Letters from Naknek Part 3

A Chronicle of a first processor season at Leader Creek Fisheries

Sunday, July 12th, 2020 (1:34 PM AK time)

Good after-whateverrefernceoftimewouldmakethisapplytoyou, those who sleep soundly at night, and those who know the shadows are up to something,

I call attention first to the fact I am cursed. I rushed through my after-work process and still ended up at the same time as always, despite wanting to be early to have more time to write this letter and still get six hours of sleep. Granted, I also had laundry and checked my locker for a note from Erica, and should probably write this later. However, I've already gotten this far and if I don't write now, I never will, and if I don't write, you all can't write back, which would be tragic.

Because that leads smoothly into my second point: I love your replies. They make my day. Or night. Or whatever it is I'm in, time has lost all sense of meaning beyond numbers and which ones mean I get to sit down. Regardless, every word I receive is a slice of normal, home, and love that holds me over to the next time I get to write and receive. So thank you for the replies you've all given, and I eagerly await more.

July fourth came and went uneventfully except some decorations in the mess hall and patriotically named desserts. I imagined the loud clanging of the dumpers were actually fireworks which was as close to them as I got. It didn't quite do it, as the only color they were accompanied by was the pink of salmon and grey concrete, but I've had worse parties before.

My body is angry with me or Naknek is trying to kill me, I'm not sure which. But something is afoot (that's a pun, which you'll understand in the next line). My feet are the worst. I cannot blame them for disliking holding me up for so long each day and being stuck in sweaty, rubber boots but they don't have to develop a minor case of trench foot each night and ache like a hundred-year-old elephant's bones because of it. Also a strange rash of sorts has popped up, my legs have lots of red dots like pimples, and my hand gets all tingly like it's fallen asleep in the mornings which kind of ruins my last twenty or so minutes of sleep. I'd write a formal complaint to the manufacturers if I wasn't sure this was all operator error.

I am having fun! All I do is complain, but that's because that's the most eventful stuff that happens. The next best thing is a small story. We were behind in the freezer and the fish wasn't cold enough, but we still needed to move it. So we just banged out two fish from a pan and slapped them together. If it made a thwack of frozen fish sound, we ran it out and moved it on. My coworker wisely said, "if it smacks, we packs," which made me laugh. But they haven't fired me, so I'm doing something right.

It's now about 6 hours and ten minutes before I need to be at work so I'm ending this letter now and going to bed. I hope this rambling wasn't too painful to get through and was worth the wait—or surprise.

Rapidly,

Jason/Peru Hat Guy/Snow's Brother