Streets paved with fish in Alaskan El Dorado

I’ve lived in Kodiak long enough that first-time experiences have grown rare, so I was moderately surprised when I stepped out of my front door Wednesday morning and onto a 30-inch halibut.
My second thought (right after, where did I last see Luca Brasi?) was, how am I going to explain this at the office?
It may come as a surprise to readers who know this column as the shrine to veracity I always intended, but sometimes, some of my colleagues doubt my assertions.
As a kid from the Midwestern suburbs, where fresh fish are — as who should say — uncommon underfoot, I have some understanding of their doubt.
On the other hand, I have also lived in Kenai, where the tide brings in all kinds of stuff, and if you have to step over a few herring or a waterlogged crate of Nikes to get to your car in the morning, nobody considers it worth mentioning.
My third thought was, cool — here’s my chance to try out www.whatdoesyouromenmean.com. There, between “entrails” and “fruitcake,” I found “flatfish, stepping on (morning)” and learned that either the Greek empire or the Persian empire will fall. No specific dates were given, so I pulled my investments from both, just to be safe.
But gods who leave important messages like that with a copy editor on the other side of the world have their own credibility problems, so I spent some time exploring other hypotheses.
I quickly rejected the idea of a halibut just getting lost. While I do not ask an animal with a brain the size of gummy bear for an opinion on public funding of health care, I’m reasonably sure they understand the difference between the bottom of the ocean and my doorstep.
Did an eagle drop it there? When I was camping near the beach in Ninilchik, I saw an eagle swoop into a stream and fly out with a live halibut. The eagle took its catch to a nearby tree and started eating, but then dropped it a few minutes later out of exasperation with a raven that lighted on the same branch and wouldn’t shut up about some investment opportunity in Baghdad.
It was almost a disappointment to find out later, by a roundabout message, that a friendly neighbor left me the fish. The moral? We need to invent a pen that writes on slime so as to leave explanatory notes on gift fish.
Meanwhile, thanks for the offer, neighbor. I couldn’t refuse.

Kodiak resident Drew Herman’s award-winning column Out of the Loop has readers in more than 40 countries, for all anyone knows.

Maybe the questions are just too crooked

You gotta believe in magic — the way the spring sun makes flowers bloom, falling in love makes all the world sing, and filing to run for public office makes a person’s ability to give a straight answer vanish like George Bush’s budget surplus.
I listened to the ComFish Congressional candidate’s debate last night, and I had to wonder about what happens to people’s psyches under that grilling from voters.
In personal interactions and with few exceptions, politicians are far more charming than us regular folks. They seem more forthright and engaged, able to feel familiar quickly without calling you “sport” or “chief.”
Not that any of them are strangers, in this state. Like every other Alaskan, I have met and talked with most of the candidates before. If I’d lived here a little longer, we would all be on a first-name basis. And if my parents had lived here they would have been to school with half of them, worked with the other half, and probably divorced a few of each.
I have family in Columbus, Ohio, a cow town with the same population as all Alaska. They don’t undersand that for us to know our U.S senator is like them knowing their video store clerk.
The point is, I know our political leaders are all real people. But give them a podium and the risk of losing a vote, and they drone out the same script whether you ask them about fishery policy, oil pipelines or their picks for the sweet sixteen.
In my capacity as a professional reporter I have spoken with Rep. Don Young three times in the course of 15 years. I should disclose that I would vote for a patch of lichen before I would vote for him, but that’s not because he never remembers me. Recognizing a small-town reporter you only have to deal with for five minutes once every five years would require a level of intellectual prowess that would disqualify him from membership in the Republican Party, if not from Congress altogether.
But I do resent The Joke. At each encounter, Young told me the same reporter joke, one that already had gray hair and false teeth when Millard Fillmore trotted it out for Horace Greeley.
Now most people wouldn’t think it wise to begin such encounters by insulting the interviewer’s entire profession, but I guess that’s why Don gets the big bucks. Of course, journalists are trained to be objective and we would never take a sense of personal outrage out on somebody unfairly in print, no matter how many slimy deals in Florida are involved.
Anyway, we are pretty well inured, since journalists rank below lawyers and politicians in polls about public trust. And, I have to admit, Young seemed to genuinely enjoy the joke every time.
The particular joke is too lame to reprint here (if you really want to hear it, all you have to do to trigger the tape is say the word “reporter” to Young), so here’s a trombone joke instead.
I got paid for being a musician long before I ever got paid for being a reporter or an Alaskan. We instrumentalists have our own default goats. Instead of lawyers, blondes and rednecks we have trombonists, violists and accordionists. (I understand singers have tenors, but that’s just sad, like the way Ketchikan makes fun of Petersburg.)
Q: What’s the difference between a dead squirrel by the side of the road and a dead trombonist by the side of the road?
A: The squirrel was on his way to a gig.

Mirror writer Drew Herman would never change the subject.