Mary and I met in the library at West High School in Anchorage. We were registering students for second semester. She worked the Spanish table which happened to be next to biology, the one I manned. That was in late January of 1981. It was Mary’s first year at West but she had missed most of it due to a serious auto wreck in October. I heard, shortly after the accident, that the new Spanish teacher was in the hospital, but thought the announcement referred to another person. So, there I was, sitting next to the survivor, but ignorant of the fact. I personally registered the presence of a cute, petite, thirty-something next to me - one that was quiet and without much to say.Another thing I noticed was her newspaper. It was open to the puzzle section, and she was working the cryptoquote. Crossword puzzles are one of my addictions. Hers was blank, and I was in need of diversion, so I gallantly offered to take it off her hands should it be a bother to her. She surrendered it graciously, but without a word.
I didn’t see her again until the end of the school year when a number of us converged on the La Mex for a TGIF session. That commenced a night of bar hopping, including several games of pool at the Mid-Night Express, and Missile-Command at the Fly-by-Night Club. I called her the next day and invited her to breakfast at Gwennie’s as it was handy to both our homes.The next week we went to a movie, Popeye, starring Robin Williams. I made a big impression on that occasion - got to the ticket booth and realized I had no cash. I now have a deep appreciation for the anguish and pain Mary must have felt in making an unsecured loan to a questionable, high risk client. She was stoic when handing over the bill, but the transaction passed with a certain inertia, a reluctance to let go. I paid her back the next day, and have been paying ever since.
Summer vacation commenced and I left shortly thereafter to work on my cabin, which I was building in a cove on Seldovia Bay, across from Homer. She sent a big box of home made chocolate chip cookies - my favorite. The generous act lead me to the erroneous impression that she liked to cook. We didn’t see each other again until I invited her for a visit near the end of the summer. (Photo below: Summer 1983 @ Cabin)
That fall Mary wanted to know if I could help her find land she bought near Talkeetna. She had five acres in Bartlett Hills Subdivision, one of those land lotteries the state ran in the early 1980‘s. We drove three miles north on the Talkeetna Spur, turned east onto Yoder Road, went another four miles or five miles before getting to place in the road I did not wish to ford. We started walking and were soon picked up by a guy in a jeep who said he had a place up the road where he was going to grow strawberries. He dropped us off at the edge of the subdivision. There were no roads into it at that time. (Photo below Summer 2000)
I searched the brush at the side of the road, and found a survey marker. After consulting the map it seemed that her land was yet some distance away. We hiked southward. It began to drizzle shortly thereafter, that slow, steady, dripping that all residents up here know too well. We trudged through tall grass and climbed over downfall for nearly an hour. Mary became noticeably tired so I found a downed tree for her to sit, gave her my rifle, and said I’d go on and see what I could find. I told her that I didn’t think I’d get lost, but if I had not returned in a hour to fire the rifle once. I continued south, stopping and glancing back after a few steps. Mary sat there in the middle of the wilderness, looking small, wet, and very insecure. I went on for twenty minutes, found another survey marker and knew I couldn’t make it in a reasonable time. When I got back Mary was sitting there patiently waiting my return. I was moved by the trust she seemed to place in me. And she could cook. That knowledge inched me one step closer in thinking I might marry the woman some day.
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