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On the Waterfront By Elton Engstrom

Over 600 years ago Geoffrey Chaucer wrote of a trip to Canterbury to visit the great cathedral. This is when English was a fresh new language.

His opening line was: "Whan that April with his shoures soote." We couldn't understand him today if he was talking to us. But by the time of Shakespeare 200 years later, we could more easily hold a conversation.

Chaucer's opening lines as translated today would read: "When that April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root."

And a little further on he wrote: "So priketh him Nature inher corages, Than longen folk to goon on pilgrymages."

Which today would be: "So Nature stirs the hearts of folk to long to go on pilgrimages."

On an April day I decided to make a pilgrimage to lower South Franklin Street to visit a site of remembrance, the Fishermen Memorial. On it are many names of the brave and good. I would like to tell of one who is special for me.

His name is Rick Nelson. In the 1950s and '60s he lived in Thane with his mom and dad. His mother Georgia was a school teacher.

In the early 1970s, I was spending the summers running a cold storage in Yakutat. In the winters I was in Juneau working out of a tiny office in the Valentine Building. Often Rick would come by, and he and I would talk about the fish business. I recall him as a man of quiet sincerity.

On Oct. 26, 1977, he was fishing for crab in Icy Straits. He had one deckhand. Unfortunately he had only a single survival suit aboard. He ran into trouble. Imagine with me that he had no thought in his mind except impending peril, with water coming up and the need to quickly act.

What did he say? "Get in the suit."

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In the Bible in John chapter 15, verse 13, it is said that: "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend."

I honor Rick as the skipper who gave his deckhand a chance to survive, while willing to lay down his own life in the violent ocean waves.

I like also the poem by the psalmist who commemorates all those who work at sea and especially those of the lost:

"They that go down to the sea in ships,

That do business in great waters,

They see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.

The Lord commands and raises the stormy wind, and lifts up the waves.

The frozen sea mounts to the heavens, and then it goes down into the

depths. A mariner's soul is melted because of trouble.

He reels to and fro, and staggers like a drunken man. He is at his wit's

end. Then he cries to the Lord in his trouble.

And the Lord brings him out of his distress.

He makes the storm a calm, so that the waves are still.

The mariners are glad because the sea is quiet

and the Lords brings them to their desired haven."

• Lifelong Alaskan Elton Engstrom is a retired fish buyer, lawyer and legislator (1964-70) who lives in Juneau.