Heather Lende
The birthday party
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This afternoon, rainy and very windy.. tonight periods of snow. Gusty south winds. Tomorrow rain. Probability of precipitation 100 percent today, 100 percent tomorrow...
While I curse the gloom and slushing skies, the automated voice inside the radio never complains.
I hadn't realized how glum I was until my daughter suggested that for a New Year's resolution I "stop and smell the roses." It was pouring rain the day after New Year's, when my husband and I walked up the steps to Budge's back door for his ninetieth birthday party. In the living room a dozen friends and relatives sat on chairs in a circle balancing glasses and paper plates on their laps.
Leave it to Tom, the editor of the Chilkat Valley News, to liven things up. He wanted a picture for the paper. So he moved Budge and the next oldest person in the room, Budge's sister-in-law, Hazel, to the couch for a photo. Like Budge she was born in Haines and has spent her whole life here.
Every time it got quiet Tom jumped in with a question, tapping their collective memory of town that has more of an eye to the future than the past. Keeping warm was a big priority back then. Budge split wood for a dollar a cord. "If I ever got paid." His woodpile is still the most impressive in Haines.
"I'm tempted every time I go by" Tom confessed "to grab some."
Hazel, who talks rougher than she really is, said "Tom you dumb Cheechako, I bet you don't have wood a year ahead."
Tom agreed "wet wood burns slower, right?" and everyone laughed.
Budge told a story about how his parents got married. Budge's father and uncle worked at the Treadwell gold mine in Douglas. They got a lot of letters from a pretty school teacher they both loved. They agreed to let her choose which brother she would marry -- only they didn't tell her. Instead they looked at the salutation on the next letter -- she addressed Budge's father first as "Dearest" and his Uncle second with a plain "Dear". In the understatement of a lifetime, Budge said his father got the girl " ...and my uncle, well, he was bachelor 'till he died." The present-day English teacher at the party caught her breath and put her hand on her chest.
That's when Hazel reminded us, that in this country you were tough or dead.
Budge was born at the long-gone Presbyterian Hospital in Haines. A nurse nicknamed baby Fred, "Budge," because he moved around so much that he kicked the wooden slats out of his cradle.
His parents left the hospital for their cabin in a dog sled pulled by one big dog. It took all day to go seven miles because the dog sat down very time the snow got deep. The road wasn't built until 1917 when a card shark from Soapy Smith's notorious Skagway gang built the cannery. When Budge talked about him he held an in imaginary deck in his hands and pantomimed a sleight of hand. The cannery is one of the few manmade landmarks from Budge's youth still standing.
The brick kiln at the head of Mud Bay is so far gone you can barely figure out were it might have been. Budge told us the brick maker was an Englishman, so frugal he wouldn't heat his house. He wore a coat, fur mitts and a hat -- indoors -- until he inherited "something like half an English town" and left.
Which means Hazel isn't exactly right. There are really three options in Haines -- get tough, die or leave.
We left Haines when the sawmill my husband worked shut down sixteen winters ago. We thought it was too hard to stay with a young family and no real work.
Budge was our neighbor and landlord then. He must have been watching from his kitchen window as we hitched up the U-Haul, because he was at the end of the driveway when Chip pulled out, pressing a 20-dollar bill in his hand.
We were back before a year was up, in lots of ways because of Budge and people like him.
As we got on our coats to leave the party I asked Hazel if this wet winter was a sign of global warning. She said no way, they had lots of rain in the old days too. Brown Christmases even. I expected her tell me to be brave, you know, "get tough or...." But instead she said on the next full moon it will turn clear and cold. I thought she was teasing, but she wasn't.
Even if she's wrong, my inner weather has already improved, thanks to Budge and an evening of old stories. Besides, listening to Hazel and Budge is lot more fun than that fake little man inside my weather radio.