Letters from Nikolaevsk

Annitta

12-2-98 -- Thanksgiving

Hi from the village and the clouds..

Ketchikan is quite a ways from here. That area is beautiful though I have never had the good fortune to wander around there. Fairbanks gets COLD..... almost as bad as Barrow.

Nikolaevsk is located ten to twelve miles off of the Sterling Hwy. Turn left in Anchor Point at the North Fork Road and follow until pavement ends. Watch out for moose as one enters the winding dirt road with trees on each side. Go up, go down. Go around for about eight miles until the small sign on right and road on left. A bit of caution here... this is where THE HILL lives. It lives for moments of unsuspecting people with no studded tires or four wheel drive.

Then after one swallows the heart it's a mile to the village, make the curve and pop into one of the most neatest communities down here. For those of you in Alaska, I am twenty-five miles Northeast of Homer; seventy-five miles to shop to Soldotna and Kenai (where the BIG stores are such as Safeway and Fred Meyers and K-mart) and seventy-five miles back. Sooo, a day of shopping is like taking a trip. Especially on the road in the winter.

There is the ever present internet though it does have a tendency to fade out now and then. Two internet providers only but one telephone company.. we are at their mercy.

Russian Orthodox is not Catholic. Call an orthodox a Catholic and a new religious war is on. There are three cultures here: the monkey, the fish and the turkey. The monkey arrived from Russian via China. A group broke off from the Russian Orthodox Church in Russian around four hundred years ago and went to northern China near Mongolia and there they lived for four hundred years. They still speak an archaic Russian, much like our Old English would be four hundred years ago in England. They are called monkey tails because of the belt the males wear. When it is tied, it hangs down in the back and thus the term monkey.

The fish is a different sect of the Orthodox who arrived from Russia wearing different clothes. Bright, cheerful and well covers the female form. Their russian is spoken differently and is considered, by at least one fish, to be the correct and proper Russian. The turkey group is from a Turkish backround and the women's clothes were different. Now, they wear what the old timers call "English" dresses and is considered by the elders to be a terrible thing to do.

Russian Orthodox is the religion that has the beautiful icons. Every Orthodox home has icons. I have a copy of an icon of Mary and Joseph going into Bethlehem.... Well, one female thought it best to be safe than sorry... something about demons lurking in pagan homes and all... enough of that...

Take a look at what happened at Thanksgiving. Please understand that most of the Orthodox Old Rite Believers, (those with no tvs, computers, and etc.) think of non-orthodox as unclean... This is not an insult, but does lead to some pretty funny situations when visted by one. I had invited two little girls to Thanksgiving... they do not celebrate this holiday. A few adults came over including a friend whose husband is a priest. This is what happened

Took about twenty minutes for a twenty pound turkey to get stripped to the bone. Never saw anything like it.

The little Russian girls bugging all day until dinner time... Fourteen showed up plus three boys. The girls all under the age of nine. Most of the girls were from the old rite Believers and are not allowed to eat off of anything that we have touched, so to paper plates. I learned this last year. Then, the forks and such have to be dishwasher done so that the kids can see the steam rising and know that everything else has been sterilized. Then, they can eat. Opened a box of cups that were new so that they could drink juice and such.

Soooo, one twenty pound turkey - gone; one seven pound chicken - gone; seven pies - gone; one peach cobbler - almost gone; potatoes - forget it; dressing and gravy - nope, not one drop of either; five loaves of homemade bread - two loaves left. The veggies are still here though.... so there is a snack. The little girls ate and then left. The boys didn't care what they ate from as long as the food was good. Several adult Russians stopped in and ate very well - they didn't care either if the plates were paper or not. One Russian woman wandered in, said hello and left... have no idea who she was. My friend, Photini, (her husband is a priest), enjoyed all of it. Now, Ivan let the cat out of the bag, or should I say goat.

Photini had had this brillant idea to become a real poster woman for Mother Earth News and had decided to raise chickens, and rabbits for food and eggs. Sure.. the first egg probably cost four hundred dollars. The first chicken coop burnt down and bbq cluckers was had by all - one hundred of them. The next crop was around twenty. After feed, rebuilding of henhouse, etc... one expensive egg. She didn't know whether to eat it or glue it to the kitchen wall.

Then, the decision made by her hubby was that they needed to thin some of the seven roosters that appeared when they all the "hens" matured. Photini could not do it. No matter how hard she tried. So, she tried to give them away. She found out that in such a tiny community that roosters find their way back home again - and bring other ones with them. The thirty cluckers she finally wound up with was enough to make her cry.

So, brave soul that she be, she took an axe, and committed cluckercide... one rooster bit the dust. Photin tells me that from that day on the chickens would shrink from her whenever she went into the side yard to collect eggs. Well, she wound up giving all of them away to a couple who live many miles from here. One day two weeks ago, the young couple called and had a present for her.. yep, ten fully dressed hens. As far as I know, they are still untouched in her freezer.

She then decided to get a goat. You know, milk and a great lawn mower. Wonderful goat until she got it home and discoverd that it was 1) very old and 2) a nutered billy... Photini doesn't have much luck. Everything went along fine until her hubby decided that he has been called to somewhere else, and voila! he is off to seek a job with American Indians (he is a licensed family specialist as well as a Russian Orthodox priest and they are not from here, which made it VERY hard on them). So, there he is leaving. Photini finds a home for her big old billy.

Several of the Russian neighbors are out celebrating one thing or another with the ususal vodka and find Photini's goat.. they said it followed them home.... They burst into Photini's home which scared her half to death, she takes the old broom to them and the chase is on.... wobbly russians in one direction with a mad woman behind them, and a goat in the other direction. That was several weeks ago. She had no idea what happened to the goat and no one was spilling the beans. Except for one vodka celebrating, turkey eating Russian male who wondered in to see why all the kids were here, and decided to have a bite or two or three..

So, here we were sitting down and sucking on turkey bones, (the ONLY thing left) when Ivan wanders in.. Now, Ivan has been going to AA meetings but his Russian mind knew that this was some sort of "English" holiday so he would celebrate too... so he came over... lots of kids means lots of food. We do not drink so he was disappointed... not enough to not eat. Ivan is sitting across from me, Photini is at the end of the table between us. Ivan eats his fill, (Russians NEVER get their fill), says excuse me he will be right back that he has some Red Snapper -- what's with the snapper lately? -- and trudges across the snow to his tiny house and trudges back dragging two large white plastic kitchen bags full of fish.

He comes in, trudges up the stairs banging the bags with each and every step and proudly deposits these wet, (-he dragged them through the snow as well- ) on the kitchen floor. We were impressed that he could stand much less drag fish around. He presents Photini and I with the fish and then he pulls this baggie out of the bag full of meat. Ohhhh, said Photini, what's this? and Ivan, said proudly...GOAT!

Yep, he had found this goat wandering around in front of his house, and he captured it and then got some of his friends and they did what people do who figure that food has walked its way to their freezer. Photini drops the bag and Ivan picks it up... Photini drops it again, and again Ivan picks it up.

Of course, by this time, I needed to be picked up. The drama is wonderful... Well, all is forgiven, Ivan felt terrible about it when Photini explained, as best as possible in clean words.. after all her husband is a priest... Ivan swaggers home. Photini gathers her brood together, and I have a large chunk of goat meat in my freezer... sighhhh.

bless,

annitta
from downtown quiet snow-lit Nikolaevsk