For the Love of Pete

For Pete’s sake! Whatever that means. Growing up in the “boondocks” as some call it or the “bush” in Alaska, we never used slang terminology. I remember someone calling our village the “bush”. What do you mean the bush? I thought we were called a village? People coming from out of town or “down states” as we call it, calling us the “bush” confuses me even up to this day. I remember watching shows in Austrailia and on the "tele," they would call a village; bush. Maybe that’s where it comes from, who knows.

I remember playing basketball and someone said; “Go break a leg”. What you mean go break a leg? I thought this person was cursing me. Laugh out loud. I could not understand why this person would want me to break a leg. I had to get clarification. I am glad that it was explained to me, because at that moment, after what was said, this certain person became my rival. I understand now that they wanted me to do good, I think. I think that is what it means.

I grew up in a village in Southwest Alaska of about 600 people at the time. I think after about 40 years the population has grown to about a thousand, give or take couple hundred. Often in the winter we would have to walk to school in the bitter cold. We had three sections to our village. What we called the number one side, where the school was located, the store, the laundromat, post-office and the clinic. The number two side is where we lived. It must have been about a good half a mile to three quarter of a mile walk to go from number two side to number one. Then there was the number three side, which was across the river. They would have to trudge along with a small boat when it first freezes up or walk alongside the boat to get to the other side for school and what not.

My classroom must have consisted of just eight of us at the time. I recall being introduced to the English language at about the third grade. We were taught in our Yup’ik language starting from kindergarten to the third grade. I think that in most of the villages it is still like that, I’m not sure. But I remember our class being told a story in English. I was so mesmerized by the Cat in the Hat and eating green eggs and ham. I didn’t know there was such a thing as green eggs. Wow. At that age I really believed there were green eggs that existed. This was one of the highlights of my young age, being introduced to English. Another highlight was lunch, my favorite must have been tomato soup with chunks of cheddar cheese. Something we would not eat at home; it was something new and different and definitely yummy.

Things have changed. We have television that is remotely controlled. I see memes that say that “Back in my day, I was the remote." We have cellphones now, I remember we had only one phone in the village and when we would get a call on the one pay phone, the person with the payphone would call our vhf number to let us know that we got a phone call. The whole village would know that we got a phone call. When we would get a call on the vhf, the caller would tell us to go to channel 70. Everyone used channel 68 in my village. For the sake of being nosy, we would all follow to channel 70 to listen in on the conversation. We must have been bored.

Oh for the love of Pete!