Everybody Has a Story: Drummer found community, comedy in Alaska

In 1968, I graduated from high school. My brother Ed called me and suggested I come to work at the salmon cannery where he worked in Kake, Alaska. His job was maintaining the proper pressure and temperature in large boilers to cook cans of salmon.

About a month into the season, I was walking to town, which was a couple miles north of the cannery. Coming toward me was an olive drab rusty ’48 Plymouth. Before it reached me, all four doors flew open and booted feet flew down to slow and finally stop the brakeless leviathan.

Four members of the Tlingit tribe got out and asked, “You Jim Comrada? You play the drums?” Somehow they had found out I was a drummer. They proceeded to explain that they were a rock ‘n’ roll band and had lost their drummer in a “family spat.” (So many of these people were related.) They needed me to fill in.

Why not? Hesitantly I got into the car. They assured me they stayed in low gear and were always able to stop — mostly.

We ended up in the town church, where I found an old beat-up drum set on the stage. A few adjustments and the set was usable. I discovered these guys were a talented group who became my seasonal brothers and bandmates as I spent subsequent summers in Southeast Alaska. They wrote a lot of their own music and it was good, though they supplemented it with CSN, Bread, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones and others.

With the Fourth of July just around the corner, the local sheriff, whose name was Squirt, was once more getting ready to jump ship for a few days, because he did not enjoy the hassle of a lot of drunk folks from the town and the local logging camp. Now, Squirt was an Aleut, and the largest I have ever met — so, not an accurate nickname. He was scary huge with a gravelly low-bass voice. And yet he was the mellowest guy you would ever want to meet. Squirt deputized a few townsfolk and went fishing for a few days.

That Fourth of July dance is still etched in my memory. Fun. Our band played, and it was a kick to see so many townspeople fill the town gym and dance like there was no tomorrow.

Then the band took a break and a fight broke out, outside the gym. People were duking it out, some on the ground rolling around, some doing their version of fist fighting, all quite inebriated. Reggie, one of the deputies, who was also three sheets to the wind, pulled out his pistol, fired it into the air and said, “Stop in the name of the law!”

One of his cousins promptly took a swing, and Reggie was laying in the ditch, out cold. The fight stopped immediately. People dusted themselves off and gave a hand, in most cases, to the people they had been fighting minutes before. Everyone filed back into the gym. When I asked about Reggie, someone said, “He’s fine. Just let him sleep it off.”

And so the band started up again with a full house while Reggie slept off his misfortune by the side of the road. The next day, he didn’t feel too well, to say the least. He was very apologetic and embarrassed. Like many of my friends there, he was a nice guy — when he wasn’t drinking.

The next summer, I fished for salmon commercially on what was referred to by my Tlingit brothers as a West Coast boat. That is, a boat with a crew of white folks like me. It was called the Keku Connie. The skipper was great and we did well.

The third summer, I was invited back by the skipper, whose name was Cook. I brought my lead guitar player from home to play in the band and fish with me.

For several days, West Coast boats followed us around and sometimes succeeded in “corking” us. That’s when another boat drops its net in front of you to steal your fish. The biggest offender was a “high-liner,” that is, a very successful fisherman. We had other names for him and his crew.

One morning, we were slowly going along a beach looking for “jumps,'” that is, telltale signs there were other fish around where one or two had jumped. But when we were in position, Cook told us to pretend we were going to “pull the pin,” releasing the smaller boat that pulled the net off our deck to encircle fish — but not to really pull the pin. OK, what the heck?

We made a big scene of pulling the pin and looked more than upset when that “high liner” corked us once more! But Cook had only tricked him into wrapping his big, expensive net around one of the biggest rocks in the bay. He spent the rest of the day trying to get off it. Never a problem with West Coast boats after that.

I knew the skippers of the fleet were really good, but that day, Cook showed this white boy just how good they were.

I miss what is still one of the most scenic views in Southeast Alaska, looking west from Kake. But I mostly miss the people, my surrogate brothers and sisters, in that little town.

Everybody has a Story welcomes nonfiction contributions, 1,000 words maximum, and relevant photographs. Email is the best way to send materials so we don’t have to retype your words or borrow original photos. Send to: neighbors@columbian.com or P.O. Box 180, Vancouver WA, 98666. Call Scott Hewitt, 360-735-4525, with questions.