Ho, Ho, 2020, Ho - Humor Column

 

"Ho, Ho, 2020 Ho."


This is a different holiday season.

Masks, social distancing. People insisting that everything is normal and then having to get a footlong Q-tip shoved up their nose.

Didn't see this coming last holiday season, for sure.

The other day, I was trying to think what was on my mind 12 months ago and it was hard to erase The Hallmark Channel's "A Covidian Christmas" from my thoughts.

I'm sure I wasn't pondering having to stay six feet from everyone else and washing my hands obsessively with sanitizer.

If I had, I would have converted my apple shares into toilet paper and paper towel futures.

Didn't know I had apple "shares" 'did you? 

Well, many, many, many years ago, I "invested" in Ketchikan's first "apple" orchard out the road. One of my school chums insisted that (really!) Ketchikan is a good apple growing climate and that we'd make a killing once his trees got up and blooming. Well, they didn't. And we didn't.

But I digress.

I do know that 12 months ago. I was looking forward to getting off the island and going to see my son play some baseball down south. Turned out that watching that baseball in early March in Spokane was the last bit of "normal" for 2020. There was this growing concern over something that folks were calling the "beer virus." It had already popped up in Seattle, but over in Spokane there was little concern, no social distancing and no masks.

By the time we returned to Ketchikan, it was already time to start getting up close and personal with those super-swabbing Public Health nurses.

Speaking of the "beer" virus, you have to wonder how the makers of Corona beer managed to get us all so quickly on the same page to start calling it COVID 19. They were looking at a brand name Armageddon and some how we all shifted away from Corona Virus to COVID 19, which was the real name anyway (was Dos Equis the first to call it Corona Virus?).

Sorry, I digress again.

Of course, national and state and local elections were approaching on the horizon like an enraged water buffalo (didn't like getting the Q-tips stuck up his nose either). We were just starting to be bombarded with the soon to be incessant TV and radio political ads and the first telephone surveyors. You could tell they were early surveys because once they found I was an old white guy from Alaska, they thanked me for my time and hung up.

Talk about being typecast!

Yes, I am an angry, old white guy. But not because of politics. I am angry because every time I want to do something on a computer, I have to certify I am "not a robot." To a computer!!!

I also remember looking forward to 2020 being a normal weather year.

Remember we had actually, just that fall, come out of a "drought." As much as any place with 100 inches of rain could be considered "droughtish." Still, it was a drought and the lake levels were low and we were cornering the market on diesel generators to make up for it and everybody was clamoring for "renewable" energy even though it would cost tens of millions of dollars to establish those energy saving options in Our Fair Salmon City.

Then, 2020 being 2020, we had our wettest summer ever.  Which itself is a marvelous atmospheric joke. We could have the wettest October-November ever and no one would blink a waterlogged eye. You're supposed to be drowning in those months. But only if you have a decent summer to make up for it. Now twice in the last few years we have had record summer rainfall.  Fiddlesticks!

But at least it was a good fishing season, right?

Doesn't everyone say that the fishing is better when it rains because the salmon are closer to the surface? Not this year. And since the few salmon that returned had trouble getting up the creeks, well so much for the next few years.

Natch, you would think that all that summer precip dried out the clouds.

And you would be wrong.

in the last week or so, we just had the wettest eight-day stretch (22 inches) in Ketchikan since 1920.

Why? Because 2020. That's why.

Which leads me back to "A Covidian Christmas."

In this story, a stressed-out career woman from Seattle comes to Ketchikan to de-stress. She meets a hunky, plaid wearing Ketchikan fisherman (who actually has a PHD in molecular biology but prefers to fish). He teaches her the true meaning of Christmas and they live happily ever after.

Actually, when they meet, he is delivering her a meal from a local restaurant (because he needs the money after the horrible fishing season), they are both wearing masks and hazmat suits.

Neither falls madly in love with the other because, well, they can't see each other and - anyway - it is pouring down rain and there is no time for "meet cute" small talk.

At any rate, she is in traveler's quarantine for the next two weeks anyway.

Ho, ho, ho.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OHASHI HISTORY STORY

  80 years ago local Japanese families Were sent to internment camps Ohashi s were one family that came back Eighty years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the imprisonment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. The February 19, 1942 decree was put in place because of concerns that first and second-generation Japanese-Americans would have divided loyalties during the War, even though there was little evidence at the time to support those concerns. In 1976, the United States government formally apologized for the internment and in 1986, it authorized payments to the surviving Japanese Americans. More than 50 Japanese residents in Ketchikan were swept up in the internment, including the Ohashi family,. The Ohashi 's had first come to Ketchikan in 1900.  Jasmatsu "George" Ohashi was from Kawanoishi, Ehime-ken on Shikoku Island and he came to Alaska to t...
Read more

Gravina: A Tale of Two Islands

  Gravina : A Tale of Two Islands - History Story Considering that Ketchikan residents spend a lot of time staring a cross Tongass Narrows a t Gravina Island, we don't of ten know much a bout it. Yes, we take the a irport ferry a nd we fly out from the a irport. Maybe we have driven to the end of the "Road to Nowhere" or we have gone deer hunting on High Mountain. Residents of a certain a ge still talk fondly of the community picnics a t Black Sands Beach. But in general, Gravina is a like a prop to Ketchikan. Something to stare a t on a sunny day, but not much else. Of course, there is more to Gravina than that. For example, did you know that Gravina is two different islands ? Well, not now, but it used to be. First of f, there a re three distinct parts to Gravina that a re a ll geologically separate, a ccording to the 1973 federal report "Geology of Gravina Island, A laska." There is the eastern side, which is similar to the geology of R...
Read more

KEtchikan Pilot Found Millionaire's Plane Crash in Boca de Quadra in early 1950s - History Story

 http://www.sitnews.us/Kiffer/HermanLudwigsen/032520_herman_ludwigsen.html    Ketchikan Pilot Found Millionaire's Plane Crash in Boca de Quadra in Early 1950s   Most area residents are familiar with the plane crash of legendary pilot Harold Gillam in Boca de Quadra back in 1943. But almost exactly a decade later there was another crash in Boca de Quadra, barely a mile away from where Gillam's plane when down. This one involved Ellis Hall , the multimillionaire owner of Texas-based Condor Petroleum. Hall was on a vacation with his wife, two daughters and a family friend to Southeast Alaska. After visiting Juneau, Ellis was piloting his de Havilland DH 104 Dove, a large twin engine plane. The plane would disappear after leaving Annette Island on August 17, 1953 leading to a month long search, before the wreckage was found by Ketchikan pilot Herman Ludwigsen . Hall had landed his plane at Annette because the weather was beginning to deteriorate but wa...
Read more