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new guy, so they know who to fuck with. As soon as we walk into the plant with our hats on, guys yell "funoogie!" for Fucking New Guy.

GW: Did you make any money?
CC: They pay was actually $6.25 an hour, for the first 400 hours, then up to a little over $8. The woman said, "Don't worry, you'll get that (400 hours) in a couple of months. And there's overtime." When I got my first paycheck, it was for a negative $30. I owed the store for all the rubber supplies, for room and board, the float plane, union dues. I couldn't move my hands from the processing, I'd been waking up with my hands fully clenched, they were puffy and the skin was peeling. I went back to my room, locked the door and cried. You couldn't complain though, or everyone would make fun of you. Fucking Carl, a guy there, has been working there 40 years as the header on the slime line, the header stands at the head of the line cutting off fish heads. He's working there today. He'd say, "That's alright, darlin'. The first 10 years is the hardest!" Carl has three greetings for everyone he sees as he rides through town on his Moped. If you're a guy, it's "Hey there!" If you're a woman, it's "Hey, darlin'!" and if you're a group, it's "Hey, gang!"

I made a couple of hundred bucks that summer. Then I begged a job as a nanny aboard a WWII landing craft being used as a fish-buying scow just so I wouldn't have to touch fish anymore. We would go out to coves at the mouth of the ocean and buy fish from the fishermen coming in, and every week the processor boat would come and buy from us. I didn't know at first that the ship we were on had been used for 10 years as a garbage scow, it had been garbage soaked for a decade. There was this smell, and slime seeping out of the walls. I'd mop everyday and each morning the sludge would be back. It was the haunted summer. The skipper was pregnant, and her morning sickness was worse than the smell. I was the nanny for her three-year old on the boat, trying to keep her from killing herself. Becca, another deck hand, had just returned from India with head lice, so we all got it. Well, not the skipper, which is lucky because she has this really long beautiful hair. In my photos from that summer, I have my hair shorn.

I also helped run a crab plant, buying them and filling 12-foot deep tanks with 15,000 pounds of crab, then trying not to get your fingers broken by the crabs. Dungeoness are really fast.

GW: How did the Boardwalk Boogie start?
CC: Some friends in Pelican, Stewart Ely and Riley Woodford, from Juneau, had put together a pick-up band in a bar, the Starr Hillbillies. Fishermen would get together and play music around town, too. I was singing with the Pimentos, and we thought it would be great to bring them to Pelican. In 1998, we hired one boat to make two runs, bringing about 60 people to Pelican, about 75 miles from Juneau. We posted signs at the Alaska Folk Festival, it was mostly people we knew.

Spring 2003 13

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