In Twin Hills, Alaska, there are three general ways to get your groceries.

One: you can buy stuff when you are in town and bring it out with your luggage.

Two: you can call in or order online and have your stuff delivered by air freight or through the mail. Sometimes, if you know someone who is coming out from Dillingham or Anchorage, that person can pick up your stuff and bring it out in their luggage.

Three: you can (sometimes) make your way across Togiak Bay to Togiak, and shop at the Alaska Commercial Company (AC) there.

In preparing for our school’s community Thanksgiving feast, I opted for door #3. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

First there is the requisition process. Yes, I have a credit card with my name on it, for which bills I am not personally responsible, but I can’t just go buying stuff. I have to get online and enter a strange Universe known as “accufund” (sometimes accessed through a portal called “GoGlobal”) and enter all manner of information, including the purpose of my desired purchase, the estimated amount I need to spend, the mysterious “budget codes,” and all manner of tiny little details. Miss even one of these details, and the system will throw out a cryptic “error message” that has nothing whatever to do with what actually went wrong. Maybe future error codes could say something like this: “Ok, hon: now go to the reference window on the activity page and enter the last four digits of your school’s credit card,” instead of things like this:

But I digress. I got it figured out with the help of a wise and patient man who makes his living dealing with budget codes, and without perpetrating any property damage, and got the green light on Thursday, November 16. Good so far. But how to get those turkeys and all the other goodies, across the bay?

Well, first things first, said one of my colleagues (wise and gentle creature that she is). Following her lead, I called the AC store in Togiak and ordered the turkeys. We had to go ahead and do that for two reasons: a) AC might run out of turkeys, and b) we would need to get them over to Twin Hills and start the thawing out process asap, since our dinner was planned for the 21^st. So, I called AC, business credit card in hand, and ordered three fifteen-pound turkeys. The nice lady who took my order is used to Twin Hills folks, and she agreed to save the turkeys until somebody came to pick them up.  On Friday afternoon, I learned that several Twin Hills folks were over at the Togiak AC in real time, and that if I called right now I could arrange for them to pick up the turkeys. I got through to the nice lady while one of the guys was still in the store, and he and his family brought the turkeys over in their skiff.

It was well after dark when this wonderful family pulled up at my front door, one person driving the four-wheeler and the rest riding behind in the skiff it was towing, cheerfully telling me about almost getting frozen into the ice on the bay, and delivered the precious box into my safekeeping.

Thanksgiving ’23, Phase One, complete.

Oh, but there’s more. Lots more.