Southwestern Virginia sits on top of a magnificent system of limestone caves, some of which span multiple states. When I was growing up, one of our family vacations was going to Luray Caverns for the guided tour. We saw formations called fried eggs, drapery, soda straws. . .Luray had boardwalks, spotlights, vending machines, and, way […]
Author: Evelyn J. Willburn
Togiak blues (and reds)
The picture you see here serves a dual purpose. First, it gives you some insight into why I stopped coloring my hair. Second, it shows you what it’s like to pick berries in Southwest Alaska. This picture was taken just outside of Togiak, which is a Yup’ik community of about 800 people. As you can […]
Would you like fire with that?
For about six weeks in the summer of 1980, I worked as a cocktail waitress in the Club Candalejas, a salsa (music) bar in Hollywood, California. I had worked as a waitress before, but this was my first time in the dog-eat-dog world of a bona fide cocktail lounge. Nobody had their own station: we […]
Coffee apocalypse
When the zombie apocalypse comes, how will I get my coffee? It’s a question of concern to me. I began enjoying coffee at the then-tender age of nineteen. I worked at Clinkerdagger, Bickerstaff, and Petts, affectionately known as Clink’s, which was a theme restaurant in midtown Anchorage. One of our perks was free coffee. Having […]
For the love of cats
My cat Socks is twenty years old. I never get tired of bragging about that, probably in part because as a child I thought the average life span of a cat was two years. There was high turnover in our dynasty of farm cats, which I now understand to have been a source of stress […]
Sewing machines, past and present
When I was growing up, it was cost effective for my mother to make our dresses. I would go with her to the fabric store and make my choice. We would bring the fabric home and she would wash it and hang it on the outdoor clothesline. When I was really little I would play […]
Close encounters of the curious kind
I’m remembering that one time, in my little cabin in Kake, when I heard something on the porch. I looked out the window and found myself nose to nose with a fellow mammal. This also makes me think of a time while I was at school. One of the kids, Timmy*, came galloping down the […]
In deference to spiders
I grew up around spiders. My grandfather built the house in 1921, complete with a damp musty cellar in which we stored, among other things, firewood. That corner of the cellar was the domain and realm of the so-called “wood spiders,” hairy and fast-moving and about the size of a medium-sized mouse. Apropos of nothing, […]
The longest short plane ride ever
How, you may ask, did a 45-minute plane ride from Twin Hills, Alaska to Dillingham stretch into six hours? Well, since you asked. . . I was in Twin Hills waiting for my flight to Dillingham, the first leg of my long journey home. One of the paraprofessionals from the school was waiting also. With […]
In which I acknowledge the finer qualities of chickens
A few months ago, I stopped by the post office and heard a sound I hadn’t heard in forty years. It was like a google earth experience: pull way back, make a wide lateral swing, zoom back in. Is there a google time app yet? Anyway, the sound I heard was the chirping and scruffling […]