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This Summer's Hectic
Job
This summer I worked down at the fish
plant here in Marshall. My job was very basic. All I had to
do was unload fish from the fishermen's boats into large
metal totes. It was very hard work but I manged to pull
through the fishing season.
My first day on the job was June 15,
and I was pretty nervous. There were only four people
working when I started
out. They were Mike Papp,
Joey Coffee, and I. Nick Duny was our supervisor. And
working the tenders were, Vassily Sergie and Patrick
Peteroff on the
Kathleen, Joe Oney and Terry Thompson
on the Kimberly Ann, and Alvin Owletuck Sr. and James Oney
on the Agnes 0. The first opening was a six hour opening,
and it lasted from 6 P.M. to 12 A.M. I was glad because I
wouldn't have to go home at curfew.
That night I had to be down at the
fish plant by 10:30 P.M. We went down to the dock and got it
all set by parking the boomtruck, which had a crane on it
near the docking site. We stacked and prepared both yellow
and metal totes around the the boomtruck. The metal totes
were the ones the fish would go in, and the yellow ones were
for backup.
The fishermen started coming in at
11:15. I got a little nervous when three boats pulled in.
Then I knew it was going to be hard work. The whole night
felt like a day. The process was slow and tiring because we
had only three workers that night, myself, Joey and Mike.
Nick helped out a little but he operated the crane. During
that time I glanced down at the fishermen a few times, and I
could tell they were restless and tired too and wanted to go
home. When the night was finally over I was dead beat, and I
went home and fell right asleep.
The next day I went to work pretty
tired. Joey, Nick, and I were the only ones that afternoon.
All we did was clean the totes we used. Later on that
evening Mike came to work, and we organized and cleaned the
kitchen and some of the other vans. We also cleaned up
around the plant when there was no fishing.
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A day before the second opening, Tom Soolook, Chris
and Joe Fitka were hired. Joe Oney was in Pitka's Point when the second
opening opened. Since Terry Thompson needed a partner, he and Nick
decided to pick me for a deck hand aboard the tender, KimberlyAnn.
I felt as if I was promoted. Terry who had been the deck hand became
the captain. It was a thrill to work on a tender boat, but I had heard
it was hard work.
The second opening was a 12 hour
opening, and I knew it was going to be hard work. It was to
be from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. After work I went home and got
ready to tender. When the boat was prepared, we left at
10:30 P.M. and we anchored at our spot outside the mouth of
Polty's Slough at 11:15 P.M. We prepared the boat for the
fishermen to come and sell us their fish and then we rested
up till morning. Our first seller was Camille and Allen
Boliver. Nine boats sold 12,000 lbs. of fish to us. I was
kind of happy because it meant more money for me. When we
finally got up to the dock at the fish plant we had to park
and wait for the fishermen to sell their fish. I think that
was the best opening for the fishermen because they had a
lot of fish. When we got there, there was a]ready a long
line of boats, so we helped out by taking some of the fish
from some boats. That also helped add to our own total
pounds of fish. We had a total of about 13,200 lbs. of fish
when they were done selling. After a little break we got the
boats Kimberly Ann and Kathleen loaded with iced fish and
ready to go down to the major fish plant Boreal below St.
Mary's where the fish had to be packed up and sent to
Anchorage.
In the Kimberly Ann there was myself
Joe-Joe and Terry. In the Kathleen there was just Patrick
and Mike. It took us 12 1/2 hours to go down and another 4
hours waiting for a barge to refuel Boreal's gas tanks. With
hardly any sleep for me, it seemed like a whole day and a
half was three days. On our way back up to Marshall we blew
both engines near Pitka's Point. We had to pick up Joe Oney
anyway so we landed. It took Joe and Terry about another
hour and a half to fix just one engine, so we had to come up
with just one engine which took us about eight hours. We got
up here a day and a half after we started down.
I didn't go to work for two days after
we came up, and then we mostly cleaned and organized or did
whatever Nick wanted us to do.
The third opening was the last one.
This time I didn't have to work on a tender and go down to
Boreal again. After that Boreal trip I didn't want to go
down there again for awhile. The opening was another 6 hours
long. It lasted until the early morning of the 4th of July.
After that one I was relieved that I would finally be
getting payed and I wouldn't have to suffer with the fish
anymore.
And that was my hectic summer
job.
Fred Alstrom
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Marshall
Cultural Atlas
