So, evidently, I now have a nickname in my hometown of Petersburg.
“Bread and Butter.”
I will let you stew on that while I finish this column.
I also want a wiener dog, OK, a dachshund for all you canine snobs…and I want to name him/her/they “Shaboozey” after a current musical artist whose songs help me get through two hours on the stationary rehab cycles.
So stew on that one a little bit, too.
I voted! The second day polls had opened.
Voting and flu shots are date nights for me and that wonderful person that keeps my running shoes sorted by smell at the door.
One year we felt cheated.
What? Don’t need a COVID shot this year?
Crap, take the tux rental back. Guess we are just watching “British Baking Show” tonight.
Voting is our most stressful date.
I mean, the menu is set. It’s not like I can ask to “leave the onions off…”
And I never really see the result of what I did.
Seriously, I am not getting a call from my selection, saying, “Whoa dude, thanks for the coloring in of my oval. How’d I do?”
And quite frankly I am the worst person to make a choice.
I’m terrible.
Toothpaste aisles in the store are a demon on my shoulder. Whitening, enamel protection, anti-cavity, anti-gingivitis, sensitivity, breath-freshening, pleasant taste…all packaged in different sizes and colors.
It wasn’t until last year I discovered that fluoride is the ticket. And you want me to pick the leader of our country?
Anything with more than two choices and I spiral.
Sitka coach Jarret Harai and referee Ron Taug discuss a call during the 2019 Region V 3A Championship game in Mt. Edgecumbe’s B.J. McGillis Gymnasium. (Klas Stolpe / Juneau Empire)
Sports is the worst.
I am not a jinx but my friends know to ask who I am rooting for…and they bet life savings on the other team.
My significant couch sitter will ask me to root for a team if it is defeating hers.
And it works! I lose. She wins.
And it doesn’t have to be professional or college sports.
I am so sorry 2024 Thunder Mountain Falcons basketball team -—??? state title game.
I’m sorry 2024 Mt. Edgecumbe Braves basketball team — ???? Nome, state title game.
Sorry 2013 JDHS football team — 56-49 Soldotna, state championship game.
I’m too terrified to root for my hometown Petersburg Vikings in any state sport outing, yet too ashamed not to.
Speaking of my hometown…I was just there…secretly not-rooting for swimmers from multiple schools…I’m such a mess.
Voting is just as messy.
One of my best friends and his significant other are one of the treasures of my visits back to my birthplace.
He and I have been lifelong friends.
Some days we walked home from kindergarten together with paperwork in our hands. Some days we rode home from kindergarten in my mother’s three-wheel bicycle basket, bouncing around, paperwork flying in the wind.
We bussed to and from elementary school, raided gardens, ate lunch, played tackle football at recess, snagged salmon under Falls Creek bridge, moved from Little League baseball to high school basketball, traveled on the Alaska Marine Highway, drank beers out the road, and lost by a point in two state basketball tournaments. We also lost the Region V championship to JDHS.
We had matching pageboy haircuts — yes, that charming style worn by medieval English pages at court, it was popular in the 1970s and ‘80s and coincided perfectly with our most influential young adult years (1978 PHS grads! #blessed).
His choices always turn out.
His first kiss he married and, yep, that is the significant other who is one of the aforementioned treasures.
Whereas my first kiss, well, I think it was spin-the-bottle-in-the-closet-while-dunking-for-pickled-herring or some such game.
I told you, I make poor choices.
But this friend and I when we visit we talk.
We talk about yesterday. We remember. We laugh.
We discuss today. We relate. We laugh.
We dream of tomorrow. We cry. We laugh.
We hope the best for our lineage in topics that begin with, “In our day…”
We have a thousand opinions on a multitude of topics.
But these are all just our opinions.
I don’t hate that he likes grey cod more than halibut chowder, and he could care less if my lefse has too much butter and cinnamon.
I don’t have to eat his grey cod nor he my wonderfully gourmet potato bread stylings.
If I like the Chicago Bears and he the Minnesota Vikings, we still talk — By the way, we each received those helmets as Christmas gifts purchased from Sears & Roebucks catalog circa 1971-72 and wore them proudly in our winter tackle football outings along Hungry Point Road.
No subject is unimportant in our conversations because we truly care and enjoy each other.
Just days ago on my most recent visit we touched on the elections, like we had on so many other visits.
But this was the first time I realized we were on opposite party lines, disagreeing on some points and agreeable on others.
And for the briefest moment I found the differences frightening.
But why?
We were not standing belly to belly boisterously professing the universe spins around the promises of our electoral candidate, nor were we loading firearms and sharpening utensils for the Great Moose Hunt Overthrow or leaking each other’s pickled herring recipes on the internet.
What is more amazing is that I am Swedish and he is Norwegian.
Now, there are two countries with a bit of unfriendly history… but a whole heck of a lot of good-natured partnerships. Everyone knows that Swedish heads are second in thickness only to the Norwegian noggin.
He is a lifelong commercial fisherman that doesn’t like sea otters. I have paid my dues as a deckhand and I don’t mind those cute little critters.
But I sure listen to his thoughts on the fishing industry and how the two relate and he welcomes my input as well.
These are poor examples for most of you I’m sure.
But the bottom line I guess is, like sports, these are just my opinions.
He has his. You will have yours.
Now, I was supposed to be taking it easy as I am healing from an Achilles injury.
So in Petersburg I thought covering the Region V Swim Championships would be relaxing.
Instead I was standing all day, not eating correctly, not hydrating and trying to walk back to the resident of the relative that was lucky enough to answer my knocking on arrival.
I did that for two days.
When I had a rest day, I told my home-bed givers I was going for a little walk.
Hours later it turned into an up-and-down in the dark on Raven’s Roost Trail.
The whole walk I thought of my friend and our discussion.
We had differed in many things before, why did this weigh on me so?
I am seldom right in my choices anyway and he has known that our whole lives.
And that was it!
He loves me for who I am. He always has.
As I descended my hike and walked back toward the hovel on Hungry Point our family has settled for generations, I stopped by my friend’s place.
“I really miss you man,” I said. “I love you guys.”
“We are right here,” he said. “Always.”
I had a heightened pace in my limp home.
All was good in the world.
Our opinions don’t make us weaker, our explanations make us stronger.
I wasn’t going to be hoarding my leftover Halloween candy offerings and moving to Canada after all.
Until I walked into my accommodations.
“Whatcha doing,” my nephew’s daughter said in a singsong tone of some cartoon character.
In the eyes of the adults near her it meant, “Where the (ampersands, signs, exclamation marks) were you?!”
I had broken my own rule, kind of.
I told my hiking person in Juneau where I was going and I had a headlamp and a cell phone and I found a sturdy branch halfway into the adventure that became both crutch and critter protector.
I did not tell those now eyeing me that same information.
Decked out in a Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department hat and Search and Rescue shirt my nephew said, “The Raven’s Roost Trail is our bread and butter.”
Meaning they rescue poor lost souls and misguided uncles on numerous occasions there.
I told him next time I would bring my wiener dog “Shaboozey.”
“Yeah, you would definitely be Bread and Butter,” he laughed.
And my sister-in-law stated, “I am calling you Bread and Butter from now on.”
The laughter from five little great-nephews and great-nieces solidified that moniker.
• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@juneauempire.com.
