My husband called me at 3:00 a.m., furious. “I’ve been Shanghaied!” he shouted.

Here’s the back story: when I was principal in Kake, Alaska, Husband often came up to spend some time with me. During one of his visits, I had a conference to go to in Juneau, and we decided to fly there together. The other part of the equation was my car: we wanted to get it to Juneau for some warranty work. We made this plan: Husband would drive my car down to the ferry, which was coming in at 2:00 a.m., and put it on the boat bound for Juneau. The next morning, we would both get on the plane for Juneau. I’d go to my conference, we would visit all the coffee shops, and have some quality time while the car made the thirty-plus-hour ferry trip. Then I would head back to Kake, while Husband would stay a few extra days to get the car to the dealer. As soon as the work was completed, he would put the car onto the next boat back to Kake, and then head home to Craig.

He followed the plan. He drove the car down to the ferry terminal at 1:30 a.m. and waited for the boat. Kake has a ferry dock, but no office or employees, which means that the deckhands do the entire tie-up and cast off procedures with no help from the ground, and anybody who wants to ride has to pay on board at the purser’s office. At the time, the MV Taku was the boat that came to Kake, and the purser’s office was way up on the third level.

Husband drove the car on board and explained his errand to the parking attendant. He knew he had to go upstairs to pay, so he made sure to tell everybody he encountered that he was just delivering the car and needed to get off the boat before it left the dock. Everybody he talked to grunted and nodded without seeming terribly impressed. Apparently, nobody told the skipper, who may or may not have been in a big hurry to get home to Juneau.

The line at the purser’s counter was long, and before he even reached the window, he realized that the boat was getting underway. He was trapped, and the dear old Taku wouldn’t get to Juneau until I would be getting ready to go back to Kake. . .and then, they told him he would have to pay the fare!

So, here’s what he did: he rode the boat until it reached Sitka (about 8 hours). He got off there and got onto one of the so-called “fast ferries” (a major boondoggle for the state, but that’s another story) that just happened to be making a run from Sitka to Juneau and would be arriving in Juneau at approximately the same time as I would get there on the plane. He was able to accomplish this, with the gracious assistance of ferry agents in Sitka and Ketchikan, for what it would have cost him to ride the slow boat all the way to Juneau, considerably less than the fare for the fast boat.

When I got back to school, Jim the tech guy came to my office to set up a new computer program for me, and I told him the story. He laughed and laughed, and after finishing the installation, he informed me that my new password was “shanghai.”