124. Salt of the Earth

I never saw Dima without a coffee mug in one hand, the other hand gesturing as he spoke, as though pointing to a list of undeniable facts, and a Camel cigarette dangling from his lips. His English was good, with just a layer of a clipped Slavic accent. He always wore a weathered European-style fishermans’s cap, so I can’t tell you if he was bald or not.

Dima made his way to America when he was a young man, just after the Nazis pulled out of Yugoslavia.  He had worked on fishing boats back in the old country and quickly found a job on a large crabber out of Shilshole Bay, in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. Since Ballard was heartily populated by Scandinavian immigrants, Dima found companionship among a lot of Swedish and Norwegian fishermen, with whom he worked on all types of fishing vessels for most of his life. Eventually he met a young Swedish woman named Eina Nilsson, strong enough of character to take on the incredible task of becoming Dima’s wife.

Eina was as opposite from Dima as one could imagine. To his short, lean and sinewy, she was tall, full and soft. To his Eastern European swarthy, she was flaxen Nordic. To his guttural, she was lilting. To his emphatic and judgmental, she was gentle and open-minded. Eina voiced her support for her husband’s one-sided views, but when it got heated, always found a way to close the discussion with tact. Her concluding remarks would be something like “Well, I’m sure we can’t solve every problem… there is always more than one way to look at it.” Dima smilingly protested Eina’s Swedish Neutrality. She rolled her eyes which I interpreted as “You’re welcome, my loveable Croatian. Now let's sit down to eat.”

To this couple was born a son whom Eina promptly named Einar to uphold the Swedish lineage, despite Dima’s hope of naming him Jakov. The reason I knew Dima and Eina Petrovic is because their boy Einar grew up to be the fellow I knew as a landlord and friend for many years, and from whom I learned many things.

Einar Petrovic had his mother’s height and kindly manner, and his father’s certitude and can-do work ethic, an ideal combination for a first-generation America. Einar possessed a curious mixture of ethnicity and traits, a Slavo-Nordic man who stood firmly for the things that mattered, but with his mother’s sense of humor, managed to admit there were other opinions than his.

Einar followed his father into commercial fishing, and they worked together for decades on the 40’ gillnetter they built from lumber and steel. After Dima found fishing too strenuous and moved into carpentry, Einar continued fishing for many seasons around Puget Sound. In the summer, his wife Paula, on summer break from teaching, helped on the boat.

The changing politics of commercial fishing filled the conversations I had with Einar and his parents. All the things that affect the fishing industry were debated: government regulations, corporate seafood monopolies, market conditions, climate, international treaties, and Indian rights. Sonsabitches, all of them.

In the Pacific Northwest, the Indian tribes of Puget Sound had asserted their treaty rights to a fair portion of salmon runs, and a huge court ruling favored the Indians (The Boldt Decision.) Small-boat gillnetters and charter fishing businesses were knocked down drastically. Einar certainly didn’t begrudge the Indians what they were entitled to, but it was obvious he had a thing to say about the judge’s ruling that stripped his livelihood. That’s when Einar and Paula began sailing as far as southern Alaska for salmon, and later refitted the boat for catching tuna in colder water far off the coast.

As landlords go, we couldn’t find better. The rent was very fair. Since Einar was skilled with carpentry and everything else, he was quick to respond to our calls for help, unless he was out catching fish, that is. Anything we wanted to do by ourselves on the property was fine with him—even digging up the whole backyard for a garden and chicken coop, or finishing off the attic for an extra bedroom.

One benefit from being Einar and Paula’s tenants in the Kirkland house was the frequent gift of fresh seafood or an invitation to their home to see photos of their journeys at sea, but the relationship we had with these kind and entertaining people was really the highest blessing. They were fascinated with my work in art and music, and Linda had much in common with Paula as a public school teacher.

Whenever Einar came around for a repair or to drop something off, he made it obvious that he was available to stay for a visit. I knew what he meant by “So, how do you like using that new drip coffee pot?” After the coffee and conversation, that repair would eventually get done, in “Einar Time.” It was during those times together that I enjoyed some of Einar’s "lessons." The simple and obvious, such as “measure twice, cut once,” and “if a 4x4 will do, better use a 6x6.” Or the mind-blowing, such as “you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.” Gee, Einar, I never thought of life like that before. We laughed a lot!

I’m kidding… really, he had much to say that I agreed with and disagreed with, and no matter what, he set an example of integrity and self-assuredness. He was a self-educated man, admirably confident in his knowledge of the world, and demonstrating the value of not overthinking everything. I found an interesting shiny black stone in the backyard and asked Einar if he thought it looked like some kind of obsidian or agate. Einar smiled like I’d said something silly. “Bob, it’s a black rock.” I could expect him to provide the plain and simple truth.

You can measure someone’s level of education by how he uses the verb to be. On the one end, something simply is or isn’t. At the other end, things start getting nuanced with hesitant phrases like might possibly have been, or theoretically, it could be. Einar had mixed feelings about “college-types.” He’d rave about the geniuses who cure diseases and discover galaxies, but throw his hands up in bafflement over “whacky” gray-area stuff coming from the schools of social sciences and education. Things he said remind me of a quote: “The purpose of higher education is to replace unashamed certainty with thoughtful uncertainty.”  Thoughtful uncertainty was not his style!

The decision to move away from the rental to a home of our own was actually pretty hard news to break. Great landlords hate losing great tenants. But great friends remain friends. The Petrovics eventually sold the boat as well as the house we rented from them, and though we have lost touch over the years and distance, I imagine that Einar and Paula are still finding plenty to do with their boundless talents.

Note: This is a story based on real people. Names and some details have been changed or imagined.