<Begin Segment 22>

DN: So you got out of the service, and what did you start doin'?

EH: Well, the kid I grew up with, he got a job at a salmon cannery in Alaska. I says, "Jiminy Crickets, that's what I want to do. I wanna make some money." And so my old boss, he got me a job at False Pass on Unimak Island. So I just got home, turned around, and left to go up to Alaska. My mom had a fit. "You just got home, you've been gone all these..." So, okay, so I went up there and spent six months, and then went back again the next year, and then the third year, then I, I went to Alitak on Kodiak Island, and I spent two years there. And then...

DN: What were you doing?

EH: Huh?

DN: What were you doing?

EH: Running the cannery.

DN: Oh, I see.

EH: Canning salmon. Well, in the four years that I canned salmon, I canned over... or I should say "we," over 400,000 cases of salmon. That's a lot of fish.

DN: That's a lot of fish. [Laugh]

EH: Oh, boy.

DN: People hardly ever buy canned salmon anymore.

EH: No. Well, look at the price of the Copper River kings right now. Aye-yay-yay. But my uncle wrote me, and he says, "When you get through in Alitak, why don't you come down to Petersburg and go fishing?" So I went down there and fished for five (months) with my uncle. Or, I had my own net and my own boat and everything. And we pooled our fish, and so then I spent the month of, last part of August and the month of September in Petersburg. Then I came home, and then I had enough money in the bank to loaf for a while, chase girls, and...

DN: [Laughs] Is that when you met Norma?

EH: No, no. There, I didn't meet her until they built the Agate Pass Bridge. That was in 1950, '50 or '51. And that year I went purse-seining with a friend of mine. And it was a fall run of dogs in a place called Chomley Sound, outside of Ketchikan. And the trip up, it was just absolutely gorgeous, just beautiful weather. And we got up there and went out to Chomley Sound, and everybody that was there, we were a little bit late getting there, and everybody had deckloads of fish. And during the night it started to rain. And you know what happened to the salmon? Up the river they went. So we didn't get very many fish. I made more money playing bingo at the Elks and Eagles club in Ketchikan than I did fishing. [Laughs] But then Norma and I were married in 1951, '52. '53, '52. And then I went to work at Keyport, at the torpedo station, and I retired out of there.

DN: Doing, what were you doing for them?

EH: I was a planner and estimator, and then when I, my back was getting so bad, so I had to have back surgery, and I had the back surgery, but I, I went out on a disability from them, and then Honeywell asked me to come to work for them, so I worked for, part-time, as a consultant for them for six years, which was a good deal.

DN: And when, so when did you officially retire finally?

EH: 1986. I left Keyport in 1979, and Keyport in -- or, I mean, Honeywell in '86.

DN: And I'm sorry, what, when did you go to work for, at Keyport? What year did you go to work at Keyport?

EH: 1953.

DN: '53.

EH: May, May of '53, yeah.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.