Yea rain!

It is a long held tradition here on the island of complaining about the weather regardless of atmospheric conditions. It is raining, we want the sun! It is snowing, we want the rain to wash the snow away... it is sunny, we want it to be overcast again because we don't own things like air conditioners.

To be realistic, the lament only is spurred on after a long repetitive meteorological event - and the wish for the sun to disappear for a bit is only out of sheer exhaustion. Living with torrential onslaughts more often than not, we Kodiakans have been conditioned, brainwashed, and obligated to make the most of any sunny day.

As a child, the sprinklers and slip'n'slides would be out in full force (my mom was kind enough to hook the hose up to the kitchen sink so we could have lukewarm water). Water balloons and squirt guns prompted battle royale as we ran around barefoot, immune to the stabbing of spruce needles on young foot flesh.

After a good stretch of above 65 heatwave, we'd hit the lake at Abercrombie ... just as it was almost tolerable to swim without generating a good case of hypothermia. (This activity also coincided with the ceremonial removing of tiny leeches from your legs if you decided to walk through the muck at the beach end).

Grown up now, the honey-do list overtakes the fun-things-to-do list. The sun comes out, aside from sweltering work conditions and an overwhelming desire to skip out on it, there is lawn mowing, fence building, painting, car washing, pressure washing the side of the house, gardening, clothes line building... all vieing for completion before the next downpour. Tack on to this the children and their incessant plea to wander to the beach for a bonfire, hot dogs and wading in the surf.... the sun is exhausting.

Which is why I appreciate the fog and mist that rolled in ever so gently last evening. If it manages to hold out, I might just be able to be my own couch potato self tonight.

Nostalgia Addendum...

Thank you Rants of the Scooby for reminding me of the Captain's Keg. The owner's daughter was very beautiful and one of the nicest people you'd ever met. Her name was Heidi, they moved and shut down shortly before or just following Mr. Forester's death.

I did remember a few more faded memories in the process.

• Beryl's Sweet Shop. (Commented this one back to myself... but figured it needed to be properly documented). Instead of waiting in line at the concessions stand inside the Orpheum, we would run around the corner to Beryl's and stock up on gummy coke bottles and fireballs. Rusty used to have a 25-cent popcorn vending machine as well. The sign that reads This is a 3B theatre... B-Good, B-Quiet, or B-Gone has been in existence since my earliest memories.
  
  
• How in the world could I forget Wodlinger's Drug & Photo! Upstairs was pre-Wal-mart, pre-Grand Slam toy heaven. I remember going with my parents and buying the Weeble Wobble Treehouse from there when I was approximately 3-and-a-half. (They made very good play hand-grenades later during our neighborhood fort wars.) Downstairs was the drugstore, candy aisle, and of course the magazine stand in the back. They had nudie mags. We sneaked peeks.
  
  
• There was a chicken buffet place called the Golden Skillet that served KFC-esque food that was on the opposite corner of the Subway building before Cross-Fox inhabited it.
  
  
• El Chicano's wasn't always downtown. This memory is completely fuzzy, but I'm thinking it was either inside the metal building where Joanie's Dog Groomer's is on Mill Bay... or in a building that has long since been torn down right next to it.
  
  
• The bakery mall was a wonderful place to hang. The *only* place for a person to aquire anything resembling real music was located on the left of the entrance. If you couldn't find it, the owner was more than willing to order it for you. I have a slight memory of comic books in that vicinity. There was an awesome deli that is where ElChicano's is now.
  
  
• Skip forward several years for a second on the mention of Deli's gone past. Mimi's Deli (KANA Wellness Center) was awesome. Her Rosemary Chicken Salad sandwich was inspired, that and a sampling of Quiche always made for a great lunch date. * now back to the even further past ...
  
• There was a feature article newspaper printed on 11x17" folded white paper called the Kadiak Times. I don't really remember much except some photographs by Roger Page, who later was accused of really bad things... but in my kindergarten years I made the front page sitting with our gym teacher.
  
  
• The KVOK logo had a graphic of a mouth for the letter O, and there were bumper stickers of that everywhere. The radio personality at the time was Keith Beaver. They had a wonderful program on called "Chicken Man". Come on, you know you want to say it... "Brooock Brooock Broooock... Chiiicken Maaaan...." I think I had a t-shirt. The radio station has gone through so many ownerships, I wonder if they still have the masters of that series. It was classic.
  
  
• When my parents finally signed us up for cable after only recieving the antennae'd version of RATNET (Channel 9), we got two channels: 2 and 4. They had Bugs Bunny & Roadrunner and the Flintstones on in the morning.
  
  
• Back to Baranof Park... (The track used to be all gravel!) I need to make a map of this to truly explain, but I don't have the patience to illustrate it. Where the ice rink is to the end of the skating area / tennis area was located a volleyball area, basketball hoops, and a couple of backboards for tennis practice or hand ball. On the other side was three tennis courts. We used to rollerskate the heck out of that area in our orange giant wheeled 70s disco-style skates... then later, skateboard it to death with our boards decorated with an obligatory DK and Misfits skull.
  
  On the playground side the only thing that still exists from back in the day, is the same Merry-Go-Round. I wonder if you touch it now and have any psychic vibes at all if you feel all of the children spun to the ground and run over by the kids pushing. There was a small section set aside for little kids on the left (near where the office is now), the baby swings, a small slide and a small half-sphere climbing toy was there. Out in front was the big swings, the tall slide, hanging bars, and monkey bars. Following back to the right there was a giant mirrory triangle thing with bars on the upper edges meant for climbing, then the merry-go-round, then the large barred jungle-gym that used to be up at the elementary school with the parallel bars and very unsturdy feeling sliding poles off the top of the monkey bars.
  
  Then there were metal teeter totters, a barred covered slide that was shaped like a witch, and in the middle of everything a giant yellow metal dome for climbing. There was a bunch of sawdust underneath it, as it was so tall... it disappeared fairly early though. I never climbed to the top, someone must have though.

Fading out here again as far as memory lane's paths criss-cross between the real and imagined.

You know you've been here too long....

Nostalgia kicked in watching pavement applied, and re-applied, and mourning trees that are being clearcut from our old "Outsider's" hangout. (Behind the high school... it the place where a pack of Kool and a sixer of Bud snagged from the parent's cooler were exchanged over testing the sound of new curse words burning off our tongues).

This little town sure has evolved in my lifetime here. I wonder how many people really remember:

• Main Elementary used to be where the Community Schools Offices are, and on the gravel playground near the building was a sandbox, one of those springy ride-on toys, a swingset, hanging bars and a jungle gym that was relocated to Baranof park, and then East Elementary (or they bought two).

• The Junior High gym had a stage and was the auditorium before there was an auditorium. The cafeteria above the gym (art room in the middle school) had an opening where you could look down onto the gym floor.

• East Addition park didn't exist. It was a swamp with a creek that ran through it with a culvert that ran underneath the street until it escaped into Potatopatch.

• The roads were mostly gravel... aside from downtown, the Aleutian Homes and Rezanof. Provided for maximum skiddage slamming the back breaks on my California Mongoose with yellow mag wheels and custom ergonomic grips purchased with lawnmower money from Elkay's bike shop (a small bike shop that was in a dug-out basement of a house on the other side of the park).
  
  
• The big bunker at the top of Fort Abercrombie was open, and you could run through and echo your voice while reading up on decades of spraypainted "I was here's".
  
  
• There was no Safeway, no McDonalds, no Pizza Hut... that area was all trees. (As well as the entire Woodless Acres development, and much of the property behind where Mill Bay Coffee is).
  
  
• Spenard's used to be where Warner is, and where Spenards is now used to be Waldo's supermarket a division of Krafts (downtown where Food For Less is now). In the entry way of Waldo's used to be a brown horse that you could put a dime in and it would give you a rocking ride. City Market was a mini-store where Mack's is now.
  
  
• We had a store called Mark-It-Foods. (Underneath where Total Interiors is now). For some reason they thought it would pass on the savings if they didn't have to price the product, so you were given a wax crayon and hand-wrote the price from the shelf onto your cans or cereal boxes or whatever.
  
  
• The hot place to go was Blairville Laser Station. I curse the Centipede that kicked off the beginning of my carpal tunnel syndrome.
  
  
• The Credit Union used to be a refurbished Dairy Queen before they tore it down and rebuilt it. I really miss Peanut Buster Parfaits.
  
  
• Beachcombers was a bar/nightclub (where Salvation Army is now). Before it moved into that building it was in a boat that was either washed ashore during the tsunami, or just permanently dry docked there.
  
  
• The post office used to be where the old KANA building was that is now replaced by the KNWR Visitor Center.
  

That is just the tip of the iceburg, I'm sure I will think of more that I should have added! Let me know if I missed anything!