Episode 14 : Surprises

Alaska Dub shares a story about a romantic encounter with a girl from Berkeley. They had a strong connection but she eventually leaves with someone else. Soon after, Alaska Dub receives a surprise call from his ex-girlfriend and mother of three, who wants to move in with him. He quickly arranges accommodations and they settle in a boarding house. However, their presence doesn't fit well with the other residents and they eventually move to a hotel. Despite the challenges, they celebrate Christmas together at the hotel and eventually find a new place to live in a cabin. Welcome to episode 14 of the Alaska Dub Chronicles. I'm your host, Alaska Dub. Today is about some romance. So our hero's working away, living in the boarding house, meeting all sorts of interesting people, and one of the interesting people he meets is the new friend, maybe girlfriend, of one of his roommates who has for a few days been hanging out, hanging around the place, you know, just chatting everybody up, cooking, eating, just being a nice addition to the place. She was from Berkeley, and I think a recent graduate from Berkeley. Tall, lean, pretty, you know, of course smart, and super hippie, too. Maybe not super hippie, but definitely leaning on the hippie side. So yeah, when she wasn't running around, I don't know, somehow we ended up having some good conversations, and, you know, one thing led to the next, and we sort of had a spark, and so the day comes when she had planned to, I think, ride the ferry route with her, with the artist, and, you know, we were a couple days into really being into each other. That's a silly way of putting it, but I mean we were really digging each other's company, and so she was all regretting that she had to leave, and I'm just like, well, stay, and lo and behold, I don't know what magic potion I had, but yeah, she chose, at that moment, she chose me over the apex bachelor of Juno, some hippie freak hillbilly. I don't know how I managed that, and we had a, you know, we were kind of inseparable for about a week, you know, really enjoying each other's company, and we were affectionate, but, like, never sealed the deal, just in case you were wondering if she was kind of of loose morals, but she wasn't. I think she was just creating experiences, and somehow I was one, but as it came to pass, you know, anything that's too good to be true probably is, and, you know, today Alaska Dove is all confident and knows what he has to offer, but back then, I easily put her out of my league, and probably at that moment, she was, because I didn't really have anything to call my own, hardly. So, I guess my charm was starting to wear thin. She had mined all the gold I had to offer. Oh, I mean, not that she was a digger. It wasn't a money thing. Just a figure of speech. But, like I had mentioned before, the fairy runs on a weekly route, and so about a week later, the artist was back, and, you know, when the fairy pulled out, she was on board with him. So, boy, I was sort of heartbroken, but, I mean, the consolation I got from all my bros was, like, dude, you knew it. You knew it was too good. So, that's how that rolled. So, I was a little romance-shy, not thinking about women or nothing, really. I mean, as much as a healthy 24-year-old, you know, doesn't think about women. Now, my heartbreak, that's another sort of air coil. That's a theatrically thing, heartbreak. It didn't last long. Heartbreak always kind of takes a while to dissipate, but it was replaced with shock pretty quickly. I don't want to say the same day, because that sounds too much like a plot device, but if it wasn't, it was within days. I get a phone call, and I can't recall if this was on a house phone, like the old flip phones, like a Nokia, maybe, back then. I'm not sure. Anyhow, I answer the phone, and lo and behold, it's the mother of three from Kansas City, who I thought we had decided it's not in the cards. I was just someone to help the transition, I reckon. I wasn't the long-term prospect. But I guess opinions vary, and the phone call I got was from the mom. She was in Washington with her kids, and she was getting ready to board the ferry to come up and be a family with me. So, as you can imagine, that didn't leave a lot of room for pining away for my long-lost hippie. Not long-lost, but recently lost hippie chick of my own. And so it instantly switched to, like, family survival mode. I mean, this is happening. It's happening whether you want it to or not, and it was definitely not, but, you know, I've got to at least have a place for her and the kids to land, and, you know. And this was, I remember, this was November. It was like the first of November, and there was no sun for months. And I think I remember hearing about that. I think what I think happened, I don't think I had a cell phone yet. I think when I arrived and got the house, I had promised her to, she, we had broken up, still in Kansas City, but I think I had shared my plan. And nice guy I am, I promised to let her know whenever I was safe and so forth. And I think that's probably, I probably called from that number at the boarding house. And that's where I got the return call. She was determined. And she packed the kids up. I think she packed a box or two and put it in the mail. And then like a duffel bag and little backpacks for the kids. And they hopped on a Greyhound. Greyhound of Bellingham. So I had about three, maybe four days to just to figure out. I mean, I'm living in one room of a boarding house. As things worked out, I think another room, another room opened up. And that was one of the larger rooms. So I think we put the, I think we put the kids in. I don't know. Now I'm thinking, we took the two big rooms. And one of those was empty. So it wasn't so bad. And then the resident of one of the big rooms agreed to move to my smaller room, which had a better view. But so yeah, I did my best to, to get accommodations all squared away. And I will probably simultaneously working as many shifts at both jobs that I could to, to scrape some more bread. And, and within a few days, I'm, I'm picking, I'm picking my ex-girlfriend and her three kids up at the very terminal and bringing them to my place downtown. You know, I cannot thank the, the, the boarding house owner enough for the offer, the other residents for their patience. And, you know, everyone was just so accommodating and, and understood sort of the shock of it all from, from my perspective, because, as you know, I'd been there a few months. So as you can imagine, as, as accommodating, large, varied, as, as this house is, it was a house for adults and three young kids. I think we were looking at four, five, and six, two, two older boys and the youngest girl. And, you know, kids just being kids, it's, it needs to be a place that's welcoming to kids. And, you know, these, these people were tolerant. And I don't think it lasted more than probably the first month that I ponied up. And, you know, we wore our welcome out there. I think my ex, that mom's personality kind of didn't mesh so well with a lot of the, a lot of the people there. You know, I, I can't say she was the most sincere person. And that really stands out in this town. So, you know, I'd spoken earlier about the qualities that, that, you know, that are valued here. And a lot of the ones that aren't were the ones that she prioritized. And, and, you know, to, to, to be fair, any mother of three trying to make it work in any circumstances deserves tons of credit. And, and, you know, admiration and help, which is what I was trying to do. That's what I was trying to do, trying to make the best situation for us. And, and, you know, I think mentally I'm still reeling from, you know, my, my golden youth, trying to find my own hippie chick. Wow. Now I'm, I'm back to father of three, sort of. So, anyhow, the next, the next place was to the Alaskan. And this at least had more room. It wasn't, it was, wasn't much of a step up as far as kid friendly environments, but at least, at least there was space. And at least the place was used to noise. And, and so, you know, I was working there, working, working the rent off, doing shifts. And I think she was just being a mom and getting, getting herself and the kids kind of acclimated. Like I said, I had the glorious dry summer week to fall head over heels, which, and I had probably called her, thought about calling her, you know, a few weeks later. And then by the time she arrives, it's, the fall can be kind of gloomy, kind of gloomy, even more so if it's your first one, and you had higher expectations for the loveliness. I don't think she even saw Douglas for like the first week. It was so sucked in, just the cloud cover. So, that is where we find ourselves of holidays. So that was Christmas 91 happening at the Alaskan hotel. You know, I shouldn't have been so disparaging about the family quality of the hotel. I mean, you are working within the context of a hotel. But like, they've got a Thanksgiving tradition of, you know, the feast for anyone, especially people who don't have family. So like, the Alaskan does, does become a people's family. I don't know now, but back then, it was definitely the case. They definitely became my family. The crew there, the owners are cool. You know, everybody, seems like everybody associated with the place is a quality individual. So, I'm sure, you know, they tried to make it as festive as possible for the kids. I think, yeah, I think there's a, there's usually a tree up by the stage in the bar, and I think, yeah, I think the kids opened presents in the, now it's a rustic, you know, Victorian bar. So it's not, it's not as skeevy as it might sound, you know. But, you know, so that is, that's where we're at. So I had to refresh my memory. To my recollection, we stayed at the hotel for a few months while looking for accommodations, which I've sort of mentioned the real estate scene, which is not very good. Well, it's good if you're a landlord. It's not very good if you're a tenant who doesn't have very much money, because usually it's a, you know, one month's deposit and one month's cleaning deposit, you know, down payment. It takes a good chunk to get into a place, but, you know, in typical Juneau fashion, through a friend of a friend, you know, whose dad, a friend of a friend whose dad had a place, like his dad's old bachelor cabin, was not as rustic as it sounds. But that was coming up for rent. And so I want to say that this would be the spring of 92. And so this was a very simple place. It was located at the end of the road in Thane. And as I described the H of the road pattern, this was one of the ends on the southeast end of the road on the mainland. From there, there's a trail that led to Hug the Coast and to, I think, DuPont, Point DuPont, a little peninsula sticking out there, and look out onto the Taku Inlet. But one characteristic of this, it's very steep. Pretty much the whole road is steep. They do avalanche control in a part very closer, much closer to town. I want to say it's probably about six, seven miles is the length of the road from downtown to Thane. Within the first couple miles is a huge avalanche zone, which they often announce and then block off, the Department of Transportation blocks off, and then they shoot a howitzer from, sometimes I think they shoot a howitzer from Douglas. Other times it's like helicopter bomb drop. That's probably more often, the bomb drop. I think howitzer stuff is more for close in, like ski resorts like Eagle Crest. But yeah, they bring a ton of snow down. Sometimes they bring down way more than they expect. One time they did that and I was racing to get home. I had worked a night shift at the Alaskan and I was trying to beat the road close deadline in the morning and didn't make it. I was like two cars shy of being able to go. So they do their thing. I thought I'd just be chilling for, I don't know, maybe a couple hours or whatever. They bring down like three times as much. The road's closed for two days. I'm hanging out at the Alaskan while my wife and kids are stuck at the end of the road. Thankfully they had everything they needed and I had a good time. I was just bacheloring out for a couple days. So the place itself, like I said, it was pretty simple. Just one story, had a nice big deck. But as I was starting to describe, everything's steep. So either you've got a bunch of stairs going down to your house or a bunch of stairs going up to your house. But the road was kind of being in the only level part in sort of the middle of the hill, hill, mountains. So our place was up the hill and I want to say we had about 50 stairs, like one landing about halfway up. But sometimes those stairs, one reason we got the place affordably is because it was fall apart. A lot of things needed refurbished and so the rent was sort of commensurate with the dilapidation. Again, that word's a bit far, but I do remember they had to replace the stairs because they janked out hard. I think they completely fell off. Or were so close. They did get replaced and that was nice. And there's a little shop, disconnected, just a little shack built a little ways away from the house. And of course, I took that, I took over the little shack and made it my own spot. I remember there's a propane heater, a little portable propane heater. Kept the place warm and just a little insulated square with, I think it had a workbench built around it. The place came, I don't know if they were aware of it or not, but it came with an Alaskan mountain cat. Just a domestic cat, gray and white. But this guy was just like totally burly, big old paws. And he, man, when you give him some affection, he just digs the claws in and starts drooling on you. And I always liked having him jump in the window of the shop. It always scared the hell out of me. But just the fact that he wanted to be close. He wasn't a house cat and he'd just go off and do his own thing and show up every now and then. Usually pretty draggled. Just towel him off, give him some love, give him some food. Just a typical Alaskan mountain cat. So that is the setup as 92 begins. I think I'm going to put a pin in it there. And when we resume, we'll see how the year plays out. But until then, be good folks.