Funny, Unexplained, and Sensational: Digital Clippings That Gave Me Pause
If you were around Homer, AK in 2003, this picture might have hung somewhere in your office or house. It was from the fundraising calendar for the local nonprofit Kachemak Bay Family Planning Clinic, titled the “Sexy Men of East End Road.” Spoofing the traditional bikini calendar, the Homer calendar featured scantily clad, mostly well-known local characters and caused a thrum of much appreciated humor for the whole year.
When I saw this picture my heart squeezed a bit—so much life has come and gone in two decades. The man on the left is Tom, who on first release of this essay, I mistakenly said had passed. James is on the right, and at one time he spent many of his evenings at my dad’s house philosophizing. According to a reader, he passed away within the last year or so. Even the building the photo is taken in—Fritz Creek General Store—is gone. A beloved landmark, it burned down last year.
But the picture is great. It stirs up nostalgia and captures some kind of joyful, casual irreverence.
Unexplained
During my meandering quest to find my dad’s letters, I’ve collected digital clippings of eclectic, sometimes humorous, moments of our local history. Bits that could be (or have been) forgotten entirely without a ripple of consequence. Hiccups. Sometimes the stories are on the front page, but often they are buried several pages in. Like this article that could be straight from the X-Files:
I’ll spare your eyes, and give you the scoop: in late summer of 1981, a loud boom, origins unknown, was heard by the entire town. The Alaska Regional Office of the FAA, Elmendorf Air Force Base, and the Homer Police Department were all contacted by concerned residents. Locals believed the sound had the force of a sonic boom, but the authorities remained in denial. A collective shrug emerged. An unidentified reporter of the unidentified sound playfully wrote:
If the mysteriously unidentified sound was not an earthquake, sonic boom, clap of thunder, ground explosion, or the owner of the local theater pulling a publicity stunt to draw a larger crowd at the movie house where Superman II is playing this week, then residents may have to keep guessing at its origins.
One theory, not to be discounted is that it may have been, as William Shakespeare would have said, “A voice crying in the wilderness full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Maybe it was nothing. But more likely, no one who knew anything of substance was willing to talk about it.
Psychics and other sensational news
Psychics solving crimes is excellent fodder for late night television binging, and in the 1980s, the Homer News regularly reported on the role of psychics in unsolved missing persons cases. I wish I had kept track of all of them now, but headlines such as:
or
were not common, but not terribly unusual as well.
I found the headlines surprising, something more likely to be found in a tabloid than a hometown newspaper. I’m not commenting on the efficacy of psychics or whether I believe in them, only that the headlines are amusing and give me pause.
Perhaps more bizarre, is this front page story of a man, Ed, who performed his own dental work with self-hypnosis:
The picture is grainy, but it shows Ed on his back looking up at a mirror, his hands deftly at work filling a cavity.
Ed tells the reporter, “I’ve been waiting to do this for three or four years and this was my opportunity…I never did trust the doctors so I’ve always watched these sorts of things. I think I’m ready.”
Fixing your own cavity is kinda strange. It’s also brave and risky. You won’t find me performing my own dental work. I don’t even have the dexterity to style the back of my hair, much less drill my tooth.
The story leaves me gawping…both the event AND the editorial decision to make it front page news.
An actual tabloid story: the man who bit off a bear’s ear
I saved the best for last…the story of how Keith Iverson bit off a bear’s ear in Sadie Cove. Or did he? After dinner one night, I read the May 1993 story aloud to my husband. According to the original article, Iverson tumbled down a steep hill, ran into a black bear, they tussled, and Iverson bit off the bear’s ear. Iverson then managed to stumble to his lodge, where he used a VHF radio to call for help. He was helicoptered to the hospital where his injuries were treated. He had no broken bones, no sprains, and no deep wounds. He had a few scratches on his face.
At this point, my husband starts laughing. “That did not happen. He did not wrestle with a black bear. How do you bite the ear off of a bear or a lion or even a house cat without needing a single stitch!” At first I’m shocked by his disbelief. Why wouldn’t it be true?
My husband recalls sitting on the porch as a child while the adults around him chewed on the veracity of Iverson’s stories. Minutes pass as he trails from Iverson to other local legends of dubious truth. I see in my husband a glimmer of how all the stories we are told, we read, and we consume take residence in our very beings.
BUT, not sure I believe my husband, I swipe the jpegs of the articles I’ve collected until I come to a later Homer News piece, dated August 1993. In this story, the Homer News describes how Iverson sold his bear adventure saga to the National Enquirer for $150, complete with staged photos from a professional photographer. The reporter tries to navigate rumors that Iverson was less than truthful:
“Several readers […] suggested Iverson staged the incident to sell his book, but Iverson bristled at that idea…” responding,
“I have integrity. I wouldn’t do a stunt like that just to sell a book.”
But then a few paragraphs later, the reporter continues:
“…the tabloid sent a photographer from Anchorage to take pictures at the scene of the scuffle, Iverson said. He borrowed a bear cape and draped it over a lodge employee for the re-enactment.
‘It was a little strange,’ Iverson said. ‘You’re hamming it up. You’ve got someone taking pictures and telling you to growl.’
So…did it happen? Did Keith Iverson really bite the ear off of a black bear and survive unscathed needing no significant medical attention?
I don’t know. And I’m not sure that nearly 30 years later it matters.
Why are sensational stories so intriguing? I thought it would be fun to share a pithy article about strange things that happen in a place I presume to know well. But do we ever really know the place that we call home? I shared moments that were interesting to me both because they were a departure from the norm and because the newspaper was compelled to report on them.
But for all the wild and weird that punctuates our lives, it is the steady hum of the day-to-day that sustains us. If the stories I shared make me raise an eyebrow or chuckle to myself, this picture creates a sort of longing:
Time might have stopped for these kids, who probably don’t even remember this summer afternoon in Neverland. For all the outlandish stories, mostly it is moments like these that thread our lives together. Moments so perfect and mundane we remember them in our bodies more than in our minds. Perhaps the only unusual thing about this image is just how long ago it was.
Until Next Time,
Mercedes
Notes:
My apologies for my error regarding Tom! Apparently, even a small town it’s easy to lose track of people. Thank you to the Facebook group Historical Homer and Beth Carroll and Bumppo Bremicker for correcting me!
1.) Thank you for reading. With all you have in your day and life, I appreciate the time you spend with me here. As always, please share your version of the stories I share. I love learning from others.
2.) Join me September 26-29 for Dirty Messy Alive: Embodied Memoir-Writing Workshop Series. This is a free 4-day event that will help you explore memoir-writing from start to finish and learn from 25+ skilled memoirists and writing teachers. As part of the event, I’ll be leading a short workshop called Serializing Your Memoir on Substack, where you’ll learn how to begin crafting your memoir an essay at a time. The event is coordinated by the amazing Janelle Hardy who teaches a fabulous course called The Art of Personal Mythmaking. You can register for the free series here.
I’m so glad you’re capturing the history of your home, with its quirky people and stories. I can’t imagine performing my own dental work! Also, my grandma loved the National Enquirer.