Alan Skeoch

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  • EISODE 581 COTTAGE LIFE…NOT ALWAYS GLORIOUS

    EPISODE 581   COTTAGE LIFE …NOT ALWAYS GLORIOUS


    alan skeoch
    may 13, 2022




    NORTH BAY: SUMMER 1965

    “Would you like to spend a couple of days at our cottage?”
    “Sure.”

    That invitation sounded great.  A couple of days all to ourselves at
    a Northern Ontario cottage.   Visions of gin and tonic served on a sunny
    wood deck with a northern lake stretched out below with a dock and
    motor boat and arm sunny evenings with a campfire and marshmallows.

    Well we discovered that cottage life is not all its trumped up to be.
    The cottage was high above the lake.   No deck.  Really it was
    a garage built under a canopy of pine, cedar and tag alder.  Home
    to a million blood consuming insects.  

    The safest place was inside the one room cottage.  It was big enough
    to park a car but not much more.  Yes it was really a garage.  Some itinerant
    vandal had ripped the screening from the windows.  To open them was to
    invite the little blood consuming creatures in for dinner.

    There was one bed.  A place of safety as the sun settled and night
    arrived  That’s when the mice came out.  Dozens of them scurrying
    here and there as we snuggled down in our sleeping bag hoping
    that no pregnant varmint had found the bag a good place to make
    a nest for little creatures.  

    We did not sleep. Nights in the north can get cold.  No stove in the
    cottage unless a Coleman cooking stove would do.  We got it going
    But would the Coleman
    consume all the oxygen and leave us to die?  We made it
    through the night OK.  The thought of a nice swim in the morning
    allowed us to put the negatives of cottage life aside.

    Well.  We were wrong.  The lake was not a lake really. Swamp would
    be a better term…It looked like
    a lake and I suppose far out from shore it became a lake.  But we
    never reached the open water.  The water weeds were as thick as
    a tropical forest.  And on the weeds were little slippery things called
    leeches.  And other squishy things that moved as we trod our 
    way out from shore.  Perfect hideout for snapping turtles we decided.
    What would happen if a bare foot appeared in front of a snapper’s mouth?

    I got my camera…waded out to Marjorie and got
    a good shot of the cottage we would never forget.

  • EPISODE 580 “ANDREW PULLED ANOTHER STUNT TODAY” (TALE OF THE GUMBALL MACHINE, JULY 24, 1978)

    EPISODE 580   “ANDREW PULLED ANOTHER STUNT TODAY” (TALE OF THE GUMBALL MACHINE, JULY 24, 1978)


    alan skeoch
    May 13,2022




    “Andrew pulled another stunt today at the supermarket ,” wrote Marjorie way back in 1978
    which we will call the Gumball caper.  Let me try to put the story in the first person.

    “Gumball machine over there.”
    “Trust the supermarket to do that.”
    “Mom?”…”Gumball?”
    “No, Shopping fast today.”
    (long pause while Marjorie shopped)

    “Where is Andrew?”
    “I called but he didn’t come….where is he?”
    “Notice the crowd over there at the entrance….hope not Andrew in centre.”
    “He is…got his hand stuck in the gumboil machine…”
    “Didn’t put a quarter in….”
    “Got his hand wedged up the gumball slot.  Trying to reach the gumballs.”
    “Andrew?”
    “Hand got caught, Mom..still caught…these people are trying to help.”
    (about ten people gathered around.)
    “Does it hurt?”
    “Sort of  hurts”
    How Many Gumballs Fit In The Gumball Machine? - Robert Kaplinsky
    Picture of Monster Gumball machine…Not Andrew in picture but you can see how tempting
    the size of the slot would be to a Guball thief.   Never ever seen such a gumboil machine.

    “Get the manager, Alan”
    “Manager is away trying to phone the vending machine people.”
    “Yaaa!  This hurts, mom.”
    “I know.”
    “Tell Kevin (brother) to stop laughing at me, mom”
    “Here comes the manager with a screw driver.”
    “Twisting…smashing the gumball machine….only way to get his hand out.”

    People gathered around.  Most of them smiling. A few, however, were concerned about Andrew.

    “There!  Got his hand out at least.”
    “Still part of the machine around his wrist.”
    “Like a bracelet.”
    “More like a handcuff.”

    “Just one simple question, Andrew.”
    :What, dad?”
    “Did you manage to get a gumboil?



    alan

    Post script…Marjorie’s Note  July 24, 1978


  • EPISODE 583 “ALAN, DON’T DO IT! WE CAN Make ir….I think!”

    Note from Alan:  The story of the Pebble Mine is difficult. 127,000 pages and 1 million feet of diamond
    drill core…and the young discoverer, Phil St . George, is hard to find….ignored in mine reports it seems.
    So here is a short story.  I am typing this note as the JD sprayer drags us along.  Marjorie was right…when
    she said “Don’t do it!”



    EPISODE 583   “ALAN, DON’T DO IT!”  “WE CAN MAKE IT…I think !”


    alan skeoch
    may 12,2022

    “Quick Marjorie, get in the car.”
    “Why?”
    “I think we can slip beneath that John Deere sprayer.”
    “No!”
    “Too late, here we go….”


    “Well, we did not make it…stuck…what will we do now?”
    “Make a call to John Deere HQ”
    “Why?”
    “They must have had this problem before.”
    “No one is as stupid as you.”
    “Seemed like a good idea…”
    “Dumb”
    “Save on gas…let this giant spider drag us along.”
    “Stupid is as stupid does….as Tom Hanks said.”

  • EPISODE 278 SOCKEYE SALMON

    EPISODE 578   SOCKEYE SALMON ..AND BRISTOL BAY


    alan skeoch
    May 7, 2022

    See that little red dot?  That is the site of the Pebble Mine.  We worked 
    somewhere in the centre in 1959;




    If you eat canned salmon, odds are it came from Bristol Bay, Alaska.




    Sockeye salmon….milions of them…startled us.  We came looking for mineralization.

     

    we did not know that sockeye
    salmon from Bristol Bay, Alaska. are highly valued  They provide 47% of the wild salmon
    fishing industry in the world.  

    “Between 1990 and 2010, the annual average inshore run of sockeye salmon
    Was appoximately 37, 500,000 fish.” (Sept. 9,2021).   Oher studies say 70 million.



    Sockeye salmon | U.S. Geological SurveyWildlife Preservation | The Conservation Fund

    We did not know that.   This was a mining job;  We did not even  know that the 
    river below our campsite was loaded with huge creatures working their way
    eastward to their prime spawning ground.  Sometimes they virtually walked up
    the river with their backs in the air where he water was shallow.

    Bristol Bay, bounded on the south by the Aleutian Island chain, contains the
    largest commercial salmon fishery in the world.  

      We were
    searching for gold and copper. no one mentioned ’sockeye salmon’ to us.  Only Bill Morrison brought
    a fishing rod and he was a sport fisherman looking for trout because they put
    up such a fight.

    Look closely…that’s Bill ..a speck of red.


     When Bill slipped down to the river he was astounded.   The river seemed
    full of bright red fish…all moving determinedly to the river headwaters.
    Today the estimate is that 71.2 million sockeye salmon will return to Brisol Bay
    (Nov 16, 2021)

    Why so many?  British Columbia salmon runs are diminishing year by year.
    Why is Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed loaded with millions and millions of salmon.

    “Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, a consortium working to protect the traditional Yup’ik, Dena’ina, and Alutiiq ways of life in southwest Alaska, calls Bristol Bay a “salmon powerhouse.” There are many reasons for Bristol Bay’s bounty of salmon stocks. But chief among them is the robust health of the bay’s mountainous watershed, which remains untouched by industrial development. “There are no dams, there are no mines,” Hurley says in a telephone interview. “This is as pristine as it gets.”


    “THERE ARE NO MINES…THIS IS AS PRISTINE AS IT GETS”  (Alanah Hurley, United Tribes of Bristol Bay)

    In 1959 we were the thin edge of a wedge that would change Bristol Bay.  The toxic waste
    of the mini industry tends to eliminate the word ‘pristine’ from vocabularies.

    Of course we did not know that.  We did not know that the stage was being set for a momentous
    battle that would last 60 years.  A battle between the people dependent on Sockeye salmon
    and the Pebble Mine.   Both could not coexist. Only room for one.
    Sockeye Salmon or gold and Copper.


    DON Vanevery nd Bill Morrison…snagging sockeye salmon in Alaska in 1959




    For us, we never thought of the big picture.  All we thought about was catching these 
    30 pound salmon ….snagging them because they were not interested in food …then
    dragging them ashore for s picture. Then releasing them.  They had not long to live.
    The deeper the  redness, the closer to death.  Once spawning was complete they died
    and the rivers were clogged with their bodies.  All the better for the Kodiak bears…


    Bill Morrison…too big for 1 man to lift

    “Al, I got a bIg one…must be better than 30 pounds.”
    “Guess you have to land it yourself, Bill.”
    “Why?”
    “For the record books.”

    The real battle was about to begin.   Would Bristol Bay remain pristine?.  Or would
    the inevitable leaks from Pebble mine tailing ponds kill the salmon industry?


    Dillingham native fishing drying rack

    We never thought of the future.  But there were s great many people who would
    find the next 60 years from 1959 to 2022 very stressful.   Victory was declared
    eventually but wil it last?

    NEXT EPISODE:  THE PEBBLE MINE … LARGEST OPEN PIT MINE IN NORTH AMERICA…MAYBE NOT

    alan skeoch

    post scriptGuided Salmon Fishing in Cooper Landing - Jason's Guide Service“There are no dams, there are no mines. This is as pristine as it gets.”


  • EPISODE 577: Skeoch CAR re-creation hailed as ‘Epic Restoration’ in national magazine

    > On May 4, 2022, at 9:05 AM, ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com> wrote: > > EPISODE 577 THE SKEOCH CAR > > alan skeoch > May 2022 > > Well this note from Geoff Allison was a big surprise that may interest readers. > The ‘Little Skeoch’ had a short life when created in 1921 when fire destroyed the > factory and 6 of the 10 models ever made went up in smoke. Fragments of > the car remained … especially the paper plans. Thanks to Geoff and his > gifted friends a model of the little car has been made as you may remember as I did > a story on the car some time ago. > > Well today a thorough story has been printed in the june 2022 edition of > Classic Car. And I mean through. With a pile of detail pictures. The full > article is included. > > What is our family connection to this car.? I really do not know for sure. > Nice to imagine the connection may exist though. > > alan > >> >> Dear Transatlantic Skeochs, >> >> I am sending you a copy of an article published in the June 2022 edition of Classic Cars which refers to the re-creation of a 1921 Skeoch Cycle Car as an epic restoration – for your interest. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Geoff > > > >