the machinator

got to the plant.  walked through the building, saw where i'd be staying, and eating, and shaving.  then we walked out to the dock, about 25 yards to the Kenai river.  The machinator was propped up on pallets and other means.  a 12 foot step ladder lead the way up onto the deck.  we immediately started installing a water cooling system.  in the belly of the boat is a room about 10 feet wide, 8 feet long and about five feet tall.  called the fish hold.  for years that place needed to be manually packed with shaved ice in layers for the fish to sit until they could then be manually unloaded into the plant for processing. 

we were installing a water cooling system.  the fish hold will now be completely filled with water.  kept at 32 degrees.  the fish will just be thrown down in there.  and then they will take a big vacuum thing and suck all the water and fish out to then be taken into the plant for processing. 

if Randall Jarell were working here he would probably have written a poem about it like "The Ball Turret Gunner."  where the belly of the boat is some kind of metaphor.  some kind of life providing thing or something.  like the belly of the plane in the poem. 

the boat was built in 1979 and commercially fished for twenty some years.  now the machinator just sits off shore so the big boy boats with all the catch don't have to come in close to shore.  they will use the vacuum hose thing to put all the fish directly into the machinator so they can get back out for more.  the machinator is far from being put out to pasture. 

we worked on the deck of that thing from about 11:30am until 7pm.  a nice long coffee break, sitting in the shop, listening to classic rock.  more than a feeling.  dead or alive.  rock and roll fantasy.  paranoid.  every rose has its thorn.  few other beauties.  we drank black coffe out of styrofoam cups.  the sun was up without a cloud in the sky.  for the entire 7 hours it did not bend or arc.  it just traveled parallel to the ground.  it moved significantly though.  but if felt like noon the entire time.  the light was exactly the same all day.  it never really changed.  after about 9 or so it started to descend very gradually toward the horizon.  it set at about 11:45pm or so.  won't be dark until about 1am  but not even a true dark.  like way after dusk.  like when you're playing outside when you're a kid and you can still kind of see, and the lightning bugs are out.