The Choice to Be Good People: Delivering Lunches During Covid-19

Last delivery at the 14-plex (photo Courtesy of Ellen Harris)

I walked down the steps of the fourteen plex in Unalakleet hoping that it would be the last time I delivered lunches there- not because I minded doing that job, but because delivering lunches meant my students were not in their classrooms.

            And honestly, delivering lunches had been a great job.  I now know where a large number of my students live, and to a small extent, a little more of how they live.  I delivered lunches to houses with moms and dads, some with uncles, some to grandmas or grandpas, some to friends, and a couple to guardians.

            Early in the process, my nephew and work partner, Merle, voiced some frustration, “Doesn’t seem to matter what good we try to do, people still complain.”

            “We are going to be good people and good to people,” I voiced what had become my mantra.

            “Okay,” he said shaking his head, “even if they aren’t good to us?”

            “Even then,” I smiled.

            “We’re going to be good people,” he repeated and we finished delivering that day’s lunches. 

            It was a decision we made and continued to repeat to each other pretty much every day.

            “Good to be working,” he smiled on one occasion as the talk had been of all the people in our country unemployed.

            Merle and I pretty much lived the post office’s creed as we tiptoed around icy puddles, pushed stuck trucks out of snow banks, ran to houses through the rain, and were often greeted by dogs tied up outside of the houses.

            “You can deliver this one,” Merle handed me a lunch and looked out the passenger side window at a large interested dog tied to the porch of a house that was on our list.

Middle School Drive Through

            On top of handing out lunches, our school district had decided to do distance learning through packets that kids would pick up from the school.  The middle school had set up a “drive through” window where parents would pull up and get the work for the day.  Elementary and high school both had something similar.  Those who could not make it to the building had their packets delivered with the lunches on Monday.  This made Mondays pretty interesting.

            “How many lunches here?” I asked Merle at one of the stops. 

            “Three.”

            “I can only find two homework packets for this house, though,” I pointed out.

            “Maybe that is all of them?” Merle questioned.

            On the other side of town, we would find the other packet mixed in with another kid’s.

            “Guess we go back,” Merle would smile.

            Mondays were also pizza days.  As part of an incentive program for students doing their work at home, names would be put into a hat and drawn for Papa Murphy Pizzas.  The back seat of the truck would be piled with three boxes of student packets, 30+ sack lunches, and five large pizzas.

            “We’re pizza delivery guys now,” Merle laughed as we dropped off the first one at a very happy child’s house.

            As if pizza, packets, and lunches were not enough, Merle and I were approached about adding two more things to the back of the truck.

            “Dad,” Ellen said looking up at me, “can we help you deliver lunches?”

            “Yeah,” Harper, her partner in crime, echoed, “can we go deliver lunches?”

Harper Ellis lunch delivery apprentice (Photo Courtesy of Ellen Harris)

            So, Merle and I gained a couple of apprentices who would count lunches out and hand them to us from the back seat as we stopped for deliveries.  Granted, as three-year-olds, there were times when they got distracted, but for the most part they were great help.

            “Oohhhwoowoo,” Ellen and Harper yelled out the window.

            “Looks like we have gained a siren to aid in our deliveries,” I commented to Merle.

            Each day, we continued repeating our mantra: we were going to be good people.

            As we were backing out of the driveway of our last delivery for the day, I caught the eye of a person glaring at me.  I waved… I’ve always been a little slow on the uptake with things like that.  He continued to glare and so I stopped, rolled down my window, and said hi.

            The complaint I received is not really important.  It had been a long morning, a long week, and we had been into the whole Covid thing for what felt like an eternity.  I thanked the person for the input, rolled up my window and began backing up again, grumbling under my breath.

            “We are going to be good people,” Merle said quietly without looking at me.

I continued my grumbling.

 “Even when people are not good to us,” he added.

            It was a choice we had to remind each other of from time to time.

            For the most part, people were happy to see us.  The kids were strangely happy for the homework we were bringing them.  My own daughter would jump up and down cheering as I brought hers in each week.  She was excited to see what her teacher packed for her.

            “See, Dad,” she said earnestly, “my teacher hasn’t forgotten me and still loves me.”

            Kids would run out to greet the truck as we pulled into certain neighborhoods.

            “We need to play the ice cream truck music,” Merle joked.

            “Yay,” the kids would yell, “the lunch truck is here.”

            The last day of deliveries came and went.  School, though arguably over for quite some time, came to its last day.

            We still don’t know what school will look like in the fall when the first day is upon us.  If Merle and I are back to delivering lunches, we’ll happily tackle the job.

            Our hope is, though, that we will be welcoming our kids back through the doors and maybe we can apply what we learned through what is hopefully the only pandemic we see in our lifetimes.  We’ll be good people.

Evidently mirror selfies are a skill learned early in life (Photo courtesy Ellen Harris)

Stuck in the middle (of the field) with you: Getting a slow start on the Marston Victory Garden

Brad and Elwood working with the camp's Kubota

“Be careful about how much fertilizer you use,” a conversation about the victory garden started.  “The soil up there was always very nutrient rich, and produced potatoes without adding much.”

            “The fertilizer we ordered is actually compost,” I answered.  “It will help build the soil and will aid in water retention.”

            “Oh, that soil holds water,” the person continued.  “In fact, it will sometimes hold so much that it pools on top.”

            “That sounds like clay to me.”

            When the road was finally clear enough to drive, Brad headed up to the camp to fire up the tractor and start turning over the soil.  We went up with him to get an idea of what kind of shape the field was in.

            “There’s Brad now,” Myra pointed out when we pulled into the road running through the field with our car.  “Better get out and take some before pictures.  He is getting it tilled up right now.”

            The camp’s cute little Kubota was driving toward us cutting into the grass and soil with its PTO driven tiller.  In standard farm kid style, Brad’s son Elwood was riding in his dad’s lap.

Bub saw her friend, and bailed from the car as soon as we were stopped.  I pulled my phone out and snapped some quick shots wanting to get a good batch of before pictures to include with the beautifully tilled after pictures.

Cottonwoods, willows, and grass are starting to reclaim the field.

            Brad shut down the tractor and clambered down with Elwood to give us a tour of the out buildings and help us take stock of what we had on hand and what we would need to work the field that summer.

            A log “barn” held some ancient equipment and what we hoped were vacated yellow jacket nests.  There was a raft frame, an old air force generator, some machine made from a steel frame and chicken wire, and enough dust to plant another field right inside.

            The plywood shed held spades and hose that looked like it would add nicely to that which we had ordered.  The building itself showed the signs of years of being left vacant on the side of a field.

            Brad climbed back on the tractor and Myra, Bub, and I continued to look around the field and the equipment we hoped we could get operable again to be put into service in the potato field.  The next time we turned around to take a look at Brad’s progress, he had the tractor wedged cross ways between two large tire ruts dug into the earth.  The tractor wheels were coated in clay the consistency of Crisco.

            No amount of shoveling, wedging willows under the wheels, or rocking back and forth was going to budge it.

            “I’ll go get the camp’s Kubota side by side,” Brad explained, “a little tug should get me out.”

            And, it did.

            “Can you drive this over to the other side of the field and park it on the road?” Brad asked as he climbed back onto the tractor.

            “Sure,” I smiled, excited to operate a little equipment myself.

            I pointed for the other end of the field and where a trail had been worn through the grasses.  I figured if others had driven there, that I should have no problems with a little side by side.

            Brad was shaking his head as he walked up to where I was sitting… up to the frame of the side by side in mud.

            “I didn’t want you to feel like you were the only one,” I sheepishly explained.

            We hooked the tractor to the side by side and Brad attempted to pull me out.  The field was the consistency of a wet sponge albeit less supportive. 

            Our car was sitting on firm gravel and so we hooked a rope between it and the stuck Kubota to give a kind of tandem pull.  Myra got behind the wheel of the side by side, Brad pulled with the tractor, I pulled with the car, and the little Kubota crawled out of its mudhole.

            “Well, I think that is enough progress for the day,” I said looking at a field with almost no tilling done to it.

            “It’ll need to dry out a little anyway,” Brad agreed.

            Day one of our farming work and we had managed to get both pieces of equipment stuck and the most soil we turned over was due to the tires digging into the ground.  Clay, clay, clay.

            With some time, the field would dry out, but my wheels started spinning on how to get a bigger tractor to work the field of heavy wet clay.  Like with anything, the start is the hardest part.  If getting stuck counts as getting started, we were on our way.

Maybe the boat parked on the side of the field should have been a clue to how much water it held.  This is the trail I buried the side by side in.

Back to Square One: Finding Land for Ellen's Rainbow House

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“Are we going to start building my rainbow house today?” Ellen asked me as we ate breakfast.

            “We’re working on it, Bub,” I answered trying to figure out what I was going to do that day to truly be “working on it.”

            Ellen had no understanding of permafrost, had no idea why clay was going to be difficult and expensive to build on, didn’t know the cost of gravel.  In her mind, houses were built on the ground with wood… clay counted as ground, and we had some pallets made out of wood up at our lot.

            Considering I thought people in Alaska lived in igloos when I was three, Ellen is lightyears ahead of me on the developmental scale.  However, she does hold my feet to the fire in a way that can make for a stressful life at home.

            “Hey dad,” she asked as I pushed her on the swing later that day, “do you have my rainbow house figured out yet?”

            “Not yet, Bub,” the swing squeaked as I pushed out and away.

            “Well, how about my pool then,” she asked about the other back burner project I have begun researching, “are you working on that today?”

            “I’m working on it, Bub,” I said as my brain went to the hurdles that stood before me on that project.

            “Okay.”

            Back in the house, I began calling around, “Hi, I heard you had a lot you were thinking about selling…”

            “Yes, I have a lot up on the hill I would sell,” the voice responded.

            “How much were you wanting for it?”

            The other end answered and I choked on my gum.

            “How much?”

            “What was the asking price,” Myra asked when I got off the phone.

            I whispered it in her ear.

            “Oh my,” she stepped back and stared at me with wide eyes, “well, I guess that one is off the table.”

            We called around some more.  Answers ranged from I decided to keep it to I have decided to give it to my grand-daughter.  Property does not really sell in western Alaska.  Multiple generations traditionally live under one roof, and when it comes time for a new owner, the house or lot gets handed down.  Though Myra grew up in Unalakleet, in a way, we are both kind of transplants there, which makes getting property tough.

            I sent a private message via the modern-day vhf- Facebook, and heard back from another property owner with a negative answer, but more thought bubbles followed showing he was still typing.

            “Try Leonard Brown, he is a heck of a guy, will do right by you, and has property for sale.”

            Leonard Brown is 87 and does not do social media or email.  I tracked down his phone number and it went right to voicemail.

            His grand-daughter does social media and email and so I reached out to her with a private message via Facebook.  She told me when I should call… 87-year-old men have nap schedules she jokingly typed.  Now was an okay time, and so I called him only to go right to his voicemail.

            “Should I text him?” I asked in our chat.

            “Oh, please, no…”

            I chased Leonard around for a couple of days before catching up with him.  He was puttering around his yard getting it ready to plant gardens.  We drove up with him to where he was planning on selling some land and he pointed it out from the road.

            “It is this area here.  I have several acres that I am ready to let go, and could sell you a couple right here if you like.”

            There were spruce and willow and signs of much better buildable soils.

            We came to a tentative agreement and because you cannot go away without shaking hands at the end of a deal when working with a man of his generation, Leonard and I shook on it… pandemic or no pandemic.

            A battle with a borrowed earth auger later that involved replacing a throttle cable with a bike brake cable, and then dragging it out to our test site, Myra earnestly stated, “You’re going to have to find somebody to run this with you.”

            “I have found somebody to run this thing with me,” I smiled as I nodded toward her.

            “Oh, okay.”

            And so, Myra and I danced around a hole while trying to get the hang of a large drill connected to a Honda lawnmower engine.  Down we went to the end of the auger to the point where we were pretty much sitting down on the ground holding the handles.  We pulled it out and I shoved my arm down as far as it would go into the hole and came back with a piece of gravel the size of a golf ball.

            “Good sign,” I smiled.

            We drilled another hole with the same effect.

            “I think we can make this spot work,” Myra and I agreed.

View of the ocean and Besboro Island from our new lot.

            Back at Leonard’s, Ellen ran around the house playing with his great-grand-daughters.

            “You want to pay a third today?” he asked as he put pen to paper.

            “We’ll pay it all today,” we said, completely decided on what we were setting out to do.

            “Oh, oh,” he smiled, “I’ll need to get a new piece of paper.”

            He came back with a new agreement showing us paying in full, “It will make you a good home up there,” he said.

            Leonard is a wealth of historical information and we sat talking airplanes and flying and traplines and land and work.  Given enough coffee and time, we could have talked for hours.

            Later his grand-daughter expressed her gratitude, “Thank you for your patience in working with my grandfather.  We have a saying around here, ‘Leonard’s way is the only way.’”

            “Oh, I think we have a new friend,” I assured her.

            It was hard to get Bub to leave her new buddies.

            “Can’t we stay a little longer?” she whined.

            “We have to go start your rainbow house,” Myra answered.

            Amazingly, getting to the car was not a problem after that.

Bub and Harper, our two grizzly bear cubs, foraging for last year's cranberries up at our new lot.  The willows and spruce are back where the house and garage will be.