Fridays are for Friends – Florida Hillbilly

Not long after we moved to Willow from Wasilla, Alaska, we started making friends. I’ll talk to anybody willing to make eye contact with me. Bless their innocent hearts.

One day, while I was taking pictures of a moose in Nancy Lake State Park, one of the park maintenance guys pulled up and started talking. Thirty seconds into the conversation he asked, “Your name Darrell?”

Three moose moving among leafy trees in Alaska — Three moose among the trees in Alaska, August 2021.

This was Cactus, a prickly bastard who worked with the husband of one of my wife’s friends—the people who had effectively sponsored our move. He’d heard about our relocation and apparently wasn’t quite as dumb as he looked.

By a long shot. I’m not suggesting he’s a Mensa candidate, if you catch my drift.

We chatted, discovered we were already friend-adjacent in a place with considerably fewer people than Florida, and became fast friends. To this day, I seldom go a day without one of us reaching out to the other. Mostly to bust stones. I did mention the prickly part.

The Luckyshot Garage

Cactus had a Friday routine: he’d go hang out at the Luckyshot Garage. The owner was a saintly fellow we’ll call ChoppedMeatPat, CMP, or just Pat. Imagine somebody half Daniel Boone and half Fred Rogers. He’d give you the shirt off his back, never say an unkind word, hold the door for every woman he encountered, and tend an amazing garden while fighting a running war with one particularly notorious squirrel.

Every Friday a different cast of characters would pass through that garage. We’d have a drink, a smoke, tell some lies, retell old stories, and make plans that occasionally had actual intent behind them. We’d fix carts, buggies, wheelers, and sleds. We’d judge each other openly, fairly, and with love. Brothers, every one of us, even when some of us had been strangers to each other an hour earlier.

It felt like a cartoon show with severe adult undertones.

I’d hang out with that bunch every damned Friday I could. The conversation was warm, friendly, smart, and snarky enough that you never wanted to miss an episode. More important, those guys would show up for one another without a second thought. On a -30-degree, frost-locked morning, one would come running if you called and said you’d fallen between your flush toilet and your bathtub. (Both items are local bragging rights in a place where dry cabins aren’t exactly unusual. The fall might even have been staged as a street-cred flex.)

They were rugged individuals who didn’t much care for having their liberties trampled, and they were also the first people to help when somebody needed a hand. Watching that, I tried to follow their lead. They’re the kind of people I think I’m still trying to be.

One of the things I miss most in that state, it’s that garage.

What the Luckyshot Gang left me

I’m certain not all of Alaska was like that. Like so many other things in my life, I was blessed by the people around me. Pat brought me patience. Cactus taught me bravado. Then there was Lez, the non-lesbian Subaru driver from the Pacific Northwest who wore Birkenstocks and camo while toting a gun and tending his homegrown weed. All legal up there, folks. Even the Birkenstocks.

Lez taught me that some days are blue, some days are red, but purple tends to be where it’s at, man. And hug your kids.

They changed me, more for the better than the worse. I like to think part of that is learning to filter out the negative and accentuate the positive. But I love and miss all of them—including Porchrail Pete, whom we called The Stumbler.

Pete knew he had issues, and he was man enough to walk home rather than choose the alternative. An imperfect fellow struggling through life like the rest of us, he felt like a little brother to me. I hear he’s improved his station and turned to face his demons. That’s a hard fight, one day and one step at a time. I don’t pray often, and I don’t say this lightly: he’s always in my prayers.

He was fighting those demons long before our paths crossed, and he’s turning pages that are new to him now. I don’t want credit for any of it. I just hope I helped, in whatever small way I could.

Today is Friday, October 2. The wife and I have been back from Willow for about 20 months. Not a day goes by that we don’t think of that place, those people, or the life we lived there. We still spend time every week retelling some moment from Alaska to each other.

That’s really the Alaska I miss. Not the garage itself…what’s inside. The friends.

Fridays are for friends. Even in Florida.

But!!! Florida is a pretty crowded place. I’ve spent a few days here in my time, and I suspect I may still have a few friends hanging around.

We made it down to Legion Hall 126. It’s Friday Fish Fry Day—like Ronald McDonald. Say it aloud a couple of times. You won’t get it out of your head now.

Apparently there’s a food truck that’s become a regular Friday event. I’ve had their fish and chips and brought home an order of ribs before, so I’m not going in completely blind. I can eat anywhere, but the booze is cheap for the wife, Friday Fish Fry Day is open to the public, and I’m a new member of this Legion Hall.

And now the food has arrived: a rib dinner, fish and shrimp, a fish dinner, and a shrimp dinner. Stephen, our server, has been prompt and helpful. Friday Fish Fry Day is officially more than an idea.