- Summer

Life in Alaska
by Summer Katz
         
         “My best experience in Alaska is talking to you, meeting people right here,” Marvin Bodewig said. He has been living in Alaska since he was born. He was born and raised in Fairbanks and has lived in Homer for ten years.
         When he was growing up his dad owned Arctic Bowl, a bowling alley in Fairbanks. Growing up with his dad, he learned a lot about bowling alleys. ”I was cheap labor for him. I go, ‘Dad, how ‘bout an allowance? How ‘bout a salary?’ He goes, ‘Nope. You live under my roof, I feed you, I cloth you, you get ten free games per day’,” Marvin said.
         Living in Alaska his whole life, Marvin has had several different jobs. He worked as a sociology professor for OCS, Occupational Children Services. His job was to determine whether or not parents were fit enough to have their children in their homes. “I did not like that, so I got out of it,” Marvin said. Before he worked for OCS he was a mechanic and then he worked on the Alaskan pipeline. He didn’t really like that either. He had to work for two weeks straight. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off. Then he was off for two weeks. “Sure, you had money in your pocket, but what are you gonna do for two weeks? Most people liked to go to the bars and stuff, and sure, I like to drink, but I don’t like bars. Most of my family moved down to the lower 48 so I’d fly back and forth every two weeks. That’s how I met my second wife,” Marvin said.
         Marvin loves his current job. “I wouldn’t give it up for the world,” He said. In the summers he works for sport charter outfits, where they allow clients to go out and catch fish and Marvin cleans them. In the winter, he cleans and processes fish for a commercial fishing company. He loves his job so much because he gets to be out doors. “Would you rather be trapped inside an office from nine to five, where here, it might start at six in the morning and end at ten at night or not start ‘till twelve in the afternoon; and you are still outside the whole time,” Marvin said. He also really likes meeting and learning about the various people that come talk to him while he is cleaning his fish. The conversations make his work more fun for him.
         Marvin really loves Alaska. “What I really love about Alaska is the openness that you do have. You have a lot of freedom,” He said. Marvin loves the outdoors, mountains, glaciers, and water. “Where can you go fifteen miles and see the ocean, see whales? There’s nothin’ like it,” Marvin said. The cold and dark winters don’t bother Marvin too much. “You do get used to it. Your body does change,” he said. “It’s dark when you wake up and go to school, and when you get out of school it’s still dark,” Marvin said.
         He especially loves watching the Northern Lights. He used to sit in his car in the winter and watch them. Loud sounds attract the lights, so Marvin would hold down his horn, and they would dance around his car. When he would let up on the horn, they would go back up to the sky. “Don’t talk to me about Northern Lights, they are beautiful. I’ve seen them when they fill the whole sky. They say Montana is the big sky state? Take a look around you and have it filled with Northern Lights. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is unreal. Different colors of everything, you see in the swirls,” He said. The lights are kind of like clouds, you can see different objects in them. You can even hear the lights. “You can hear the static electricity, it’ll make your hair stand in the air,” Marvin explained. One time, he was lying on the top of his car watching them dancing around in the sky. He spent hours just lying there. When he finally decided to come down, his head froze to the hood of his car.is my best experience,” Marvin said.
         Marvin has met a lot of different people from different states and countries during his time in Alaska, and loves the state. He has lived here his whole life and doesn’t plan on moving away anytime soon.