It pains me to hear from time to time that some of my friends think that my true life adventures in the wilds of Alaska are untrue or smack of embellishments. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those sort of friends are the same kind that would think that Oswald was not part of a CIA conspiracy, Big Foot was not real or that alien abductions do not take place.
You know you have permeated the hierarchy of Raven Bay society when asked to join a seal hunt. A Yup’ik or Inupaq Eskimo does not express an invitation the same way in Raven Bay, Alaska, as it would in Independence, Missouri, let’s say. Not that an Eskimo would ever invite one to hunt seal in Independence, but one might be asked if one wanted to sit in a deer blind, not by an Eskimo, of course, but you know what I mean. The deer blind invitation would be straightforward, to the point and require a simple yes or no. If the answer was yes, one would make specific plans on where and when. If the response was no, a flimsy excuse is made as to why and one would go on one’s way. The inviting party may feel momentary rejection, but it soon passes after the invitee buys the invitee a beer at the Calico Cat or Cozy Inn. But Eskimos are a shy people; their feelings are easily hurt. Therefore, they have developed a system that protects their feeling, deters rejection, and allows the invitee to accept or reject without fear of humiliating or offending the inviter.
My good friend, Nanook, (yes, there really is a Nanook of the North) asked me to go on a seal hunt — a great honor for an outsider, or Gussick, as we are called. Although I never really wanted to sit in a deer blind waiting for some hapless deer to walk by, a seal hunt sounded sort of interesting and besides, I understood what rite of passage Nanook was offering. The invitation went something like this:
Nanook: Good day for hunting tomorrow.
Me: A great hunter like you would know.
Nanook: You make fun of me Gussick. I am a worthless hunter and my efforts only bring shame to my wife.
Me: Your wife is known to have the finest skins in the village and your children grow fat from the meat you provide.
Nanook: My wife dresses in skins that the animals themselves reject.
Me: I hear one could learn a lot from a great hunter.
Nanook: One could but one would have to find one first. Tomorrow I will go out on the ice and see if the bears have left a rotting seal carcass for me. They laugh too. I will leave early from behind the school, perhaps this miserable poor excuse for a hunter will be lucky and keep his wife from public shame and her wicked tongue from spanking me and her voice from laughing at my failure.
The next morning I arrived at the school parking lot (although there are no cars in Raven Bay — it must be a government requirement — four-wheelers and snow machines are plentiful). There were five snow machines waiting to be mounted by the eight villagers and one Gussick. Nanook, the leader, would have his own machine. I noticed that everyone had a rifle but me. My driver, Tolik, looked at me, then at his rifle and then looked back at me. I told him I did not own a rifle. He was bewildered and appeared a little disgusted. Tolik went to his sled and produced two harpoons which he thrust towards me. “Here”, he said, and then mounted our snow machine and, at a signal that I could not discern, the five machines began moving westward. I was just able to jump on at the last minute. We sped off towards the bay at a speed I thought rather fast, given the fact I was not buckled in and couldn’t hold on to Tolik because I was still trying to figure out how to carry the harpoons.
We proceeded single file toward the bay and Bering Sea and kept that formation through the bay ice, zigzagging north and south but always inching west. I eventually grew accustomed to the rhythm of the machine and bumpy pack ice and had even devised a way of carrying the harpoons so as not to stab myself, Tolik, or anyone else who might come close.
The rough ice gradually smoothed and at another unrecognizable signal we fanned out across the ice, five abreast, twenty or thirty feet apart. We would go straight then arc one way, then another, stop for awhile, and then proceed. This went on for an hour. I was beginning to think the hunt was a flop. I, for one, did not care. I just wanted to get off the ice, sit in front of the fire, drink anything hot and tell my wife about the brave deeds her hunting husband had done this day (I might embellish the facts a little).
Then at another silent signal, or whatever they were using to communicate, we stopped. Everyone dismounted and lay on the ice. Everyone except me, of course. I was busy trying to figure out why I would want to lie on the ice, and more importantly, what I was going to do with the two harpoons once I did. My hands were useless, the gloves were frozen to the shafts, and my dexterity was not adroit enough to manage the dismount. Tolik solved the whole problem by knocking me off the machine with his foot.
We all lay flat on our stomachs and we all started crawling in the same direction. My arms were flung out to the side and the harpoons prevented me from low-crawling like they taught me in the army; after several attempts I did devise a away of moving forward, though.
We crawled for a while then stopped. Crawled for a while then stopped. I lost count how many times we did this. Just as I was about to pass out from the exhaustion, we came to the edge of the ice. Nothing but the Bering Sea in front of me. At last I could rest. I was aroused from my stupor by a whistle. I looked forward out into the sea and saw in the distance little brown specks scampering about on a piece of floating ice. Seal! I was too tired to care much, but fascination soon took hold. They were jumping in the water, then jumping out on to the ice floe, and seemed to be playing like they do when you see them in the zoo. They would look in our direction for a while then resume their play. Then without warning they all began scattering. A much larger brown animal, walrus, I suspected, jumped on the ice floe, grabbed the slowest of the seals, and pulled it off the ice into and under the water. The rest of the seals were busily running, swimming, or flipping away from the area as if their lives depended on it, which they did of course.
Then there was no movement on the ice floe, but still we did not move from our prone positions at the edge of the ice. We stared straight ahead without movement, transfixed on the now vacant ice floe before us. I, too, lay still, but for a different reason: I could not move. I felt tired and sleepy. My body would not respond. Was I freezing to death, I wondered? Was this the way it would all end? I knew I had to keep my mind active. Then I realized my harpoons, gloves, and ice were frozen as one to the ice thus preventing my movement. Then it also came to mind that a walrus could decide it wanted more to eat. Could a walrus not jump up on the ice in front of me and pull me into the sea for his dessert? What if there were Polar Bears around, or Killer Whales? I had seen enough National Geographic specials to realize things like that happen, albeit with seals and not humans. But there was a first for everything, I reasoned.
Then my worst fears materialized. There at the edge of the ice, just inches from my nose, were two brown eyes peering at me. A head seemed to grow right in front of me as it ascended from the sea. I was paralyzed, or at least I guess I was. How would I know? I was frozen to the ice from head to toe by now. How ironic I thought, to die like this.
I then heard what I thought sounded like a crack. I felt a thud and then I saw red in front of me, nothing, nothing but a red blur. My body jerked, my arms flopped about, and my eyes momentarily focused on the red again and then I saw nothing, nothing at all. I felt myself being pulled over the edge of the ice, into the cold salty water of the Bering Sea. “The walrus has me” was my last coherent thought at the time. I then heard muffled voices coming through the icy water, angels? Where is the tunnel of light? Then my body began to move in the opposite direction. Was a polar bear playing tug of war with the walrus? The voices became louder, stronger, clearer, familiar. The Eskimos had me. They had saved me from the jaws of a killer walrus. They continued to pull me from what I thought would be my icy grave. They helped me to my feet. They were laughing and cheering, such emotion I had never seen by Eskimos while in Raven Bay. A rag started cleaning blood off my face. I started to gain some semblance of awareness. Then Nanook spoke above the throng. He told me that only the greatest of hunters could stare down a seal and thrust harpoons forward fast enough after someone had shot the seal, thus preventing the hard won prey from falling back into the sea, and it took an even greater hunter to hang on to the harpoons while letting himself be drawn under the water while the seal was sinking so the rest of the hunting party could have time to pull the seal and then the greatest of all hunters out of the sea. I tried to tell Nanook, through chattering teeth, that it had been an accident. That I was not a great hunter at all. I only went with him so as not to hurt his feelings. That I really did not even know what I was doing in Alaska or Raven Bay or let alone on pack ice somewhere on the Bering Sea. But the more I expressed my ineptness and worthlessness as a hunter, the more my virtues grew and exalted. Everyone mounted a snow machine, the already skinned seal thrown in the back of one of the sleighs and we headed home.
A crowd had gathered behind the school. Somehow they knew we were coming. Nanook told the crowd of my skill and daring. Then each hunter gave their version of the hunt. The story seemed to change with each telling and my fame grew each time, but no one seemed to mind or even notice. I again repeated my ineptness but no one would listen. This day, one of the elders said, would be told many times and become part of the lore of Raven Bay and perhaps the entire region. “Mr. C”, he said, “will be regarded as a great hunter and good Gussick from this day forward. He has made his wife and family proud and their status and esteem in the eyes of the villagers will be as his”. Nanook draped the sealskin around my shoulders, handed me the seal’s liver as befitting the greatest of all the hunters that day, a choice delicacy. The others were dividing up the rest of the seal and dispensing the meat proportionally to each hunter in a manner established long ago.
As Nanook escorted me back to my cabin it occurred to me that I didn’t know who shot the seal? Nanook said, “We all did.”
As we approached the cabin my wife came out on the porch. She looked at me. There was blood in my hair, blood on my parka, a big bloody seal’s liver in my hand and a bloody seal skin draped around my shoulders. She asked me if I was hurt. I said no, I was fine. She then began to laugh at my appearance. Nanook looked horrified. He bowed his head and said in a low voice without making eye contact for me not to worry about the shame, he would not tell anyone and he walked quickly away.
My wife directed me to the back steps and told me to clean up before I came in side; leave the seal remnants and hunting stuff in the shed. The hunt was over.
Now as I sit in front of the fireplace I retrace my great adventure. I wonder if the Eskimos saw within me the greatness of the hunting stock that gave me the power to endure the hardships of that great day in Raven Bay. It is part of my gene pool, gifts handed down from generation to generation, I assume. It was nature, not nurture, that directed me on how to lie still waiting for the right time to thrust the spears forward, thus keeping the seal from falling deep within the sea. I have the instincts of a great hunter; I realize that now. I shall hunt the seal again. But wait; why just seal? I live next to the Bering Sea. There are walrus, polar bear, and whales. The whale migration will begin soon I hear. I will join the hunt! No! I will lead a party in the hunt, my party. Many will want to go with me. I will take the harpoons that my wife allows me to keep in the shed supporting my seal skin trophy. I wonder what became of the seal liver? How can you misplace a seal’s liver as my wife claims? No matter. I will hunt the whale, I will feed the village. Once again the great hunter will bestow honor on his wife and children. Call me Conley.
This collection is a real snapshot of America from the 1940s through 1960s. Some of the matchbook covers are worth scanning in at high resolution, and I may get around to that someday soon. There's probably a whole sub-branch of history that deals with matchbook covers, for all I know. It's certainly a real slice of popular road and club culture.
