Mindy Fisher Leary: Slime

Fish Creek gurgles under the midnight sun. A tin can rattles in the distance. Strains of Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth lingers on the airwaves as DJ Gene Shedlock signs off for the evening: We better stop children, what’s that sound? Everybody look—what’s going down? The can is kicked again. Kids scatter about the dusty vacant lot, hoping not to be called home for the night. An acrid whiff from a smoldering garbage barrel drifts down Chugach Way. Center Bowl is hopping. Dead Man’s Curve is waiting. Single and doublewides dot the spaces at Kathy O down the block. Mid-60s Spenard: I can hear it, I can smell it, I can see it. My only complaint about this idyllic childhood: the slime.

Fish staring at me from the bathtub: It was so gross. How many children had to remove a thawing fish specimen from the family tub in order to take a shower? For the Fishers, this was a daily occurrence. De-sliming the bathroom was a character-building experience from childhood I could have done without, the only hiccup in an otherwise-blissful upbringing. Yes, I am the daughter of a taxidermist. My father was Hunter Lee Fisher, an avid fisherman who arrived in Alaska in ’62, full of energy and dreams, who went on to become one of the most noted fish taxidermists of North America. Allied with an affinity for fishing and an artist's eye, Hunter pioneered the skin mounting technique of his generation.

Dad never set out to become The Fish Whisperer of Alaska. He was working full time for the government as a Civil Service Investigator. His hobby simply got out of control. Once word circulated that my father produced lifelike mounts, anglers started dropping fish off at our log cabin in Spenard at all hours of the day and night. A chest freezer appeared in the back of the house, my brothers joined in on the mounting, and Dad painted in a frenzied miasma to keep up with the workload. Hunter Fisher Fish Mounts grew from a passion to Pandora’s Box in a short order: one evening, some guys pulled up in a pickup and unloaded two 14-foot sharks.

The taxidermy studio was attached to Mom and Dad’s tiny master bedroom. “I” (as Dad called my Mom, Ilene) had to abide not only the wafting particles of Styrofoam pebbles floating about the house, but also the paint and shellac fumes he produced with abandon. Dad married a saint—a non-fishing saint, which makes my mother’s patience with all of it hard for me to fathom. They were high school sweethearts and lifetime partners. Saint “I” unwittingly encouraged my father in his madness. As a newlywed in 1949, my mother wanted to do something special for her husband for their first anniversary. Locating a taxidermist in Clarksburg, West Virginia, by the name of Casto, she had his 19-inch, smallmouth bass mounted. It was an expensive proposition—$10 for the first 12 inches and $1 an inch thereafter. Hunter was intrigued by the gift and wanted to understand how it was done, thinking perhaps he would try his hand at stuffing a fish. Solving the mystery was tough going. Old-school taxidermists were like magicians, holding on to the secrets of their craft, revealing them to no one.

His interest piqued, Hunter scrounged around for information. Bit by bit, he tore apart his bass trophy in an effort to decipher Casto’s tricks. Destroying his anniversary gift in the process but pushing forward the boundaries of his knowledge, the man with the childhood nickname of “Fish” moved onward—from the hills and hollows of West Virginia to his own taxidermy studio deep in the heart of Spenard.

Our cabin was cute as could be. We rented it from the Britz family, who lived next door, for $200 a month. That was $15 more than the rent on the previous house on West 26th Avenue near the Pink Poodle Lounge and the old Spenard Post Office, so Mom and Dad had to think long and hard if the increase would fit into the family budget. I remember the lovely pine paneling in the living room, with the knots barely visible among the fish mounts covering the walls. The room had a rustic rock fireplace with a built-in desk and bookshelves on the left and a nook for the black-and-white television on the right. There was a mudroom just inside the front door. Coats were hung on hooks, and Mom’s little piano was tucked in an alcove on the opposite side. We had to keep our shoes tidy as customers would enter through the door and put their dead fish—their treasures—on the counter. It was actually a cut out to the kitchen—probably meant to have bar stools—but Dad used it much like a retail counter at a store. Plastic sheeting and tape were at the ready to wrap arriving fish.

Anglers were apprised not to gut or otherwise clean their fish stream-side and not to let trophies sit in water as it would make the fish soft and mushy. They were encouraged to wrap their keeper in a soft cloth, dampen it from time to time, and freeze it as soon as possible. Arriving in various states of care, the incoming salmon, trout, grayling, or whatever would be wrapped, then taken to a cold-storage area in the back of the house and put in a freezer. In the fall, that room was often crowded with sides and parts of moose dangling from the rafters—aging, as Hunter called it—awaiting his butchering blitz. We ate so much moose. Mostly cubed steaks fried in Oleo and moose burger tossed into a multitude of casseroles.

A picnic table, framed by pine cabinets and appliances, sat amid the kitchen action: the Fisher family’s official dining room set. Mom and Dad always used a picnic table to seat the six of us. It was all they could afford, plus it was cozy. It wasn’t about fancy furniture; it was about being together as a family. We ate together every night. It’s just the way it was. We couldn’t afford milk, and we hated the powdered stuff, so Mom always brewed up a batch of ice tea at the last moment (no doubt another West Virginia habit she brought north).

We didn’t know how sophisticated we were: European style, Dad rigged up a washer and dryer in the kitchen for Mom, cramming them in somehow. There was no vent for the dryer. The moisture created from clothes drying formed thick ice on the inside of the windows in the front of the house during the coldest months. In hindsight, I think it was healthy for us. We never suffered with colds or the sinus infections from the dry winter climate that plague me today.

I ignored my distaste of all things slimy long enough to mount a fish for my seventh grade science fair project. It was a rainbow trout. Standing alongside my brother, Mark, in the taxidermy studio off Mom and Dad’s bedroom, I completed my first and only mount. It turned out pretty well. The judges at Romig Junior High didn’t believe I had mounted it, though my science teacher, Daisy Lee Bitter, argued on my behalf, knowing full well I had. I gave up my interest in anything to do with ichthyology after the debacle and gave the fish to Daisy. It hangs on the wall at her home in Homer to this day.

Somehow, though, after all these years, I can’t escape the beady-eyed beasts. It’s psychological, I know, a love/hate relationship I can’t explain—but the remaining dozen and a half mounts from Hunter Fisher’s private collection now hang in the family room of my hillside home. They stare at me every time I pass by, just like those fish did thawing in the bathtub some 40-odd years ago. It’s the shark that really gives me the creeps.

Mindy Fisher Leary is a fifty-two-year Alaska resident. She is a confirmed introvert living quietly on the Anchorage Hillside. In concert with her spouse, Collin, she has owned a retail boot operation and shoe repair shop, Boot Country/Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair, in Anchorage for nearly forty years. When not at her desk chasing debits and credits, calculating payroll, or cranking out payables and receivables, Leary likes to read, write, garden, knit, and swim. She is proud to have supported the 49 Writers group in its infancy as a founding donor, and took the Memory as Muse class to prepare for the Anchorage Remembers project. She has been published in Alaska magazine and KnitLit the Third: We Spin More Yarns by Three Rivers Press. Leary is currently seeking a publishing venue for a biography, titled Fish & I, about her father, the legendary Alaskan taxidermist Hunter Fisher.