Welcome to my little snippet of childhood memories. Growing up on a 32 foot sailboat in a family of 4 created some weird and wacky memories. It wasn't always a fun experience, it wasn't always an adventure and some days it didn't even feel do-able but we managed to do it. As my dad always said, "it builds character". Well, THIS character thought it would be fun to share little pieces of boat memories on occassion.One of the best Christmas presents I received this year was Hall Anderson's new book "Still Rainin', Still Dreaming". In it is a collection of photographs from his 30 years of work at the Ketchikan Daily News. This is probably the best representation of Ketchikan, Alaska that I've seen and with each page I was reminded of the uniqueness of that little town.
As I turned the pages I was pleasantly suprised to find some people I know....my first boss teaching swimming lessons at the pool, my lifelong best friend's younger brother fishing at the derby and a nearly forgotten boat family that I used to play with on the docks.
This is the Bunton family. A family of 7 living on aboard a barge/boat with their big ol' dog and a rooster. There weren't many other kids around the "neighborhood" (aka...the docks) for my brother and I to play with so we ended up befriending the younger Bunton boys. We'd go with them as they took the dog up to the parking lot and walked him along the trail that led from one end of the docks to the other. My brother and I would watch in facination as the Bunton boys would swing from the top of the ramp rails or jump off the top of the ramp into the ocean when the days were warmer.
If life was interesting for our little family of 4 to grow up in such a small space I'm sure that things were just as entertaining over at the Bunton's boat. For those of you who can't make out the quote on their refrigerator it says, "If God had wanted us to live on land he would have created more land than water." Guess that was my parent's philosophy too.
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