Alaska -- Portrait Of Meyer's Chuck: The Fine Art Of Village Life

Groceries arrive every Wednesday via Parcel Post. No electricity, no roads. Until six months ago, the whole village shared a single telephone that was nailed to a tree.

Meyer's Chuck, in Southeast Alaska, 40 miles northwest of Ketchikan, is a remote fishing village of 25 souls. It has an elementary school with six students, a post office-and an exquisite native crafts art gallery.

The origins of the gallery go back to a ladies' carving class that Rebecca Welti taught three years ago. After Rebecca studied carving in Seattle, she thought it might give locals something constructive to do during the long, dark winters.

It was Pete Rice who first told me about the gallery. A Mercer Island native, Pete worked in Ketchikan as a fisherman and carpenter until his late 20s when he went back to college, picked up an M.D., did a residency in internal medicine at U.W., and re-settled in Ketchikan. He and his brother Greg, who's married to Rebecca, have a cabin in Meyer's Chuck.

Approaching the "chuck"

During the 90-minute skiff ride from Knudson Bay we could see massive Prince of Wales Island to our left and the dense rain forest of the Cleveland Peninsula close on our right. Sea lions and schools of porpoises surfaced periodically. Bald eagles perched in the tall red cedar, Sitka spruce, and hemlock stared at us impassively.

"Chuck" is a geographic term for a saltwater bay that becomes landlocked at low tide. It is thought to originate from the Nootka word chauk, meaning river or stream. Meyer's Chuck consists of a central bay ringed by about 15 cabins. The tides are extreme - 20-foot surges every six hours - and at low tide the central bay essentially becomes a saltwater lake.

The first residents I met were Steve and Cassey Peavey, Pete's next-door neighbors. Steve works as a salmon troller and Cassey makes drums of yellow cedar and deer skin for the gallery.

Steve, a muscular Irish-American ex-boxer, told us with good humor about his bad week. He'd misjudged the tides, ran his outboard over rocks, then wrapped a fishing line around his prop.

Steve related a lengthy story about Greasy Gus, an old Meyer's Chuck resident who never cleaned his cooking utensils. Cassey said she didn't care how I spelled her name. It occurred to me that I'd never known anyone who didn't care how their name was spelled.

On the small dock we met Ed, who was working on his new boat. Ed, now retired from fishing, carves during winter. His specialty is bowls of spalded alder and yellow cedar. Last year he sold more than 100.

The gallery

Art and Linda Forbes live next to the gallery. Linda runs it and Art works as a fisherman and a carpenter. Art built the gallery as a schoolroom for their two boys, but then decided to send them to the elementary school instead.

The gallery, "Village Arts Co-op," is a solidly constructed room of spruce with a hemlock floor and abundant natural light. Rows of wood bowls, native-style masks, deerskin drums, wood carvings and casted bronze sculpture line the walls. There are stacks of elaborate baskets of cedar bark and spruce root. No T-shirts or postcards.

The gallery is non-profit and takes only a 5 percent commission, a minuscule amount by usual gallery standards. It's used for advertising and operating costs. An ad was placed in a yachting journal, but most of the folks who come to the gallery say they heard of it by word of mouth. Their first year, 1993, they sold out their entire stock.

As in any small community, there have been feuds in Meyer's Chuck, and some people hadn't spoken to each other in years.

Almost everybody used the same analogy when describing their neighbors. "We're like a big family," I was told. "And like in any big family, there're people you get along with, and people you don't."

But the gallery has forced people to work together. As fishing revenue has dropped, residents realize that an alternative industry was needed. Logging is increasingly episodic and uncertain.

Celebrity visitors

Linda told me about the celebrities who'd been to the gallery. One polite man from Florida wore a T-shirt that read, "Big Daddy." Art immediately recognized him as "Big Daddy" Don Garlitz, the first person to go over 200 mph in a drag car.

Other visitors have included Audrey Sutherland, a 75 year-old writer and kayaker from Hawaii; and a recording engineer for Jerry Garcia. Yachts have arrived from Japan, Istanbul and France.

Linda and Art talked about their worries about the elementary school closing. The current enrollment of six is below the state minimum. Their two boys make up a full third of the student body. They talked about the possible strategy of importing kids from neighboring islands to bolster the census.

Linda is pleased that there's more than one phone now. Before, since the phone was next to her house, she was responsible for relaying messages to everyone in town. "Whoever was calling would just let it ring. They knew I'd answer it eventually."

Some folks

On the dirt path that runs between the cabins we ran into Ray, an elderly fellow, who told me that he liked Meyer's Chuck just fine. "Close enough to Ketchikan," he explained, "but not too close."

Some people might consider a distance of 40 miles by boat from a city of 15,000 on the remote side, but apparently for Ed this is the ideal level of urbanization.

Blanche, an 85-year-old Native American, initially refused to allow me to write anything about her. After a few minutes she relented and said I could use her name "if you promise to tell the truth." She did, however, refuse to allow me to photograph her.

Pete is her physician and he essentially was making a house call under the guise of a social visit. He promised to bring her some ooligan, a small local fish similar to smelt, prized for its high oil content.

She expressed concern about Pete's single martial status and advised him to ask out a particular Ketchikan woman.

The lodge

Joyce and Cliff Gardener run the Meyer's Chuck Lodge, the sole business on the island other than the gallery. They have four rooms and offer package deals including fishing boats and transportation by seaplane from Ketchikan. Joyce contributes deerhorn earrings to the gallery.

Marian, Ed's wife, gave us homemade dry, subtle blackberry wine. It packed a wallop and I found myself gripping the sofa to avoid listing. She showed us a copy of a book she'd written on her childhood in Port Protection, a similarly sized fishing village, and 1950s photos of Meyer's Chuck residents Lonesome Pete and Halibut Pete. "All the oldtimers had nicknames," she said wistfully. "No one has nicknames anymore."

Marian is the Meyer's Chuck postmistress. I asked her about the pay. "I get $5 for Tuesday and $5 for Wednesday (the two days it's open). I don't complain. If I made a fuss, they might close the place altogether." She contributes deer antler earrings to the gallery.

I met Shirley, a nurse who works in Ketchikan periodically, and her husband, Herb, their nephew Robin, and Shirley's half-brother, Rory. I did not meet Jackie, who was away on a bark-gathering expedition, or Jackie's daughter, Eve, who was born in a Meyer's Chuck cabin 15 years ago. Eve has an uncanny ability to carve animals, and several people told me that "birds come right up to her."

Word gets around

Throughout our day, no one was surprised to see us. In fact, as we made the rounds, every successive house seemed to know a little more about me. I quickly found out that there is an active CB network, and news of our circuit was being reported on a house-by-house basis.

I heard discussion on the effects of television on the community. The consensus was that the major advange was less bickering. Major con: less socializing.

The pace is slow in Meyer's Chuck. Everyone expected us to visit for longer than we did.

I thought it might be a wonderful place to hunker down awhile, fish and get to know the locals better. But only if I could learn to contribute something to the gallery. Christopher Sanford is a freelance writer who lives in Arlington, Snohomish County.

More information:

-- Village Arts Co-op Gallery, Meyer's Chuck AK 99903

-- Meyer's Chuck Lodge, Meyer's Chuck, Alaska 99903; phone (907) 225-4608.