Ted decorated pickups, cars, and trailers for every parade in Haines. The floats and costumes he and his family designed and built are still the highlights of our three big annual parades—on the Fourth of July, at the Southeast Alaska State Fair, and, my favorite, at Christmas.
When I was small, Christmas entertainment meant the Messiah, The Nutcracker, and Amahl and the Night Visitors. Our household included my parents, two sisters, and, for a few years when I was in high school, three grandparents. My grandfather was French, but he and my grandmother had spent much of their lives in England. My father was born in London. So Christmas dinner always ended with a flaming plum pudding and hard sauce. No one under seventy actually ate it, but that’s not the point. It was a tradition. My Pennsylvania grandmother, who also lived with us, was a soprano and a pianist. She and my mother, an alto, sang in church choirs.
Our first few Christmases in Haines I was homesick. I missed the eastern holidays, with candles in colonial windows and tiny, delicate white lights. Here, December is dark; the sun rises at about nine-thirty and sets before three, but it hangs so low in the sky that it feels like dusk all day. Often snow and rain obscure the sun completely. That’s why everyone uses lots and lots of little and big colored lights. More of them are inside than out, because windy, wet snowstorms rip them off the eaves and short them out. We leave them on all day. The Friday after Thanksgiving may be the biggest national shopping day of the year, but just about every store in Haines is closed. Main Street is quiet. Shops have shorter winter hours, and many are closed until the summer tourist season. The holidays are more about having fun than buying things. And it simply wouldn’t be Christmas without the parade, and we couldn’t call it a parade without the Snow Dragon. I have never actually seen the dragon, because I’m in it, along with seven other members of the Lynn Canal Community Players. When I met the Greggs, they recruited me for various bit parts in Lust for Dust. I’ve also acted in other shows, have served on the club’s board of trustees, and directed Carousel when I was pregnant with my fourth child, Joanna Jeanne, or J.J. I got the idea for her nickname from the Greggs; their youngest daughter, Kathy Ann, is known as K.A.
This year, as usual, I’m right behind the dragon’s head with a fifty-pound fire extinguisher that Fireman Al has filled with flour and strapped to my chest. Every time I squeeze the handle, the dragon spews a floury cloud of “smoke.” The twenty-three-foot-long dragon is made of heavy plastic oil drums, cleaned and cut in half, with holes for our necks, all tied together and draped with yards of white and green cloth finished with a foot of tinsel fringe all the way to the ground. Foam fins cover our heads, completing the serpentine effect but making us legally blind. Tom is behind me, cracking jokes and holding the car battery that powers the dragon’s red eyes and flashing lights.
A long time ago Ted’s son Tresham helped build the Snow Dragon for one of the Lynn Canal Community Players shows, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Ted made a swan-shaped sleigh for the Snow Queen that year too. But while he was towing it back home behind his pickup from that very snowy parade, it skidded into a ditch and was totaled. Today Ted’s oldest daughter, Annette Smith, acts as our guide and handler. She looks great in her Sergeant Pepper costume. The parade begins as soon as it’s dark, about three. Annette leads us out of the Elks Lodge onto snow-packed Main Street. Santa and his fire truck get their lights and sirens going; the Snowburners snowmobile club starts their engines. A pickup truck of Christians with JESUS SAVES spelled out in lights above them sings carols, and in the dragon’s tail the last person turns on the boom box with the traditional parade soundtrack: Alvin and the Chipmunks’ Christmas album edited with roars every few tunes.
The dragon bobs and weaves, with all of us passing instructions down the line: “Watch the ice,” “Slowly left,” “Swing right,” “Hop a little.” Remember, we can barely see anything. Someone—it must be Tom—suggests that we go into the Fogcutter, so we part the crowd on the sidewalk, take a spin around the bar, and head back out the door. The dragon belches smoke and roars while my children, dressed as Robin Hood’s merry band, run alongside tossing lit firecrackers, waving sparklers, and pausing occasionally to launch a bottle rocket. When my mother saw a video of the parade she said the whole thing was vaguely reminiscent of the Tet Offensive.
The chamber of commerce would like something more traditional than the dragon, and last year tried to add an old-fashioned sleigh full of carolers. It seemed like a fine idea. There are summer horse-and-buggy tours now, and a few draft horses winter over. But the fireworks spooked them, and the snowmobiles drowned out the singing.
EACH YEAR DURING the holidays my parents would take us kids into New York to see a Broadway play. When we travel back to see my family now, I always try to include a visit to the theater. Years ago, Chip and I took the children to see Cats. It was good, but not nearly as memorable as the musicals they’d seen, and been in, in Haines. It was nowhere near as much fun as the show we saw in Haines a few months later. For The Sound of Music there were fifty people in the cast, crew, and orchestra, although that’s stretching the last term: Five instrumentalists held together by a strong piano player provided the music. Everyone else had built the set, gathered props, or sewed costumes. Outfitting an Austrian villa with furniture from Haines homes is not easy. First, you have to find someone who actually has a nice Louis Quatorze love seat (or anything close), then convince him to part with it for a few weeks. Ted also used a lot of gold spray paint to dress old set pieces up.
Just before opening night Maria, the leading lady, got laryngitis. Over coffee at Mountain Market, everyone talked about what would happen if she couldn’t go on. No one else in town could possibly sing the part. Since she’s the Presbyterian minister’s wife, we hoped she had an in with God, but we knew she’d been to the clinic. And someone said they’d even seen her going into the new Chilkat Valley Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine office, above the Alaskan Liquor Store on Main Street.
Did it work? Of course it did. As the curtain parted, we heard Maria loud and clear. The hills are alive...
The stage was full of our friends and neighbors wearing nun costumes. There was Mrs. Maple, my son’s teacher; Annie, the volunteer undertaker; Marie, who has a whole yard full of giant malamutes she sells to Japanese people for a lot of money; and Sylvia and Teresa, who teach out at the Klukwan School. Father Jim got a round of applause when he appeared in his own red vestments during the wedding scene. Having real people play themselves is an old Haines tradition. In Our Town, the police chief played the police chief. That play also gave me my own opportunity to play a role awfully close to myself: the Stage Manager. Instead of a suit, I wore a long skirt to tell the story of life and death in Grover’s Corners. My family also played a family in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. In that show the real fire department put out the pretend fire.
After helping with sets, props, and programs, I watched The Sound of Music knowing all the cast members and rooting for them as you would for a home team. Everyone in the audience did the same thing. We put up with an off-key French horn player, because he’s old and we all knew he was doing the best he could. We smiled at the youngest children, who looked like little angels and delivered their lines so you could hear them in the back row. The ballroom scene got the biggest applause because everyone was wearing evening gowns and rented tuxedos from Juneau. They were so finely dressed up we hardly recognized them. When it was over, we presented flowers and locally made jewelry to the guest director, an aging grand dame from South Africa who was a friend of the Greggs’. She told us that Haines was “weird and wonderful, a place out of time.” Which we took as a compliment.
I’m still humming “My Favorite Things,” and so are my children. Chip’s been playing the John Coltrane version on the stereo. No one remembers any of the music from Cats. This summer when we hike up Mount Riley, I’m sure at least one of us will break into “the hills are alive with the sound of music.” It’s our song now; everyone knows all
the words. That’s why local shows mean more than big Broadway productions, and local customs, shared with friends and family, take the place of other ones from other places. Happiness can be as simple as a familiar tune and someone to sing it with.
AT TED’S MEMORIAL service in the theater the singing kindergarten teacher belted out “Danny Boy” and “Unforgettable.” Debra Schnabel played the piano. At the reception afterward on the parade grounds, the sun shone as warm and brightly as it had that first spring day when I’d met Ted. The wind blew paper plates and napkins off the tables. We ate salmon, salads, and cake that the Gregg family had prepared—a meal for a hundred or so. Two of Ted and Mimi’s grandsons toasted Ted, and Mimi, too, who smiled and took a theatrical bow. Then we raised our glasses, drank to Ted’s spirit, and sang “Auld Lang Syne” together. Mimi had made sure we all had a copy of the words.
“PARTIES,” TED GREGG often said, “make the world go round.” And he would have known. Ted was one of the few men in this town who actually had dinner parties, as opposed to feeds—as in a game feed or fish feed. Other men ate; Ted dined. As far as I know, he is the only man in Haines who ever wore a silk smoking jacket and cravat. He had many costumes for daily activities, often punctuated by the right hat. At the beach, he wore flowered trunks and a wide Panama hat. When it was stormy, he put on a yellow sou’wester. He had a plaid tam-o’-shanter and a black beret. Sometimes he even wore a dress tartan kilt. Ted really did make his world a stage.
Ted made what he helped create in Haines the standard, instead of comparing it to what he’d left behind when he came here from Connecticut after the war. Ted taught me that while it’s good to hold on to some traditions, it’s just as important to make new ones—ones that both reflect and spotlight this place and our lives in it. I still listen to Handel’s Messiah in December and think about New England. But the Snow Dragon means Christmas to me now. And it isn’t until I hear Alvin and the Chipmunks’ version of “Frosty the Snowman” from inside the dragon costume that I know Christmastime has arrived.
In spring, when the new sun makes everything look good as it falls over Pyramid Island, the river, the sea, and the green mountainsides, I often think about Ted. I watch the crows flying back to their tree on the island and the shadow from a cloud moving across a far slope. A bike tour heads down the road. There’s a cruise ship at the dock on the other side of town. In the distance, I can hear planes full of tourists taking off at the airport to see Glacier Bay or Glacier Point. Skiffs are trolling for king salmon out at Letnikof Cove. In twenty years, we’ve never had another April quite as warm and sunny as that very first one when I met Ted on his front lawn. I remember how he compared Haines to Madeira. I now know that Haines weather is really nothing like that on the balmy island off Portugal. But in a way, he was telling the truth. Lots of people have willed Haines to be a paradise, and because we do, it is. Ted wanted Haines to be like Madeira, and he made it so. And when I was in his company, playing the part of a young mother or an old friend, it was.
DULY NOTED
Pet owners can go through a lengthy grieving period when a beloved animal friend dies. Haines hospice volunteer Beth MacCready is finding that out firsthand after the death of old age of Bonsai, her constant companion for thirteen years. “I was holding him in my arms when he died,” she said, but “there’s still this sense of disbelief. It’s like someone came in and moved all the furniture around.” Bonsai lived through two German shepherd attacks and made the news in 1993 when, using standard human CPR techniques, Dave Nanney revived the seemingly dead West Highland terrier, who was choking.
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Mother Nature had help recently bringing spring to Haines. Tired of waiting for a thaw and anxious to open for the season, Troy Fotta and Yngve Ollson cleared all the snow out of the woods at the Port Chilkoot Camper Park. It took them two days and many dump-truck loads.
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Parents Les and Jan Katzeek and Terry Heinz stayed behind to clean up after a fourth-grade picnic at Battery Point in the rain this week and were given an unexpected treat for their trouble. They were lucky enough to spy a pod of about ten killer whales cruising toward Portage Cove.
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Fishing and good weather don’t often coincide, but they did recently. Charter boat captain Craig Loomis showed off a tan that looks more Baja than Berner’s Bay while he was in town this week. The lifelong Haines resident said he’s never seen anything like the eighty-degree weather we’ve been having. “But hey, I’m loving it,” said Craig, who recently received a $750 tip from a happy client. “Can you believe it?” he asked.
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I Am Not Resigned
THE SUMMER WE WERE building our cabin, there were a lot of bears around. Although my dog, Carl, was with me, I carried bear-repellent pepper spray in my pocket all the time. The three carpenters working with me were even more cautious; they had rifles. We never did run into any bears. I did suffer from one minor bear-spray attack, though. On a wet afternoon, I wiped my nose with the back of a glove, and in seconds it felt like I’d been punched in the face. My eyes watered, my lips went numb, and the tender rims of my nostrils stung something fierce. The builders noticed and quit working.
“Pepper spray,” I squeaked. “Must have leaked in my jacket.” The biggest guy acknowledged that the stuff could really sting. Then he launched into a long story about bartending in Hawaii when he was married to his first wife, who left him to join the marines—or maybe it was for an ex-marine—and he had to use bear spray to subdue drunken Samoans when they got out of hand at the bar.
“They’d run down to the beach and stick their head under water to get rid of it. Funniest thing I ever saw,” he said. I grabbed his water bottle and poured it on my face. Then I sucked up some water and blew it out my nose. Three times. Carl wagged his tail. He’s not much of a protector. He’d rather be sleeping on the sofa.
I used to try to keep my dog off of the furniture, stacking lamps and books on the couch before going to bed. In the morning, I’d catch him wedged into an armchair. When he’s in Christian’s room, he’ll take the bottom bunk and wriggle as close to the wall as he can get, then stretch out, like a person. He weighs 110 pounds and thinks I can’t see him. My favorite picture of Carl was taken outside; he’s in a lawn chair. And Carl will always get in the truck because the seat is as soft as a couch—and it takes him places. Try getting him to ride in the back, like any self-respecting Alaskan dog, and you end up driving away with Carl chasing behind until you stop, open the door, and let him in.
Water dogs outnumber huskies at least three to one around here. Carl is a black Labrador retriever. He’s never been duck hunting, but throw a rock into a pond or the ocean and he’ll go after it like a pearl diver. He looks like a seal. The last thing you see before he completely disappears is the tip of his tail. He always surfaces, breathless, with a rock. Not necessarily the one you threw, but still, it was pulled off the mucky bottom with his teeth. Carl does have one hobby he shares with the furry huskies most people associate with the north: He’s a runner. Not a take-off-in-the-woods-and-don’t-come-back-for-three-days Bad Dog kind of runner. Carl would never run alone, or even with another dog. Carl runs with me, almost every day.
Ten years ago, I was sitting in a doctor’s office in Juneau, looking at the framed documents on the wall while he lectured me about getting more exercise. I was tired, eight months pregnant with my fourth child in nine years, and not in a very good mood. I skipped over all of the medical school diplomas and settled on a Portland marathon finisher’s certificate. It said 3:43. I memorized it, vowing silently to start training for a marathon as soon as I had the baby, go to Portland to run it, and do it faster than my doctor had.
My dad was a marathon runner, and Chip is, too. Which may be why I didn’t think it could be all that hard. When I told Chip about my plan he wrote me up a training schedule, advised me on running shoes and gear, and, most important, came home every day at
lunch to stay with the kids while Carl and I went running. Next to reclining on the couch and diving for rocks, running is Carl’s favorite hobby. I asked him to run with me when a former police chief warned me that a woman running alone on remote roads might not be safe, even in Haines. The chief said there was a man living in his car, out by the derelict sawmill, who didn’t have proper ID to get through the Canadian border. He also didn’t have enough money to pay for a ferry ticket south. But he did have a long police record, much of it for sexual assault. “You didn’t hear it from me,” the chief said. “He’s rehabilitated in the eyes of the law, so I can’t do anything about it. Wouldn’t be legal. But I thought you should know.” I ran the Portland Marathon with Chip a year after J.J. was born and beat my doctor’s time by twenty minutes. When I called to tell him, he was thrilled. We’re all friends now, and he cheerfully takes full credit for my postpartum activity.
Today Carl and I are taking advantage of the extra hours of spring daylight to stretch our run out past the sawmill to Lutak. I’m training for another marathon and need the twenty-plus miles right now. Lutak is a neighborhood of houses clustered on the northern shore of Lutak Inlet, next to the Chilkoot River and Chilkoot Lake, ten miles from Main Street in Haines. There’s no city power or telephone. Generators and solar panels run households that range from cabins with outhouses to modern waterfront homes. A gravel road separates the main settlement from a wide, sandy beach and expansive tidal flats. Fish running up the river attract shorebirds, sea lions, whales, and more of the ever-present seals. Everyone loves to watch the seals.
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