Looking for something else, I found this. I dunno what I was even looking now. It’s Radical Betty and the GG two years before she died. We were having brunch at the Hotel Ojibway and The Commander and Cam are also with us (and not sure who else).

On NPR (LOL) this afternoon I heard a familiar voice. It was Big Abe. He has been dead for a long time but he was a Native American fisherman (and bar owner, probably more well known for that) in the area of the moominbeach and there was a big kerfuffle about various kinds of fishing, “gill net” being an operative word. This is all too complicated for my “pretty” little head and my family does not fish at all but that would be a story for another day. Or not.

At one point, Big Abe got taaaared of law officials trying to track him down, so he called them up and said, “I am gonna be fishing HERE today, come and get me.” A lot of stuff ensued that I don’t really understand, so I’ll have to listen to the podcast.

Okay. I had a Japanese Uncle. Tatsuo Takei (yeah, he was from samurai). He married my eccentric Aunt Roberta when she was 70 and he was 60. He fancied himself as an entrepreneur and wanted to do some kind of deal with the eastern yooperland Native Americans. So he scheduled a meeting with the tribe and he and Roberta stayed with my parents, who accompanied rhwm to his meeting out on the reservation. Now. My dad was a long-time *savvy* local banker and I’m sure he knew a lot of these people and what they were all about. Native American or not, my dad had a better handle on what eastern yooperland people were all about than Tatsuo did.

So the whole meeting from what I remember being told about it was a little crazy in terms of cultural differences. Japanese? Many rules and protocols, like kids (for example) were probably not even around in Japanese negotiations. Native Americans? Kids were running in and out of the building all the time, acting like “wild Indians”, kinda like my cousins and I did when we were kids on the moominbeach.

Tatsuo dubbed Big Abe as Big Chief. Big Abe was not the chief. He called another guy “Big Mouth”. I don’t think he was the chief either. I don’t know who the chief was. My parents were laughing about all this but I suspect Tatsuo also understood some of this stuff. I’m pretty sure no entrepreneurial deals came out of this shindig.

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