CANADIANS, ESKIMOS AND THAT BIG COUNTRY TO OUR NORTH

 

First Avenue in Seattle or "Skid Road" as we called it.  I walked these streets as a teenager, intrigued as Paul Simon wrote by
"seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go, looking for the places only they would know"

With my so-called formative years spent in and around Seattle, interracting with Canadians came naturally and with the exception of that annoying "eh?" at the end of every sentence, they were essentially to me Americans without military bragging rights.

More intriguing were the Eskimos, although that's not a name currently used, but indigenous people from Alaska, Russia and Siberia, tough-minded folk with enough resilience to survive in the world's harshest climate.

Sadly, Eskimos, said to have a predisposition to alcohol addiction, could be seen walking Seattle streets around First Avenue where all the taverns were, stumbling from one beer joint to the next.

As an ignorant kid, I bought into the urban legend regurgitated by my lily-white relatives that Eskimos came to Seattle from Alaska, "drank one bottle of Rainier and stayed drunk the rest of their lives."

That was certainly not true of the one "Eskimo" I knew from close range who went by the name "Mr. Hansen," a man possessing so many skills, he couldn't narrow it down to a single one to make his living.

Hansen's day job was building aircraft, but he was in demand from shipbuilders as an artist with the axe, who created one-of-a-kind wood sculptures for the front fore of ships.  

In his spare time he used his private plane to fly hunters and fishermen from Seattle to Alaska, drop them off and pick them up two weeks later.

Hansen and his white wife bought acreage near Maple Valley in a wooded gully with their home not far from Cedar Creek, a stream that became a raging river in spring with the snow melt from Rainier and company.  

Hansen, who built his own house from basement to rooftop, had his own earthmoving equipment, graders and such, to do all the prep work including a driveway so steep my high school friend Joe Mallory could barely climb it in his English Hillman using compound low.

Another Canadian, Malcolm Tuokula, blew into my life for a couple years, then disappeared.

Malcolm and I were academic rivals.  Both of us had our hands up in class before the teacher could form the question and she was forced to do the eeny minie moe ritual to get her always-right answer.

But, Malcolm disappeared as quickly as he'd appeared, and, unlike many of those in my youth, I've been unable to find him or his beautiful black-haired Eastern European mother anywhere via Google.

I was successful in locating the most beautiful girl in high school, then known as Renate Rekavics, one of those rare combinations of stunning beauty and wholesome personal interest in others.

Google gave me her family's story of emigration from the Soviet Union to flee religious persecution as members of a religious sect known as the Nazarenes.  

Her heroic father orchestrated their escape to the U.S. where Renate and her siblings all became accomplished citizens.

Anyway, Renate and I had one brief exchange in the high school hallway, where she stopped me, grabbing my arm:  "Jim, I've been told that you're a genius," she said.

"Oh, no.  That's not true at all," I remember responding.

"Well, that's what I've heard," she insisted.

Since the supposed genius lacked the conversational skills to prolong the conversation, it simply died there and we never spoke again.

Anyway, I left that area long ago and have had little contact with eastern Euros, Eskimos or even Canadians until I spent twelve years at what came to be known as Sunset Palms RV Park.

What I discovered at Sunset Palms is that my background, culture and humor more closely matched the park residents from Canada than anyone else.

That's funny because I could have sworn I'm an American who watched every minute of the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960 on black-and-white tv, the 1969 moon landing and all of Jordan's championships with the Bulls.

Yet, my maternal grandmother, Edith DeMan, a nurse, accompanied Admiral Perry on one of his treks to the North Pole, but never talked about it.

It was only in recent years that I learned that my mother, Beverly Marie DeMan, was actually born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada and that, as her son, I could easily get Canadian citizenship if I so desired.

Maybe that explains why my grandfather, Adolph Joseph DeMan is credited with inventing some sort of steam-powered contraption for harvesting Alberta's wheat.

Adolph's family left East Flanders, Belgium when his mom was about 7 months pregnant with him and Adolph was born in Republic, Michigan on March 15, 1885.

About 4-1/2 years ago, as Ana and I were petitioning for her immigration to the U.S., I briefly pondered moving to Canada, assuming my citizenship and petitioning from that country, but that step proved unnecessary.

As for now, Ana and I are stuck in a beautiful mansion in Keosauqua, Iowa as Ana is negotiating her next contract location.

We've been moved to the second floor with even more floor space, two bedrooms, more rooms than we can possibly use and beautiful cabinetry and woodwork.  

My computer desk is a solid wood table in the living room and I'm surrounded by windows that allow me to look out on Iowa Hwy 1 or "Broad Street" as its known in Keosauqua.

Traveling these local highways, the driver has to constantly be vigilant for deer as they can dash out of the corn fields at any moment.

Ana and I stopped and chatted with a deer recently, a creature not the least bit intimidated by the two idiots talking baby talk from behind the rolled down windows of a Ford Explorer.

Baby, understandably, was more interested in eating grass than conversation.