"Summer started out as usual for me, but with little hope of having enough water on the Yukon to commercial fish and to travel on. My hopes for higher salmon prices were also dampened by hearing about the fish farms flooding the market with farmed salmon. This made getting ready for commercial fishing not as exciting as it had been in other years. We had hoped to have a good summer of fishing and then to put away a lot of dried salmon for the winter. However, many of these "noble" goals weren't met.

In June, we started commercial fishing. We knew that "most" of the King salmon had already passed because they were early this year. Spring was also about two weeks early. Many days before we had our commercial fish opening, everyone was expecting low fish prices. That prediction came out pretty accurate. We had our lowest salmon prices since before the '70's. And the fish price did not change. That was the pits! Our local and regional economy was extremely low for the first time that I can remember. We all had a very poor summer. On the "flip-side," however, we had the largest number of marriages in Marshall ever in a single season.

When July came I was selected by our parish priest to be ordained as a Subdeacon. On July 11, 1996, I was ordained in Russian Mission by the Bishop at the Annual Russian Orthodox Yukon conference.

My summer felt too short. I wish that it felt a lot longer. But don't we all wish it were that way!"

By: Tom Andrew

Interview by: Jack George