Nearly ten years after I had located, been accepted, and been labeled by the first in a lifelong quest for surrogate families, I took a job aboard a commercial crabbing vessel working out of Dutch Harbor on the Bering Sea. The vessel was called the Pavlov. 

Growing up in the Northwest, there were quite a few kids whose fathers or older brothers or uncles made their living and supported their families in such a manner - gone for months at a time. Their homecomings always seemed like a mixture of summer break and Christmas come early. This was long before everyone and his or her cousin had a relative working at Boeing. There was no Microsoft, no Starbucks, and no Costco.  Even REI was still a one location, locals only, specialty shop up on Capitol Hill. Hell, this was before ATMs and debit cards, to put it in real perspective. Seattle was rural - a negative image of the city you see before you today.

As non-transient yet migratory as the population was in Northwest in the ‘70s, everyone knew someone who was a commercial fisherman. It was THE job for anyone who had the cajones to go north and INSANELY west, to stake a claim in the last great frontier the country had to offer. Alaska. 

My family's move from Huntington Beach Calif. to Edmonds Wash. was borne out of a job at Alaska Magazine that would provide a paycheck in the grey for my father where there was none available in the sun. Growing up, Alaska and its allure always gave a distant call - it was always in the back of my mind. Not consciously. But present, always. 

Alaska was (is) the only state further out of the way than Washington.  It was almost impossible to end up in either of these places by happenstance or without a bout of frivolous joy riding. There was a connectedness, an ilk-ish similarity between the two states that belied the 3500 miles between Seattle and Dutch Harbor.

I was going to the bank. I can't be certain why. I had no job, no car. I had yet to move out of my parents' house.  But there I was at whatever it was called before it became Wells Fargo (Western something?) - and there was Sean Landry.

Sean was a killer dude; a big husky guy with a permanently scratchy voice - a total teddy bear. He was a year ahead of me at Woodway High School; never had a curfew, always had a car. Sean was down for anything, with plenty of ideas of what that might entail.  He was crazy. But like a fox. 

In his sophomore year he was expelled for something to do with the 'unauthorized removal' of the American flag from the school's flag pole in conjunction with an "other than officially sanctioned' fire drill. Previously he had been a spirited baritone player in the brass section of the marching band. He was sorely missed by the heads around the music building after all the dust settled.

I heard from around the way that, upon his early release from the teachings of high school, he had gone north to make a bid for his inevitable initiation into the "I Almost Died in Alaska Club" that is crabbing in the Bering Sea.

I was just leaving the bank as Sean pulled up. When I called to him it took him a minute to recognize me. We were in school together for less than half a year, but there had been numerous keg parties in the woods around Edmonds where our paths crossed.

"Heyyyyyy!!! Geoff!!" he eventually said.

In the span of five minutes Sean confirmed he had, in fact, JUST returned from Dutch Harbor, and that the opilio crab season had been cut in half because the ice was so bad, He told me he'd be going back in a week or so, and that the company that employed him WAS looking for workers. 

I called that day. It was a Friday. In the span of three days, I went from being a loser with nothing going living with his parents in Edmonds, to being a Motherfuckin' Crab fisherman in Dutch Harbor, Alaska - a percentage employee of North Pacific Management. A greenhorn on the FV Pavlov. Doing the jobs no human would ever want to do. Cleaning out the most vile, rotten black muck that, weeks before, had been brought onboard as live opilio crab and had fallen through the cracks.  

A few days later, as I touched up chipped away black paint on one of deck's hand railings, Sean came walking up the dock. "You MADE it!!" he said.  He was a pleasantly surprised to see me. We hadn't spoken since that day in the bank's parking lot.  Later over dinner, I learned he was actually the deck boss, which put him number four in the pecking order, trailing only the skipper, the first mate and the chief engineer. 

This meant I had a well-placed ally. It also meant I would have to work harder than most to conquer the unavoidable (and accurate) appearance of favoritism. 

Most guys who had been onboard a while had a handle, a moniker. Sean's was Big Jake. Or just "Jake." The process foreman's real name was Scott, but everyone called him Vanilla. Turns out he was such a horrible alcoholic, and with no alcohol allowed onboard, he would always come out of his room smelling of the extract - which, of course, is almost 30 proof.  

New guys didn't usually get handles right away - except for Raul, who was from Tacoma, and buddies with Dennis the cook. Dennis called Raul "Hog" or "Big Hog." I had never heard one man talk so much about the size of another man's Johnson. It was a little creepy. But when you're locked into a small space with grown men who are REAL losers and REALLY have nothing to lose, you let these things slide. They would become so commonplace that it eventually went without notice. 

I was worried a bit about what name some might start calling me. Sure, I had a couple allies who were deck hands, but they constituted only one sixth of the 18 workers on board. For the first few trips out, none of my friends were on my shift. I had no homies that were processors like I was. 

Onboard, everyone wants to be a deck hand. That's where the money (and the actual fishing) is. When there was no crab to process, the greenhorns were directed to clean. But there was ALWAYS deck hand side work to do, and more often than not Sean would pull me from whatever UNBELIEVABLY crappy work the green horns were doing to keep busy, and have me help out on deck. The grumblings were never far behind, or out of earshot. 

The first four days out at sea I would spend throwing up - like clockwork. It was a vicious cycle. About an hour after we set sail, I'd start to feel queasy, which would advance steadily until reaching debilitating nausea in about half an hour - thus emptying the entire contents my stomach. Then I'd drink a TON of water, which would make me feel OK for about half an hour. Then the whole thing would start over. Guys told me that after looking at me they understood the term "green' when referring to being sick. For the entirety of those first four days I had a green hue to me. 

All the while, I was working. Never letting up. Never wanting to be branded a "slacker" - which was the ultimate insult and constant label thrown back and forth onboard. I completed my share of any work that was being done, even while I was puking.  It was a matter of pride. I was no slacker.

Still, it got to the point where the grumblings were no longer just about my stints on deck, but the time spent sick as well. My seasickness became a borderline mockery. 

During one of my sick days I was in the process house. The smell of boiling crab and brine coupled with the enclosed surroundings - with no chance to keep at least a casual awareness of the horizon - made it the most torturous place to be sick in. 

I was just about to the part in my cycle where everything comes up, so I turned the wheel on the process house door, pushed, and stepped out. I would only take a few precious moments puking on deck in the fresh air, and then head right back to work in the sweating, rolling, boiling room.  

I did something I never did. I stuck my head over the side, leaning on the railings where its only waste high. Just as I was about release something to the sea, the boat rolls to my side and a wave came up and caught me square in the face - just for an instant. Then the wave was gone. 

It was shocking. The water was so cold it burned, like freezing shrapnel. Every drop that went down the front of my shirt and my face was on frozen fire. My chest became ablaze with the watery molten run off. As far down as my lower thigh I could feel these arctic shards of fire. It was the most awake I have ever been.

I found myself laughing. At everything and nothing. At my whole situation. My childish concern over how I might be labeled by men, who, in essence, like it or not, were my brothers at sea. You can't choose your family. When had I ever waited for my brother to make the first move? Wouldn't anything they called me be a form of respect? Why not let them have some fun with it?

The next morning, before starting my shift, I took a sharpie and in big letters wrote YACKSTER across the shoulders of my orange Grudsen rain jacket.  

It was perfect. The grumblers loved having a name to call me openly that fit their opinion of me.  By the time the name had been shortened to YACK, through the natural progression of usage, the grumbling had stopped altogether. I loved the fact I had been the master of my own moniker destiny. 

I would be YACK for the rest of my tenure on the Pavlov - eight months in all. When I left Dutch for the last time, I would leave the handle onboard. 

I am still in contact with only one guy who fished with the YACK, a deckhand named Bairdi Bill - aka Bill the beat farmer.

He doesn't call me YACK.  No one does. 

Drummer Geoff Reading - who writes a bi-weekly online column (Fridays) for the Weekly Volcano called "Holding Down the 253" in addition to his weekly Wednesday music column - has played music in tons of Northwest bands - Green Apple Quick Step, New American Shame, Top Heavy Crush and most recently Duff McKagan's LOADED - to name but a few. He's toured the world several times over, sharing stages with the likes of Slipknot, The Cult, Buckcherry, Korn, Journey, The Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails and on and on. He has called Tacoma home since 2005, and lives in the North End with his wife and son.