Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1474
Finishing up and heading home
Hello hello hello hi what is it? 2PM Alaska time. 6PM East coast. Not morning anywhere, really. I mean, you know. Europe or something but that may as well be another world these days. We can’t go there, they can’t visit us. Cut off. An iron orange curtain has descended around America.
I am sitting in my mom’s nearly empty house. The nice lady came and took some stuff away for the Ukrainians. She took the last painting — an Ernest Robertson signed and number print of Denali that is worth maybe $500 — and it is being donated to the home my mom lived in. The breezeways connecting the four buildings are all covered in Alaskan art. It will be labeled as being donated by her. A part of her will live here forever, which makes me feel good. She loved this place. I probably should have asked my sister about this but I did say I would ‘take care of it’ and she did say okay.
I saw a Cybertruck yesterday. It was the only electric truck I had seen the whole trip and I was going to have to report to you this sad fact. But then yesterday at Justa Store, yes, the Justa Store, I saw a Rivian. Its license plate said “AK R1T” which, you know. Easy to get when there are not a lot of R1Ts in AK I guess. So, two electric trucks. No Lightnings. Sad. And actually, very few Teslas in Fairbanks compared to NC. I mean I don’t think I saw a single Model Y. Maybe one Model 3. Poor Elon.
I dropped off two last packages at USPS and went to the Transfer Site (not Station or Center, I have learned) and dropped off my mom’s microwave cuz no one wanted it. There was no one there — no flippers, but also no people in need. Which is good for society but bad for my ego, amirite?
Moved a ton more stuff out to the free table, now that all the cousins have had a chance to review everyting. A heavily neurodivergent teenager got super excited about “these really old dice” so, you know. One man’s trash, another man’s treasure. He also told me a story about how last week he ate a sixty year old jelly bean and he was scared, but it’s been a week now and he is fine so he thinks it was probably okay. It is unclear what this kid was doing wandering around an old folks’ home, but he does seem to bring a spot of joy to the place.
There is an electric can opener in front of me that no one has claimed. Anyone need an electric can opener?
I drove around Farmer’s Loop today, drove by my old house. Still looking awesome, that house. Still one of the more unique houses in Fairbanks, perched on a hill, Scandanavian design, Alaskan materials, utterly impractical with all those flat roofs somewhere with more than 60 inches of snowfall a year. But I loved it so much, I loved living there. Moving there when I was 13 from our other house was… wow, yeah. Just a complete change of context of life. What a great house. Who else gets a view of Denali from their bedroom window.
My parents painted it grey after I moved out and I never liked that, it should be brown, receding into the hilltop. It is still grey. That is a shame. But they cut a few trees down so the picture windows in the living room now have as good of a view of Denali as the bedrooms above, so that is awesome.
God, that house makes it seem like I grew up so rich. My two union parents scrimped and saved for that house, lived beyond their means. It was $270,000. But it really does look majestic:
Tonight we take a fleet of cars back up to Val’s house, hauling the last of the stuff up there that doesn’t go to another family member. Then Val will drive me to the airport. I decided to take the 10PM to Anchorage, and then take the midnight from Anchorage to Seattle, because, well, I don’t know why. I do not enjoy sitting around Fairbanks International Airport for, like, four hours waiting for a flight. I have a lot of memories of that airport — I worked there, my dad worked there, I think my grandfather even worked there, though he mostly worked at Weeks field in town where the library is now named for his old boss.I even got to walk through it while the new terminal was under construction the day that Ronald Regan and Pope John Paul II met there for a quick meeting. But I.. I don’t know. I am a nostalgic person but my nostalgia does not extend to FAI.
Johnny Cash said it was forty below during springtime in Alaska and it’s not. But it is very dirty. Giant piles of snow everywhere, slowly melting, revealing all the gravel and trash that lay within as the water drips out and forms temporary lakes in every parking lot. I have really been looking at all of this with a new eye as our contracting partnership in NC deals with county approvals on drainage on the RV Storage Facility lot. Drainiage is such a huge thing, such a giant part of getting building approval. And they clearly do think about it in Fairbanks, the spring thaw doesn’t seem to flood any actual buildings. But they definitely take a more cavalier attitude to giant ponds in parking lots than they do in the Carolinas, I’ll tell you what.
I am bringing home so many tchotchkes and knick Knacks and mementos that the library knick knack room is going to need a rework. I am not sure what to do about that. Once the new studio is done, maybe.
I am excited to go home I don’t much like being away from home these days. I am not excited to fly I don’t much like flying these days. I had a nice long talk with my wife last night and she filled me in on Jane’s rash and school and recess and report cards and Emma’s success and 3D printing a drier flap that single-handedly paid for the 3D printer I am so proud of her about that. Hats off to Emma.
I’m a comin’ home honey.
KSUA still been awesome. One song I shazaam’d isn’t even on Spotify, so that is cool. But this was a solid space-rock-shoegaze tune from this afternoon. I enjoyed it. Maybe you will too.
See you Monday as we return to our regularly scheduled GMHHAYs.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.