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"I Arriving in the Petersburg Hospital on October 13, 1929. One would have thought a Bush was President. The economy was in shambles." And you couldn't borrow a dime." ________________________________________________________________ PROFILE: The first line of his prospective and, friends hope, distant obituary, will probably note that Andy Mathisen has been a fishing guide-the first of his kind in Southeast Alaska to introduce fly fishermen to salmon and salt water, an innkeeper of some renown who built the first modern motel in Petersburg, a Boat designer and builder who with his friend, Tom Greer, produced the first welded aluminum self bailing skiffs in 1982 and later models featuring down turned chines, now an Industry Standard. If the obit writer coved his bases, he would have also note that Mathisen had been an insurance salesman, a software promoter, multi-striped entrepreneur, and not least of all, since this is Petersburg, that Mathisen in his youth, seined, trolled, long lined, owned and operated boats of his own and others With a little leg work among the still living, the obit writer will dig up some quotes that testify to Andy Mathisen's productive efforts in two fields of endeavor, the first promoting tourism and, as Mathisen himself might say, protecting wilderness and rivers from ourselves and others more motivated by profits than good sense. Serving on the Chamber of Commerce, Little Norway, the 17th of May, the local Fish and Game Advisory Board, World Championship King Salmon Derby, Alaska State Tourism Advisory Board, the Federal/State Land Use Planning Commission and the Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission . he was a member, a player, a doer when others didn't. As for fighting environmental battles, Mathisen has been unbowed, unapologetic, and unrelenting. He takes no prisoners. And one victory he shared in, saving Petersburg Creek, may be his biggest contribution of all. Somewhere toward the end, in the way of most obits, he will be noted as the father of three incredible daughters, the grandfather of six, most of them Alaskans, all of them good citizens. Missing from his obituaries will likely be his calling hours. The color, the flesh and blood, the vinegar, mischief, fun, friends and attitude that are Andy Mathisen. I met Mathisen, his motel, Petersburg, and Alaska all in the same day, I think, in the mid-Seventies. All save the motel left a lasting impression. He was on his own hook by then, a single dad in the prime of career number three, a motel owner, commercial salmon smoker and a sports fishing guide, dapperly dressed out in Orvis Fashion and a rakish Stetson adorned by a tie fly. In a town of slimy baseball capped fishermen splattered with gurry, blood and scales, Mathisen stood out in more ways than one. Brooms in the mast didn't measure his success. There was no sweat on his brow and he gave the impression he was on easy street. What pressures there were to putting guests in his rooms, a fly on the water and a fish in his customer's creel, he didn't let on, all the more one suspects to create that air of confidence and imminent success so vital to customer and clients alike. He had a fundamentally different view of fish than the town he lived in. In a society of hook, net and purse men, who loved catching fish, Mathisen actually enjoyed fish for being themselves. He had scales and gurry, boats and boatloads of fish behind him. That gave him standing even though he didn't have to keep the fish he caught anymore. But when he caught them and kept them, he treated them like the gourmet food they were, a rather obvious point often ignored he thought by commercial fishermen and processors who did everything but. In a town of Norwegians and Lutherans, who valued sweat-on-your-brow hard work and frowned on ostentation, Mathisen's leisurely-looking pursuit was a novel kind of work. His non-conformity was apparent. So too his devil-may-care attitude. So too his congenital contempt for the greed, hypocrisy, and lack of imagination he said contaminated the commercial procuring and purveying of fish; having already succeeded in fishing and insurance, often being one, he didn't suffer fools gladly. Needless to say, these traits contributed to a certain bad-boy reputation, which had the effect of bringing out more mischief. Like Groucho Marx, he lived by the adage, "I'd never join a country club that would think of having me as a member." He loved all wildlife and wilderness, fine food, women, homegrown strawberries, new potatoes and a pipe with a sensitivity that suggested Mediterranean genes obtained by a long ago Viking raider. Fun loving, free-spirited and flouting convention, he played pied-piper to a collection of greenies, newcomers, and young men and women, who collected around him and his house and thought this guy pushing fifty was the cat's meow. Now that he and I are so much older, I think of the many lessons I learned and the maxims he passed on. "That liars going first generally get the worst of it, and "not to let schooling interfere with one's Education, so you better top it up, Davey" he once told me. But you couldn't make this up, I swear. What follows is an interview with Andy. David Boeri ___________________________________________________________ THE INTERVIEW Question: Talking about history, is it going to be stone or ashes for you, Andy? Andy: Ashes. Question: Scattered out in Frederick Sound, where we dropped your retriever, Alaska Black Fly wrapped in burial cloth with a boulder and a shot of whiskey? Andy: Nope. Right up here, in my yard, along Wiley Creek. My grandparents lived here- they got the property from the Ursins, who were related to my grandmother-my parents lived here, then me and now my oldest daughter's family. Five generations so far. Andy: So, you'll be out there near your strawberry, raspberry and blueberry patches. Answer: Yup. SAVING PETERSBURG CREEK Question: When people come up the Narrows past Hungry Point someday and see the house and Wiley Creek, and think of you, what do you want them to remember most? Andy: I already told you that. Getting Petersburg Creek set-aside as wilderness. If my mom and I hadn't gone to Washington, D.C. to lobby for it, we'd have another logged out watershed, a multi-lane highway to Kake, Lord knows how many traffic deaths and one more monument to Forest Service Bad Management. Back during the land dividing years, when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was being worked up, Senators Ted Stevens and Mike Gravel wouldn't do a thing for us, the Forest Service, our Chamber of Commerce and the other parasitic entities were useless. (Are you keeping up with me, Davey?) That's been the problem with all these damned land managers over the years. They talk about having a road to Kake and elsewhere, but what they really wanted was another damned highway to the trees. Anyway, it seems very few besides Ethel and Harold Bergmann realized what my mom and I accomplished. We had gone to D.C. to lobby for "The Creek" and we weren't getting anywhere. Then, in a sub-committee meeting chaired by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson gaveled to a close for lack of a quorum, I grabbed my mom and said, "Come on, let's go." We told Senator Jackson, "Petersburg Creek is a crown jewel, it's a premier fishing and recreational spot," and he says, "I know of Petersburg Creek. I've been there." He told us that he once worked a summer at the Pacific American Fisheries cannery now named Icicle Seafood's. "So you want it saved?" he says. My mom and I told him, "Hell, yes! Everyone wants it saved except the Saw Mills, loggers, Forest Service, Chamber of Commerce and our own Congressional delegation." Scoop scratches his head for a second or two and says, "Andy, Bunny, I don't know where this is going to go or how it will boil out. But I promise you this. If there's any way to get Petersburg Creek included as a wilderness area in the bill, I'll do it." And he did it. Petersburg Creek got classified as a wilderness area. And it's the recreational crown jewel of Petersburg. We might have had five, no more than ten minutes with him. That was it, again I found myself in the right place at the right time with the right people. Many others sleep right through opportunities like that. THE SALESMAN Question: From what I can see you never slept through any kind of opportunity. Andy: You know I missed some Davey, just not many. . Question: How did you come to mesh your fishing and selling experiences so successfully? Andy: Everything I learned about dealing with people and selling, I learned from fish, fishing and my old Insurance boss, Virgil Bohlke. Question: How did you get into insurance? Andy: I was spending some winters down in Seattle rotting away like the rest of my fishing buddies in crummy hotels and bars waiting for spring, the trek north and the halibut and salmon seasonal openings. I wanted to get away from that life, so in the winter of 1954 I grabbed my skis and headed off to Portland to ski Mt Hood. And there began a whole New Life. In those days it wasn't like today. You couldn't get too cozy with a lover. The Norwegian way was to have a job first. Otherwise, it just wasn't acceptable. So, in order to pursue my new interest.... "I need a job," I told Ruby and Virgil Bohlke, who were both dear family friends of my parents. "No problem," said Virgil. " I can get you on the job tomorrow." And he did. I sold Fraternal Life Insurance for nearly seven years. Question: Sounds a long way from salmon, halibut, sago soup, and Petersburg creek? Andy: Yeah, it was, suits, big cars, high-rise apartments, pleasure boating and beautiful women. Lots of fun and I had never seen that much money come so fast. No more smelly tortuous twenty-hour workdays on fishing boats either. Hell, I called my dad and asked him to dump my own gill-netter. Good ole Virgil and the insurance business taught me about motivation, initiative and success. "You want to make more money?" he used to say to me. "Make one more call each day and double your income." I was so young and naïve, I believed what he told me. And it all pretty much came to be true! Pretty soon the money was coming over the rollers just like fish Question: How did you do it? Andy: After establishing my credibility with them and that's what I did. My attitude was "I'm honest; the prospective client just doesn't know it yet." I learned I had to be genuine with them; I had to be myself and tell the truth. Hell, I was convincing and perseverant and my credibility rarely ever let me down. Question: Was it really that easy? Andy: Are you listening to me at all, Davey? It was just like fishing. And I treated it that way. I mean the only thing I ever knew about was fishing. So why try to do anything else. Question: Sounds like you took the Dale Carnegie course on How to Make Friends and Influence People. Andy: Yup. And you know, years later, when we were back in Portland one winter I took a job selling cars. A lot of my old insurance customers came down for lunch and drove home in their new Fords. I think my customers loved me. I lost very few of those insurance accounts. FLY FISHING Question: So how did you start up as a fishing guide? Andy: Art Hammer helped me the most.. He gave me the boats and motors I needed and asked that I only sell them at the end of each season.piece of cake there. Andy: A bit later on, my uncle, Alf Lee and his wife were riding a bus to a bullfight in Madrid. He retired in Edmonds, Washington after many years serving as the manager of the States Steamship Company in Seattle. Upon retirement, they gave him and his wife a Steamer trip around the world.. Question: What's that have to do with fly-fishing? Andy: Well, if you'd keep quiet for a moment, I'll get around to telling you. I think Uncle Alf was in his seventies and he'd never caught a salmon in his life. So when he came on a visit to Petersburg, I took him fishing down at Blind River Rapids. He caught a couple of Coho's and you should have seen him. In the photos I took he looks like he just landed two Miss Americas. Those photos turned out to be priceless. Sometime later he's in Madrid riding on a bus to that bullfight. The guy next to him happens to be a travel agent from Vermont. And like men do, they're talking fish and women, women and fish, and of course, Alf drags out the photos of his cohos. So he shows them off. And the travel agent, says, "Good God, Alf, I've been trying to get in touch with a few guides in Alaska for one of my clients. Either they can't read or they can't write, because I've never heard a word back from a single one of them." My uncle Alf says, "Well, give me your card. You'll hear from his one." So I wrote to him. By the time I receive a reply, three months had gone by and the season was nearly over. But I remembered what ole Virgil Bohlke used to say. "You want to make more money? Make an extra call ." So I picked up the phone and called the travel agent in Vermont. He told me he of a client who wanted to come up to Alaska to check out some guides and sites for sending his own clients up here for fishing. I figured what the heck; I didn't have much going on. So I set it up. Well, it turns out the client was Leigh Perkins of the Orvis Company. He owned the whole tackle bag and box. When he arrived here, a whole new world of commercial sport fishing opportunity opened up for me. I took him fly fishing up Petersburg Creek, down Duncan Salt Chuck, and at Blind Slough Creek. Later he wrote up his trip in the Orvis Record Catch Club News that circulates to all Orvis customers. I netted three hundred and fifty inquiries from that write up and enough clients to take care of my first five years as a fly fishing guide. Question: So did you deal with your fly fishing customers the same way you dealt with insurance customers? Andy:: The psychology of dealing with clients was pretty simple. My ex, Marilee, fed them like Royalty and I aimed for the fishing to peak on or near the last day, so they'd go home happy. Peaking any earlier, the trip was all-downhill from there. Question: There must have been a lot of pressure. I remember the time you snuck into town looking for Doc Wood to remove a wooly worm fly snagged under your nose. Was it the State's Attorney General who snagged you? Andy: Pretty close Davey, I think it was his boss. I felt like a damn dolly varden twisting and squirming while trying to escape that damned fly. Question: So, you had to show a lot of discretion. But what about the pressure when the client isn't catching fish? Andy: Early on in my career, I had a European client who was an elderly retired French Army colonel. The week was coming to a close and he hadn't yet caught a fish. I must have been showing the strain when. "Andy, my boy," he calls. "Come sit over here and share a smoke with me." He lit his pipe, I lit mine, and he says, "Andy my boy, if I could leave you with but one wish, it would simply be that long before you reach my age you will have learned that catching is not all there is to fishing." Well David that was a conversion experience. On the spot, my thinking and my philosophy changed. I stopped being so greedy. I tell you, Dave, that ten-minute pipe break with the Colonel made me a better person. And dealing with clients, motel guests and people in general got a whole lot easier after that. Question: If your fishermen got uptight about not catching anythingt, what did you tell them? ANDY: I told them, "I guaranteed FISH!" I guaranteed they would see me catch 'em and if they paid attention they'd catch some, too. Question: You had all sorts of celebrities and VIPs up here, didn't you? Andy: Some, yes, I had Manfried Werner, the West German Defense Minister and chief of NATO, Fred Pabst of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, Colonels, Barons, and even a few prize turkeys. Two of my favorite clients were Catherine Perkins, the mother of Leigh Perkins, who owned Orvis, and Mary Brown, who learned fly-fishing from Arnold Gingrich, founder of Esquire Magazine. These two gals were both in their seventies, both Grand Dames of Fly fishing and the world. Question: How did you catch that National Champion 61 pound king salmon? Andy: I was fishing for bait herring late one evening so my German clients could get an early start next morning. We just about had enough when WHAMO!!! This whopper king salmon jumps straight up out of the water like some giant tarpon close enough to the boat for me to see a few herring hanging from the jig that's designed for catching six-inch baitfish. Well the salmon was hooked on the jig too. Weighed in at sixty-one pounds and won the Zebco Tackle Company sponsored US National King Salmon Championship and a thousand dollars CASH! Personally delivered to me in Petersburg by Dick Posey, the Zebco rep. So the next day, my German clients begged me to let them use the herring jig so they could catch "A big one, too." ridiculous. What a joke. I still don't know another fisherman who could have pulled off that catch Question: You still have bragging rights. Who else did you have out in your boat? Andy: I had Life Magazine's top photographer and writer up here, Rudy Crane and Hal Wingo. Murray Morgan, the Seattle author of Skid Row and I became pretty good friends. And a world famous documentary filmmaker, Martin Schliessler from Baden Baden, Germany came here too. I made him stay ashore one day at the glacier in LeConte Bay when he begged to be picked up, so he was there with his movie camera running when the entire face of the glacier suddenly let go and fell into the sea. For him, it was fantasy come true. His Signature shot.. Question: How many clients do you think you took fly fishing? Andy: At this point, I couldn't even guess. I had my first paying client back in the early 60's and my last paying client in 1981. One old curmudgeon of a trial lawyer from New York and his wife came for two weeks at least ten different years. I still think many of my clients returned just for the food; my ex wife, Marilee put on some awesome meals. Watching them fish and eat left me feeling pretty sure they came to eat. MOTEL OWNER Question: So what made you move back to Petersburg and start up a motel? Andy: I'd gotten bored with insurance, and wanted to come home, and all of a sudden the Ferry System was on the books. And it looked like there was going to be tourism. So my new bride and I packed up and moved all our possessions to Seattle, whereupon I met Magnus Martens. Having seined with him for a summer or two- I knew he was a thoughtful generous captain-so, when I asked, he agreed to carry our furniture and all our belongings back to Petersburg. We had so much he had to load his own freight onto another boat. Thank you, Magnus. wherever you are! Anyway, back in Petersburg, we wanted to build something touristy and there wasn't any chance for a fishing lodge or for much of anything else. Question: Why not? Andy: There was no money for anything but halibut boats and whiskey loans. Question: Whiskey loans? Andy: In Petersburg, old Banker Locken had a reputation near and far for keeping his buddies at the Harbor Bar skoaling through the winters when money was in short supply for anything meaningful like a decent place for Petersburg visitors to stay.. Other lenders and those in the know suggested I go to Anchorage where money was easy. But that wasn't my cup of tea. Question: Never liked Anchorage? Andy: You know what Anchorage is to me? The Pit Stop of the North. It's where all the bottom-feeding scavengers go who want to get rich swarming like maggots on a carcass and not giving a damn about what's good for the land or the real Alaskans living on it. Question: So you couldn't open a fishing lodge and you didn't want to live in Anchorage? What next? My wife and I had wanted to open a motel. You know it never occurred to me how so many in this town could be so unimaginative. Drinking loans were commonplace, but I couldn't get one for a seemingly sound business. Old Banker Locken was still living in the Dark Ages. So dark, he couldn't see his way to giving me a small business loan. And the owner of the only Petersburg Hotel wanted me to take that miserable place off her hands, but I'd been around enough boats to recognize a sinking ship. So she was like the plague, trying to make sure the banks here wouldn't give me a loan to build my own place. And it seemed like they never would. Waiting for something to open up, my wife and I fished summers for king salmon out around Kake and Saginaw Bay. That money and the insurance renewals kept us going until one day in Ketchikan, I'm walking down the street where I ran into Wynn Brindle, my old boss from up at Naknek in Bristol Bay. I had worked for him up there in 1952, converting sailboats to power and later fishing red salmon from his plant at Naknek. Brindle was "The Baron". He and his family owned salmon canneries from Naknek to Ketchikan. He was bigger than life. Hell, he was as big as the banks. For whatever reason, Brindle had taken a liking to me early on. And every time we met after 1952, he hit me up to come work for him. Now, years later, I meet him on the street in Ketchikan. "Hey, kid," he says. "How you doing'?" I told him, I wanted to build a motel up in Petersburg but couldn't raise the money. So he says, "How much do you need?" I told him maybe two hundred thousand. The only thing I remember now is that it was a lot of money at the time. "Follow me," he says. We were walking in the same direction and without a pause, he reverses direction and I follow him back to the Miners and Merchants Bank. Right into the bank we go without a pause or knock at the bank manager's office. "Bill," he says to Bill Moran. "This is my friend Andy Mathisen. He wants to build a motel up in Petersburg." Then with all the authority of the Cannery Baron he was, Brindle seemingly leans right into Moran's face and says, "Find him the money, Bill." That took all of ten minutes and in short order, I had a genuine commitment starting me off and running. It was dramatic. Made me much more discreet and discriminating with whom I talked business with. We opened the Tides Inn Motel in 1963. The rooms had telephones, full baths, and soon, televisions in every room. Having such facilities back then was big in Petersburg, Davey. And for God's sake, having a television? We were there first with the most, including rental cars. Question: What happened to the hotel you were being squeezed to buy? Andy: Actually, it burned down, along with the adjoining buildings. The new owners, George and Nancy Murrison, put up the new Scandia House, something else the town could be proud of. Question: Why didn't you give a Scandinavian name to your motel? Andy: It never occurred to me. In Petersburg, so much revolves around the Tide. Nothing moves without consulting a Tide Book. Who wouldn't choose a name that important? Much later I offered to sell my registered business name, "Fish Alaska", to Icicle thinking they might prefer a name representative of their Fishing business instead of continuing with one reminding one of Popsicles. Oh well, all the canneries sold canned salmon for 100 years before even adding a recipe to the cans. What's that tell you? Question: That there is still room to exercise some imagination? Andy: Yup. FISHING STORIES FROM THE OLD DAYS Question: When did you make your first fishing trip? Andy: When I was about six, or eight. I rode out to Hobart Bay on the old tender, Jugoslav to spend a day or two with my Dad on the Ankle Deep and it turned out to be a pretty short day. My raincoat snagged in the purse line on the seine winch and my dad ripped me right out of it. Just enough to send me home early. Question: You long lined, seined, gill netted, trolled and fly-fished. Any kind of fishing you didn't do? Andy: I never tried crabbing. Question: You said before that one reason you eventually got out of fishing was because of your hand. Andy: Because of my hand injury, I always had to do twice as much work as the next guy. It got to be too much. Question: I never heard you talk about your hand. What happened to it? Andy: I had a hunting accident at the start of my sophomore year in high school. With a buddy. I was out in a skiff duck hunting. When we went to get out on the beach, I grabbed my loaded gun by the barrel end changing my life forever when it went off. My parents, by the way, were awesome. Throughout the entire ordeal, and the threes years recovering, they never said a word of blame. Question: How long did it take you to recover and get back to fishing? Andy: By the time graduation came, I was back on the water making trips halibut fishing, four or five straight with no lay-ups between, except for one day off in May of 1947so I could take a bath and deliver my speech as class salutarian. Question: What came next? Andy: Wanting to get out from under my fathers rather oppressive ways, I secured a job with Erling Thomassen on his freezer ship, ICELAND. We headed off to the Bering Sea as far from Petersburg as I could get and still do something familiar. Two good Seasons on the Iceland in the Bering Sea opened my eyes to fish anything beyond the confines of Frederick Sound I also joined up with my favorite mentor, Captain Martin Walstrand- my granddad's brother-the first one in our family to come from the old country. He was a super fine gentleman. I fished two halibut trips in Canada's Hecate Straits with him before rejoining my dad and half a dozen other Petersburg hot shots in 1949 for another western adventure. We went salmon fishing along the Alaska Peninsula from our base cannery in Raspberry Straits on Kodiak Island. Question: Sounds like you covered a lot of water. Andy: Yeah, I spent my winters in Seattle, some of them at the University of Washington, some at the old Broadway Edison boat building school and later at the Sagstad Boat Yard in Ballard. Then I got a chance to escape deck handing from my old friend Odd Johansen. He put me on the flying bridge of his halibut/seiner Carmella J-she was a beautiful boat that had been built at the Sagstad Yard. A poor salmon season didn't do anything for my ego. I think it was 1952, one of those years; I went off to Bristol Bay and Wynn Brindle's Red Salmon Cannery, where we converted old sailboats to power. That was the last year for sailing boats in the Bay. From there I finished the season seining salmon out of Seattle, which included the final salmon seining season off Vancouver Island and the awesome Swiftsure Banks. Question: You fished your last commercial years up in Petersburg? Andy: Yeah, Gene Sheldon and I bought two sailboat hulls from Wynn Brindle's salmon cannery in Bristol Bay and converted them over the winter to power gill-netters for Frederick Sound, the Stikine River and Lynn Canal. We pioneered synthetic deep mesh gillnetting in Frederick Sound. You should have seen the old-timers. They thought we had "stolen" the fish; every drift down the shore under those towering Horn Cliffs-we'd net five thousand pounds or more of sockeyes and dog salmon. The old-timers couldn't believe the heavy catches we were making. Though I didn't realize it then, I was winding down my commercial career. I continued trolling king salmon with sports gear out near Kake, with some fun-loving and generous Natives. There were two fine old Indian friends, Topsy Duguqua and Gilbert Williams. I passed on the ins and outs of rod and reeling for kings to them. The Indians use of fixed gear soon went by the wayside. Question: Talk about wayside. what's the final word before you and I hit the wayside? Andy: I simply hope my kids and grandkids have all the fun I did without the heartaches. And that my retirement foray into the Internet World of business makes us all rich leaving me with more to share with my family and the many friends I have come to love and cherish. Oh! And a few more cribbage wins from my longtime buddy; John Martin will ice the cake for good. ANDY....

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