It's also referred to as the 'Aleutian Stare'.
I won't get into the causes of all of this but by the time I had turned 36 I had been to about 50 funeral services and only 3 or 4 weddings.
Some of these were routine natural demises, two I recall were from an automobile accident. There were a couple suicides and there were two or three people that headed off into the bush unprepared. Both were discovered as bear-eaten remains. There were a number of airplane accidents because Alaska aviation is dangerous because of shifting weather. Most of the rest were from commercial fishing accidents.
Boats went down, crewmen were washed over the side. I fished halibut on deck in 20 foot seas more than once. I clearly remember that one man got caught in a 1500 long purse seine net and drowned before he could be hauled back on board. His name was Wrong Way Bob and I would occasionally drink beer with him.
My first taste of losing a friend or acquaintance was when a flight from King Salmon to Kodiak went down presumably over the Shelikof Strait. Gone without a trace.
The pilot, Jamie Madsen was one of the first people I met when I arrived in Kodiak. I won't get into the details but the rumor mill was that he was given a false weather report from unnamed person or persons. Let's leave it at that. As for the other two that died in the crash, I didn't know them.
As I write this I remember yet another fishing boat that went down with all hands. I had fished on her several years earlier and while I knew the skipper, I didn't know any of the crew members. I was long gone and long out of the business when that happened.
Still, the number of deaths to marriages for a man in his 20s and 30s is exactly opposite of what it should have been.
I heard quite often that commercial fishing in Alaska was nine times more dangerous than coal mining. I just looked it up and it seems to be currently seven times more dangerous so there was something to what I heard. People die out there.
Of course we partied hard and spent our money like men that had no real future to look ahead to. I carried an engraved Zippo with "run as fast as you can and escape if you will for you are the quarry and fate is the hunter." That should say something about the attitude we carried. We were running against the wind.
A lot of people left for safer work. I know of at least two Vietnam combat veterans, one a Ranger, that went back into the Army. The ranger told me he was doing this and said he considered it to be a lot safer.
A decade of living like that does something to a person. Sometimes I catch myself going into the 10,000 yard stare. It seldom happens but it occasionally comes on. I slip onto it and snap out of it.
I left the business and moved petroleum products over water for 35 years. It was far safer.
Some people get upset when I am so casual of my eventual demise but the truth is I have always considered the past 45 years to be a gift from God. When my time comes I will not only be ready but grateful I got 45 years longer than I dreamed possible.
As for the Zippo? It was given to me by a friend that left fishing and ironically died in a skiff wreck off the coast of New Jersey. On a trip running oil between Philly and New York Harbor I returned the lighter by sending it to the deep close to Blaine's skiff wreck.
