folks share fond memories and shit. Just not in my neighborhood though.

Back in Barrow, my whale crew mates trucked their harvested shit from butchering, across a mile or two of ice, right to our front yard. Most of the whale meat and fat is hauled in snow machine sleds, so the max length is 8-10 feet. I went out back and dragged 2 Captain's Belts around front and then did the same process of putting the heavy motherfuckers on plastic and dragging it all inside out apartment. I let the behemoth slabs thaw out enough to cut the fuckers up and then wrapped each block in plastic trash bags, then boxed all of it up. Captain's Belts are the PREMIUM fat strap of muktuk that whaling captains take for themselves, but being such a good bootlegger and smuggler of LSD, I was awarded approximately 500 pounds of filet mignon, butter-soft fat and skin from dead Bowheads. This heap big pile of grub was what I selected and sent back to Kotz for old man Frank Norton's funeral.

After calling a cab and lugging all this bounty down to Cape Smythe, I was presented with a freight bill for a cunt hair over a grand. This included a discount from my girls at the counter, but funeral feasts don't go free. Ouch, fuck me. I didn't even phone bun at work, I scribbled a check for the damage and handed it over. After getting home, I let her know the cost to ship the Nortons the finest strips of dead sea mammal lard, blood and skin. She was quiet for a few seconds, then said "That's okay. I get paid on Friday, I'll phone Alice at the airport and ask her to hold the check a few days." You boys need to realize something. I've always enjoyed the luxury of marriage to a pretty Eskimo woman, and despite my massive windfalls, she's always earned more than I. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it.

The freight made it to Kotzebue that same day and with plenty of time for the funeral. Denise Norton phoned and was ecstatic and thanked bun for such a overwhelming gesture. Bun just repeated her childhood stories about her brothers visiting and tending to Poppa Frank. Knowing how these high-dollar long-distance phone calls end, I made busy and let those girls laugh and cry and bid repeated farewells. In closing, Denise told bun that she'd send Pete down to pick up the boxes.

Pete Norton fired up his wheeler and booked down to the airport and was stymied by the pallet of boxes that exceeded a quarter ton. He was expecting something he could put under his arm and rally back home. He was chatting with Solveig and explained he didn't have a truck to haul all that food. Solveig told him not to worry about it. She phoned Wade Laws driving for Midnight Sun Cab and told him Karl dropped a megaton o' muk on Pete Norton and clan for their funeral. Wade arrived grinning like a motherfucker and explained that KarlnBun live in Barrow, help for a bunch of whaling crews and when it comes to shipping big ass freight, they don't fuck around. "Karl is trying to earn his way into Heaven and bun always busts his ass for old friends and family back on home turf." Because life ain't all shit, she refrains from calling home, "the rez."

Poor Pete Norton couldn't heft a single box, so Wade and the Cargo agent busted ass, flexed some big ass muscles and hoisted the palletized boxes of goodies onto the rear tail gate of Wade's Midnight Sun Ford Van. Apparently the front wheels drove real light and Wade was smiling and cheesing like a motherfucker. He ain't a cherry on these funeral food hauls and there was no charge to load, haul and unload the tasty tonnage. Wade's old hat on these missions and receives his gratuity hidden inside CD's of British music. That's code for acid paper you dildos.

Pete Norton phoned bun in Barrow and was almost angry, embarrassed and heart struck at all the frozen foods we shipped him. Bun just assured him not to worry about the big price tag ($1,000) he saw on the air-way-bill and that to share all the muktuk at the funeral. She further expressed to him that he's now in the possession of two entire Captain's Belts and that it's the softest and tastiest whale muk she's ever seen. She further explained the Captain's Belt gets saved for whaling festivals like Appuati or Nulukatuk. I think Pete was flabbergasted at such an honor and tribute for his dad's funeral. Those two old codgers cried together in stereo over a thousand miles of phone lines. He sobbed and wept and promised and swore he'd tell everybody at the funeral that Bun wished she could be there, but instead sent a near pornographic cornucopia of Eskimo food, compliments of her Uncle Edward Itta's whaling crew. I could hear Pete crying over the phone all the way out in the living room.

As stated before, I'm not so tough. In a bad mood, I'll pull the head off a child, but when I'm clean and sober, well fed, well rested and far from a prison, I have the same problems as you coppers. I get pulled into dark pits and lose my way, even driving or shopping. I use serious anger to find my way back and get on an even keel. Ya see, the weight of the world is on my shoulders and the history of all humanity's heartbreak is contained inside me. I been handcuffed, shackled and hooded and could hear impact blows and cellmates nearby crying in agony. It's called softening up a suspect. Hearing women cry is tough enough, but listening to men holler, wail and sob breaks my heart. In my old age, I can't seem to get that shit outa my head.

Years ago, I lost my license to drive. I was accused of being out of compliance and failing to follow traffic ordinances. I even got cited for driving with a suspended license and was threatened with jail time and forced to ride the fucking bus. At all the colleges in Washington, when registering for classes you can check the box for a bus pass and a cafeteria card. So I did. And put the expense on my parent's and grandparent's tab. I aren't dumb, life ain't all shit.

I was riding those buses all over the Pacific Northwest. I'd ride out North to visit my stoner buddies, down too much beer, then sprint to catch the last bus home at midnight. I used the bus pass for every conceivable destination and also used the cafeteria card to snag meals as I booked on to campus or between lay-overs on bus routes that had at least a half hour between connections. I'd grab coffees to go and sack lunches, then hoof out and catch the next bus all the way up to the Skagit River and restock on weed or further up to Bellingham to purchase blotter paper LSD. Looking back, I see patterns of moronic futility and ingrained stupidity that followed me north of the Arctic Circle. Call me a dumb ass, but I think I just revealed to a bunch of stupid cops where all my best acid comes from too. I snatched a shit load of blotter paper 'cid, ran down the hill to the bus stop and waited for my return trip to Seattle.

Arriving at the bus stop, I sat down next to an old man who looked distraught. He was trying to wipe his face with the back of his hand and his sleeve, so I acted like I wasn't watching. He looked at me and asked where I was going and I told him all the way back south to the transfer station in Lynnwood, then onward to my basement apartment on Capitol Hill in Seattle. We chatted a bit and I consulted the schedule inside the bus station and noticed I had almost 45 minutes till my bus arrived. The old man was upset that his son killed in a car crash nearby. I'd read about this pile-up and was struck with how many cars were tangled up on I-5. I'd no clue who the deceased were, but his son picked up the old man and took him to go shopping, errands or appointments. Today, was his first day without a son and was catching a bus. At a bus station next to me. Poor old man was heartbroken.

I told him to hang on a second and ran up street to a bodega that sold newspapers, cigarettes, beer and liquor. I grabbed all four, returned and again sat next to my newly minted bus rider and old friend. I handed him a bottle of beer and told him my tale of losing my license. I felt like such a pussy. I was whining about losing my license and he'd lost his boy. We toasted our beer, drank them down, then I opened a pint of Jim Beam and asked if he needed a snort. He said he'd take one if I had another beer fer chaser. I did. When you coppers find yourself a stranded widower with zero transpo, you better hope I sit next to you at the bus stop.

He refrained from cigarettes, although he stated, "I sure miss smoking." I thought of sharing my LSD purchase with him, but he seemed a lot like my dad, so we just clinked bottles and split the pint o' bourbon, old school. My bus riding partner seemed to cheer up and we chatted until his bus came. I helped him aboard the bus and told the driver that his son was killed in the big pile-up on the freeway a few days back, no longer had a ride and is now taking the bus. The bus driver, a tall black man who looked like a Navy Seal, shook my hand and told me "He's gonna be looked after. We gonna take care of this ol' boy. I'll make sure he makes his stops. You don't gotta worry none suh." The old man sat down directly behind the driver, smiled and waved to me and the bus driver reached across and shook my hand again, winked, saluted, closed the door and drove off. My bus was only minutes behind, so I assembled and stowed my mini-bar and booked back South. All I have to keep in mind, is find the good and praise it. Life ain't all shit.

Sometimes, life is a bittersweet mix of tender moments, surrounded by pain, violence, unhealed injury and crap. While I was working in Russia, my buddy Dwayne Weleschuck told me about an audition and rehearsal at the St. Petersberg State School. He told me they serve liquor and you can smoke there too. I smiled and said, "Sure, sounds good to me." So we got dressed up in slacks and sport coats, snagged packs of our favorite French drinking cigarettes and hiked a couple blocks in the super cold -25 below to watch big women battle it out for a spot on some opera. In Russia, it's customary to wear fur hats, long black wool top-coats, black leather gloves and expensive silk scarves. That is, if yer going to live performances.

We handed our heavy black top-coats, scarves and gloves to the Russian gals at the coat-check, handed them an American fiver for a tip, which converts to 200 rubles, took our numbered tokens and headed for the bar. We both toasted big shots of Stoli Vodka to get primed and limbered, then two fisted large bottles of beer and headed towards our seats. Seats that still have fucking ash trays. I'm cool with that. See? Life ain't all shit.

Dwayne translated all the details and info about the singers and which particular symphony being played. I told him that I knew the material because I suffered a million fucking years of orchestra as a kid and also attended years of advanced drug training too. He told me that I was just a low level field grunt, cork my loud English and to keep my dick in my pants.

The performances were top shelf. On some parts, we just watched big bosomed gals sing next to a grand piano player and others had a quartet of stringed instruments in support. On a couple pieces, I noticed some of the well dressed men nearby were crying silently as the ladies sang. At first I didn't give a shit and attributed this to all the booze, but as them dames proceeded to belt out their hearts on stage, me and Dwayne started getting teary eyed too.

I hate these moments. I had zero idea what was being sung, because all opera is Italian, regardless of venue. The content was tragic and the suits around me were deeply touched and it was rubbing off on me. I lit another French cigarette and washed my blubbering down with my German ale, watched the Russian women belt out tragedies in Italian and soon I'm dabbing my American eyes with the sleeve of my sport coat. This is such bullshit. As a particular poignant performance came to an end, all the suited men around me stood and applauded. And each one was sobbing wet and clapping like cry baby oligarchs.

Me and Dwayne stood and clapped too, and since we were surrounded by well dressed and groomed Soviet dudes, we played along and wiped our eyes unabashed and cheered. This is a weird notion of cool. As the show concluded, all the ladies that performed in the audition walked across the stage and bowed, greeted with giant bouquets of flowers, then sent air kisses to the audience's standing ovations. The last lady that caused the most sobbing and water works finally came on stage to take her bravos, bravissimos and cheers was crying too. What happened to men behaving like Lee Marvin or Clint Eastwood? Not a dry eye in the house and I was fumigated with horribly expensive cologne, cigarettes and foreign men dressed in hand tailored dinner attire I could never afford, and we're all blubbering and cheering like a pack of faggots at a gay fucking AIDS funeral. I oughta get my head examined, cuz even the biggest mobsters were sobbing out loud.

Dwayne and I clapped our hands sore, then headed back out to grab a couple more shots of Stoli Vodka. What I mean by shots is metric drunk-speak. Shots in Russia are called drams, and they're roughly 3 or more American pussy shooters. We down a bunch, chased them with German Ale that'd strip paint offa patrol car, then went to claim our coats and shit at the coat-check. With our prior American $5.00 tip in mind, the gals descended on us with smiles and busty cleavage and helped us with our outer winter gear for the walk home. These gals were total fucking babes and after their warm fitting, adjusting and affectionate attentions to our outer wear dressing, my expanding Mr. Wobbly wrecked the fit of my slacks. Dwayne laughed at me and whispered that the leggy, overly busty pretty one asked in Russian if we needed help walking home. Figure it out.

I smiled, blushed and couldn't recall the last time I'd been kissed, loved, fucked and tossed by such pretty women, but Dwayne gave me a look and a subtle shake of his head that was interpreted that I may be falling into a honey trap or stepping on professional turf that is coveted by the well-dressed oligarchs and mobsters we sat next to. I demurred politely, thanked the gorgeous ladies and tipped them my last bill: a twenty. Yeah, I know, I just paid for fine pussy and didn't get my dick wet. My beard neither. The money was furnished by my paymasters and they usually expected receipts, but twenty dollars is 800 rubles, yet chump change to Americans. Fuck, that money is more than a month's rent to these delicious foreign babes. Their pretty Russian faces, heavenly cleavages, dangerous round hip curvatures, legs and perfume breaks my heart even today. I'm really retarded you know.

As me and Dwayne walked back to the dorm building, he turned and looked at me asked what I thought of the evening's performance. I told him I didn't see a dry eye in the place. I conceded that after being tended to by such pretty Russian women, walking home alone, I thought I was gonna cry like a girl too. He laughed and chided me that I was whining like a bitch cuz I just bought and paid for an evening with some of the world's most beautiful women, and now I gotta go home and beat my Johnson with a claw hammer.

Which is what I did. I do my best work alone.

Despite us men having 3 brains, we can't think fer fucksake. Alas, life ain't all shit. I wouldn't have lived this long if I only TWMD.

Only thought with my dick.

Karl.

Is subsistence hunting and drinking dangerous? My lips are sealed.

Top of the morning gents,

Have you been so scared, you truly worried you weren't gonna make it home? Yup, me too.

Years ago I was invited to go seal hunting with David Melton, David and Danny Burnor and Nils Gregg. I'm always enthusiastic, almost to a fault, besides it sounded cool, so I said, "Sure, you bet." It looked easy enough. Me and Sara sat on the Little Kivilina beach and watched Eskimo dudes dressed in white camos, stalk seals resting on the ice, level their rifles and blammo! Put a bullet under the cute sea mammal's chin, mouth or nose.

My favorite pair of hunters to watch was Octuck and Murphy. They'd do the Inupiaq commando crawl, moving within range of a collection of adult seals that looked about 100 pounds each, take aim and simultaneously fire, splitting the seal's snot lockers with smaller, super-sonic, ultra-high velocity, semi-jacketed hollow point rifle rounds and amidst a cloud of red mist, their prey would flip over dead. Once in a while I seen a gravely injured seal gimp into the open water, but only float there until Patrick or Joe snagged the little fucker with a gaffing hook and pull the red bubbling snack ashore.

After hunting and dragging his kill to shore, Octuck lectured and showed Sara and I that shooting seals through the snout, mouth and face prevented the animal from exhaling, descending below the surface and sinking out of reach. Cool huh? With Joe Murphy and Patrick Octuck's lessons in mind, I fancied myself qualified enough to at least watch seal hunting up close. So I took this opportunity to join Nils, Melton, and the Burnors on their ill-fated hunt.

From the Hanson's fuel pump on the beach, we loaded up David Burnor's boat with almost a million fucking bucks worth of gasoline. We also loaded up a bunch of booze, some bags of weed and also stowed a number of rifles and ammo. Myself, I holstered a couple revolvers, a DA snubby and a Taurus long barrel, both 357 magnums, I also pocketed a couple boxes of bullets too. There ain't honor amongst thieves, nor murderers, and coming from a extraordinarily violent farming community and alcoholic family, I didn't want to go out hunting, get shot and sunk to the bottom of Kotzebue Sound next to centuries of honey buckets. Besides, adding my weight to the food and supplies, I balanced the boat and also brought a degree of safety to the mish. What the fuck, look at my company. None of you niggers'd go hunting alone with these lethal drunken retarded motherfuckers. Someone had to be the responsible person. That's me. And 2 magnums.

Nils and Melton were interested in heading out to the left, south of Kotzebue and approach the ice pack, scoping with binoculars looking for adult and pup seals to shoot. So under a good measure of throttle, we boogied full tilt towards the ice pack while the two seasoned hunters were scanning for game to shoot. David and Danny Burnor could repair any part of that boat with all the tools and parts, whereas I was only along for the ride cuz I'd never hunted seals and considered my contribution was merely as observer and lookout. I liked the ride and the weather was clear with bright sun and not a cloud in the sky. You all know spring weather in Kotzebue Sound, not a breeze to blow out our lighters as we toked, chiefed and choked monster plumes of green bud along the way, leaving a carbon footprint that'd make Dan Yenni smile.

As we approached the ice, it was obvious we weren't gonna just step off the boat, stroll onto the ice sheet and blast munchies. The ice was likely more than 20 feet thick and any seals were gonna be way above our heads. We eased the throttle and slowed our approach looking for a sloping wedge to climb or even sea level ice we could tie to and go hunting.

The ice pack was fucking huge and pretty much a vertical white and blue wall we'd never be able to climb. We motored carefully both left and right looking for an easy approach. We made note of two canals of open water that headed into the 50 mile wide (and hundreds of miles deep) ice pack, but we wanted to hike and hunt on top of this huge white wall, not motor down a blue walled open roofed tunnel that breathed a freezing wind straight out and into our faces.

After craning our necks looking up at this vertical ice cliff, Nils and Melton suggested we drive down one of the narrow channels and see if any sea mammals were swimming about looking to suck a bullet. We'd heard some splashes that echoed out of these refrigerated leads, so we proceeded inside the ice pack. Within a few minutes, we were colder'n shit and the splashes were coming from ice calving down the sides of our open topped tunnel. We didn't see any seals and we were dreaming out our asses if we were gonna see any walrus.

Another claustrophobic aspect of our narrow channel cruise was the only illumination came from overhead. Sunlight and blue sky were our lighting and we just motored along looking for shit to shoot. We'd tired of boating inside a giant ice pack and agreed it best we turned around and headed back out to explore the other open water lead.

We reversed our course and chuckled at how our voices echoed and air was super dense, cold and sweet. As we approached the area we assumed was the exit back out to open water, we noticed a fork in the channel that wasn't there on our initial foray. This was troubling, we didn't know which channel led back out. On our way in, we drove down a single lane of open water and there weren't any forks in the road posing any decision whether right or left. It all looked the same and all we had was blue sky above, about 20 feet or more over our heads.

We agreed to inspect the right turn first, then back up and take a look down the left channel. The right turn was identical and we couldn't tell if this was our original route into the ice pack. We turned around and headed back to take a look down the other choice, the left turn we found. As we came to the junction, I saw a line of crushed ice from below water level vertically up to the blue sky overhead. It was two walls of ice that had been crushed shut and was our original entry route. Now closed off.

This isn't an isolated event, I been trading merch for seals and shipping them upriver to grandma Magdelen (bun's mom) for years. I traded bottles with Kenny (bun's brother) for seals or purchased them outright from old lady Mary Ann Mendenhall, wrapped them in rolls of clear heavy gauge plastic I use for masking off my paint and mud work on 711 and 676. With miles of clear strapping tape, I put big labels on them, tightly wrap the entire plastic cocoon, then put them back outside in -30 below temps and froze those heavy fuckers solid as a rock. For your information, yes, I did think of shoving bottles of booze or sheets of acid up the asses of my frozen seals, but since bun was directing my philanthropy, I put the kibosh on that scheme. Besides, putting liquor or LSD in the hands of my retarded in-laws will invariably prove stupid.

My go-to guys for transport were old friends of mine. Calvin Monroe (Albert Monroe's nephew) drove for Arctic Cab (owned by Mungnuk), old man Alvin Ivanoff drove for his own cab company and Wade Laws drove for Midnight Sun Cab. I checked my 2 plastic wrapped seals to make sure they were rock-hard then phoned Wade. After clearing his passengers and the lunch rush slowed down, he drove his cab to my house, helped me pick up and heft the 2 wrapped and frozen seals into his cab, then we booked down to the airport. He also helped me carry them two heavy frosty seals inside Baker Aviation.

Seeing the Selawik addresses I taped on my frozen seals, old lady Margie Baker wouldn't take a dime for our freight. She gave me and Wade a big smile, insisting the 2 wrapped seals were shipped for free, that very day. She even directed us out onto the tarmac and loaded the hermetically wrapped seals on the planes ourselves. Marge Baker went so far as to instruct the pilot that she's paying the freight on these frozen seals and could they get delivered first on his down-river triangle (Noorvik, Kiana, Selawik). Mrs. Baker glowingly praised our 100+ pound frosty food units we were shipping to Selawik. She further poured compliments upon us for sending rock-hard frozen seals to the funerals in Selawik and this was really a wonderful gesture and everybody will enjoy them at the feast. Wade and I were gobsmacked and dumbfounded, we weren't aware of any funerals in Selawik, but graciously accepted her generosity and thanks. And our faces got hot. Sometimes, in life, when old ladies owning airlines gush praise and affection and extend such glowing approval upon you, it's best to keep yer mouth shut, smile and nod.

After broadcasting to Charlie Reich Sr. back at home-base for Midnight Sun Cab 'bout our Inupiaq Nikipaq mission of mercy for the funerals in Selawik, Charlie yelled a couple atta boys to both of us, "You boys did real good there." "Thanks Karl. Tell bun thanks too." Did you see that? Wade and I just hijacked a wave of community kindness, generosity and well-being, all by accident. Over the air Charlie doubled up his praise and declared there was no charge for the cab fare.

On the way home, Wade lit up a monster bomber joint and said, "Fuck Karl, I think we just earned our angel's wings, so we better smoke this." Of course, I handed Wade a packet of LSD soaked paper doses for his efforts. Wade and I are such dumb asses. God spread his grace upon us from so many directions, and we never expected it. That day provided dozens, possibly hundreds of smiles and warm hearts all around us. It also reinforced my future efforts undertaking what I fondly call: Operation Muktuk. My eyes well up just writing about that day.

Instead of dropping me off back at home, I asked if I could ride around while Wade picked up more passengers. That was when he told me his story that lots of seal hunters have disappeared inside the ice pack of Kotzebue Sound as it merges with the much larger ocean going ice pack that stretches all the way to Russia. Doug Sheldon was Solveig Naylor's dad, and Raymond Brown was Martha Brown (Glenn Lodge's wife) and Amelia Brown's poppa (Billy Byrd's wife). Sheldon and Brown had disappeared and presumed dead after getting locked and crushed behind the closing doors of ice leads as gentle winds blew the ice pack channels shut.

In roughly the year 1988, Doug Sheldon and Raymond Brown loaded up their boat with gas, gear and guns and headed South to go seal hunting on the receding ice pack the same direction and same distance as my plow-headed crew mates. After gassing up at Hanson's, if you look way to the left you can see the white margin above the water and just below the sky's horizon. The reason I use those directional illustrations is this is how Wade Laws told me this tale.

Mr. Laws frequented that same route and went bone and fossilized ivory hunting near Elephant Point, adjacent to the community of Deering and the formerly inhabited gold mining ghost town of Candle. Wade expressed great fear of entering the spring ice pack and motoring in and around the maze of channels hunting for seals. "No fucking way." "The bravest subsistence I'm gonna do is dig for mastodon around Elephant Point." That's where all mastodons go to die.

He further explained that like modern day elephants and ancient mastodon (woolly mammoths) from prior ice ages escorted their dying family members to their burial grounds. Smaller mammoths that died in transit to Boot Hill were carried in the massive tusks of the males. Modern elephants will tag team and coordinate their efforts in transporting their dead or dying parents, siblings and offspring to the soft earth of their family plots. The whole herd takes turns dragging or carrying loved ones for shallow burial as a protective measure against predation.

Wade explained he'd seen photos of larger male and female elephants carrying dead family members with their bodies laying across pairs (and trios) of marching pachyderms like lounging across 4-6 tusks. I added that I'd seen a row of three pallet-forklift equipped bucket loaders carrying whales up the shore for butcher in Barrow. "Fuck Karl, I forgot you and bun lived up there." I corrected him and stated that we have to return when our tenants move out of our duplex on Northstar street in Browerville.

I insisted he continue his story, I wanted more information about Doug Sheldon and Raymond Brown, so Wade Law continued, but his eyes welled up retelling me the unspeakable. He and his mates were near their boat loading fossilized bone and tusks when they heard faint VHF radio chatter requesting assistance from Sheldon and Brown. Wade grabbed the microphone and asked where they were and they explained they were 20 minutes down a water channel, inside the ice pack, disoriented and lost, and couldn't retrace their way back out.

Wade and his buddies repeated their radio request back to Kotzebue Police Dispatch and Search and Rescue for emergency assistance. The VPSO's in Deering (Dickie Moto) and Buckland (either Geary or Hadley) could hear the radio chatter and phoned KPD 911 emergency services and advised the boys inside the radio shack (Central Dispatch) in the old KPD jail of the troubled boaters. A Service Request (SR) was initiated with names, dates, times, agencies contacted, agencies responding, estimated location of distressed parties entered and AST was notified. The dispatcher at KPD simultaneously notified the Fire Hall and Search and Rescue. S&R scrambled 2 boats with Trox, Munson and Danny Thomas coordinating the search. Only you coppers know how many parties get activated and mobilized on these kinds of calls.

The troopers followed the VHF boat radio chatter from Jackie (Joule) and Joe Hill, who were South of Sadie Creek, acting as directional spotters who'd seen Sheldon and Brown motoring by earlier in the day. Ross Schaeffer also radioed in from his cabin on the Kenworthy native land allotment and added a closer time and distance he'd observed the two troubled boaters had motored by. His estimate was that they'd driven by at roughly noon, a couple hundred yards offshore, just past all the buoy markers and subsistence nets. Ross Schaeffer further added Sheldon and Brown both waved, yelled hello and looked in good condition and good spirits, heading to the ice pack just offshore.

On emergency call-outs, the best and only radio relays are the campers and fishermen at camp, in boats or in cabins, all the way down the coast. As the radio chatter and information requests increased, Dispatch, Search and Rescue and the Troopers were able to better zero in on a tighter location of the lost or stranded Sheldon and Brown sealing crew.

The Kotzebue Detachment Troopers scrambled an airplane and a teacher from Deering went wheels up and both zoomed the beaches, streams and shoreline signaling the adhoc communications network up and down the coast with wings tipping and hails from both CB and VHF. The teacher from Deering was quickest to first barnstorm the beaches, then went over water towards the ice pack. The troopers were directly behind him by a short time and monitoring both CB and VHF and also FAA radio frequencies and started a rough grid search of the ice pack. An ice pack that was dozens of miles wide at the Northern face and went hundreds of miles out to sea.

When a channel was spotted, the planes would divert from their grid work and trace the blue water leads from beginning to end. If no boat or hunters were spotted, then they'd resume their north-south, east-west flyovers, looking for more open water cracks in the ice pack.

The teacher from Deering ran low on fuel and headed back to the village air strip to gas up on more 100 octane low-lead, then flew back out over open water and continued searching the blue open water leads amidst that giant ice pack. The Troopers then departed to Deering and fueled up too.

With both planes flying, the radio hails from Sheldon and Brown stated they'd seen and heard a plane fly over, but their communications grew garbled and disintegrated into static with none of our Eskimo relays down the entire coast from Kotzebue, Sadie Creek and Elephant Point able to make out the distress calls from our ice locked seal hunters. In moments like these, radio silence can break yer heart.

Wade told me that as they finished loading up their gear and were going to head out towards the ice pack and join the two Search and Rescue boats, the regularly scheduled late afternoon breezes started to blow. Then the really sad news started to repeat up and down the coast line. The Search and Rescue boats watched as the remaining few open leads in the ice pack closed like giant white and blue doors. The search planes also got quiet as they reported that all the blue water channels directly below them were closing up. Any camper, fisherman and seal hunter knows that floating ice packs answer to the prevailing winds and open and close the large cracks in the pack. This time of day, the ice pack closed up all the big cracks with our two seal hunting boaters within them.

The troopers and the civilian plane from Deering discussed the dilemma and the S&R boaters awaited a decision to halt their search and head back to rescue base. Robert Thompson (Warren and May's son) manning the FAA station in Kotzebue radioed with information from Kodiak Coast Guard that it'd be many hours for helicopters to join in the search and the ice pack prevents any ocean-going vessels from coming close.

At this time other Civil Aviation volunteer planes including Dale Walters (Nush and my boss at Ryan Air), Bob Douglas and Carl Weisner (Brian Higman's boss at NW Arctic School District) were performing flyovers and verified that ALL the open leads in the ice pack were shut tight and there was zero chance of survival. The only visible leads were those that were located more than 100 miles west, and part of the larger ocean ice pack. For miles and miles, the pilots and boaters could only see solid white and not a single vein of blue.

That's when prayers were heard on all the CB and VHF radio channels. Wade Laws got pretty torn up concluding his story. He'd gotten a boat full of fossilized ivory and bones, but the ride home was real fucking depressing. As they headed back up the coast towards Kotzebue, all the campers and fishermen were out on the beach crying and waving as all the planes flew over and boats passed by. The teacher from Deering radioed thanks to the adhoc relay communications stations along the coast and departed back home. The S&R boats and volunteer planes, along with the troopers advised they'd do follow up searches the following day.

I asked Wade what likely happened and he explained that the walls along the sides of the leads Sheldon and Brown were boating in, closed tight like bulldozers from two sides, crushing everything inside. The debris from their boat and gear would likely never be found because as an ice pack ebbs and flows on it's migration out to sea, the old cracks stay sealed tight with new leads opening with the wind and tide water currents.

I complimented Wade Laws on his detailed recollections of that day, then asked how he knew so much about these missing hunters. His reply was, "Doug Sheldon was my uncle, my mom's brother." Ouch. That was the moment I told Mr. Laws about my trip into the ice pack with David Melton, two Burnors and Nils Gregg. He looked at me in awe. I told him that our entrance had shut tight and closed off our initial water channel.

We couldn't radio for help, we had zero signal and not a scrap of static down below 20 foot tall cliffs above our heads, so we had to simply hunt and pray. I concluded that had we not found an exit an hour later, ice climbing gear would've been the only solution to our dilemma. All we had was booze, weed and firepower. We would've been classified as another tragic case of "Gone Missing."

We motored up and down a maze of leads looking for an exit and finally found a brightly lit blue walled water channel. That brightly lit channel in the ice pack seemed to me to be a sign, so I suggested to the Burnors that our exit just showed itself. Melton and Nils nodded in agreement and I believe, secretly prayed I was right. This channel offered our escape from a real fucking nightmare of white and freezing cold breezes.

I still have nightmares about that mission. Since I'm the last of a very few living members of that ill-fated seal hunting mission, and you coppers are the last living team members of that era of Kotzebue's emergency responders, it's fitting I tell you about the parallel disappearances of Doug Sheldon and Raymond Brown alongside this tale. Nils Gregg and David Burnor passed away years ago, and so have Jackie and Joe HIll. I'm not sure about Danny nor David Melton. What the fuck, look back at the names of the folks I've listed and do the subtraction, most of them are long dead. I'm grateful you're still here.

Now I'm going to tell you the other part of the story. As me and my crew of seal hunters, poachers and alcoholics motored up and down dead-end channels looking for our exit, we were drinking and smoking. A lot. All you coppers know how boating and flying tends to drive alcohol into yer bloodstream much faster, and well, add bleeding ulcers and booze inflamed intestines and fried colorectal tissue, and you got Nils, David, Danny and Melton, all liquored, soaked well into their cups and fuckered up. Not a pretty site.

After our escape from the ice cap and heading back to town, there were a lot of smaller icebergs in our path, across the middle of Kotzebue Sound, so we booked closer to shore. This maneuver made sense to me, but not the consequences. We veered in along the shoreline and then opened up the throttles, roaring back towards home, in front of Ross Schaeffer's cabin on the Kenworthy native land allotment, Sadie Creek and the Kotzebue Air Force Base. David Burnor was driving, Danny was co-pilot and Nils Gregg was in back with David Melton and myself, passing bottles of 151 rot-gut shitty liquor and smoking bowls of Ken Hall's green bud that was fronted to my crew mates, and likely never paid for. Do you see a cookbook with a recipe for disaster in the making? Hold yer dicks and listen up.

We were really moving along, close to the shoreline, at top speed, up on plane and zooming over a million fucking fish nets spanning perpendicular to our flight path home. We were churning up a rooster tail, breathing flames and green toke plumes in our wake, shredding nets, buoys and even overturned net-check rafts, skiffs and canoes. Sounds fun huh? Not to the subsistence salmon crunchers up and down the beach all the way home. We heard shotguns and rifle cracks and heard bullets scream by and whistle over our heads and on both sides of the boat. Just imagine a redneck action movie, starring drunks, half-niffs and morons. I played the role of the moron.

David and Danny kept the pedal to the metal, wide open and we flew close to the beach like speeding motherfuckers, putting distance between us and all the campers on the beach firing rounds at our drunk asses. I was amazed that not one single pellet or bullet didn't score a hit and puncture our hides or even hit the boat hull, cabin or windshield. Fuck we were moving at light speed, leaving a killer wake with floating fish and chum steaks cut up from our propeller, sending waves of chopped up subsistence food ashore. I chuckle at my retelling this tale. That is, until we arrived in front of the Post Office where we parked our vehicles and boat trailer.

As we cleared the Air Force Base, zoomed past the shit lagoons and rounded the ass end of the airport, I saw trooper and city police cars matching our speed, following our vector and trajectory, from the south end of town like a motorcade racing to meet us for our VIP arrival and docking. Don't think for a second all these police units were speeding along Front Street to shake our hands and high-five for our escape from the ice pack. How about cuffs and shackles, book-ins, bail hearings and legal messes that were soon gonna fuck up our lives. At least the lives of my crew mates, seal hunters and poachers.

As we slowed and eased our way towards shore, Troopers Nay and Kozloff, Officers Wallace, Salazar, Erlich and Blanchard were all converging on our stupid asses. I knew this wasn't a party, this was a fuck-fest. The coppers assisted us in pulling ashore, then requested we step out of the boat, one at a time. David and Danny Burnor were obviously in control of the boat, being the only chumps in the cabin and Nils, Melton and myself were standing in the back. That was when David Burnor, Danny, Nils and Melton yelled at the cops to fuck off, started pushing the cops away, raising fists and preparing for a brawl. I stepped out of the boat, walked up to Front Street and stood far from the fray as my crew mates started swinging and kicking at the cops, yelling loud and super fucked up. I was amazed: green bud and alcohol makes men stronger and smarter. Not.

The cops and troopers responded with batons and put down this shoreline battle, beach brawl and drunken fisticuffs in about 4 minutes. I stayed with the assembled crowds and watched KPD and AST beat the shit outa the fighting drunk belligerent four. I just stood aside, kept mum and didn't say a word. This battle seemed to have been brewing long before I hopped aboard that boat and I'm thinking it was related to Trooper Carl Schramm's bootleg bust and the long history between the cops and my crew mates. It also looked to me like the cops were gonna settle their hash, once and for all. Nils, David, Danny and Melton took blows on their heads, necks, elbows and knees, but kept on fighting like mad dogs, yelling, cursing and doing a lot of damage to the peace and dignity of the great state of Alaska. Kotzebue too.

Even Paula Burnor (Hensley), Roberta Brower (Numnik), Karen Hensley, Clifford Melton, Renee Lane (Gonion), Kenny Ipalook and a couple others awaiting our arrival volunteered as combatants and joined in the melee. It looked to me almost as messy and complicated as the brawl in front of the Lyon's Club when half the town and KPD (Nush, Roger Dubie and John Mack) beat the shit of the nigger Thomas clan o' monkeys, chimps and gorillas after the dance. Fuck, this woulda been worth money on pay-per-view. I simply stood with the growing crowd of post office employees, patrons, Manilaq workers and watched the slug-fest and beat down.

After my drunken crew mates and their volunteer brawlers were all subdued, restrained and the cops caught their breaths, Wallace signaled to me to approach. He drew me away by the arm and asked politely to tell him what the fuck just happened. I told Wallace and Nay the simple, unvarnished truth. We were seal hunting, got trapped in the ice pack, found a way out, headed back home, close to shore and then the Burnors floored it. Albeit, super drunk, shredding sub-nets and flipping little boats and rafts all the way home. I even included taking rounds from rifles and shotguns as we sped by the beach. I was asked if I was intoxicated and I truthfully stated that no, I wasn't drunk. The weed I smoked was long gone, due to the sheer terror and stress from the trip home shredding nets, fish and tossing smaller craft. And dodging bullets. I'd popped some Altoids, had no booze nor drugs on me and kept my hands at my sides, still and answered the questions honestly and directly with zero hedging and coloration.

After the patrol cars and ambulances departed the scene, I was still standing on Front Street, next to Mumpsy, Ron and Peggy Brown from Arctic Sun Video. I was book-ended by lunatics Harold Wells and Dave Summerfelt, so I felt comfortable. They all asked me what the fuck just happened, so I told them a brief synopsis. Ron and Peggy shook their heads and stated that they've had their nets cut up by boats, and it was fucked up. Then Wells and Summerfelt looked up and down Front Street, laughed out loud and asked why I wasn't arrested and being driven away with all my compatriots. I shrugged and told them the troopers and cops had all the information they needed.

My testimony combined with the CB and VHF radio reports, and the arriving pissed off sub-net fishermen and angry cabin psychos pretty much sealed their fate. When my crew mates started swinging, punching, kicking and yelling at the cops, well, that was simply a garnishment to their shit pile they'd just created. I wasn't driving the boat, I wasn't drunk (visibly) and I stepped a mere dozen feet away and simply stood still during the fuck-fest and ass-stomping. In my younger years operating Lem's Mortuary and Crack house, I learned to take police beatings from Officer Beuler and his Defective Detectives. Don't raise a finger, even if yer face down, out cold, in yer own front lawn.

I refrained from revealing my assignments working for Nay/Nolton on a special Capone project that years later, yielded numerous accolades and commendations statewide. Both Summerfelt and Wells are long deceased, and so is Ron Brown, but they're all gossip chatterboxes and weren't classified as "Need to Know." Remember, I'm just a dummy and that's my story, and I've stuck to it for decades. K160, N606: paid professional moron, unpaid bullet dump, non-profit punching bag, half-wit wholesale drug consumer and walking half-watt transmitter.

In scribbling this week's composition, I referred to bun's encyclopedic memory of events of citizens that've "Gone Missing." I was astonished of the number ice mishaps and vanishings that's occurred in her community and her family. She told me what happened to the original Charlie Tikik of the Point Hope village and clan: her grandfather and father's and brother's namesake. The name Tikik is an Eskimo family derivation of the village title: Tikigaq, the family and clan name bestowed, from the native village name, later called in English, Point Hope. Captain Cook pasted this new English name on this ancient community and upon his newly drawn maps during his pursuit of the Northwest Passage. Cook named both Cape of Good Hope and Point Hope on his voyages discovering continents that've been inhabited for thousands of centuries. English, Portuguese and Italian (including Christopher Columbus) explorers searched for a rapid sea route, a route through the Arctic Ocean that they discovered was closed off with the polar ice pack, yet open for sailors in earlier millennia, before global whining. In maritime museums in Finland, Norway and Sweden, you'll see ancient maps drawn by Vikings and Norsemen that illustrates an Arctic Ocean completely free of ice. Us sea-faring Europeans are such shits.

Bun's grandfather, Charlie Tikik of the Tikigaq Village, now called Point Hope was a seal and whale hunter of local repute. By genius standards of his peers, he was above average as an artist, singer and dancer, but did a bang up job of notoriety and uniquely excelled feeding the community with his bounty. On the 1900 census, the dude's occupation is listed as sealer and whaler. That fucking rocks.

Out hunting on a day almost a century ago, he didn't return home and a search party was sent out to retrieve him. There were seals way out on the ice, in the direction his neighbors seen him hike, but the breezes had picked up. Following his boot tracks in the ice and snow, it appears the chunk of ice pack he was hunting on, fractured and separated into many different windblown pieces.

Bun's grandfather, Charlie Tikik, sealer and whaler extraordinaire likely floated away, on his own island, blown out to sea, surviving on raw seal meat, ice melt water, eventually drowning when his solitary piece of ice melted and submersed him. This narrative scares hell out of me. I've no desire of dying alone, eating my own catch and waiting for my flotation device to finally sink. I'd likely go under with wonderful memories and prayers of my coworkers, friends and adopted Arctic family on my mind. Ironic, but that includes all you coppers. Fuck me.

As far as more moments of pure terror, we've likely had a few million since the 80's, living and working all over the 907 negro. Shit, I traveled around the world to experience chattering teeth and soggy shit-soaked diapers. The way I see it, lives and careers are long stretches of regular day-to-day existence, blended with thousands of wonderful romances, punctuated by moments of unexplainable anger, mysterious rage and those times that scared the shit out of us. Only a fool thinks his nightmares are unique. If you think of your worst fears as commonplace amongst us, yer peers, you won't die alone.

I know every one of you has a slightly different memory of these events. That's to be expected. We all possess a fraction of these composite events and truth as a whole is relative, complimentary and overlapping. Retelling this tale and all the parties involved wasn't an effort to bring back shitty memories and piss you off. Nup, I hoped to help you refresh our fading case histories and possibly retrace the NANA Region's community and lineage of half a century ago, long gone citizens, dead cops, drunks and bootleggers. By adding the married names I can illustrate their relationships to cherished friends, neighbors and coworkers.

This'll surprise y'all. I'm not related to anyone in all of Alaska, except by marriage, employment and odd ball friendships. With consults from the Chief and verification of kinship from bun, my narrow perspective, impaired writing skills, drug altered peephole and brief period watching you, I think I got this article of historical seal harvests portrayed accurately, fairly and with the correct sensitivity.

Remember, there's two kinds of Alaskans. Those that were born here: First Alaskans. And then there's those that arrived here, running from something: Worst Alaskans. You can guess where my membership lies.

Regardless of your origins, there's considerable philosophical and religious thinking and text, that if you die surrounded by coworkers, neighbors or family, you can be reasonably confident, that you can rest in peace. Fatal on the job injuries, violent trauma bagging fish and game or succumbing to chronic illnesses with your kids and grandkids surrounding you, yer going out in style.

Your dying bed may not be within 1000's of miles from yer birthplace. We also may pass away on the far side of the Rivers Noatak, Jordan or Styx, but God willing, you shouldn't be frightened.

Smile yer biggest shit eating grin. You made it home.

Karl.