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Les introduced me to this fellow and we shook hands. His name was David also. David Ullin to be exact. He lived a little further up the Duwamish River on his boat. At his feet was a well worn heavy canvas satchel with hand sewn leather hand grips. Les and Alf drifted away to clean up and Dave and I were left standing there alone. The moment was a bit awkward, I did not know this fellow and he was less a conversationalist than I. So I asked him what he did and he told me that he was just down from Alaska after a season of trolling for Halibut and some salvage logging. Salvage logging is the term used for recovering the logs that break away from a log raft being towed to a sawmill and wind up on the beach.
They are not true salvage as the law is very firm on ownership of all cut logs in Alaska. But if a person salvages them and brings them to the mill or makes up a raft of them and notifies the mill, they are entitled to a per board foot salvage fee. That is what Dave preferred to do, salvage logging. He fished for the cash money to live on the rest of the year but he really wanted to go back up to Alaska and just do salvage logging for a living. As he put it, " I like the hard work, fishing is not hard enough".
It was quitting time and Alf had left to catch the bus and Les had gone off to his boat so I asked Dave if he would like a ride to his boat? He accepted and we drove about a mile further up the river road to a small marina. The Duwamish Marina was not the type of marina that most folks would think of when they imagine a marina. No, the Duwamish Marina had quite a different clientele. Commercial fishermen with small trollers or gill-netters, some livaboards, mostly retired fishermen living on their Social Security and preferring to be on their boats than some depressing retirement home and several of the ubiquitous do-it-yourselfer boatbuilder types with boats in various stages of repair, remodel, etc.
Atop the bulkhead that led down to the slips there was a tin building with a well-kept marine railway along side it. We got out and I went back to the tailgate of my truck so that Dave could get his satchel. I grabbed the handles and gave a yank. I nearly broke my shoulder, that satchel was heavy! Dave gave it a pull and picked it up with ease. I asked him what he had in there and he said, "oh a couple hundred pounds of grains and spuds". I took another look at this Nordic giant as he toted that load down the gangway and out the slip to his boat. That gangway was at a 55 to 60 degree angle for that far north the tidal range is greater than closer to the Equator. So not only was he toting several hundred pounds of grains and spuds, he as also walking down a steep incline. He never faltered a step. The slips were made up of logs with planks nailed atop for a walkway. When Dave stepped on the slip where his boat was moored the damn thing sank enough to be awash.
Dave's boat was typical of the small wooden troller types then in use all over the PacNoWest. About 34" long, double ended with a small pilot house with galley stove and sink across the aft bulkhead and space for 2 bunks down below and up towards the bow. The engine, a Lathrop, was behind the ladder down from the pilothouse and then the forward bulkhead of the fishhold, which took up the balance of the hull. Dave had removed the second bunk and set a workbench in its place complete with a blacksmith's leg vice set into a plate atop one of the frames. I guess I stayed and talked with him for 2 hours because when I glanced at my watch it was 6:45. Penny would be waiting and worrying so I said so long and invited Dave to come and visit with us
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