Chapter One:

Something Fishy (At Least Watery) From The Start...

THOUGH I WAS BORN in the 'Mile High City' of Denver, my first memory is of fish and the ocean and Indians, because my parents moved to the Pacific Northwest shortly thereafter. These three icons, however, have all played prominent roles in my later life. Go figure. Or... read on further, whichever is your want.

I must have been about three years old. The year would have been 1930. A firey red sun was setting beyond a vast and dimpled sea. My father (who was legs clear up to his chin in those days) and I stood on a sandy beach, the air redolent with the odor of fish. Overpowering, in fact. I was fussing (now you know it really is me writing this..!) about the smell, and my pop was paying no attention. We lived then in Portland, Oregon, and he had taken me and mom down to a seaside village where the...what? Klamaths or the Kwakiutls (no, that's not right)... Umatilla (?) whatever .... some local group of Indians had a "fishing camp". (They were not then "Native Persons," nor so far (imo) are they correctly so-designated yet - a better apellation perhaps being "first immigrants" - or the more scholarly "Amerind" of MY undergrad years - now seemingly, rather mysteriously gone out of favor for the oxymoronic "Native Persons").

Readers are thus warned I shall be pulling no punches in the wandering accounts ahead, but shall call the shots as I see them (including a Spade a Spade - make of it what you will...Grin!)

And the Fish Camp was in full swing! Strangely, I don't remember any of the Indians, only pop grinning and the (then) awful smell of fish drying on racks. Soon, the sun went down beyond the far Pacific rim, but the smell of fish stayed with me - (as will be apparent further on, fish genes may even run in my veins!)