Expanding the outlook on life

by Peter Twitchell

At the end of August 1970 when I returned home from firefighting and working at the Bristol Bay at the Alaska Pacific cannery I had the strong desire to go to the Sheldon Jackson Jr. college in Sitka, Alaska.

When I was attending S.J., I had the opportunity to see the Harlem Globetrotters at the college campus gymnasium. The thought of seeing a polished basketball team stirred my mind and I went to watch the game.

The gymnasium was filled to capacity with Mount Edgecumbe and Sitka residents and students including the SJ college students.

At the time I didn’t know who this team was or where they were from. I learned from other students that they were from East Coast and could do amazing things with the basketball on the basketball court.

I knew that they had to be professionals but didn’t have any knowledge that they were entertaining as well as comical in nature.

As the Harlem Globetrotters crisscrossed and ran around the gymnasium they dribbled the ball and threw the ball skillfully and put me in another world. They changed my mindset about how basketball was played and put me in a wider field looking outside the box.

I saw a different picture of how basketball was played outside, two and three point basket shots, and the competitive nature of the sport.

To my amazement, the Harlem Globetrotters had the whole gymnasium roaring with laughter. My idea of a basketball game was changed forever. For two hours that evening my mind was expanded from the humdrum of college life to a new horizon.

Going to the event was a good release of college stress to expanding my outlook on life that anything is possible. It was like a bridge furthering my education, my experience that evening in Sitka at the college gymnasium with the Harlem Globetrotters stimulated my mind to greater awareness of the world I was living in and my part in it.

Being there that evening I realized I could go and live my dreams fuller, happier, and more satisfied.

When I graduated from the Kilbuck High School in Bethel I never had any real desire to leave but college did come to my mind.

When I was 18 the Selective Service had given me a classification of 1-A. The way I understood it was that I was a sole-surviving son status and could not be drafted into the military only in case of national emergency. If war broke out in my country I would be called in.

In the summer of 1970 I had joined the crew of firefighters from Bethel and we went to fight fires around Lake Minchumina and Chicken, Alaska – 15 miles from the Canadian Border.

I arrived from my firefighting month, painted Mom’s kitchen and left the next day for the Bristol Bay to find a job at a cannery. Upon my arrival at Dillingham I saw men from the Akula-Nunapitchuk region.

They urged me to sign up at Pacific Alaska fisheries cannery with Mr. Gillian. I went down to the dock and met him and was hired to start working the next day. I started out oiling fish cutting machines they referred to as the “chink”.

I was moved to get a wheelbarrow full of crushed ice to fill fish cartons to keep the fish cold. Then I was upgraded to record the salmon roe weights that were sold to the Japanese and I did this the rest of the summer and most of August.

I felt satisfied in my heart having worked at the cannery in Dillingham where my Dad and his friend Oscar Larson fished and sold their catches in the 1950s and 1960s through 1964. I was amazed at how many tons of salmon was processed every day that the commercial fishermen caught and was brought to the dock.

I had a strong desire to fight fires with the Bureau of Land Management and go to work at the cannery before going home to give my Mother and my brother a hug and catch the Wein Air Alaska jet to Sitka.

Creator God I know was in charge of my destiny because none of these trips to work and to go to school were planned. I just went and let the chips fall where they might and I’ve never regretted those decisions, but grateful to Creator God for taking care of me.