Chapter 3

The Path to the Abode of the Damned

“Ring-ring-ring-ding-ding….!”  The ringtone of my phone sounds.  I spring up and quickly turn it off.  Five a.m.  Time to get back to the grind.  Work starts at six.  I step down the ladder, slip on a second pair of pants, put on a sweater and jacket and step into my rain boots.  My roommates roll under their covers as they gently exit their slumber.  A quick visit to the bathroom and off I go marching down the hallway.  My footsteps on the plywood flooring are clearly heard.  I make my way to the front door as other workers stagger between their rooms and the bathroom.

I breathe in deeply the crisp morning air as I make my way to the plant recalling the happenings of the past two days.  I’m still ecstatic about our all-night climb down the mountain.  I can’t wait for the next opportunity to do that again.  Yesterday was also a nice day.  A bunch of us piled into a taxi and went to town.  Going to town is our portal to the outside world.  Around here there is nothing but wilderness.  Literally.  No stores, no restaurants, not even catering trucks come here.  However there are pizza restaurants that make deliveries here bringing the most pathetic excuses for a pizza I’ve ever seen.  But to get toiletries, snacks, or anything else you have to go to town.  Jay, Ben, Vera, and I walked the streets together and visited several shops and souvenir stores.  I enjoyed window shopping and planning the gifts I would buy after the money starts rolling in.  Beautiful and unique gifts of quality northwestern craftsmanship grace the shelves but they aren’t cheap.  I ended up getting some postcards to send home and soap and shampoo.

Before going through the door of the plant I deviate my path to the opposite side of the driveway to gather juicy orange and red salmonberries for some much-needed nutrition because the food inside is not of the freshest ingredients.

The two days off work gave my hands a chance to heal but only a few hours after beginning work I can once again feel the painful effects of snatching thousands of pounds of fish returning to the flexor tendons and muscles.  Over the following several days I try to adjust to the strict and demanding work schedule adopting a sustainable pace that won’t land me in the hospital with carpal-tunnel syndrome, as well as managing my breaks so I don’t risk getting fired for being fifteen seconds late.  Typically break lasts about fifteen minutes.  We get two a day.  The foreman announces break to the supervisors who then very loudly yell, “break” so to be heard above the grinding hum of the machines.  Everyone immediately stops what they’re doing and heads over to the rain gear room to shed the rubber suits, gloves, and hairnets.  At the entrance to the rain gear room are two metal troughs and floor mats filled with iodine water for sanitization purposes.  A supervisor stands by to make sure we each splash and brush down our rain gear and boots to remove scales and bits of carnage before hanging the gear on the racks. Most of the workers then exit through the bay door to the dock where the kitchen staff serve coffee and donuts, or corn dogs, or left overs from the day before.  Sometimes even ice cream is served.  I rarely partake in the grab for the scavenger grub.

At least ninety-five percent of the workers satisfy their nicotine addictions during break.  The air downwind becomes a slow-drifting nauseous chemical fog so I stay upwind of the rest of the crew and just stare across the bay at the magnificent mountain peaks.  Some days a low fog rolls just above the surface of the glassy water.  Fewer are the days dominated by clear blue sky but their occurrence blesses the observer with unobstructed breathtaking scenery mixed with varying hues of blues and greens and sights of salmon leaping out of the water along the adjacent shoreline.  When Lenin yells, “Break is over.  Get back to work”, the moment of peace and beauty suddenly fades into drudgery once again.  Everyone scrambles to the rain gear room to get suited up.  After being late on my second day and subsequently threatened to be written up I avoided drinking a significant amount of water for a few days to prevent the need to go to the bathroom and that way I could just sit inside, close my eyes, and rest for about fifteen minutes with my rain gear on instead of participating in the mad rush to get out and then back into the rain gear during breaks.  However, this experiment failed and I suffered dehydration and fatigue as a result so I then resumed taking breaks for the sake of my health.

Fishing vessel slowly motors in amidst a slowly rolling low fog that reveals the peak of Bear Mountain in the distance

The work force consists of quite a diverse crowd, something fitting for a prison scene of a Hollywood film.  Men of all ages between eighteen and sixty, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians.  Many with tattoos covering their arms and neck.  From young smooth baby faces to those with rough leathered faces molded from years of hard living and further aged by alcohol and cigarette habits.  Many have little or no formal education and talk the slang they grew up with.  The “F”-word is the most used noun and adjective.  It’s used to describe both the good and the bad, the context only discernible by the tone of voice in which it is used.  There are several women working here too, very young and older alike.  Two young women with model-like features surprise me with their use of profanities.

The common bond between us all is a willingness to subject ourselves to a demanding work environment that would be considered harsh according to standards of the lower forty-eight.  Some were curious what it would be like to work in Alaska.  Others have been working in the Alaskan fishing industry for years.  Still others just couldn’t find any decent employment where they live.  I am of the latter.  The summer months are very slow for my main source of income so I needed a temporary job to supplement my photography income.  After sending out several resumes, and filling out online applications without absolutely any results I came across an ad on craigslist looking for people to work twelve to sixteen hours a day six to seven days a week in a salmon processing plant in Alaska.  The deal was that when they hire you they pay for your airfare from Seattle to Sitka and then back to Seattle if you complete the season.  The employee just needs to get to Seattle.  I instantly knew that this was a job I wouldn’t be denied.  After all, there are no special skills required, just the willingness to work long hours on your feet.

I responded to the email the same day and then received a request for an interview with a recruiter in San Diego.  The interview seemed to go well although the man interviewing me seemed to try his best to discourage me from pursuing the job.  He kept reemphasizing the long hours and told stories of the many people that quit and get fired.  I reassured him every time that I would endure to the end.  A couple weeks later I received the confirmation email and a one-way plane ticket from Seattle to Sitka.  And here I am.

WAGE SLAVERY

On the third day of work the power suddenly went out.  The machines suddenly halted and their noise was replaced by a roar of the workers.  So loud was the yelling it sounded like a prison riot.  The supervisors hurried to regain order and sent us outside to wait nearly two hours until power was restored.  Despite the long wait we weren’t allowed to leave or go to the bunker house even though we were not getting paid for this down time. While sitting and resting on the dock another worker, a Hispanic man of probably about thirty years of age, strikes up a conversation with me.  He squats down next to me, “How’s it going?”

“Not bad.  Just trying to survive eight more weeks of this.”

“Yeah man, I’ve been doing this for six years.”

We end up in a conversation about wage slavery, corporate power, and republicans.  He describes the tough working conditions, low pay, and lack of regard for the workers and suggests that he is somehow forced to do this work because of a lack of other options.  He blames the republican owners of corporations in California for their greed and cites this as the reason he couldn’t find work there.  “I haven’t been able to find work there either,” I tell him.

“What did you do before this?”, he asks.

“Well, I still do what I did before.  Mostly modeling and stock photography.”

“Then why are you here?”

“My work is real slow in the summer.  I was searching for a temporary summer job but found nothing, then I saw an ad for this job and just figured I could definitely qualify for this, so here I am.”

He further charges the owners of this processing plant accusing them of earning massive profits and not sharing the wealth among the workers.  “Without us they wouldn’t have a company.”

“Without them we wouldn’t have this job,” I correct him.  “We may hate this work but we chose to come here.  We found no work in California but we did here.”

“Man, I had no other choice than to do this.”

“Man, this is America.  You’re not forced to work anywhere.  There are always options.  You may not like the options at the time but sometimes you have to make sacrifices, and it’s hard.  You don’t even have a family to support.  You’re got the whole world for yourself.  I have to leave my family to come work here and the money I make will go to pay rent and expenses there.  You’re alone, it’s just you.  No outside expenses.  Save your money.  Invest it into something that will make you money.  I lived out of my car for a few years to reduce expenses, all the while working.  Sacrifice.  A lot of millionaires sacrificed a lot to get where they are today.”

He thinks about it for a moment, “Yeah, you’re right.  I’m supposed to be getting paid ten-sixty-five an hour because of all the other seasons that I worked for other companies.  I talked to Kyffon about it and he said I just need to provide a statement from those companies showing how many hours I worked then I’ll get ten-sixty-five.  That’s two-thousand dollars more in earnings for the season.”

“Go get it.  That’s good money.  Get it then save it, figure out what you want to do.”

After another long day of labor I return to my room in the bunker house.  Melvyn (the DJ) and Mackenzie (the engineer student) are there chatting.  “How was your day?”, I ask.

Mackenzie extends his hand towards me and reveals his right forefinger fatly wrapped in white medical dressing.  “Already?”, I exclaim.  “What happened?”

He explains that while working on the loading dock his finger got smashed between a sharp steel edge of the railing on the conveyor belt and a fifty pound block of frozen salmon.  The tip of his finger was nearly severed off.  He was sent to the hospital and they stitched it up.  He’s going to continue working but only light duty.

Melvyn and I remind ourselves of the many occupational hazards of the plant and the fact that the long hours and monotonous routine further amplify that risk.  Wet and frozen floors create slip hazards, uncoiled hoses extended on the floor along the walls beg for you to trip, and heavy cutting machinery and conveyer belts with pinch points crave worker’s blood.  My goal is not just to finish the season but to do so without injury.

Our room with my bunk bed on top

Every day of this first week of work rumors are heard of a huge catch of salmon and the plant going into full operation of twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.  Every morning we check the board to see our start time and nearly every day more workers are shipped in, most from the major cities of Seattle, Miami, and San Diego where the company sent recruiters to interview applicants.  Some are locals, such as Garrett.  I had met Garrett on day three, a few hours before the hike up Mount Verstovia.  I went to the old bunker house to get some water from the drinking fountain.  A lean Hispanic man with a short buzz haircut and wearing a white wife-beater tank top was standing nearby outside the door to his room.

“I like your shirt”, he says.

I glance down at my own white wife-beater tank top, “Hey, thanks”.

Soft spoken and with lethargic speech Garrett introduces himself and begins talking non-stop.  I had come only to fill my water bottle but I end up learning more about Garrett than I could have ever wanted to know.  He’s thirty-five years old, unmarried, lives at home in Sitka with his grandmother and alcoholic father.  He got into some trouble with the law up in Anchorage when he was in high school.  He’s been bouncing around working different jobs from the seafood industry to construction work.  His grandmother had a medical emergency one time but his father was too drunk to respond to the situation.  On and on he went.  I hardly said anything but just waited patiently for him to finish, which he never would have finished had I not finally broken in and excused myself from the conversation.  “You know, I’ve really got to go now.  It was great talking to you.  I’ll see you around.”

GOING, GOING, GONE

The attrition rate is high.  Some guys were fired when Tiny caught them smoking pot on the property.  Still, many of the workers smoke in secret.  One night, at about two in the morning, I was startled from my slumber by shouting in one of the rooms of the bunker house.  I listened attentively and could hear the voice of a young man yelling obscenities at someone else.  “What, are you threatening me?  Come on you muthaf__er!”  On and on he went yelling then there was a brief pause, and then he continued, “Ha!  See!  I ain’t goin’ nowhere!  I’m gonna be here for two more months.”  I heard the following day that it was a young pit-faced white guy that caused all the commotion.  Tiny let him cool down for the night then he was promptly fired and kicked out in the morning.

Some get fired but more are the ones that simply quit.  The reasons vary but usually are due to conflicts with management or other employees, or, more commonly, unwillingness to further endure the physical discomforts of pain and fatigue.  Michael, the guy on the airplane, has a conflict with another employee who complained to Juan that Michael had threatened him.  Michael totally denies this charge but has nonetheless been ordered to stay away from the other worker.  While on break one day, he shares with me his philosophy of the ideal world and the concept of “the leavers” versus “the takers”.  The former being peoples that live in harmony with nature, respecting the earth and its resources and never exhausting those resources or exploiting them.  “The takers”, he condemns, are those who industrialize the natural resources and race to beat out competition and reap as much profits as possible.  They take and leave nothing for others.  I remind him that he is a taker too.  from the clothes he wears to the food he eats, all of that is provided by companies that do some amount of harm to the earth, and do so in the name of profits.  The only way to truly stop pollution and the slow destruction of the planet and it’s resources is to live in the most basic fashion much like the indigenous peoples of centuries ago.  Everything should be hand-made of natural materials, period.  No computers, no cell phones, no iPods, no internet, no intense agriculture, no motorized transportation.  “In fact, by working here you are contributing to the problem.”

Michael starts to see the reality and understand how difficult it would be to create his alternative society of leavers.  “Even if you did create a sizable society of leavers it would ultimately be destroyed by the much more powerful takers.”  History attests to this.  Less than a week later Michael leaves Silver Bay.

Although we are pushed to work hard, consideration is given to the older less capable people, at least for a while.  A man I will simply refer to as the ‘sailor troll’ is a short stalky and physically well-worn guy probably in his 50’s.  With long thinning un-groomed brown and gray hear and a pronounced hunch-back posture he slowly shuffles along on two short legs with his pants’ belt line hanging low on his undefined hips revealing a bit of crack in the back.  After the supervisors tried him out on a few different tasks he ultimately ended up being the guy that watches the trays of fish as they roll onto a second conveyor belt that goes to the freezer.  It’s a T-shaped junction that doesn’t work one-hundred percent of the time.  In other words, the trays sometimes jam up at the intersection and then get backed up on the main belt.  This results in the jammed trays of fish getting lifted up and flipped over onto the floor.  To prevent this from happening someone has to watch the trays and manually push the trays through when they jam up.

‘Sailor troll’ has been assigned the task of keeping an eye on the fish trays going to the freezer.  Sadly, he doesn’t’ seem very adept to handling the task.  Trays of fish inevitably jam up and he is too short to reach the turn-off switch and too weak to dislodge the jammed tray.  Fish end up all over the floor on several occasions and the situation is only corrected when one of the supervisors rushes to the rescue.  ‘Sailor troll’ scrambles to clear the floor of the tossed fish but after a week or so of pointless effort ‘sailor troll’ is no longer an employee of Silver Bay Seafoods.  Whether he quit or was fired, I don’t know.

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Wednesday of the second week, my tenth day at Silver Bay, I’m one of only a handful of people selected to work.  There are no fish to clean and sort.  More boats are scheduled to arrive the next day, so I, along with seven other guys, am assigned the annoying task of scrubbing clean hundreds of plastic pans, the ones we weigh the fish in.  During the six-hour ordeal I learn a little about another co-worker, thanks to my fluency in Spanish.  His name is Jorge Corona, a fifty-five year old man from Morelia, Mexico.  He has ten children. Jorge has worked at Silver Bay Seafoods for three years, this is his fourth.  He is a consistent worker, not the fastest and most able, but he does whatever task assigned to him without complaining and he always shows up for work.  After finishing the season here he tells me he will go to Arkansas where he butchers chicken wings for the Tyson Foods company, one of the world’s largest processors and marketers of chicken, beef and pork,  at a pay rate of nine dollars an hour.  When December comes along he will return to Mexico to spend Christmas and usher in the new year together with his family.  

At one in the afternoon we finish the grim work of removing bits and stains of guts and blood from the pans and are released for the day.  After another unfulfilling lunch from the cafeteria I leave the plant, return to the bunker house to get my camera, and walk up the trail behind the bunker houses to look for photography opportunities and feast on the abundant supply of salmonberries.  For a few hours I shoot and eat hundreds of delicious berries.  They are the perfect snack, the kind you just can’t stop eating.  I sample the taste of them individually and then handfuls at a time together with blueberries.  When walking back down the trail I observe a large figure climbing into a large stand of salmonberry bushes near the bottom of the road.  “Hey!  Those are my berries!”, I yell at him as I approach.

Derek is a tall muscular guy with a distinct mid-west accent.  Other than myself, I haven’t seen anyone else pick and eat berries with such enthusiasm.  Come to find out, he’s eating them for the same reason as I, the food at Silver Bay is no good.  Nature provides the best.  Derek works in the freezer pushing heavy shelf racks of frozen fish trays around.  His large football-player physique make him perfect for the job.  When he is fully geared up in the cold-weather Arctic gear worn for the job he looks truly like a force to be reckoned with, as if he could confidently walk along side a pack of polar bears.  Despite his physical attributions he is a very humble and down-to-earth kind of guy.

Fresh picked salmonberries and blueberries

As I walk down the hallway of the bunker house to my room I see Mackenzie standing outside his doorway talking to his new roommates inside (Mackenzie recently switched rooms).  “We’re going fishing, do you want to go with us?”

“Yeah!”, I tell him.

They had just returned from the fishing supply store in town.  No fishing poles, just hand lines.  The clerk assured them that they could catch salmon by throwing a heavy hand line from shore baited with a chunk of dead herring.  Together the six of us march down the road to the other side of Sawmill Creek.  At the mouth of the river salmon congregate in huge quantities awaiting the physical changes to take place in their bodies to cause them to embark on the final journey of their lives upstream to their native birth waters where they will spawn and enable the continuation of their remarkable species.  Fishermen on the opposite side of the river are successfully catching them on lures.

Fishermen casting for salmon on the other side of Sawmill Creek with Silver Bay Seafoods in the background

James, John, and Mackenzie wade into the shallow waters of the low tide and launch the bait as far as they can.  After several unsuccessful attempts they concede to the fact that the salmon probably don’t like chunked herring all that much.  At this stage of the spawning season some salmon are already suffering pre-spawn mortality.  They die for various reasons including parasites and diseases.  A large male pink salmon lies on his side taking light breaths in shallow water.  His motionless body would be easy prey for an eagle or bear,… or man.  James reaches down and picks up the dying salmon.  Noticing that it looks otherwise healthy he decides they will cook it and eat it.

The guys build a fire with small sticks and dry grass.  Paul admires the prehistoric appearance of the basic elements used to fuel the fire along wight he idyllic setting.  “This has always been one of my dreams – to build a campfire in the Alaskan wilderness.  Hey, will you take a picture of us?”

“Oh yeah, definitely”, I reply.

In the fading light of the final hour of the day backdropped by blueberry and salmonberry bushes with the bright orange flames of a small campfire sending a plume of smoke up to the heavens the guys pose for a truly classic photo each with his unique personality somehow portrayed and captured on the digital sensor of my Nikon D90.  It’s one of those pics that you just have to print and frame in your home or office.  A memory of the time and place of a very unique experience in life.

From left to right: Najea, Mackenzie, Paul, John, Chad

From left to right: Najea, Mackenzie, Paul, James, John

It’s close to ten p.m. and not quite dark yet.  I leave the camp before the cooking of the salmon and return to my bed for a good night sleep before beginning the cycle of sixteen hour days.  The rumors of the massive catch are true.  The following weeks will be a true test of endurance.  The schedule is posted on the board at the entrance to the bunker house.  We are divided into three shifts.  Shift A will work from six a.m. to ten-thirty p.m., shift B from two p.m. to six-thirty a.m., and Shift C from ten p.m. to two-thirty p.m.  With this shift schedule there is always the same number of workers laboring  non-stop twenty-four hours a day.  I feel fortunate to be on A shift so I can keep a somewhat normal sleep schedule.  I’ve already been averaging eighty hours a week, but one-hundred twelve hours per week?  That’s insane!  Life as I know it is about to change.  Welcome to the abode of the damned!

…continue on to Chapter 4