Rogue Wave! Part 1

By John Steven Mickman

I worked as a commercial fisherman on draggers and crabbers for 10 years from 1972 – 1982. For the first 5 years, my wife Su and I lived on Kodiak Island,  in the small fishing town of Kodiak, Alaska. As one could imagine, these were some of the most exhilarating years of my life.

After the first 5 years though, I found myself at sea for 9 months of each year and I decided that I wanted to spend more time with my young family, meaning I’d have to get out of the fishing business. So, on a trip back to Minneapolis one Christmas, I met with my youngest brother Chris and we decided to start a landscaping business. For the first 5 years the business was not successful enough to support my family so each Fall and Winter I would return to the cold stormy waters of the North Pacific and Bering Sea to fish King Crab and Snow Crab. This tale took place in 1979 during the Bering Sea King Crab Season.

Best buddy Chris Jones picked me up from the airport in the Marcy J’s 1 ton flatbed truck; we were very excited to see each other. It had been since the previous March since we’d last fished together, and the September 15^th start of the Bering Sea Crab Season looked promising. The quota for King Crab was even bigger than the previous year and we each stood to earn between $40,000 - $70,000 during the upcoming season. Who wouldn’t be excited!

After parking the truck at the cannery, we walked down to the boat and I swung my sea bag over the rail onto the deck of the Marcy J. She was a beautiful 100’ steel hulled combination dragger/crabber and I had fished aboard her for over a half dozen years. Harold was our skipper and owner of the Marcy J and Chris was his oldest son. He and I were built about the same, short and wiry. Perfect for working on the deck of these older boats that really were not built for large men.

Working on deck repairing some crab pots, were the other two deckhands for this Crab Season; Millich Morris (Mill) and Dave. Chris and I were both 28 years old and at 35 years each, Mill and Dave were much older. “Geez Chris, do you think these old guys can keep up. I mean, God, they are so old.” But, after working with these two seasoned veterans I found I had nothing to fear. Mill was a great deckhand and knew all there was to know about working on the deck of a Crabber. And Dave was the best Engineer I was ever to meet. The four of us became fast friends.

That was the cool thing about working on the Marcy J; the crew was always great and we got along well. It was fun. There was always a lot of joking and rough kidding, and we all knew how to give as well to receive.

It took about a week to complete the preparations before departing from Kodiak for the Bering Sea. We all knew that there would be no towns or stores to visit during the coming season, which might last up to 90 days. Mill had already claimed the position as cook, but I insisted on accompanying him to the multiple trips we needed to make to Kraft’s Store to buy groceries. I wanted to help him of course, but I had ulterior motives; Mill was from South Carolina and had some distinctly different tastes in food. I needed to make sure we didn’t have to have grits for breakfast every single day – which is what Mill had in mind! Grits & eggs, grits & eggs…

We all loved fresh fish, and on the Marcy J we traditionally only purchased enough dinner meat for half of our meals; we had fish every other night. Halibut, crab, codfish, octopus, sole; the ocean was full of fish and we had our choice. My favorite breakfast to this day is warmed up halibut from the previous night’s dinner - with eggs. We also needed candy bars; lots. We burned up a tremendous amount of calories while fishing and candy bars were always a great way to get some extra energy. Heaping bags of them.

After I had assured myself (and Chris) that had all the candy bars we needed (along with getting the boat ready) the day finally came that we cast off the lines and the mighty Marcy J headed out to sea. Up the channel we went, and waved to Harold’s wife Marcy who always waved back to us as we left for a fishing trip from the deck of their home at the end of the channel. Around Spruce Cape toward Whale Pass we went and caught a favorable tide which washed us through the Pass at about 15 knots. Our normal speed is 10 knots, so it is always fun to be swished through Whale Pass on a favorable current.

We got to the far side of Kodiak at about dark and headed south down Shelikof Straights. The long trip had begun; 5 days of nothing but running. I always loved this trip along the virgin terrain of the Alaska Peninsula. It was just as it had been a thousand years ago; no towns, no houses, no people. Nothing but rough coastline forested with short, stocky Sitka Spruce trees and Alders.

Harold, who was about my dad’s age, and I were the best of buddies. I spent most days up in the wheelhouse with Harold trading stories. He had served as a Helmsman aboard a Liberty Ship in WW ll, and then took his new wife Marcy to Juneau, AK after the war to begin his career as a commercial fisherman. He had 30 years of seas stories to tell – and he told them well. I loved telling stories too and we never lacked for something to talk about. Really - for months at a time.

We decided to try and save about 36 hours by taking the nearly un-navigable False Pass shortcut to the Bering Sea. This narrow ditch is the first opening after the Peninsula and the first of the Aleutian Chain, Unimak Island. Once through the narrow False Pass, the real trick was to thread our way through the shifting sand bars that built up on the Bering Sea side of the broken land mass of the Alaskan Peninsula and Unimak Island. The small Salmon Seiners always marked a way through with buoys if there was one, but they drew less than 4 feet of water; the Marcy J’s depth was 12 feet. A big difference! If we scrapped bottom, we wouldn’t sink because the bottom was all sand and mud, but we might damage our fathometers transducer which would require at least a week to repair. It was tricky business, but we made it through – although we did come within a foot or two of the bottom a couple of times. Scary!

Fall in the Bering Sea is not for the faint of heart. There is always weather and back then there were no weather satellites. What we saw is what we got. We did watch the barometer carefully to see how bad it might get, but the needle seemed to always be pointing to ‘Rain’; it really never read ‘Fair’ – or good weather in the Fall. The day we arrived at the Bering Sea was no different. The sun was covered up by thick grey swirling clouds and an 8 foot sea was running.

We had a full deck load of 75 King Crab Pots securely lashed down on deck and both our holds were filled with circulating sea water which was needed for two reasons: 1.) We had to keep the crab we were to catch alive until we sold them to the cannery, and 2.) with full load of pots aboard stacked 18 feet high, we might capsize due to being too top heavy with all that weight so far above the waterline. So we plowed through the seas which were coming from the NW – our exact course. We were slowed down to about 8 knots.

After a day or so, we were 150 miles off shore in a spot that Harold though might have some crab. “OK boys” he said. “Let’s drop 3 strings of 25 pots each right about here – about a mile apart. I think this just might be the ‘hot spot’”. We were always searching for the hot spot of whatever we were fishing. Sometimes we hit; sometimes we missed. If we hit, we were in the money. If we missed, we’d have to restack the gear (crab pots) and search for another place to try.

The four of us deckhands turned to and in an orderly fashion dropped all our pots off in 3 long strings of gear, a pot every ¼ mile apart or so. Each sting took about 30 minutes to drop and then we turned around to make the day and a half run down to Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island  – where the rest of our pots were stored.

Dutch Harbor, AK in 1979

Back in those days, Dutch was about the wildest place in America. During Crab Season, the town would fill up with ‘rich’ fishermen, and hundreds of young ‘cannery workers’. Many of the deckhands were 20 year old kids who didn’t know what to do with all their money.

Do you remember the bar scene in the first ‘Star Wars’ movie? The Elbow Room bar looked like that. If you can picture 100 wild young men with too much money, and happy to be ashore then you can get a feel for it. There were fights inside/outside and you could hardly hear over the din of Rock ‘n Roll being played and the shouting conversations happening between everyone. Wild. I’ve never seen anything like it before – or since.

We had to make 3 trips back and forth to Dutch to get all of our gear in the water, and this took a painstaking amount of time. And of course, time was at a premium; we had to have all our crab pots on the fishing grounds in time for the start of Crab Season – noon of September 15^th! We didn’t have any time to waste and we each did all we could to make sure it all went pretty much according to schedule.

End of Part I

How did our Season go? Find out in the next part of Rouge Wave in next weeks’ Newsletter.

58 More Minutes

By John S. Mickman

I worked for 10 years as a commercial fisherman in Alaska beginning in 1972. For most of those years I was a deckhand on a family owned boat, the F/V Marcy J. She was a 100 foot, steel hulled combination dragger and crabber. As a dragger, we were always one of the Highliner’s in the Kodiak Shrimp Fleet, able to bring in 250,000 pounds of shrimp per load; in our best trip, we loaded the boat in Deadmans Bay at the south end of Kodiak Island in a day and a half. We were always successful fishing both Tanner Crab and King Crab too.

Chris Jones

Life on the Marcy J was one of the most rewarding times of my life. We always had a great deck crew, led by my best buddy Chris Jones. Although he was unquestionably the leader of the deck crew, he led by example. There was no job that Chris wouldn’t tackle, from mending nets to swabbing out the hold after a shrimping trip. We use to sing old rock ‘n roll songs at the top of our lungs while swabbing out the hold because we thought we sounded just like the musicians did in their albums (not!). I’m sure that anyone listening thought we must have been couple shrimp short of a full shrimp cocktail!

Captain Harold Jones owned the Marcy J, and his sons, Chris and Tony fished with their dad during the first couple of years I was onboard; the four of us made a fabulous crew. We each had our respective specialties/skills and we filled out a very efficient team.

It was only by luck that I was able to get aboard the Marcy J. I had fished with Tony for one trip on an old, beat up dragger called the Pacific Pearl the year before. The Pacific Pearl sank the next year and 2 men of the 4 man crew were lost at sea. Our friendship grew to the point that Tony asked me to crew on his dad’s new boat, the Marcy J, not long after it arrived in Kodiak in the Fall of ’73. I soon made fast friends with Tony’s older brother Chris too. The three of us were all short and stocky and all were about the same age. Many people in Kodiak thought that maybe Harold and his wife Marcy had 3 sons instead of two.

Harold was the ship’s Captain, and the Captain is the final word at sea, for a good reason. This was not a democracy, and although Harold would listen to our input on an important decision, he would always decide the best course for his ship and her crew. The system works well.

Harold is a man of honor and has a strict code of ethics. There was no alcohol on the boat and we had to watch our language when he was near. On deck, we spoke like seamen; around Harold we spoke like gentlemen. The other skippers in the fleet also respected Harold for his clear thinking and unabashed, direct way of making his points during discussions. Over all the years I fished with Captain Jones we had developed a close friendship, and I literally spent years up in the wheelhouse with him talking about virtually every topic imaginable. We told stories, discussed politics, religion, economics, fishing, hunting – everything. A mutual respect developed and to this day, 30 years later, I still value his friendship.

On opening day of the King Crab Season in 1980, we were 150 miles offshore in the Bering Sea, waiting until noon – the official ‘starting time’ for each Crab Season. The quota for the season was about 30 million pounds of King Crab. With over 150 boats in the fleet, we all wanted to get our share of crab. That morning we ate breakfast, chopped all the bait we were to need for the day, double checked the engine room, the lines, the hydraulic systems; by 11:00 o’clock, we were completely ready to start fishing.

Although there was a good sized ground swell left over from the last storm, the air was still and a dense fog had settled in around us. As Chris and I stood on deck, with all of our chores finished, we began talking about how we knew that the rest of the boats in the fleet were beginning to fish, in spite of the fact that they were supposed to wait until noon. We knew dozens of crewmen on other boats, and they all thought it was crazy that the Marcy J would actually wait until noon to even start to bait our crab pots. Many of the boats would actually be putting crab in their holds on opening day before noon. Enforcement is very strict now, but back then, there was really no one to enforce that part of the season - with hundreds of boats in the fleet and the whole ocean to patrol. Our competition would always ‘get the jump’ on us because they would break the rules and start early.

Chris and I, and the other two crewmen were pretty much broke that Fall, as the shrimp fishery had collapsed and we had made hardly any money since the previous winters’ Tanner Crab (Snow Crab) Season. As the crew and I talked on deck, we decided that one of us should talk to Captain Jones about starting to fish early too. I was elected to talk to the Captain about it.

So, I went up to the wheelhouse and started making small talk with Harold, working my way into the conversation about starting to fish early. “Well Harold, I can’t believe how thick this fog is’, I began. ‘We can’t see even 50 yards into this pea soup”. “Yup”, Harold said, “and I don’t think it will lift any time soon either. There isn’t a breath of wind and the barometer hasn’t moved a notch for hours”. I walked over to the radar and took a look to see if there were any boats near us. “Look at that Harold” I commented, “the closest boat to us is over 14 miles out and moving away. No one is anywhere near us.” Harold replied, “It’s a big ocean but I’m surprised no one is fishing closer. This is the spot we had our great season last year. I know we’re sitting on top of huge school of crab just waiting to crawl into out crab pots.”

This was the opening I was waiting for, so I said, “Yeah, that’s what the crew and I were just talking about Harold. We’d sure like to start baiting this string of gear we are jogging on. The crab won’t crawl into our pots until we put bait in them. What do you think about starting to bait some pots?” Harold looked right at me, kind of cocked his head and said, “the season doesn’t begin for an hour yet; we’ll start baiting our pots at noon.’ I knew that is what he would say, and I was ready to propose the new plan. “Yes I know Harold, but in this fog no one would see us and there are no boats close enough to get to us within an hour. No one could possibly know if we started baiting pots a little early. We won’t actually be fishing until we put some crab in our hold. Surely, starting to bait pots wouldn’t be so bad. No one will ever know!”

Then Harold spoke slowly, carefully, and looked right at me with a heartfelt gaze. I’ve never forgotten what he said, and I’ve tried to live my life accordingly ever since. “John”, he said, “You and I will know, and we are really the only ones that matter aren’t we.” He looked at his watch and said, “We will start baiting pots in 58 minutes, not one second earlier.” I looked back at Harold, and knew he was right.

The 1980 King Crab Season was one of the most successful seasons we had ever fished. I had never made that much money in my life. Captain Harold Jones has more integrity in his little finger than most people can even imagine. He has had good times, and some of the worst times of anyone I’ve ever known. But win or lose, Harold always did the right thing – because he would know. The world would be a better place if we were all more like Captain Harold Jones.

My Captain still is not shy about letting you know if you’re doing something wrong - and when you do something right. We should all be so lucky.

Glittered Cones

by John Steven Mickman

Our grandmother learned how to make wreaths from her mom in the late 1800’s while growing up on a fjord in Norway. Then during the Great Depression, she started her own wreath business in St. Paul; this extra income helped immensely to sustain their family. She and my grandpa never worked for anyone, and always earned their living with a string of small businesses.

By the time my brother Mark and I were old enough to work (in the mind of our family) at the ages of about 8 or 9, we were borrowed to Gramma and Grampa to help during the summer in their various businesses. Grampa’s Bleach business (Hydro-Bleach) as well as Gramma’s Wreath Business were two of the pursuits we worked at during those years in the 1950's.

What did we do in the Wreath Business during the Summer? Well, painting and glittering pine cones of course. It went like this:

Grampa would get his old 50 gallon drum that had a lid, and bring it to the top of the slope that descended to the lake they lived on, Lake Owasso in Shoreview, MN. Then, Mark and I would dump a bunch of cones from burlap sacks and pour some white paint into the drum. After securing the lid, we would roll the drum down the hill, mainly holding it back so that it didn't roll over us and end up in the lake!

On the trip down the slope, the cones would bounce around inside the drum with the paint so all the tips would be painted. When we got the barrel safely to the flat spot just before the lake, we'd stop the drum, pop open the lid and dump the cones on the big sheet of plastic. Gramma would then use a shaker to shake silver glitter onto the cones. Mark and I thought they looked pretty cool! Then, he and I would roll the drum back up the hill to do another batch.
 
In the hot summer sun, the cones would dry rapidly and the four of us would periodically gather them together and put them back into the burlap sacks. Grampa kept the supplies coming and carried the finished cones to the top up the hill. "Boyz-oh-boyz, those cones are heavy" he would say to Mark and me. During those years Gramma made about 5,000 wreaths a year, and wired 5 cones on each wreath - we painted and glittered 25,000 cones each summer!
 
Gramma and Grampa made this project fun and we could easily see the fruits of our labor. When we got too hot we went swimming. When we got too tired we all rested. There was no rush, but Grandma was very picky about the 'look' of each cone. We always did a good job, and although we didn't earn much, my brother Mark and I always had our own money.

Today was one of many 'Pine Cone Painting' days at Mickman Brothers. We do semi-truck load per day with a machine we invented that does a wonderful job. Some years ago I remembered glittering cones with Gramma and experimented with adding that process to our pine cone painting program. Our Wreath Production Supervisor, Berta, came up with a couple of good ideas that helped the process immensely. 

So now, all of the Classic Style Wreaths and Sprays you order have white-tipped, glittered cones and they look awesome. To my knowledge, we are the only large wreath company in the nation that adds this, what I think is a great accent, to their pine cones.

All thanks to Gramma. I hope you like them! 

Rice Creek Rancho Part II

Even though my brother Mark and I were still little kids, right from the get-go dad got us up on the burro’s and away we went. He had purchased some really cool leather saddles with brass and chrome studded medallions accented into the inlaid leather work. All the saddles he brought home had ‘horns’ on them, were very shinny and initially that was how we stayed on the burro’s; after we learned to ride, we just held on with our knees, many times without any saddle at all.

8 Year old John Steven

with baby Burro

However, the big problem was that all these creatures were wild, right out of the Mexican desert, and had never been ridden. Although not nearly as big as a horse, or even a mule, these burros were whirling dervishes in every way. Kids came from miles around, jumped over the fence, snuck up on the burro’s and took them for bare-back rides.  Much of the time the bucking burros would run directly toward the low hanging branches of the numerous Box Elder trees which studded the field. Many a rider was knocked clean off their wily burro as it galloped under a tree branch. All told, I can only remember one kid getting really hurt, but he only broke an arm. Considering the big picture, not too bad…

Of all the burro’s back then, ‘Jock-O’ was the absolute wildest burro in the corral. He was jet black with a pure white star on his shoulders, and a longer black mane than the rest of the burros. We couldn’t even get on Jock-O. Somehow, without looking backward, he could tell when we were in range, and quicker than quick, Jack-o would whip a hind leg out and kick you in the ribs – hard. Nope, none of the kids bothered with Jock-o, for a few years anyway, but that’s another story…

In the meantime, little by little, dad’s herd of burro’s started dwindling, although we had burros for over 20 years (they kept multiplying!). So, dad thought to himself, ‘with sales lagging a little more than the initial business plan had taken into account, how else can I make money with these burros? How about a concession at the Minnesota State Fair! Now there’s a great idea!’

So started our many adventures working the burros at the State Fair. Our concession was on top of the knoll at the west end of where the Sky Ride is now located. For a dozen years we would go to the Fair and dig 2 concentric circles of fence posts, and string rope between the two circle outlines – making a circular, rope ringed track. It was a pretty big track, probably about 200’ in diameter. Dad had an old, rickety, white washed work bench with a drawer that he kept the ‘money box’ in. He painted a sign of sorts that said,

Mexican Burro rides, 25 cents  

We were in business. To attract attention to his fabulous State Fair Exposition, in his HUGE, LOUD VOICE, dad would yell out:

“2-bits for a ride on a Mexican Burro. Who’s up next?”

Honestly, you could hear my dad from over a block away, even with all the commotion of the fair. (For those that don’t know, 2-bits equals twenty-five cents.)

We had a very busy concession. Like all of these businesses, dad did all the thinking, as well as the working part that we little kids couldn’t handle. But he was a great mentor, and showed us how to do as much work as possible, as soon as possible – and have fun doing it. However, there were many things to think up and dad was a great delegator. For instance, why waste $.50 on buying tickets for Mark and me every day when we could just stay over night in grampa’s miniature travel trailer? And, we could watch the burro’s at night to feed and water them. So, even at the tender ages of 10 and 8, Mark and I would stay at the Fair almost throughout. It was great fun, and the burro’s only escaped one time (boy, was that a circus!)

However during the daytime, our main job at the fair was to keep the stubborn burros moving around the ‘ring’ with all the little kid riders, which was from dawn to dusk. The burros would get tired, and we had some extra’s in the corral to the west to trade off during the day. But even so, many, many times each day one or more of burros would just stop. Well, this was a perfect job, not only for Mark and me, but also for little brother Jimmie and best friends Cris and Brian Archibald (who lived across the street in Fridley). This really was a good job for kids that were from 6 or 7, all the way up to 10 or 12 and beyond. I mean really, can you picture a grown man walking around behind these little burros just to keep them going? I can’t, but then, I was kind of protective of my job back then too…

Anyway, we each had our own favorite stick to slap the behinds of the burros when they wouldn’t cooperate, and 95% of the time, we could get them going again. However, if we simply couldn’t get one or more of the burros started, ‘the big gun’ would be called in: Dad. Our dad had huge, strong, callused hands and when he slapped the butt of a burro you could hear it for a hundred yards. Right when he would make the connection, huge hand to butt, he would yell out, “On delay” (it’s Spanish; we didn’t know what this meant either?). The little burros ears would go back and they would leap into action, not to stop for quite some time.

After one or two of these encounters, the stalled burro in question would crane his head, and roll his eyes all the way back to see if dad was indeed coming after him. When the stubborn creature was sure it was the target of ‘the big gun’, the burro would tuck his tail between his legs and start running around the ring – with a little kid on board – bouncing (and sometimes, crying) all the way around the ring until dad could catch up to the now stampeding herd of jackasses. Are we having fun now, or what!? The show was just beginning.

Most of the time our days were spent taking turns walking burros around the ring, and when it wasn’t our turn, we would go down to the Midway where we had made friends with the kids of the professional ‘carnies’, the guys that ran all the Midway rides. We kids became compatriots because we all ‘worked’ at the Fair and our gang would get free rides in the Midway, and the Midway gang would get free rides on the burros. It was a good deal, and very cool indeed, for young boys!

If you can imagine being a little kid whose job it is to walk behind burros in a circle for 12 hours a day, you can get a taste of working at the fair at the Mexican Burro concession. We liked it, and were able to go down to the Midway and everything, but it was still a lot of boring work. So, we had to make up some games. One of them went like this:

Of course, being creatures that ate, the burros of course had to poop too. Because we all did such a good job keeping the burros moving, they could poop on the fly. Many people, maybe most, haven’t really had the opportunity to study the hind end of a burro for days on end. Well, I’m here to tell you that there is a certain sequence of events that occurs as the burro is working up to this particular project.

Our ‘honey-bucket’ was a wheelbarrow that we kept in the middle of the ‘ring’; we kept the show shovel in the honey-bucket for picking up after the burros. The contest was that the kid that was ‘up’, had to recognize the symptoms of the next bowel movement for one of the 6 or 7 burros working, run to the honey-bucket, get the snow shovel, run back to the burro in question, and catch the poop in mid-air, before it hit the ground. We developed a point system for winning points for perfect catches, and losing points when the one that was ‘up’, got the snow shovel and there was no action; this was a serious loss of points. The winner wouldn’t have to put the burros away that night. I really hate to brag, but I usually won this contest.

When I think back on this whole affair, I’m pretty sure that the parents had just as much fun as the kids did when they visited our dad’s Mexican Burro Concession. There was always plenty of action and interesting things happening.

As for our wages, ‘we weren’t cheap, but we could be had’. Each day we earned $3 each, and all the chili-con-carne and Dinty Moore Beef Stew we could eat. Of course we got free rides in the Midway, and we had an old, miniature travel trailer on the site that we could sleep in; we didn’t have to take baths when we slept over, were able to play around at the Fair, and got to spend all kinds of extra time with the burros. We loved the Minnesota State Fair!

By the time the fair ended, we were all pretty tired, but rich. We all had the money we earned at the fair and for the set-up/tear down, and on really good days, dad would give us more money as a bonus. He would take out all the money he earned and we would help him dump it on the big bed in mom and dad’s bedroom. You’ve never seen so many quarters in your life (at least we hadn’t). Then we helped put all the money into the little paper tubes so dad could bring the money to the bank, in bags. A lot of bags.

To all of us kids, our dad was the richest dad on earth, and as I came to realize when I became a father, he was richer in more ways than one.

John Steven Mickman

MN State Fair Concessionaire