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Title: Kwame Alexander interview
Date: 2015-10-21
Description: Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, New York Times bestselling author of 21 books, and recipient of the 2015 Newbery Medal for his novel, The Crossover.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: AlexanderKwame_20151021
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Kwame Alexander ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Kwame Alexander ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. All materials cited must be attributed to Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. This interview was conducted with Kwame Alexander on October 21, 2015, in the Special Collections Conference Room, Western Libraries in Bellingham, Washington. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: So we are here with Kwame Alexander, who is in Bellingham for several days for the Compass 2 Campus program, as well as lunch with Western students and high school students, and this evening is giving a community presentation. NJ: Sponsored by PoetryCHaT. KA: Welcome to Fresh Air, with Nancy and Sylvia, and Kwame Alexander. ST: If only I was as smart as Terry Gross. NJ: Yeah, really. ST: So, in the tradition that we’re trying to start with these oral histories, we’re hoping that you can talk freely, and we’ll see where it goes. And just kind of a free flow conversation opportunity for you to kind of riff on your own thought process, writing process, what you -NJ: History as a writer. ST: -- some of the insights you have about your own books, interactions, intersections. So we could start out with just some of this. We were just looking at some of the titles, and I was just noticing, myself, some of the interplay between the books. NJ: Are you even aware that you do that? Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: Yes, I’m certainly aware that the poems speak to each other and the books connect with each other. Some of it is intentional. Some of it is like when you get into this sort of rhythm, into this zone of the writing, it just -- it happens, you know. It’s sort of the writerly destiny of it all just takes over, and that’s really exciting. I don’t know how to sort of -- If I could bottle that, it would be wonderful. But I think most of it comes from BIC - Butt In Chair. Like the more you just sit down, and you’re writing, and you’re just living this writerly life, as Langston Hughes’s Jesse B. Semple character used to say, “Everything is connected.” And so the connections sort of find themselves. And it’s kind of cool, it’s exciting, especially when readers like yourself are able to pick up on that. The titles I think are really important to me. I remember my first play that I wrote. It was back in college, and it was a play called Self-Discovery 101: You Gotta Have It. And so, I was at Virginia Tech, and there weren’t a whole lot of black students there, and I really wanted to write a play to talk about what it means to be a black student on a predominantly white campus. And I stayed up all night. I’d never written a play before. I’d read plays, I’d acted in a few plays. I acted in a play on Broadway when I was 13. So at some point, I thought I was going to be an actor. But I was familiar with the theater enough to think that I could write a play. And so I stayed up all night and wrote a play, a two-act play. I remember calling my father about 7:00 in the morning and saying, I wrote a play last night. And I remember him being really excited and telling me, asking me, “What are you going to do with it?” I said, “I’m going to produce the play.” And so I started reading and researching how do you produce a play. And of course you need a director, you need a cast, you need a venue. And so naturally I didn’t have a whole lot of resources at my disposal, so I said, Well, I’ll direct it. I wrote it, I’ll direct it. I’ll get my friends who are in the theater department to act in it, and that was my cast. And then of course I had to find a venue. Well as it turns out, I had received a letter inviting me to a student leadership conference at the College of William and Mary, and that was taking place in about four months. And I said, How cool would that be? They’ve got to have entertainment there, so why not my play as the entertainment? And I’m a sophomore in college, and I remember calling up the director at the College of William and Mary of the student leadership conference and saying, “My name is Kwame Alexander. I’m a playwright at Virginia Tech, and I’d like to offer my play as your entertainment for your student leadership conference.” The sort of the audacity to do something like this is something I was raised with, that level of confidence, to think that the world is at your disposal. And something my father always tells me is that you have to behave and act like you belong in the room. If you don’t believe that you belong in the room, then people are going to notice and you’re not going to be sort of embraced, and there are going to be some opportunities that you’re going to miss. And so I’ve always believed that I belonged in the room, even times when I probably didn’t. But, Dr. Carol Hardy was her name, and she said, “Tell me more about this play.” I said, “It’s about student leadership.” I had all the buzz words. “It’s about black students and how they can, you know, sort of reach their destinies” -- And she said, “Well how much are you charging?” I hadn’t thought that far. I said the biggest number I could come up with. I’m a sophomore, I didn’t have any money, any food in the fridge. “What would be a good amount?” “A thousand dollars.” “Hmm, well, that’s too much.” “Can you do it for $500?” “Yes.” Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections I talked to some friends and so I knew -- I’d written a play, so I knew the number of actors it was going to require, and it was nine. And here I was getting paid $500 for a play that was going to take place three hours, four -- five hours away from my school, and I had to get everyone there, and I had to pay everyone, got to have a place to stay. So I said, “Well, I can do $500, yes, but we’ll need hotel rooms.” She said, “I can give you two rooms.” I said, “Done. And, we’ll need to attend the conference for free.” This conference cost 300 to 400 bucks. And I’d been invited but none of the cast members, I knew, would have been invited. So she agreed to all that. I got my cast together, started rehearsing. The play happened on a Friday night, the opening night of the student leadership conference. It was the main attraction. And I’m 17 years old, I’m thinking, Okay, this is cool. I’m going be a theater minor. My minor was theater. And, the auditorium was 800 people filled. I mean it was exhilarating and it was like, Wow! It was Broadway to me. Like I knew I had arrived (laughter). And we -- the play happened. It went off exactly as we had rehearsed it. It couldn’t have been any better. That is not to say that it was very good, because I only knew so much about the theater. But within the constraints of what I thought was good, it was excellent, at the time. Standing ovation. And of course the students, who were my peers, didn’t know any better either. Standing ovation, the teachers, the professors. The administrator was like, Whoa, what just happened? So, me thinking on my feet, which is another thing that I’ve sort of been groomed to always do. When we were kids we’d be in a grocery store. My father didn’t cook until very later in life, but he shopped. So my sisters and I would be in the grocery store at the checkout line, and he would not let the cashier take an item and ring it up until we could tell him the cost, with the sale and the double coupons. Unless we could tell him what the price was, he wouldn’t let it go through. And this happened for every item. So you had to be able to think very quickly on your feet. And so I remember saying to myself, We’re about to do a question-and-answer. We can do a Q-and-A. And part of it was my ego, like wanting to savor the spotlight. And the standing ovation, and then I said, “Okay, we’re about to have a Q-and-A.” And the actors sat down on stage, and I stood up, and we started taking questions, and it was amazing, the energy in that room. And the whole time I’m answering questions, I’m thinking this is my life. This is what I want to do. I knew it in that moment. I wasn’t able to articulate that it was going to be some combination of writing and presenting, but that’s what I had just done. So I said, this energy, this spirit, this feeling right now, this is what I want to do in my life. And I just got paid $500. It’s a wrap. And so, the Q-and-A goes on for an hour, and it’s 10 o’clock, and people are -- you know, at these kind of conferences for students, Friday night is time to party. So kids, nobody’s like trying to get out of there to go party. They’re staying around asking questions. So one kid asked a question, she’s from Rutgers, and she says, “Kwame, have you thought about taking this play on tour?” And I, come on, I was barely in the room. I barely made it into the room. But my answer was, “Yes, we are doing a tour.” So as she’s saying that, thoughts are going through my head, How can this happen, how can this happen? And so I say, “Well, after everything’s over, tomorrow…” because I knew that my father, who was a book publisher, had a -- Another thing that I’d been able to negotiate was for my father to have a booth, and so he would sell books. So I said, “At booth number Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections so-and-so, I’ll be giving out information on our tour.” So everybody’s like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. I said, the tour, “It costs $1000 for us to come to your school.” I should have never given the price out in front of 800 people, even though I was sort of married to it. But they clapped again. It was over. And we did an 8-city tour to Rutgers and Fisk and NYU... And it was sort of the first time that I was able to sort of understand that writing is, for me, is more than pen to paper. It has to be writing with sort of the goal of being able to share your words with the world in some profound way, and you now have the capacity to do it. So you don’t have to just write and it ends up in a drawer or under a mattress. You’re going to share your works with the world, and the degree to which you do that is only limited by your vision and your dreams. So you start -- we started with me talking about titles, and of course we ended in another place, in terms of this first experience where I knew I wanted to be a writer and live this writerly life, in all of its different aspects and capacities. But the title for that play was really not that good. I had borrowed it from a Spike Lee movie called She’s Gotta Have It, and so I said, Self-Discovery 101, You Gotta Have It. It seemed pretty cool. I guess the kids liked it. But from that point forward, my titles got progressively better, and so the next couple of titles...there was a title called Ebony Images, another play that I wrote, which was still okay, probably bad. But titles became very important to me. I really wanted titles that A reflected the subject matter of the book, but B, that sort of had a little bit of edgy and coolness to it, and so the titles got a little bit better over the years. I remember a really good friend of mine, my best friend, who was an actor in that first play. He’s always ribbing me about my titles. He’s like, Dude, you don’t know how to come up with titles. That used to be a really sore spot for me. We used to argue about that. And I think, you know, now he’s like a huge fan of my titles. So I think he really inspired me to sort of work on those titles. And so, when you think about - there was a play -- After Ebony Images, there was a play called 8 Minutes Till 9, which was bad, like what does that mean? The play was about a Muslim and a Christian who were twin brothers, and who were trying to figure out how to live in the same space when they had these sort of different, distinctly different, views on religion and the world and spirituality, and their mother. And so their mother -- And they hadn’t spoken in a while -- and their mother was in the hospital on her deathbed, and she died at 8 minutes till 9. Not a very good title. And then my first book of poems, Just Us: Poems and Counterpoems. What are counterpoems? I have no idea. And I think probably -- And then Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur. That’s kind of cliché. I think probably the transition into like really coming up with a title that was concise and represented the book and still had an edginess was the book Crush, and that was 10 years, 10-15 years into my writing. But I think that sort of when I hit my stride, if I can say that, Crush: Love Poems for Teenagers, I felt like it was really simple, it represented what the book was about. It had sort of an edginess to it. Just the word “crush” in and of itself has some energy. And from there I felt like it was on, with the titles. NJ: I am curious as you were just talking about that play, the 10 minutes to 9? KA: 8 Minutes Till 9. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: 8 Minutes Till 9, thank you. It really impressed me -KA: Yes, it’s just, it’s a horrible title. KA: Yes, 25 minutes past 11. NJ: Yes. And (The) Crossover, and twins, mother on a deathbed... Do you find you come back? And what do you come back to in different maybe iterations? KA: Wow. So that’s great, because we’re talking about the books talking to each other. And here’s this play that I wrote that has this direct link to this novel that I wrote, which was 20 years later. And so the thing I didn’t tell you about 8 Minutes Till 9 is that -- this was my third sort of, my third attempt at producing theater, okay. So after that first play had just wild success, as a 17 year-old, of course, I can do this. I can do this now. I will become a theater impresario. And so part of this whole idea of finding your rhythm and saying yes is that there are going to be failures. And I think that, the thing is, you got to be willing to deal with the failures. Like you’ve got to be willing to let those happen, embrace them, and learn from them. And that way you’re able to sort of find what’s possible. And so with 8 Minutes Till 9, it was my third attempt, I felt like I was in a rhythm, and it was now time for me to actually go to Broadway, like literally. NJ: Oh my gosh. KA: And so I found a theater in my home town, in Norfolk, Virginia. It’s called the Norfolk Center Theater, I believe, and I had 800 students in the first play, because the students had been registered for the conference from all around the country, so they were -- that was my audience. I didn’t have to market, just had to show up and do my piece. Well now I had to market to the Norfolk Center Theater, and I remember getting my scholarship money from school, I was now a junior, and I had leftover money. And I decided I’m going to use this money to produce my play. The theater sat 2,000 people. I’m going to do this. Everybody’s going to love this play. And there were 5 people in the audience. And I remember feeling like, or feeling a number of things. Two of the people were my parents. And I remember feeling like it was the end of the world, like it’s a wrap. I mean, just thinking about it right now makes me just want to, wow, it was devastating, because I had done everything I thought that I knew, everything that I thought I had to do in order to bring people out. And certainly a theater with 2,000 people in there and there are 5 people in the audience, there’s no way to sort of think positively about that, especially as a 19 year old, who thinks he wants to be a writer/director/producer. And so I was devastated. ST: So as part of the consequence of having the tremendous confidence and self-assuredness, when it doesn’t happen, it sounds like there’s some extremes going on. I mean, that’s a challenging way to move through the world I imagine. KA: Well again, it’s no way around that. You can’t, I don’t care how much confidence you have, you can’t rationalize there being 5 people in a theater of 2,000, in front of the people you care the most about, and the actors who you promised that this is going to be. And it was just, like you really just felt like you wanted to be in your mother’s arms. You wanted to just be away from the world. And it was Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections the lowest -- it’s one of the lowest points in my writing career. And then the other thing happened, because you can’t take away confidence, 19 years of confidence being instilled in you by your parents and being reinforced daily. That doesn’t just end because you’re devastated. It takes a hit. It doesn’t go down though. And so we did the play. We did the entire play. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Of course I’m only 19, so how many hard things have I done? But when you start looking at the future, in terms of my writing career, it definitely laid a foundation for how I would move through the world, how I would deal with the nos, because that was the biggest no. It’s probably one of the top three biggest nos I’ve ever faced in terms of the rejection that I felt. But we did the play. We did the play. I don’t know how that 2 ½ hours -- I don’t remember how I made it through that 2 ½ hours, but it’s not, you know, we did. And when it was over and I got home, yes, I felt a whole lot better because I was out of that space, and I was able to look back on it, and I knew that I would never be in that position again. I would never be in that position again. I mean, I gave up my scholarship money for this, to produce this. I didn’t, obviously, I didn’t market it and promote it well. And so, yes, yes, yes. And so, to go back to your question and the idea when we look at The Crossover and we have similar sort of themes, in terms of twins, rivalry, parent, parental illness. I kind of I guess when I think back on it, I guess I feel like I never -- that story never got told. And so maybe I needed to be able to close that chapter in some way, and this was sort of a coming full circle. I don’t know, I’m speculating, but I think our subconscious acts in ways that we don’t necessarily know. So when you bring it up, maybe that had something to do with it. I needed to have some closure, because I always felt like it was a great idea. So I needed to circle back and deal with some of that. But oh, I get chills when I think about that theater. It was the hardest thing. But again I mean, we can’t have the yeses without the nos. You can’t have the mountains without the valleys. You just you can’t. The world doesn’t work like that. So, yes, 8 Minutes Till 9. NJ: Music. It’s everywhere, in your work. KA: Yes, the music. I told my parents that I don’t remember music being in our house. I don’t remember you all listening to music. You know, I remember gospel music because my father was a Baptist minister, and so I remember church, and I remember my father didn’t listen to secular music. So he never, I don’t have that recollection of him listening to music outside of church. I remember him trying to sing in the pulpit and sounding horrible. I remember that. I remember my mother humming songs and singing songs around the house, If you want to be happy for the rest of your life... I remember her singing, How much is the doggy in the window? I remember her singing songs like that around the house. I remember that a lot. So I remember those two things. And I remember, certainly, my sisters and I loving Michael Jackson and sort of going through our phases. And then I remember falling asleep at night listening to the oldies but goodies, every night. I had a little alarm clock radio, and so I’d fall asleep, Breaking up is hard to do. Now I know, I know that it’s true. Don’t say that this is the end. Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again. I beg... So I used to listen to these songs. Yes, I guess there was music in my house. There was a lot of music. I used to listen to those songs every night, loved the stories, loved the stories. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections But you know, the music in the books, I think, comes from a couple different places. Obviously it comes from that. But it comes from, I love writing while listening to music. The writing, it centers, it calms me, it inspires me, so I love listening to music, especially instrumental jazz music. The music has to be instrumental. I can’t have words when I’m writing. So I think the biggest thing in terms of why the music is so much a part of my life now, and therefore a part of my writing life, I was a sophomore in college and I’d come home, and again, the only music I ever heard my father embrace was gospel music, and I came home -- and this is a man who didn’t, he never said I loved you. I didn’t hear that. Like you knew he did, but you didn’t ever hear it. He wasn’t very emotive. But he was emotive when he fussed. But you didn’t really get the warm and fuzzy, Oh come here, son, give me a hug. That never happened, ever! So I remember coming home sophomore year and being in our attic. My grandmother used to say that I was a meddler. “Why is that boy always meddling in my stuff?” He’s in my closets and then, “What are you, Ed, come down!” She used to call me by my first name, Edward. “Edward, come downstairs and stop meddling up there.” I loved going in drawers and finding things and being under beds, and there was always little things that you could find, and it was just so cool to me to discover all these wonderful things that you knew had stories, had these sort of backgrounds, these histories...medals in your grandfather’s drawer, and fur coats, oh and fur hats. Oh, my favorite thing was papers, anything that was paper, because papers had things written on them. And whatever was written on them, you knew was going to be something that you didn’t know before. And so you got this sort of peek into these people’s lives who were your family. My grandmother used to say, “Why is he meddling?” And this is both of my grandmothers. My mother’s mother and my father’s mother, I did the same thing. My mother’s mother had an attic where her mother had lived, so it was a whole apartment up there. Oh my goodness! I found watches, encyclopedias, you know, can I say bras? I mean, I found everything, and it was all so exciting! And so, I come home sophomore year and I do what I always do. I’m in our attic, because growing up I’d never discovered everything that was in the attic, so it was always cool to go up there. So maybe I was up there looking for something from my high school days. Everything was in boxes. And I find two crates of records, and I started looking at the records, and the records are like Ella Fitzgerald, Live in Berlin; Duke Ellington; Ornette Coleman; Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain. And I’m like what is this? And I look at the top of each record, and in stencil, which is what these guys in the Air Force used to use to identify their records, it said, Property of The Big Al. And I’m like, That’s my dad. My dad’s nickname in the Air Force was The Big Al. My dad has a record, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” What is my dad doing with Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith? What is he doing with these? And then it hit me, My dad was a huge jazz fan. Anybody who loves jazz has to be okay. That’s when I sort of fell in love with my dad. That was the moment. I took those records back to college. I took them all back to college, bought a record player, and began to just fall in love with jazz music. And it has informed and influenced my writing ever since. And I guess in some way, it’s sort of me, reestablishing or reconnecting with my dad in a really profound way. ST: I don’t know if you could hear your dad while you were giving your Newberry speech, because you were up there, but -KA: I’ve been told. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Oh you have. I loved it! It was -KA: It was church. ST: It was church, and it was -- it was church. He was so loving and so supportive and exhilarating about what was happening. KA: Yes, I think for them, for my mom and dad, the whole, you know, awards, the Newberry Medal in particular, it was -- it was validating for them in some way. Because when I got the call on February 2, at 7:16 a.m., I called him. He was the first person I called. And his response was, “We did it.” Which I was like, Dude, we didn’t do anything. But of course we did. Like I wouldn’t have been getting that call had he not done all that stuff that they did. And my father and I -- again, he wasn’t very emotive, so we didn’t -- We talked every couple months. We had conversations every now and then. It was cool. And as he’d gotten older, we talked a little bit more. But beginning February 2, we talked an hour a day, which is -- I mean, there are some days where I just, I can’t, I can’t do it tonight, Dad. I’ll have to call you tomorrow. But we talked an hour a day. And I think, what better way, what is more important for a parent than to see their child living a life that they have always hoped that they would be able to live. Maybe they didn’t articulate the specific, but that everything we put into you, we see it coming out and we’re very -- we feel good. We’ve done something. And you know, me fighting or me fussing because I have to read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and him not being able to understand. Why are you fussing? And me tearing... So there was this phase in my life where we lived in Brooklyn, and we lived in this awesome row house on President Street, between New York and Brooklyn Avenue. It was owned by this older woman who had first editions of quite a few books, Alexander Dumas. She had everything. And she left the books, and there were built-in shelves in every room. So I had a room with built-in shelves everywhere, and I hated it. Because I knew I was going to have to read these freakin’ books. And he made me read them. And so, when he traveled, I would rebel. This is not the kind of thing to share when you’re talking with librarians and English professors. It’s a part of my life. I would take books off the shelves and start tearing pages out. That was my way to rebel. I would only do it when he left town. I wasn’t crazy enough to do it when he was there. To come from that place -ST: And would you get rid of the pages, then, or would they -KA: I don’t remember. I’d tear a page out. I’d tear a page out and then throw the book. My mother would come in. We won’t say what she did, but I had to stop. That was sort of my way. So to come from that place to now be here, I think they’re just very thankful, and my mother said -- I remember my mother saying to my father, “Where did he come from? Where did this guy come from?” So I think they’re just very proud. I know they’re very proud. I’m really happy to have -- I feel like it’s good. It’s sort of my way of saying thank you for all the stuff I put them through as it related to literature. But they never, they never stopped. They never stopped, I mean, “We don’t care. If you don’t want to read, too bad you’re going to do it.” That thing never stopped. And so yes, he’s right, we did do it. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Do you think work, know when something’s going to end up being a picture book or a novel or a collection of poems? Is that conscious? Does it happen organically? KA: Yes. It’s a good question. I have not always, I haven’t been -- Quite a few of my writer friends are very sort of, and I say this in the most respectful way, in the clouds. They’re inspired, and the muse comes, and that’s all good. And to a certain degree, yes, I have muses. But I am also very methodical about my approach to writing books. I’m going to sit down and I’m going to write a play tonight. That’s always been my mindset. I’m going to sit down, I’m going to write a picture book. This morning I was working on a picture book, looking out on this beautiful water and listening to the trains, and I’m going to write a picture book. So it’s very, it’s very planned. I mean, it’s very intentional. I know what genre it’s going to be. I’ve thought about it over and over in my head because there are -- before I can actually sit down to write, I have to know what genre. There’s not going to be any I don’t know, maybe this is something else. No, it is what it’s going to be. I have to know the title. I have to know that from the beginning. And I have to know the whole -- and I have to know the entire story. I have to know the beginning and the end. I don’t have to know the middle. But I have to know those three things. And so it becomes very -- it becomes less, let the muse sort of inspire me, let me find out what this is, and more of, alright, muse, you ready to do this? Let’s make it happen. This is what’s about to go down. NJ: Do you think the muse is percolating even though you’re not aware of it? KA: Yes. NJ: So by the time -KA: Yes, the muse is definitely -- yes. By the time I actually write, I’ve already started writing, and the muse has been working with me and inspiring me. So all that happens up there while I’m presenting, while I’m traveling around, walking my daughter to school, the muse is working. When I sit down to write, I’m taking all of that that I’ve gathered and culled together over the weeks, months, or years. It’s interesting because when I present to students or when I’m giving a keynote, it’s weird because two things are happening up there. Number one, I am present in the moment, which is why I try to make sure that I connect with students and get names. And it’s not just so that the students can feel connected. It’s so I can feel connected too. Because there’s another thing going on. I’m also actively at this simultaneously, I’m involved in this whole other process, and that process is -- I’m not even sure if this is something I should say. That’s the thing about this, in this age of Twitter, stuff ends up everywhere. ST: Nancy and I do not know how to Twitter. NJ: We don’t tweet. We do not tweet, so. KA: I’m being facetious. I’m being facetious. ST: I’m not. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: My mind, my mind is in the moment and I’m trying to connect with you, but I’m also thinking about what I’m going to be doing over here. And over here could be, I heard four kids up there laughing and being rambunctious. Okay, at some point during this presentation, Kwame, you need to make your way up there, and you need to do that poem that’s on page 46 in Crush, because that poem is going to resonate with that boy, because you saw the way... So I’m having this whole other conversation as I’m connecting with this student over here. And I don’t know if that’s multitasking or literary schizophrenia, or whatever it is, but I have stopped trying to understand it and just do it. I don’t know, I don’t know how it happens, but I just do it. NJ: I think I mentioned to you at Singapore American School that that’s what I hope I get better at as a teacher. I mean, watching you yesterday, watching you at the Singapore American School, you are so present for the learners, the kids, whoever’s there, even the grownups, that we’re sure you’re -- It’s like when I go to a really good church service, it’s like, Oh, that sermon was for me. KA: Right. NJ: And that’s what I hope I can learn to do as a teacher so that when I leave they go, Oh yes, that lesson was for me. I needed that one. And you don’t even seem to think about it. I think it’s kind of who you are. KA: Yes. NJ: You’re saying, No, I’m not a teacher. You are a teacher at the core. KA: Well, yes, thank you. I tried teaching, I tried teaching. NJ: Well you’re still doing it. You just don’t do it with a certificate. KA: Yes, right. NJ: You don’t have a teaching certificate. You’re still teaching. KA: Right, right. NJ: I saw you with your daughter. KA: Right. NJ: I mean, you’re still teaching. KA: Yes. NJ: And in ways that sometimes we can’t get away with in a classroom. Cool, we’re lucky to have that happen. KA: Right. I remember Scott Riley, one of the teachers in Singapore. At the Singapore American School, he told me, it was like, “The kids are the curriculum.” And so, if you’re teaching the curriculum, you got Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections to teach to the kids. And we forget that sometimes. And I think that one of the beauties of presenting with students, like the 5th graders at Western Washington, is that you get to -- it’s sort of like jazz. When you have a jam session, you have to be present in order to riff off of your bandmates. In order to follow along, in order to get in the groove, and you don’t know the kind of magic that’s going to come out of that, but you got to be willing to do that and discover it. And I think each time I go into a class or into an auditorium or what have you, I want -- it’s a jam session for me. We’re all involved, and I may have some ideas about what I’m going to do, and I’m also open to wherever this is going to take us, because there may be some teachable moments here. There may be some things that I’ll discover about myself. There may be some things that some student will discover about her or himself. And I think that’s really magical. But you got to be willing to have five people in the theater to do that, and that is not easy. ST: Thanks. KA: Thank you. NJ: You got two people in the theater. NJ: It’s easier. -KA: Yes. It’s good to be able to talk about it. A lot of this stuff I haven’t shared in a while, just remember. It’s good to remember that. ST: Yes. KA: Yes. ST: We have a few more months until the next announcement in January. I hope it carries, I hope it flows over. You’ve talked about this year as this platform that you’re honored to be on and to reach out, and I don’t see it ending, to be perfectly honest. NJ: I think you’re booked for the next two years anyway, right? KA: Yes. NJ: I think you’ve found the theater. I mean, it is really not gone. KA: Right. I think I was able to sort of merit all those things, right? NJ: This is your theater. That one was temporary. It was a placeholder. KA: Right. NJ: It’s a placeholder theater. KA: Yes. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Right? I mean, this gig is not Broadway, but for you, you’re on a different Broadway. ST: Well it’s the trifecta that you were talking about of who you are, what you’re writing about, and the connection with the audience, that initial rush that you had from that first place. NJ: Yes. KA: Right. NJ: Sharing your words with the world. ST: And then here you are now -KA: Oh, you’re right. ST: -- in that same experience. It’s like it’s that whole spiral, cyclical thing going. And it’s like, wow, that does make a lot of sense. KA: You’re right. That’s exactly what it is. NJ: And so it’s no wonder it’s like it feels like you’ve come home when you do that. It feels right because it is right for you. KA: Right, right. NJ: Not for all of us -KA: Right. NJ: -- but it’s right for you. KA: Yes, yes. NJ: And that’s why the other people who have a muse that is different, that’s right for them. KA: Right, exactly, exactly. NJ: And that’s right for them. This is you, and to try to find that, we don’t always find it at 18 or 19. We’re looking. KA: Right. NJ: We’re meddling. KA: Right, right. NJ: Right? Yes. So you kind of hope that there is that place. And it’s just lovely when you know. I mean when you know it, it’s like, I am so lucky. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: Right, exactly. I was telling Sylvia, I wake up every morning, I just laugh. It’s like, “No way, really?” NJ: Really, seriously, right? Hey, Dad, I am going to talk to you for an hour because really? KA: Right. ST: Well, that’s a good place to end. NJ: But you wouldn’t have known that when you had five people in your audience. ST: But you knew it when you had that previous feeling. It was the feeling to repeat. NJ: Yes, yes. Thank you. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Skagit Delta Environmental Association letter
Date: 1988-03-04
Description: A letter from the Skagit Delta Environmental Association about the update on Fishtown.
Digital Collection: Fishtown Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Fishtown Collection
Local Identifier: Fishtown0083

Title: Fishtown and the Skagit River Exhibit Card
Date: 2010-06
Digital Collection: Fishtown Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Fishtown Collection
Local Identifier: Fishtown0096

Title: Fishtown and the Skagit River Exhibition Checklist
Date: 2010-07
Description: The exhibition checklist used for the Museum of Northwest Art's exhibition on Fishtown. Checklist was inside the book "Fishtown and the Skagit River".
Digital Collection: Fishtown Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Fishtown Collection
Local Identifier: Fishtown0108

Title: Bill and Audrey Nelson interview--May 7, 2007
Date: 2007-05-07
Description: Well-known fly fisherman and guide, one of the "fathers" of the Federation of Fly Fishers.
Digital Collection: Fly Fishing Oral Histories
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Fly Fishing Oral History Program
Local Identifier: FFOH_NelsonBill_Audrey_20070507
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Fly Fishing Oral History Program Audrey Nelson ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fai
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Fly Fishing Oral History Program Audrey Nelson ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. All materials cited must be attributed to Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. This interview was conducted with Bill and Audrey Nelson on May 7, 2007, at their home, in Eugene, Oregon. The interviewer was Tamara Belts. TB: Today is Monday, May 7th, 2007 and I am here with Bill Nelson, and his wife Audrey. We’re going to do an oral history. He did just sign the Informed Consent Agreement. Our first question is: How did you get started fly fishing? BN: My father was a fisherman and he dallied with the fly fishing system. When I got into high school, one of the shop teachers was a fly fisherman and helped me build a vice, that’s when I started tying flies. Then as time went on, my father would take me up and drop me off on a stream on his way to work, and then picked me back up again after work in the evening as I came down the river. TB: Now which river are you talking about? BN: Stillaguamish, and also, the Skykomish, because it was close and had good fish. TB: Pilchuck? BN: Yes, I fished the Pilchuck once in a while and the Snohomish. There were fish in the Snohomish that you could take on a fly. But that’s about it. I didn’t journey to a lot of places when I was still a youngster. Fishing was good in those days. TB: Now what was that shop teacher’s name? BN: His last name was Jones, first name Casey -- Casey Jones. TB: Where did your father work? BN: He had his own business for a while; he was in the tire business, Nelson Tire and Recapping. TB: So he traveled? That’s why he could drop you off at the rivers and you would fish down? BN: Well, no, he’d just drive up there, drop me off and then go back to go to work, and when he was through work, he’d come up and pick me up. Usually, on those forays we’d be fairly close to town anyway, on one of the rivers. Pigeon Creek was another one, Rock Creek; there are others that I just can’t recall all at once. We would pick out a stream and a time and place for him to pick me up. TB: So what was it about fly fishing that attracted you? 1 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: Well, mostly to be able to do it. We did a lot of things that were near to where my folks lived on Puget Sound, right on the beach practically. Just out of the Indian Reservation, they were down on the beach. It’s called Tulare Beach and I’d go out and fish in the salt chuck, trying to catch fish. I was tying flies when the war got going and I was still too young to enlist in the service. I sold quite a few flies to Sears, the local Sears store, and they liked them. I got, I think it was twenty cents each for those flies that I tied. Then they sold them, I forget what they sold them for and I didn’t want to look. We had a zoo there and I would go up to the zoo when I was short of feathers of some kind. I’d take some peanuts with me and I could get a peacock to come over, show it to him, and then you’d throw it just a little ways [behind] him and he’d turn around and you could get a [tail] feather. The guy that was up there running that thing decided that he was going to save some skins for me if one of their exotic birds died. Then I’d run around and see who was raising chickens and I’d get some chicken feathers. There was a feather pillow in the house, it was kind of worn out, and the feathers would come out of it and I’d use every one of them. So I just monkey-ed around mostly. But I did catch fish on the fly when I was in high school. Fresh water fishing mostly, but my parents lived on Puget Sound, which is salt water fishing. I’d walk around on the beach and cast for cutthroat or whatever, there’s a lot of things you can catch out there on a fly. Bottom fish, as we called them, mostly cod, and things like that. They would come up and grab it, sometimes, so it was fun to do. Phone rings BN: I went into the Navy right out of high school. TB: Did you fly fish when you were in the Navy? BN: Whenever I had a chance, yes. When I was kind of through with schooling and the war was over, actually, I was at Clearfield, Utah. (I could tell you a crazy story, but I better not). Anyway, we fished on several of the streams down there in Utah, and they were fun. I’ve got some pictures of that someplace. Pretty soon we had about three or four guys that would go with us; I mean that all of us would go together. One of my shipmates was a native of Salt Lake City, which is just south of Clearfield. We had a lot of fun doing things, but we’d also fish a lot. It was like still being in school, you got Saturday and Sunday off. And that’s what we’d do, whenever we got a chance, we’d go fishing when we weren’t working. They have a funny schedule when the war’s over and the Navy’s doing this and that. I was sent off to find a filter for the pool so we could kind of redo the pool. We had a swimming pool there at Clearfield, and I’d use that as an excuse to go hunting for that filter and we’d fish along the way. It was fun to do that; we’d have a jeep, the Navy jeep and go down to Salt Lake City, and try to find out what we could do there. On the way, if we could do something good, well, we’d do it, and get the filter and go back and install it, but on the way we would probably get a few casts in. That was fun. I had a bamboo rod (glass wasn’t really used in those days). I still may have part of those bamboo rods that were made in the years past. You put them in kind of a case and try and save them, and pretty soon you loose track of where they are. But I still have a couple of fishing rods and stuff like that. TB: So you got out of the Navy and then you came back to Everett? BN: Yes, I came back to Everett then. I enrolled right away at Washington State College. It’s called Washington State University now, and that’s where I met Audrey. TB: So you went to school, and what did you study to be? 2 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: I was studying things like math. I was thinking of becoming an engineer and I kind of switched and got out with a business education. I felt that it would be great to be an engineer, but the way things worked out was better. TB: So then you after you graduated from college, what did you do? Or how did you get back to Everett? BN: I was still in Everett in the summer time. I went to work at U.S. Rubber Company. That was kind of a strange thing too. I didn’t have a real, full education in business, but had some engineering background in it. I didn’t really graduate, but that was the four years counting the credit I got for the things that I had completed at Montana School of Mines. AN: Bill was stationed at Montana School of Mines (Butte, Montana) where he earned some college credits. He later transferred to Clearfield, Utah. BN: In the V-5 program which is a Naval Aviators training thing. They gave me full credit. They taught us engineering and things of this nature. Also we had Naval Organization, Naval Org they called it, they didn’t give you any college credit for it but it was supposed to be done before you were able to continue with the program. We would have football, baseball, and basketball teams from Montana School of Mines and that was still in the Navy. As soon as I got back, I registered at Washington State University. I had credits that I could use there and that was helpful. I knew a lot of the people at Washington State, and we re-established old friendships and went fly fishing there. TB: So where did you go fly fishing at Pullman? BN: The Grande Ronde. We didn’t really know what we had at that time. We’d go there and go fishing and try to catch a trout. I wasn’t there in the real summer time. The late summer and fall steelhead fishing is just outrageous, it’s so good. We married and settled in the Seattle area. The district manager for U.S. Rubber Company in Seattle came in and grabbed me, says, “We have a desk for you over in the U.S. Rubber Company,” (because my father had been in the tire business). That’s the way I started with the U.S. Rubber Company. It was my first job after leaving WSU. I was an order-clerk (I think is what you would call me). Then I got to be a salesman on the road, and calling on all of the U.S. Rubber Companies’ accounts, in various areas. AN: When you worked for U.S. Rubber, you were only in Seattle a short time (mid-1949-1950). Then he was transferred to Portland first (1950-1953), then Grants Pass (1953-1955), and finally Eugene (19551957). You did a lot of fishing in Oregon. BN: The Sandy River and the Willamette. We’d go down and fish there too, just below the falls. AN: He’d bring home all kinds of big fish. There was a little grocery store across the street that had a freezer, and they would put them in their freezer, and keep them for us and for themselves. You did a lot of fishing there; we were there for two years, in the Portland area. BN: It wasn’t all totally fly fishing there below the falls, but another good thing we’d catch was Jack Salmon, and catch them on the fly better than a spooner could or anybody else. We’d fish with a fly beneath the falls there for quite a long time. Then when it was tough, we’d have a casting rod and pitch it somewhere out there and try to catch some fish there. It could be wonderful fishing there and they’d let us go through the mill and down to the rocks right there at the bottom part of the falls, so I got hooked on that too. AN: You ought to tell them about when you were in Grant’s Pass and Eugene, how you had this little boat on top of [your] vehicle. He just went everywhere – down to the coast and over to Klamath Falls. TB: How did you get involved in the Evergreen Fly Fishing Club? 3 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: In 1958 I accepted a job with Armstrong Rubber Company and moved to Lynnwood, Washington (1958-1962). One of my best friends, Lew Bell, was president of the Evergreen Fly Fishing Club and I knew a lot of guys that were in the club because I was raised in Everett. I was living in Lynnwood but I would drive down to the meetings in Everett. There were a lot of nice guys in there. TB: How did you come to know Lew Bell? BN: I went fishing with him a lot and things like that. We just became dear friends; he’s my closest friend ever. We did other things besides fishing; we did potlucks for the club and stuff like that. But that’s a close-knit club; everybody is familiar with everybody else. It was a small enough group you got to know everybody in the club. They’d switch around to have lunch in various places. We’d go to lunch on Fridays, I think it was. Anyway, they’d have a weekly luncheon at the Elk’s Club or someplace else. (My father used to have the tire business right across from the Elk’s Club in Everett). It’s hard to recall those things in sequence. I wish I could do better for you. TB: You’re doing great. So how did you first start talking about forming the Federation of Fly Fishing? BN: We were on the Grande Ronde River, Lew Bell, Dick Denman, Dick Padovan and Dub Price and quite a group went there, it was kind of an exclusive group. At that time that was the best steelhead fishing in the world. We tried to get days off together, so we would all have the same week off, or two weeks off. Rick Miller would go down and fish with us in the Grande Ronde too. And we just started talking about it. We actually started talking about it when I was still up in Lynnwood working for Armstrong Rubber Company. We would have coffee at the Alpine Café (Everett, WA) and there would be about six or eight of us around this table and we’d just start talking about it. We all got together there at least once a week and maybe a couple days in a row, you know if I was around for a little while. We had discussions there when we were having coffee. But most of the planning and the ideas were thrown together up on the Grande Ronde when we were fishing. When we got back, everything was pretty much in our minds. We didn’t get it to a point where we got the Federation of Fly Fishermen through in thought but we all knew exactly, how it would go and where it would go. Then we bought the business in Eugene (1962) and moved here. TB: What business did you buy? BN: Eugene Tire Patch Company. The guy just said, “Well, you’re the only guy I’m going to sell it to and I’m going to make you a good deal. We’ll sell your home up in Lynnwood.” He took the job of selling the house we had in Lynnwood along with letting me buy his business. Then he spent about a month or two following me around. He worked with me for a month anyway. I got used to driving this panel [truck], and then I put some racks on the top. I had a light aluminum boat and I could put it up there on top. Everybody got a kick out of that and so half of my accounts became fisherman. That was fun. When I got down here to Eugene I found out they didn’t even have a fly-fishing club, and I thought, well, we must do something about this, we’re going to get a fly club, so I put an ad in the paper to find guys that would be interested, and we had six guys, I think it was, to begin with, set for the first meeting of people. AN: Oh, you had more than that, you had about a dozen the first night, I think you had about ten or twelve guys. 4 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: Yes, okay. Anyway, we formed the McKenzie Fly Fishers. TB: Now, let’s back up a minute, when you guys were talking on the Grande Ronde, what were the things that you thought needed to happen? Why were you interested in forming the federation? BN: Well, we worried about people doing things. We wanted to preserve as much of the water like the Grande Ronde and several other rivers, if we could possibly do it. Then we got to be friendly with people from various other places. I think I took two or three guys from the East Coast fishing here and there and that was when I was still up in Lynnwood. Then my travels around Washington, Oregon, Northern California, and Western Idaho, to sell patches to fix tires and tubes; while I was doing that, I met a whole bunch of different guys that were interested in fly fishing, so I thought, what the heck! We formed a club here and I laid it on them, and they went ahead with it. It was quite an affair really, by the time we got through starting that thing. People came from a long ways away and some of them were well known in those days and it kind of turned all of us on to what we wanted to do, and that was to help preserve fly fishing as a sport. We felt that we were more concerned about the fish than anyone else was, as far as preserving a run of fish in this river or that river. Anyway the whole thing was just a great experience for everybody involved, really. Some of them aren’t with us anymore, but you sure think of them with great respect. Lew Bell was my closest friend, he was an attorney in Everett, and actually, he was asked to serve in the U.S. Senate! He said, “No, I just don’t want to get mixed up with that.” TB: The other thing is why did you feel that there needed to be something beyond Trout Unlimited? I read where Trout Unlimited had formed in the Fifties, and it was geared towards preservation of fishing. BN: Oh, yes, and Martin Bovey who was the president of Trout Unlimited, came to our first meeting in Eugene when we were going to build a Federation of Fly Fishing. TB: So, the Trout Unlimited wasn’t going far enough? BN: No, it was just a different system. End of Side One, Tape One BN: Trout Unlimited was a good organization, don’t get me wrong. Martin Bovey asked for a list of the folks that were going to be in the Federation and then he, in turn, gave one of our members a list of the fellows that he thought would be very interested in the Federation and in the fly fishing system. There was also fly fishing clubs on the East Coast that he gave us information about. Martin Bovey was really good; he gave us a lot of information. We even had guys like Lee Wulff. TB: Now how did you get the idea to ask him? AN: He was a famous guy. Bill wrote to a lot of people that were prominent in that business or that liked to fly fish like… TB: Bing Crosby? AN: … yes like Bing Crosby, and Bill received a really nice letter that we can’t find. TB: I’ve seen a copy of that. AN: I think somebody published it at some time, but I can’t find it, but it was a nice letter of regret, but he had a lot of positives too. 5 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: Oh and we flew to Jackson Hole. One of the guys had an airplane, Bill Hilton, who was another close friend, and I’d fish with him a lot. We took four guys all together, including Bill, and went to an outdoor writer’s convention in Jackson Hole. We went around and met a lot of the guys and we got a lot of support out of just that meeting of the outdoors writers. That was one routine we went through, and it worked out very well. Also, we had folks that didn’t really want to belong to something, but yet they thought that our idea as far as conservation and everything like that was concerned was good and they came along and went to it. It wasn’t an easy program having the first conclave. But everybody really pitched in and did the best they could. TB: So you were a new club, that had just been formed, and right away you were trying to have this big conclave, so how did that go over with your club? And did everybody stay with you? BN: Oh, no, in the beginning there were guys that just didn’t think it would go, and they even quit the club, so to speak. But then in the interim period the guys that stayed and talked about it, the next thing you knew we had a run of people that wanted to be in the club and to help with this conclave we were going to put on to form a federation. The word conclave came from me in the fact that when I was going to Washington State, the fraternity went down to Las Vegas. The University of Nevada was going to have a new charter down there, so we went down there and we kind of got everybody else that we could to go to this thing and it worked out really well. It was a conclave they put on there, and that’s where I got the word conclave. TB: The conclave was in 1965. BN: The first one. TB: And I think you had just formed the club in 1964, didn’t you? BN: That’s correct. AN: Yes. TB: So it’s like the first thing your club did was to have this national conclave the next year! AN: It scared the guys. But they were all young and enthusiastic and ambitious, and full of it -- they had confidence. BN: We had the cream of the crop. We had the cream of the crop of everything. AN: The ones that dropped out though, a lot of them came back in, too. BN: Yes, that’s right, after we did the work. But it was a good club too – it was just outstanding as far as I was concerned. But the Evergreen Club is still part of it too, they helped so much. AN: And his friend Lew, who was an attorney; he helped do so much of the work, in that line. He was from Everett and he was a wonderful speaker, too. BN: I think I’ve got a little tape on that someplace, haven’t I? AN: Well, you’ve got all the beginning. TB: Oh, all of those speakers are on tape? BN: Yes, some of them are. 6 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AN: I don’t know all of them, but some of them are on that Never Name the River? TB: Oh, sure, that’s where the footage came from. BN: Have you seen that? TB: I did; that was invaluable. Tell me a little more about you then, I know you are well known for being a salt-water fly fisherman; you were a guide up in B.C., right? BN: Yes. TB: How did you get into that? BN: Well, I belonged to the McKenzie River Guides Association here, and some of us would go up to B.C. on our vacations to a place called April Point. We were friends with a couple – Marsh and Stephanie Webster – and we shared a cabin at April Point for quite a few years. We’d each take our own boat and have a great time. It was a fantastic setting. We were fly fishing on salt water. Sometimes we would use up about everything. TB: Now that was kind of a new thing, wasn’t it? BN: I think so, yes. But we’d wade along the inside edge of the kelp, and cast ahead of us, and try and catch fish that way, and we did! It was amazing how many fish are inside the kelp and nobody can go in there and troll for them. We’d fish the mouths of the rivers in the fall, and just fly fish it, and it was just absolutely outstanding. I met a guy, his name was Bob Hurst, and he was with the Canada Fisheries, in the area there at Parksville. That’s south of where we were on Quadra Island. We got to be good friends. Then we started trying to use flies and by golly we sure did use them, and they worked out pretty good. Two or three fly fishermen in the fisheries and then there were guys that were just fly-tiers and they started tying salt water flies. Short Break TB: Now which fly is this? BN: I guess you’d call that The Mrs. Nelson. But this is a better example that kind of does the work, there, that’s a herring. Then they come out in different sizes. TB: Now how did you happen to name this Mrs. Nelson? How’s it like to have a fly named after you? AN: It’s great, it has a great story. BN: I was fishing with a guy from South Africa, William Vander Byl, who came to the lodge, and he was kind of excited about casting for salmon in the salt chuck. We took him down to the south end of the island and he’d cast and catch fish here and there, and he did really well, in comparison to some of the people that we were trying to help catch fish. We were coming back from the south edge of the island and we had two or three fish that he caught. He lost a few fish and then he had very few strikes down there. I had a net float on my console (I had a compass in there but then the compass went haywire and the hole that held the compass was just right to hold the net float). When I wasn’t using the flies I’d put them in this net float. And he said, “What’s that fly there in that net float?” 7 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED And I said, “Well, that’s a fly I tied for my wife.” He said, “I sure like the looks of it.” And I said, “Well, I think it’s a good one, I like it.” And he said, “I’d just love to try it. Do you suppose that your wife would mind if I tried it?” And I said, “No, she’d be delighted.” So we put in at Quathiaski Cove and the second cast he hooked a nice Coho that was swimming around in there and we got him in, and released it. (He was a good releaser he couldn’t take fish back to South Africa anyway). He kept casting and about every other cast, he’d hook another fish on the fly. He was all excited. I’d left it (the fly) on the rod (he was going to go out again the next day). He went back into the lodge for lunch. (I didn’t eat in the lodge because I thought it was too expensive and I went home for lunch). While I was at home, why he sat down at the table where there were several guides and other guests, and he started talking about Mrs. Nelson’s fly. The guides and the guests went down to the boat to look at it, and he said, “That’s it right there, that’s Mrs. Nelson’s fly.” The people that went down to look at it, they picked it up and brought it back to the lunch table and talked about it, called it the Mrs. Nelson. And it’s been “The Mrs. Nelson” ever since that. I was going to explain to you that there are a few things that are different. I tie a lot of Mrs. Nelsons because it is a very good fly. Here’s a reasonable example of the Mrs. Nelson fly. It generally has a good eye, and here’s another one, bigger. I got the idea, and maybe it’s right or maybe it’s wrong, but it seemed to work for me, that you want to match the size of the bait more than you do any other part of it. Some guys just put a great big one on and it scares the rest of the bait away. But the one that’s the same size as the bait that’s in there generally doesn’t seem to bother them. So I go from this to this, and all the way in between. TB: Wow, so these are all Mrs. Nelson’s over here (referring to some flies)? BN: Yes; and then there’s another one, you know what a candle fish is? TB: I don’t. BN: Well, it’s a very thin, minnow type thing, and people call them candle fish or needle fish. Up there in Canada, they call them needle fish, because they’re thin and long. The candle fish have enough oil in them that Eskimos can dry them and light them and they’ll work -- they have that much oil in them. At least that’s the story I get, I never tried it myself. But here’s an imitation of a candle fish, they’re darker on the back and they have a green and a pink in the sides. TB: Wow! Now did we really settle how it was that you started going up there to Quadra Island? How did you decide to retire and become a guide up there? BN: Well, we went up there many times. The guide whose family owned the lodge would come around and we’d talk to him. I was out on the dock, there, casting for perch, really, and we got pretty well acquainted. He even came down to visit us once when we were still living in the States. The Websters and the Nelsons would have a standing reservation for a cabin a certain time of the year (the first week in September). It was a big time. We’d go up there and fish and got to know quite a few people that were of course at the lodge there, and the guides. We were fishing with flies, and the guides would get a pretty big kick out of that, especially a guy named Rob Bell-Irving. He was one of the fine, fine guides. His father was Lieutenant Governor of B.C. and the background of his family was mostly medical people, but we became fast friends. He gave me the idea about keeping the boat running, and run the fish and the fly behind the boat. Up to that time we had really only cast. Then we started having so much fun doing that that it was just great fun for us. The lodge owners actually gave me an invitation to come and build a house there or lease something, but we’d already gone on the main island, Vancouver Island, with the Websters and bought a piece of property, because they were going to retire too. Warren Peterson, who was the head person there at the lodge, said, 8 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED “Oh, gosh, don’t go there, come over here, you’ll like it, and we’ll lease you a piece of property to build a house on.” The lease was very reasonable, as far as I was concerned, so we talked the Websters into that too. I went out and built the first house, in this little cove, and then the next year the Websters retired, and they built a home there. The two of us settled in behind this cute little island, like you saw in the picture there. It was just like it was all supposed to happen. Then I became a guide there (1978). I was guiding while we were building the house too. It was kind of a fun thing to do, and it helped take care of a lot of our expenses. It was just a great idea, and a great thing that I enjoyed very much. It was just a part of my life that I’ll always remember. It was fun to be there. TB: Now, were there some celebrities that came up there to go fly fishing? BN: Oh yes. TB: Anybody special that you might have guided? BN: Well, let’s see, actually, I guided Julie Andrews and John Wayne. Her husband had a yacht, and I only had her one day and then we found a girl guide. That’s a little tough out in the boat when we were going out for a long time, but it was fun. She’d come up and fish for a month sometimes, stayed there. One time they were taking the yacht out and two of the guides that were very familiar with her because they were kind of the back up boat for this girl guide, and as her husband’s yacht went by the dock, one of the guides wearing his clothes, ran down the ramp, and jumped off the end of the dock, singing, “The hills are alive…” It was funnier than heck, it was kind of at lunch time, and we were up there and I thought I’d fall down laughing. You remember that? AN: No, I was home. TB: And John Wayne came up there? BN: Yes, he did. I only guided him a few times up there, but we hit it off pretty well. He had his yacht parked in the dock area there. And one time I dropped somebody else off, and I was going back and he was sitting on the fantail of his boat (it was a converted torpedo boat, that’s what his yacht was). And he says, “Hey Bill! I’ve got a problem here.” And I said, “What’s up?” And he says, “Well, I’ll show you.” I climbed the ladder, got back to the fantail there and there was another chair, and I was standing there, and he says, “You see that bottle over there? I’ve been working on that for two hours, and I only got it down that far. Now I need some help.” So I had to sit and have a drink with him…and that was fun. Now where am I? Ted Williams, did you know who Ted Williams was? TB: That’s a baseball player right? BN: Yes. That’s a picture of him there on the console and then Norman Schwarzkopf. I have nice letters from him (we kind of lost track as far as keeping in communication). AN: Bill, you should remind her you were a senior guide. There were only two of you, and Warren, the owner of the lodge, that was in your age group, which was fifty when he moved up there. The rest of them were all young kids, they were in their twenties and a few, a very few in their thirties, I think. They were young, Bill was an old guy. But he taught a lot too. The owner up there had Bill give classes to the guides on deportment, and what do you do if you don’t catch any fish, and all these different things -- look at the eagles and this and that. He knew all this other stuff. He provided entertainment out there on the water; it’s not just all fishing. TB: Oh, yes, very cool. Wow! (looking at photo) BN: That’s Norman Schwarzkopf and that’s his son, Christian. 9 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: And that’s you? BN: Yes. And see what Christian is holding in his hand? It’s a sling-shot. I kept the sling-shot on the boat and a can of marbles. And if the seals or sea lions became too aggressive (they would come in and grab a fish while you had it on), why you could kind of drive them off with a slingshot. That kid kept the seals off of that -- that was twenty-eight and a half pounds. Norman caught that fish on a number six fly rod, and that’s Audrey’s fly rod. AN: My fly too. I took it away from Bill right when he came in from that excursion; I put that fly and hid it so he’d never use it again. Bill gave both Norman and his son Chris a copy of the fly as a keepsake. TB: Is that what’s framed here then? AN: Yes. TB: Nice! Very cool! AN: At that time Norman was so famous it was just right after the war. He had security all over the place, flying around. TB: Oh that’s right, 1993 was after you had retired. BN: Yes, we had moved back here. We had a camper and took it to B.C. to fish and to see his old friends. End of Side Two, Tape One TB: So why don’t you tell me about taking Norman Schwarzkopf fly fishing? BN: Didn’t I tell you how they got in there and everything? TB: Well, we weren’t on tape, though. BN: Oh I see, okay. I think Ted Williams talked to Norman. They were up in that area and I’d been guiding Ted Williams a bit and he knew we were up there on a vacation. And so they got on the radio at the lodge and called me to stop, they wanted to talk to me. There was some concern about something happening to Norman, so they didn’t talk about him on the radio or anything. When I got to the lodge, why, they asked me if I would take time to guide Norman Schwarzkopf, and I said, “Well, I sure will.” So I said the tide is right at ten o’clock, and we should get on the water before ten, if we can. He was going to be in the following day so I was supposed to pick him up. He was going to be there by ten and we’d take off. I had to make sure they had everything they needed. But the chopper was late coming in. The guides would walk by me and they’d say, “Hey, what are you doing? That’s the second time you’ve washed that boat!” I said, “Well, I have to do something here, I’m waiting for a guy.” And they said, “Well, do you want us to help you?” “No,” I said, “I kind of want to stay here and keep track of it.” (I’m just washing the boat to make people think I’m busy). They got quite a kick out of that. Those guides were just wonderful at April Point. I still hear from quite a few of them. Two, three of them have their own lodges now, up on Vancouver Island, the north end of the island. We hear from them, we get Christmas cards exchanged. There are a couple of them that moved to New Zealand, we hear from then now and then. Anyway, I don’t know how I got off on that tangent. TB: Back to Schwarzkopf. 10 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: Okay, we’re back to Norman now. He came in on a chopper with his son and another guy that wasn’t there to fish. They took the chopper back out of there after that and took it someplace else. In a little while, here comes an Otter (DeHavilland Twin Otter two-engined) floatplane, and it pulls up by the dock. I can’t remember how many there were, at least five, maybe six guys get out of there. They had vests and sport coats, and they got off that Otter, and you could see the bulge because I know they had arms to protect in case something happened. They were the people that were going to take care of the security. They kind of grilled me and then they said, “You’re not to mention his name.” And I said, “Well, I’ll just say, the position and this is Kisser One.” The name of my boat was Kisser One. (Stan Stanton named it; he said, “That boat just kisses the water.” It was his first look at a Boston Whaler, and he says, “That’s just fine.” We were talking on his radio and mine, and it just ended up with Kisser One. It was kind of funny too.) When I took off from the dock, I would say, “Kisser One, now leaving the dock, all free and clear here,” so that they knew where I was. If there was any problem at all, they had a boat there to come. “Kisser One, south end of the island, we’re going to go out.” “Kisser One to the south end of the Marina” (that’s another island). So we went across and went to another island. We caught fish at the south end of Quadra Island, four or five of them, and released them. He was great for releasing and so was his son Christian. We went back over to Marina (we had to get him back in by four, he said) and we were over there and we were catching Coho here and there. There was a big rock pile and you had to know where the rocks were before you drove in there, and I kind of mapped it in my mind so I could drive through. There was a little kelp bed and we were releasing a fish and I looked up, and there was a big fin and tail that had come to the surface and went back down again. It was big! So, I said, “I know you want to get back, but let’s take one more shot, I saw a good rise over here. I was quite impressed with the size of the fish.” So we went by there, and he got his fly on the surface and was kind of making it move a little bit and it went right through the place where that fish had come up. And it came up, and came down on that fly just like a mako shark! It didn’t really do much for a little bit there, and then all of a sudden the fish decided, I’m not going to have anymore of this, and it takes off. Man oh man, I knew then that we had that big one. One of the other guides was in another boat and saw us over there and he tried to cut in front of the seals (when you see a fish in trouble why those seals are coming). He cut in between the seals and the fish and kind of scared them away a bit, which was a great move on his part. Norman’s son Christian was up there, I gave him the slingshot and a can of marbles, and he was good with it. I thought he hit one seal right in the middle of the head, but I don’t know for sure, I was doing a lot of other things. But he was coming so close to those seals that I think he just kept them away. He didn’t hurt any of them, I don’t think, but between the other guide running across, we got that fish up on the boat. Norman says, “Well, let’s release it.” I said, “No way! We release it guess whose going to get eaten? That fish will be eaten by seals, and I just as soon not turn it over to them. Let’s just bring it back into the lodge and get an ink print made direct from the fish (not with a camera), so that you have an idea how big it was.” It was a big fish (Chinook), caught on a number six fly rod, Audrey’s number six fly rod. Schwarzkopf just did a wonderful job playing that fish. He was a good fisherman, and I think his son, Christian, just did a wonderful job too with that slingshot. They both did well, on every fish that we hooked. TB: So it was just the three of you out on the boat? None of the security detail actually came out on the boat with you? BN: No, they had a different boat. If they thought we were in trouble in any way, why they’d come swinging around there. But they stayed half way down the island. They were in radio contact with us, and it worked out fine. I said, “Kisser One, I’m having a little trouble with a fish here, trying to get it close to the boat.” Of course that worked for them, but when they saw that fish, then they smiled and waved. 11 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Any other of your own personal stories of a great fish you caught, or any other great fishing story? AN: You rowed for Tyee, or somebody rowed you because they wanted you to catch a Tyee, and you did. Everybody has to do that, or give it a try, you know. Tyee are great big, fat fish and somebody has to row a boat – no motors. BN: When they are 30 pounds or better they’re a Tyee. You can’t use a motor with them or anything; you have to row the boat. You can’t use bait so we threw out a fly. TB: And where was this? BN: This was right out in front of Painter’s Lodge on Vancouver Island, it’s right across from April Point, just about a mile and a half, across the passage. One of the guides there that I was friends with rowed me for a Tyee and I got a Tyee pin (maybe I’d better show you that). Anyway, took it on a fly, and it was quite good. It was a lot heavier rod than Norman had, a heavy weight, I think it was a number ten. We were going to catch a big fish. It’s quite a thing to be in the Tyee Club. AN: It’s an annual event up there, every season they have a big rowing contest, well, it’s not really a contest, men go out and they have just a whole bunch of rowers out there trying to get these big fish and see who can get the biggest fish. BN: That’s kind of at the mouth of the Campbell River, itself. They say it was great fun to live there. TB: Then you came back to Eugene in 1989. You must have rejoined the McKenzie Fly Fishers. Do you want to tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing since 1989? And especially I want to know about your Lapis Lazuli Award. AN: Well they only give one of those every year. I don’t know how long they’ve been giving those, actually. Not every year since it started. It’s one of the nicest awards given at the conclaves. BN: Well, I think they gave that to me in 1990. My guides and I started a fly club up in Canada. TB: Oh, up in Canada too! BN: The April Point Fly Fishing Club. AN: They didn’t have anything to do with that award, though, honey, by the time you came here … BN: Well, what I’m driving for is because I kind of got three clubs started and whatever else, they decided they were going to make an award, so that’s how it got there. AN: I think you were Master of Ceremonies for that event weren’t you? BN: I think so, yes. TB: For the 1990 Conclave in Eugene? BN: Yes. TB: It’s hard to get you to brag about yourself! The three clubs you started were: the McKenzie Fly Fishers, the one up in Canada (April Point Fly Fishing Club), what is the third club? BN: I was instrumental in helping the Klamath Country Fly Fishing Club. They recognized us, so I’m an honorary member, and then the same thing at Reedsport -- the Reedsport Club. 12 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Well, how about Lew Bell? What were some of his great accomplishments? You can’t tell me his story, but what do you think are significant things I should know about Lew Bell? BN: I miss him! He was a great conservationist, a good fisherman, and a wonderful friend! I think, individually, he did as much for other people as anyone I’ve ever known, and an attorney at that! You don’t think attorneys are going to be that great, but he was, he was the greatest. He sent me a couple of things, you know. (To Audrey) -- go get one of those glasses, would you, with a fly in it? Oh, here it is! He sent me this set of [glasses]. AN: Oh, that’s why you won’t let me throw them away! They’re all beat up. I almost threw them out. BN: Well it’s kind of that Lew gave them to me. And then there’s Dick Padovan. TB: Yes, so tell me about him. BN: Well, he’s been on the Grande Ronde with us and been a very fine friend also. He was a banker, a manager of a bank in Everett, and you wouldn’t think that those attributes that he has, of kindness and straight-forwardness with his friends would come from a guy that has been in the bank business! Anyway, he’s still up there, he lives on Puget Sound, and we phone each other pretty often. He’s a good friend. TB: What about Walt Johnson? You’ve got his flies over there. BN: Yes, Walt Johnson, yes, I knew him quite well, took me a minute for my brain to wake up. He tied some flies and sent them to Audrey and me that she used for pins, you know, they’re just gorgeous. He’s one of the great fly tiers of all time, as far as I’m concerned, and he lived right on the Stilly in his later life. I imagine Jack Hutchinson had a few things to say about Walt. TB: He’s mentioned his name. Did you know Ralph Wahl? You’ve got his flies up there. BN: Yes, quite well. TB: Did you ever go fishing up at Deer Creek? Or that was probably already gone by the time you were fishing? BN: No, I fished there, a lot of guys just had a summer home right there, right where Deer Creek comes in to the Stilly and Lew and I would fish it. Gosh I started thinking about that now. Things are just flooding down into my mind here about being with Lew on the river. One time he handed me his rod, I had reeled mine in and he wanted to light a cigarette, so he handed me his rod. He had already cast it, and I just kind of made a little move like this (demonstrating), made the fly move a little bit, and a steelhead took it. And I handed him my rod, and he says “Oh, no, you can’t get away with that!” He says, “You’re just trying to make me feel bad.” So I handed him the rod with the fish on it, and he says “No way! No way!” He’s just something else, just wonderful to be with. AN: Gordy Swanson. You fish with him a lot too, didn’t you? Or did you? BN: We all went to Davis Lake; more people went to Davis Lake than I think were on the Stilly. The whole club would come down and we’d fish at Davis Lake. AN: The two clubs would go and hold an annual thing, I think, maybe they still do. BN: Well they do it on the rivers now, they have a steelhead outing. What we started was a Davis Lake thing and the guys would bring their whole family, and camp there. Then we just had great things happen. We’d have frog races. 13 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Frog races! BN: Yes, there were a couple of kids, one of the kids, I think Gordy Swanson’s son, would go and catch frogs. There are frogs all around in the reeds at Davis Lake and then we would have frog races. Monty Rounds was there, he became our frog master, or whatever you want to call him, so that was for McKenzie, and then the Evergreen had somebody else going this way, we’d have two or three frogs on the same eating table, you know, with the benches on it, and they’d put a little stick at one end there and they would start them behind the stick. Monty was our frog keeper and he’d get his mouth full of gin (only he wouldn’t let anybody know anything), and he could go like that with his teeth (demonstrating), and the minute he set the frog down and then says, “Go”, why he’d (demonstrating) and the frog would just jump!. We won more frog races with gin than we did with the regular training, it was wild! I don’t understand how we could have so much fun, having frog races, but we did, it was fun. TB: Okay, well, anything else I haven’t asked you that you’d like to make sure we get on the record. BN: I can’t figure out where we are now, let’s see. Lee Wulff was a lot of help in doing the Federation stuff; he just was a wonderful guy. He stayed with us in Eugene a few times when it had nothing to do with the Federation or anything else. I took him fishing on the Alsea for cutthroat. The way I caught cutthroat there was I would pitch in underneath the brush and stuff and try to get one to come out of there, I thought they were hiding in there all the time, but Lee, he knew what was going on, and he out-fished me about eight to one. He’d even use my fly, and he’d fish the various places he thought the fish were and he had a propensity for knowing that. Did you know that he wrote a book about wading? TB: No. BN: Yes, wading on the rivers. We were fishing on the Grande Ronde and Lew would go down this one point where the water would turn and churn and he’d get out of the water and go back up again because he couldn’t get across the other side there. He’d go back up again to get across the other side and then he’d fish the other side of the river. Lee was backing up to get back up, and he waded the river. He was serious, he wasn’t fooling anybody when he said this is how you are supposed to wade, and he did it, he waded. He did a wonderful job of wading. He was a good guy too, he wasn’t pulling anybody’s leg or anything -- he just was a good guy. TB: He still has some kind of line of I think. BN: Yes, he’s got a company his wife runs and they sell rods and different things and they ship it everywhere. My son visited there, and he had a fly rod that I got for some reason or another, it was awarded to me, remember that rod, that little bamboo rod? AN: Yes. He died a long time ago (1991). His wife married another fellow then later and she’s still teaching fly fishing and things like that. BN: He was getting a recheck on his pilot’s license, and something went wrong with the airplane and it crashed. He was killed. I was awarded a Lee Wulff designed rod, and it was Lee Wulff by Lee Wulff and I gave it to my son. He has a friend that’s a wholesale salesman for fishing tackle, and he said that this is the original Lee Wulff rod. AN: Craig (our son) just happened to bring out that rod to show him and he said, “Oh, you’ve seen this?” The guy almost fainted because it was a real Lee Wulff original. That’s kind of nice. BN: The wholesale tackle salesman told him it’s worth about five thousand dollars now. So, you know, that’s kind of scary. I don’t think Craig uses it anymore. 14 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AN: He probably doesn’t! He’s probably got it on display. TB: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about how you see the future of fly fishing? BN: Well, I think it’s gaining and I think there’s more people concerned about being able to fly fish than any other thing. I mean there are guides now that live off of fly fishing. TB: But is that hurting the sport? BN: No, I don’t think so. I think if anything, it helps it and most of the guys that I know that guide are very happy to release the fish. We’ve made a tool to be able to release those fish. Should I show her that? AN: Sure, yes, that would be good. TB: Wait, not right now, lets finish the tape part of the interview. I’ve heard some people not being happy with the current etiquette, feeling like there’s getting to be too many people and some of them are pretty rude. AN: I think in all sports and all of society, it’s just much more casual and not very nice sometimes. BN: Well, I know Gordy Swanson says, “It’s too political, the Federation’s getting too political.” There are too many guys that just want to run for office or something. I agree with him, to some extent, but I don’t agree totally. He’s got a good mind and he’s a good guy and everybody isn’t going to be as good as he is, and he’s got to figure that out. End of Side One, Tape Two BN: Gordy has property up on the Stilly. When we have an outing there he just takes care of everybody and does a great job. We have a McKenzie Cup; the McKenzie Cup goes between the two clubs, between the McKenzie Fly Fishers and the Evergreen Fly Fishers. Whoever catches the biggest fish, or I think it’s the biggest steelhead; they get to take the trophy home. I think the Everett guys have really done awfully well and have retained their possession of that trophy. Sometimes we get some pretty good guys here too, don’t get me wrong, there’s some awfully good guys here, good fisherman. Of course that’s not all there is in life, there’s more to association with people that you respect and like and they are easier to find in the fly clubs than they are anywhere else in the country. It seems like these people that are in a fly fishing club have more ability to be semi-polite. You very seldom hear bad language with the guys that are fly fisherman, I’m not sure, but they may be hoping The Lord will forgive them. If they pay attention it comes out that way. It just seems to be that way. I’ve gone to church for a long time and I believe in the Christian way of life, and I try to keep my language reasonable, and some guys, they just, man, it embarrasses me. I didn’t use to be that like before I went to college and was in the Navy, why I heard some strange speaking and I think I responded (but I’m not positive) in some way. There are some good guys in the Navy too, but in the fly club, you’ll find an awful lot of them. There’s something that turns them on to fly fishing, and I think it has something to do with character. It’s hard to find a real jerk in the fly clubs. Most of them are really good people, and its fun to know them. You don’t just talk about fly fishing every moment, you have some other conversations. We hope that we get enough guys with the right attitudes that will be able to present ourselves to other organizations to help save, what we consider to be a wonderful resource, and that’s the fish and the sport. We’re getting to the point now where you have to buy so many licenses and do so many strange things -- like if you want to go crabbing when you’re down there on the bay; you have to have a license for that. And if you want to take … I’m going to get this so I can show you. 15 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I’ve gotten to a point where I stuff my licenses into one thing here, and I’ll take them out for you, it’s amazing what’s here. That kind of bothers me but if it’s going to save the sport, why then that’s great! I’ll just read them off to you here. Now this is a boating card, and it says “has successfully completed the boating safety course, which meets the standards set by the Natural Association of State Boating Law Administrators.” I have to keep that with me. And here’s a shellfish license so you can get things like clams and crabs, when you’re down there fishing in the salt chuck. Senior citizen permanent license number, hunting/angling license, that’s all well and good, but by the time you’re through adding the other things on here, the cost of this punch card, you think that you’re saving something by being a senior citizen, let’s hope that we are sometime -- no charge down at the bottom, no charge, so you’re getting the hunting and fishing license basically for being an old guy. And all these things, you know, it’s a darn nuisance -because we are tested. Now this has something to do with the guiding, but pretty soon you wonder what’s going to happen. You carry all of this so you’ll be able to fish. I hope it helps them but I wonder how helpful some of this stuff is. I hope it helps all of the agencies that do take care of the fish. And watch out for real bubble heads out there in the water. Anyway, I thought we’d bring that in. Well let’s see, what else can I confuse you with? TB: No, no, I think that’s good. Maybe the only other thing I have a question about is you said you went fishing in New Zealand. Where else have you gone that’s kind of exotic? Have you been to Christmas Island? BN: Yes, I’ve been to Christmas Island several times and also to Mexico, Belize, and to Los Rogues. That’s an island just north of Venezuela. It’s kind of fun to go there and see it. Bone fish is the big thing there. I’ve also fished in Argentina at the south end where the rivers run into the sea. I flew down there with Marty Rathje a long time ago. AN: And Alaska. You’ve been to Alaska several times. I remember fishing “Yes Bay” near Anchorage with a group of friends. BN: Oh yes, we go to Alaska and British Columbia. In fact, every fall for many years, I think back twenty years that we’d go to Tofino, B.C. and there’d be, Dick Padovan and let’s see … John Fabian went with us once. My son and grandson went with us a couple times and others. It was a wonderful group. TB: Well, I think that’s it for my questions. Then maybe you can also show me the release tool. BN: Oh the release tool, yes! AN: You should demonstrate how that works. BN: Oh yes, I’ve got a demonstrator too. TB: Okay. End of Recording 16 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 17 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Lyn Dennis interview [transcript]
Part of: Lyn Dennis interview
Date: 1993-02-11
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies
Related Collection: Women in the commercial fishing industry research collection
Local Identifier: dennis19930211_transcript
Text preview (might not show all results): Lynn Dennis Interview 1 Washington Women’s Heritage Project, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Interview with Lynn Dennis Interview Date: 1993 February 11 Interviewer: Carole Teshima Morris Locatio
Show moreLynn Dennis Interview 1 Washington Women’s Heritage Project, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Interview with Lynn Dennis Interview Date: 1993 February 11 Interviewer: Carole Teshima Morris Location: Transcription by: Bonnie Gregory 2007 June 28. [TAPE 1. SIDE A] MORRIS: This is February 11th, 1993 and I am interviewing Lynn Dennis. Okay, Lynn, for the record, how old are you? DENNIS: Oh, I’m 31 years old. MORRIS: And you were born where? DENNIS: In Bellingham, Washington. MORRIS: Lynn, when did you start fishing? DENNIS: Oh, about ten years ago. MORRIS: On your own, or…? DENNIS: Well, actually I got into fishing through my, he was my boyfriend at the time and he was a fisherman and so I went out fishing with him and got my first taste of fishing and thought to myself, “Well, gee, I can probably do this on my own.” So I ventured out and started in the Nooksack River with a little 12-foot boat. MORRIS: How long was it before you got your own boat? DENNIS: Well probably- I’d say I went fishing a couple of years as a crewmember and then decided to get my own boat, and so I began in the Nooksack River with the 12footer and then began getting bigger skiffs- open skiffs- and then working my way up to a small gill-netter, which I have today; it’s about a 21-foot gill-netter with a reel on it, and I fish mainly up at Point Roberts for Sockeye salmon. MORRIS: So, can you explain about the tribal fisheries, can anybody in the tribe start going fishing, or…? DENNIS: Well, you have to be a tribally enrolled- well, I shouldn’t say tribal- you have to be an enrolled tribal member and you have to get a number through the tribe and once you get enrolled and get that number then you are eligible to get a treaty license to commercial fish. And also that would include getting clams and also crab. MORRIS: And so you don’t fish in the river at all anymore? Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Lynn Dennis Interview 2 DENNIS: Not anymore, not anymore. MORRIS: You’ve moved on to bigger things? DENNIS: Well, I shouldn’t say that, I don’t think it’s really a way of looking at it, but I really enjoy the openness of the water rather than- to me it seems, I feel more refined when I’m in the river, although it’s kind of fun to go fishing in the river. I haven’t been fishing in the river for years, but it’s kind of fun because you get in line at a drift and you wait, wait your turn to drift, and then during the time that you’re waiting for your drift then you can visit with the other fishermen and fisherwomen, so that’s kinda nice, but I don’t really miss it. I like the openness of Point Roberts, for example. MORRIS: Does your boat have a name? DENNIS: It sure does! The Humdinger [laughter], named by my mother. MORRIS: And you bought this new, right? DENNIS: Yes. In fact I ordered the boat and had it built and paid it off and went fishingsalmon season. MORRIS: Alright. This is a growler boat, is that right? DENNIS: Mm hmm, yes. And it has a [“wahouse”] on it. MORRIS: Oh, it does. So you stay on your boat when you’re…? DENNIS: Well, I normally don’t, I usually have my crewmember that I hire sleep in the boat and watch over my boat and I’ll sleep in the camper with my parents. MORRIS: Well that’s nice. Who do you usually take as a crewmember? DENNIS: Somebody who’s strong and- [laughter] strong and has a good background in terms of mechanical abilities and somebody that has some fishing experience. Not too excited about taking-we call them “greenhorns”- out fishing. MORRIS: So does this mean you usually have a man or a woman? DENNIS: Well, I usually have a man just because of the mechanical abilities, but I’ve had women fish with me too in the past. MORRIS: How many women do you estimate are in the [inaudible]? DENNIS: Well, I would say that the number has increased, for example for the Lummi tribe, I would say that roughly 25% are women that fish. Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Lynn Dennis Interview 3 MORRIS: Wow, that many. DENNIS: I’d say so. Or that might be even a little high, maybe more like 20%. MORRIS: What are your estimates as far as the total fleet? DENNIS: I don’t know. I’ve been told we have approximately 3200 tribal members. I’ve been told there’s about 800 who commercial fish, and that would include purseseiners, gill-netters, and skiff fishermen, fisherwomen. MORRIS: Do you do your own gear work? DENNIS: No, I don’t. I probably-- I know I should learn how, but I don’t. What I do normally is I’m very busy in my other work and other jobs that I do that I haven’t taken the time out to learn how to repair gear. I do know how to hang net, but generally what I do is I take it to a friend of mine and I have her hang my net. I pay her to hang my net. In fact, I got ran over last year really bad by a big pleasure boat and had to get the net repaired, I had to drive my boat from Point Roberts down to Bellingham and take the net off the boat and run it and have- her name is Rachel Manlove- have her repair the net and once she got that done- it probably took her about two days- then I had to load it back on the truck and then load it back on the boat and so it was quite a process, but generally I don’t hang my gear. MORRIS: So, it’s pretty expensive to have backup gear, right? DENNIS: Oh, yes, yes, well, it’s- gear is expensive. People think that fishing is all glorified, but it’s not. They think that you make lots of money all the time, and that’s not true. I could go out fishing one day and make just enough money for fuel and lunch, and then the next day I could do very well, so commercial fishing is definitely a gamble. MORRIS: Like you said, you have other jobs: for the tribe you do public relations work. How much time do you actually spend fishing out of a year? DENNIS: Well, generally I try to take the month of August off from the college and fish, because when I get into the fishing mode it’s real exciting and I get to get out in the fresh air and have some time to myself. I don’t have to dress up, I don’t have to wear high heels or makeup or… I can just put on my jeans and boots and go out fishing, and I really like that a lot. MORRIS: So it’s not so much the money that attracts you? DENNIS: Well, the money is attractive to me, but I think that just having that time to myself and I really enjoy the water, that the money is definitely a plus, but at the same time I enjoy the quietness and the serenity of when I’m out in the water. MORRIS: What about bad weather? Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Lynn Dennis Interview 4 DENNIS: Bad weather. Well, that’s something that, that I’ve learned not to fool around with, because I’ve had a couple of close calls fishing, and I think that when- at least for me, when I’ve been fishing- I have the attitude that “Oh, I can do anything out in that water and I’ll be okay.” But after having a couple of close calls it’s changed my attitude and made me more respectful of the weather and not to take any risks and- not that I have in the past a lot, but for example, one time I was leaving Sandy Point and I wanted to get up to Point Roberts that night- get my boat up there that night- and I knew it was blowing, but I didn’t really realize how hard it was blowing, because I thought “Oh, it’s only going to take me, oh, I’d say maybe a half hour to get up to Point Roberts from Sandy Point.” Wrong. It took me a good two-and-a-half, three hours and it was rough out. My parents were really worried about me and thank goodness I had a CB on my boat , but they were really concerned and I didn’t realize until I was about halfway there that I thought and realized, “It is really rough out here. Am I even going to make it?” And that was a scary feeling, and so I learned a very good lesson from that attempt to want to go against Mother Nature and still try to get to my destination and I realized that it really wasn’t that important; I could have waited until morning and gone out fishing. Maybe I wouldn’t have been where I wanted to fish but at least I wouldn’t have been taking the chance that I took. MORRIS: And you were by yourself, you didn’t have your crew? DENNIS: No, I had my crew with me, but… It’s still, it can get pretty scary out there. MORRIS: Does the fleet sort of stick together, do they kind of all move out to the point at the same time? DENNIS: Well, not necessarily. Well, there’s quite a few fishermen who head out to the salmon banks, which is right off the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and then there’s fishermen who fish around this area, around Lummi Island, and then there’s also fishermen up at Point Roberts, so all the fishermen have their own preferences to where they like to fish. Generally, it’s places that they know how to fish, because they’re certain- let’s say for example up at Point Roberts, there’s a reef up there. Depending on what the tide is doing, depending on how deep your net is, you can’t just fish there, and so fishermen have their preference as to where they like to fish. Maybe they felt lucky at one area as compared to another area, and so it really varies. It just depends on the individual fisherman or fisherwoman. MORRIS: Does anyone else in your family fish? DENNIS: Yes, in fact everybody fishes in my family. My brothers have skiffs and gillnetters and my mother and father have a gill-netter, so everybody fishes. And it’s fun too, because we can do something where we’re making money and at the same time we’re getting to spend time with each other. [Interruption- knock on door]. MORRIS: Do you think you’re ever experienced discrimination or anything because you’re a woman? Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Lynn Dennis Interview 5 DENNIS: Of course [laughter]! MORRIS: What, like what? DENNIS: Well, when I first began fishing in the river nobody took me seriously, and I was made fun of and joked around about because I think the fishermen did not think I was serious about pursuing this fishing. Through time, they realized that I was serious and that I did mean business and that I was going to be fishing for a long time, and it’s like in a sense earning my keep. And now I’m one of the guys, one of the fishermen, so to speak. When fishing comes around other fishermen ask me “Oh, so Lynn are you getting ready for fishing? How deep are you going, how deep is your net going to be?” Questions like that, so I’ve been accepted and they realize that I’m serious about it now, so they treat me differently. MORRIS: Did it make you mad or anything? DENNIS: Mm hmm, it made me mad. I think that it’s probably difficult for men to see a woman get into an industry that they’ve been in all their lives. I mean, I’m sure it was difficult, but there’s getting to be more and more women involved in the fishing industry that it’s becoming very common for women to be fishing now and it’s, though my eyes, quite acceptable by the men. MORRIS: Do you think any of this was actual harassment, or more just of a…? DENNIS: No, not at all harassment, I just think that many men were not used to seeing women fish, but I do have to say something that I think is very, very prevalent in that if any one of us gets in trouble on the water, there’s plenty of help out there. If somebody breaks down, needs to be towed in, there’s somebody there right away to help out, and so what I really like about it when I’m out fishing is that there’s always somebody there to help out if you get in trouble, so it’s very important to have a CB on your boat. But I think that says a lot. I’m very proud of my people in that sense, that when somebody’s in trouble or in distress there’s plenty of fishermen, fisherwomen who are willing to help out. MORRIS: So, when you were growing up were your parents fishing, or not at that time? DENNIS: Well, my dad always fished up Alaska, fished a purse-seiner throughout Alaska, so he would be gone for months at a time and fished up there. MORRIS: So you knew about fishing but you never really had the opportunity of…? DENNIS: Right, right. Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Lynn Dennis Interview 6 MORRIS: So what do you think is going to be happening in this industry, do you think that, you know the management of the resources and the politics, what kind of effect do you think that’s going to have? DENNIS: Well, the US-Canada Treaty has had a devastating effect and impact for both Indian and non-Indian fishermen in the state of Washington in that the treaty that Regan has signed basically gave away all of our rights for that duration of that treaty because it’s hurt a lot of us financially. We’ve gone from days of fishing during an opening to hours, and what’s really difficult is that for example a father supporting his family of five children, goes out fishing the season opens up 5am Monday morning, closes Tuesday morning 9am. He goes out fishing, he’s out there, has his nets set out at the beginning of the opening, then his motor breaks down. He can’t get anybody to fix that motor and he loses out on that opening. And the way that the openings have been going we’ve only been getting- last year I think we got six, maybe five or six openings for the whole Sockeye salmon season. That’s really scary. I don’t have any children. I don’t have a husband, so I don’t have a family that I have to support, but it’s been very devastating to many of our families here on the reservation because of the reduction of hours, because of our allocation of salmon has been decreasing each year whereas the allocation of salmon for the Canadians has bee on the upswing. But I do know that the tribes are meeting about this treaty now, they’re in Bellevue as we speak. I don’t know what the outcome will be, but it’s about time that we US citizens do something about this. And I do know that the tribes are working on it, I don’t know how much the non-Indian fishermen are involved but I do know that it’s a very important issue to the Washington state tribes. MORRIS: Have you ever considered getting involved in political actions in that regard? DENNIS: Well, I’ve considered it. I think that the kind of work that I do now, it’s not focused on politics, but I end up being involved very much so with the tribal politics because I work at the casino and I work at the college and those are the two big agenda items to the Council. In terms of possibly getting involved politically in regards to the fisheries, I would definitely consider it. I feel- I always go when it feels right, when the timing is there and… But we’ll see what happens in the future. My brother is involvedBobby is involved- with the Lummi Indian Fish and Game Commission and he attends a lot of these types of meetings and is a representative of the tribe, so I feel very good about that because whenever I have any questions I can go and ask him and I feel good that there is somebody else in my family that’s involved, because I feel that in order for us to have control of our destiny, and have control of our future through education, plus having out tribal members be involved in important issues such as fishing. MORRIS: Um, did you tell me a few days ago that you were getting into the crab? DENNIS: Well, I am in the crab business and I don’t know why, but I am [giggling]. I have 50 crab pots and I commercial crab them. MORRIS: When did you start that? Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Lynn Dennis Interview 7 DENNIS: I bought them about 3, 4 months ago. MORRIS: So how often do you go out? DENNIS: Well, I actually don’t go out, I have my brother watch over my crab pots, and we’ve worked out a percentage. MORRIS: So you’re a crab pot despot? [laughter] DENNIS: I wouldn’t say that. We’re allowed to have up to a hundred pots, tribal members. But I have 50, you have to have 50 in order to get a crab license here. MORRIS: So is that out in Sandy Point, that area? DENNIS: We have different areas, Sandy Point, right out here at Lummi Bay, down by the Fisherman’s Cove, so there’s various- there’s different areas to crab, Lummi Island, so-- Just depends on where you want to crab, but we have boundaries that we have to adhere to. MORRIS: So this is something that, since your brother’s actually doing the work, you just wanted to diversify a little bit? DENNIS: Yeah I wanted to diversify a little. There’s not many women who have invested and have crab pots so I guess I’m just somebody who likes to be out in the front tier, I guess, so to speak, and I think what’s really good about the way I was brought up was that my father taught me to realize that even if I am a female that I am just as capable as other males, so I tend to delve out into areas that the traditional woman doesn’t get involved in such as investing. I’ve takes some risks in terms of fishing in terms of crabbing, in terms of investing and I’m glad that I’ve taken those risks because they’ve turned out to be financially smart moves, but, at the same time, it’s been kind of scary, and scary too in the sense that there’s not many other women that are involved in like let’s say fishing or crabbing. So I guess I like to be out in front and doing something innovative and creative. MORRIS: So part of the challenge is the management, it’s not just the work? DENNIS: Oh, yes, definitely, and I like challenges. That’s why I’ve opted to get into the fishing industry and the crabbing. I think it makes me more of a well-rounded person to understand the other areas of being a tribal member, learning about fishing, learning about crabbing. I don’t know very much about crabbing, I’m learning, but I think it’s good to be a well-rounded person, to be able to talk to a fisherman, be able to talk to Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123
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Title: Atwater - Mr. Popper's Penguins
Date: 1948-01-11
Description: One letter from Florence Atwater to Elizabeth Rider Montgomery. Mr. Popper's Penguins was a Newbery Honor book in 1939. Illustrated by Robert Lawson, the story continues to be enjoyed today.
Digital Collection: 20th Century Children's Authors
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: 20th century children's authors collection: writing about writing in letters and personal narratives
Local Identifier: 20thCCA_atwater
Text preview (might not show all results): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <mods xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w
Show more<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <mods xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <identifier type="local">20th Century Children's Authors - Atwater</identifier> <abstract> ---------- 20th Century Children's Authors - Florence Atwater - Mr. Popper's Penguins ---------- ---------- 20thCCA_Atwater_01 ---------- 7861 South Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois January 11, 1948 Miss Elizabeth R. Montgomery Seattle, Washington My dear Miss Montgomery: I am sorry to have been so long in answering you. I did get your questionnaire, but found it a little formidable. Indeed I did not know how to answer a good deal of it. However, I can probably answer the questions in your letter - at least about Mr. Popper's Penguin's. My husband has been hopelessly paralyzed for the last fourteen years - but the facts about his career before then you could probably dig out of some old Who's Who. When he was quite young he taught Greek at the University of Chicago (I was one of his students there, as a matter of fact) but he gave up the academic life for journalism. For a number of years he wrote a humorous column for the old Chicago Evening Post over the signature Riq. He used also to write articles for magazines. As for the genesis of the penguin book, it grew out of our seeing the Byrd movies of Antarctica expedition. We were so enchanted with the movies of the penguins that like Mr. Popper. We sat through the movie twice. My husband began the book shortly after - probably with our own two daughters in mind for the audience. He abandoned the manuscript, however, and I dug it out of his desk a couple of ---------- 20thCCA_Atwater_02 ---------- years after his stroke, and decided to finish it. (I had previously done a few short pieces for magazines myself). The original manuscript was much more of a fantasy than the final form: it was all a sort of dream. I rewrote the first few chapters and supplied a practical domestic background. The humorous chapters, such as the one where the repairman is called to bore holes in the icebox for the penguins, I left untouched. The last few chapters I had to supply entirely. Does this answer your questions? It is kind of you to be interested, and I am sorry to have been to slow in answering. Sincerely yours, Florence Atwater (Mrs. Richard Atwater) </abstract> </mods>
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Title: Channel Town Press, January 27, 1988
Date: 1988-01-27
Digital Collection: Fishtown Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Fishtown Collection
Local Identifier: Fishtown0044

Title: Katrina Jez interview [transcript]
Part of: Katrina Jez interview
Date: 1993-02-11
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies
Related Collection: Women in the commercial fishing industry research collection
Local Identifier: jezk19931512_transcript
Text preview (might not show all results): Katrina Jez Interview 1 Washington Women’s Heritage Project, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Interview with Katrina Jez Interview Date: 1993 May 12 Interviewer: Carole Teshima Morris Location: Wh
Show moreKatrina Jez Interview 1 Washington Women’s Heritage Project, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Interview with Katrina Jez Interview Date: 1993 May 12 Interviewer: Carole Teshima Morris Location: Whatcom County, Washington Transcription by: Megan Bezzo, 2007 June 19. [TAPE 1. SIDE A] MORRIS: Okay, Katrina. Why don’t we start with how old you are, a little bit about your background, where you were born and how long you’ve been in Whatcom County? JEZ: Okay. Um, I’m thirty-five. I was born in Texas. I’ve been in Whatcom Count y about seven years and I started fishing when I arrived here and fished for about six years. MORRIS: So did you fish here in the county? JEZ: I fished in Alaska, mostly around Craig and Ketchikan – the southeast. MORRIS: Did you have any previous exp erience with fishing? How did you get into that? JEZ: I got into it because of [Fred?]. He ran the boat and I went with him and learned. It’s pretty common in purse-seining to take on new people anyway. MORRIS: So your whole experience was in purse-seining? JEZ: Mmm hmm. MORRIS: And that involves kind of a larger crew than gillnetting, right? JEZ: Purse-seiners carry a crew of about five or six people. MORRIS: And so were you the only woman on the crew? JEZ: The only woman. MORRIS: And can you describe maybe a typical season? How many times did you go up? JEZ: Okay. You leave at the end of June to go up north. But the actual fishing season starts in May because you start working on the gear, getting the boat ready, putting the sand in the boat, painting the boat, stocking the boat with groceries, working on the nets. Then you leave at the end of June when the salmon start running toward the coast of Alaska. It takes 72 hours to get up there and you run the boat continually, day and night, until you get there. The first stop is Ketchikan. Um, the seasons are regulated by the State Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Katrina Jez Interview 2 – the fishing times and the areas. Every area is numbered and, um, mostly they work a two-day-on, two-day-off now. When I first started about six years ago there were times when you’d have four days in a row fishing. You’d be off two days and they you’d get three days to fish, depending on what the stocks are – the level of fish. MORRIS: What year was it when you started fishing? JEZ: ’86 was the first year. MORRIS: And how many did you say again? How many years did you fish? JEZ: Six years. MORRIS: Does the whole crew usually go up when you run the boat up? JEZ: Usually. Sometimes you’ll have a crew member join you from another area, come down and fly into Ketchikan from Bristol Bay or some of the areas finishing up. But for the most part the whole crew travels up together. MORRIS: Is it usually the same crew or do you switch other crew members? JEZ: Depends a lot on the boat. Um, the better boats with higher yields generally will have the same crew more often than not and the boats that, for some reason, either have some problem on them because they don’t like the skipper or because they jump to a boat and make a higher annual salary will go to different boats. MORRIS: So how many different boats have you fished on? JEZ: I just fished on the one. MORRIS: What’s the name of it? JEZ: It’s Elaine B. Actually, I fished on two boats with the same skipper. The Juliette first, which is a wooden seiner owned by a cannery and then Scott, the skipper, purchased a steel boat a couple years into my fishing career and we started working on that boat. MORRIS: So how big is the boat? JEZ: Um, a limit seiner is 58 feet. You’ll find most of the seiners to be 58 feet or 56 feet. It won’t be any more than 58 feet or else it’s not allowed to up to Alaska. Here in, um, Puget Sound they don’t have that footage limit and then there’s also a grandfather clause so you will see some boats that are over 58 feet going up to Alaska fishing because traditionally they had been there before. MORRIS: Do you feel like you’ve had equal opportunities fishing as far as salary? Let’s start with salary. Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Katrina Jez Interview 3 JEZ: Salary yes. No problem there. Um, each crew member gets a share which, depending on the skipper, how much you get can range between eight percent and ten percent. MORRIS: Does it matter how long you’ve fished what your percent is? JEZ: That varies by what the skipper wants to do. Um, like, a seventeen-year-old, eighteen- year-old, when they start out they only get a half-share. But then they’re given certain compensations. They’ll get to sleep in a little later in the morning and may not have to stay up as late at night or do as many night watches just because they’re younger. MORRIS: Do you want to talk some about what you do on a boat, what your duties are? JEZ: Okay. Um, well in the six years I was able to do just about everything on the boat. Um, three people are on the back deck at the standard piling gear. One piles web, one piles corks, and the other person piles the lead. I did everything except pile the lead because they were heavy and I didn’t want to have to do that anyway [chuckles]. Um, another crew member runs the skiff, which hauls the end of the net out and the boat is on one of the net and the skiff is on the other and the two are joined together and that’s how the fishing process works. Um, when you work with six on the boat, not only is the skipper on the deck, but then also there’s a deck person and they run around and hook up parts of the net, help bring the bag of fish at the end hydraulically into the hatch and dump it. Um, along with just the hauling in of the gear, there’s the duty of engineer, which also runs refrigeration in the new boats. Um, there’s cooks. And the n the other people do other jobs like certain repairs or more net work. Or they’ll do more watches. Everybody splits up the work. MORRIS: Do you feel like you ever were treated differently by crew members because you were a woman? JEZ: Well, in my case I was the skipper’s girlfriend so the first year I felt I had to work harder to, uh, prove that I could be there. But then after – maybe that’s just a fact of what you call ‘being green’- you’re ended up given more rotten work to do just because you haven’t been on the boat as long. Um, I think it really depends on the age of the people you’re working with and their experience with women. In my case, I didn’t have a lot of problems. Some women had had problems on boats because it’s just the quality of men they were working with, they didn’t have respect for women. But, I think that’s, um, very independent [sic] upon what boat you’re on. MORRIS: Were there ever any problems with your own privacy or - ? JEZ: No. MORRIS: - anything like that? Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Katrina Jez Interview 4 JEZ: As far as that goes, I think the men were really quite polite. Boats are fairly big. Um, in my case there was a state room upstairs and there’s two bunks there and then downstairs there’s a bulk hold but I never had to stay in the bulk hold. But women who have, you know, report no problems. MORRIS: Do you know of many other women out there who fish on purse-seiners as crew members? JEZ: More and more women are fishing for purse-seiners. Um, first it was either wives or girlfriends but now there’s women who are just joining in as a crewmember. And, um, I think it’s a pretty good way to make a living if you like that type of, uh, work. MORRIS: And why do you think that? What makes it a good living? JEZ: What makes it a good living? Um, it’s a short season – it’s July and August, part of September and you’re through. You can make- almost, if you want to live frugally- you could make a living doin’ it. If you, um, want to pursue something else – like some of the people, uh, do ski instructing – so then you have a summer season and you have a winter season of work. A lot of people travel. You get the opportunity to travel in the winter and go wherever you want. Um, you put in a lot of hours, like there are days where you work seventeen, eighteen, nineteen hours days. So if you stop and add up the hours that you put in, for your year of work in the two months, you’ve actually almost put in as much as somebody who works eight hours a day at a regular job. MORRIS: Have you noticed any changes over the six years? Maybe in the resources? Fishing time? Regulations? JEZ: I think the biggest changes I’ve seen are more in the boats. The market has demanded refrigerated fish to be able to get a good price for your fish. And that, in a lot of ways, has made fishing a lot easier because you’re delivering a colder product. You don’t have to deliver every night to a tender where you had to before because the fish wouldn’t be fresh enough. Now you can, you know, bring in your last net load for the day, go find a place, and anchor up and fish some the next morning without having to wait in line for a tender throughout the night and not get much sleep. So that has made things easier. And it’s a little bit more expens ive for the skippers to get into it and, you know, to keep up and keep competitive in the market. MORRIS: Do you ever do any of the bookwork or financial planning? JEZ: Nope. None of that. MORRIS: Do you see this as an ongoing job for you? JEZ: No, I don’t [chuckles]. MORRIS: So are you done with it now? Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington University Bellingham WA 98225-9123 Katrina Jez Interview 5 JEZ: I think I’ll be done with it, other than just goin’ up maybe for one month or something like that during our peak season. MORRIS: Did you feel like this was a good way to spend time with your boyfriend more than a real job? How did you feel when you first started it? JEZ: I actually thought it was a good way to earn a living. It was nice that, you know, we didn’t have to be apart during that time. MORRIS: Have you ever felt like there was any danger or that kind of thing with fishing? JEZ: Um, fishing can be very dangerous. Um, fortunately the person I worked for was very cautious about keeping his equipment in good working order so that things wouldn’t be breaking. But you’re dealing a lot of hydraulics. You’re dealing with lots of speed. You’re dealing with a lot of, um, weight. And when lines come tight they can snap. When they snap they can fly into you, into your face, push you overboard. Uh, seining is not one of the most dangerous fisheries. I think crabbing is the most dangerous fisheries. Plus, you’re working in all the icy conditions. In seining you’re working in the summers. The water’s a little bit calmer, but you do get some windy days. Um, as far as safety goes, I guess it depends on your mind. It’s part of the stress of fishing – you need to be watching to make sure of what other crewmembers are doin

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