its basement into a weekly coffee house called The Chanting Gull. Full folk bands would play there while the audience sipped “Russian tea” (a blend of Tang and powdered iced tea mix) and danced or sang along.
IN JUNEAU, THE restaurant I worked at was nothing like the places I had worked or hung out at in Anchorage. My new job required a uniform of sorts—black pants and a white blouse.
I went out and bought a pair of black pants. I’m also allergic to many synthetic fabrics, so I bought a white cotton peasant blouse to complete my uniform.
My manager did not approve of the top I wore, and somewhere in the middle of our argument, I got fired.
To say I grew up with a chip on my shoulder would be an understatement.
Years ago, a close friend pointed out that I had to learn to fight to survive growing up. The problem was, I fought most of the time over almost everything. Over the years, I’ve left a trail of angry and exasperated telephone customer service agents. I would fight to the death for an aisle seat on an airline flight reservation. And God help the company whose product broke at my house!
But my tough exterior always came with a price, whether that meant it was time to move on from a bad job or not.
Perhaps because I had been doing it all and raising myself as a teenager, I wasn’t enthusiastic about going to college right after high school. But after losing my waitressing job, I vowed to get into college and never to waitress again.
I haven’t.
CHAPTER 5
A Warm Hat, a Whale, and a C in Chemistry
When the 1977 legislative term ended, I returned to Anchorage for the summer. There I worked for my former guardian, Walt Morgan, who was always there for me whether I needed a place to stay, a job, or a good laugh.
With Walt, I learned about hard labor. He was a handyman who also managed some rentals. That summer I did some landscaping work (digging holes in dirt is hard work), a little commercial janitorial work (harder), and even work as a house painter (hardest).
I explored a lot of options as to what I wanted to be when I grew up. My first serious decision was to be a nurse-midwife.
This was a career suggested by Rona in Anchorage, with whom I occasionally roomed when in town. She was a nursing student working as a lay midwife. The natural childbirth movement that took hold in the Sixties was playing out in the Seventies. The idea was to abandon what had become the standard medical practices used in hospitals, such as the use of epidurals or medication for pain relief. Oh, no, none of that. The movement (actually begun decades earlier) preached that birth was natural for women, and we had done without medical intervention for thousands of years. Never mind that even up until modern times, the mortality rate for women in labor was as high as 50 percent in some parts of the world.
This could be another of those times when I should have thought, What am I thinking? What if a mother died on us? Or the baby?
I went along as Rona’s assistant on eleven home births. I trusted that all would be fine, and it was—until one night it wasn’t. During that home birth, the mother had a prolapsed umbilical cord; in other words, the cord dipped below the baby’s head and started coming out first, cutting off oxygen to the baby still in the birth canal.
The chance of the baby dying without surgical intervention: 90 percent.
We were in Eagle River, high on the mountain, miles from the nearest hospital, and in the middle of a fierce snowstorm. When Rona realized what was happening, she had me quietly call an ambulance. She then did something her instincts, training, and experience taught her—she put the birthing mother in a position to move the baby back up into the womb, allowing the cord to work free. She then gently pushed the cord back over the baby’s head until it fell into its correct place.
I was tense with fear but acted as if everything was fine. We could not cause the laboring woman to panic.
The paramedics arrived looking ashen, no doubt aware of what they were up against. As soon as they realized the midwife had saved the day and the birth was proceeding normally, they were shaking Rona’s hand.
After this episode, Rona refused to work with patients who lived more than a few minutes from the nearest hospital; they had to get full prenatal care and could not be high-risk. She eventually went on to become a licensed midwife outside Alaska.
I HEADED BACK to Juneau to enroll at the University of Alaska Southeast. And despite my midwifing scare, I planned to go into nursing—until my first chemistry class.
Despite how much I loved my high school experience at Steller, I seemed to have gotten out of high school without taking algebra. You need algebra to pass chemistry. Fortunately, our algebra professor told his students that if we came to every class, did all the assignments, and took every quiz and test (even if we failed them), then the lowest grade we would make would be a C.
I got a C.
After that algebra class, I knew I was not meant for a life in science. I then decided to major in something I loved—music. Part of this came from my father’s appreciation of popular music, which he’d play on high volume in the middle of the night when he’d come home from “working.” Imagine Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” at 3 a.m. If you’re a ten-year-old sound asleep in your bed, it’s not fun.
My dad liked it all—pop, rock, even folk. We had the Kingston Trio, Frank Sinatra, The Mamas and the Papas, and that damn Steppenwolf. In the middle of the night. Nevertheless, I was exposed to all kinds of music early on and loved it. I began my studies in music, playing classical guitar and studying voice.
I also took advantage of film classes, including a seminar about the work of famed film director John Ford. I thought I wanted to work in the movies somehow. I also enjoyed the local National Public Radio station in Juneau, KTOO. A lot of people in Juneau knew someone at the station. My boyfriend Jim hosted his own music show once a week, and I would sometimes help out.
Actually, I wanted to be a lot of things during that phase of life between eighteen and twenty. This included, in no particular order, a forest ranger, a carpenter, and even a folk singer.
I did get a job with the US Forest Service. All day, I just sat at a counter doing nothing. I didn’t stay long.
Carpentry seemed alternative, right? I decided I’d be a woman carpenter. I had a friend who was accepted into a union apprenticeship program. She advised me to get the textbook, so I did. It was a thick hardback book that I tried reading—but not for long. I decided a life of physical labor wasn’t for me, either.
The folk singer phase lasted a little longer. The Alaska Folk Festival held each spring in Juneau was—and still is—a hugely popular event. For years, I had been singing to popular recordings by the likes of Linda Ronstadt as well as taking classical voice lessons at college.
Before I met and dated Jim, I had gone home to Anchorage one summer and fell in love with my last musician. He was a tall guitar player with waist-length hair. Originally from Texas, he played with a band at a local hotel lounge. We met, fell in love, and were together constantly until the gig ended about six weeks later and he returned home. Then I learned what hadn’t been made entirely clear before—he had a longtime girlfriend back home. Oh. Here’s what you should always ask someone: are you available? He wasn’t.
What
