THE PIONEER SPIRIT & ATTITUDE

 Thanks to the tv show Deadliest Catch you may be able to identify with what my guest this week does for a living.  My wife and I see that show from time and to time and you really get a feel for what some people will do in order to feed their families.  This week I talk to Tom Ranguette from Garden Michigan who spends a couple of months out of the year fishing for salmon in Alaska near Cook Inlet on a boat similar to the one pictured.  Now the Deadliest Catch is filmed on Bristol Bay in the Bering Sea where the waves and weather can be deadly and the boats are much larger than the one that Tom guides.  Tom has a 32 foot vessel and from time to time does face some pretty rough seas, sometimes 20 foot seas, and he does pretty much everything on his own ship.  He's the captain, the mechanic, and the deck hand all rolled into one.  Tom will usually have one of his sons accompany him, but other than that these fishermen are pretty much on their own.  There is a fair amount of danger in this job and it sounds like this work can be physically demanding.  It takes a true pioneer spirit, the kind that founded our nation, and it takes the right attitude.  Is attitude everything in life?  It seems to have a lot to do with who we are and our surroundings.  I don't think I could do Tom's job, maybe when I was younger, or maybe I'd have to go into serious physical training.  Tom doesn't get sick, why is that?  He tells himself he doesn't have time for that, you know that is the second person to tell me that.  Speaking of illness, Tom recalls a story that his mother told him about a doctor in the 1930s who used to cure peoples skin cancer with a natural treatment he developed.  Really?  I believe it, a friend who is in her 80's told me a similar story when she was a girl during the depression.  These two stories are not related, they are seperated by a distance of close to 200 miles.  It's possible they may be two different remedies.  Now how come most have not heard of these remedies?  What's changed in our nation? What goes around comes around.  We've heard this all before but what does it mean?  I hear many people say that but they can't go into detail when asked for an example.  Tom is willing to share a story that some could see as coincidence and others could see as part of a divine plan of giving and receiving.  A volitale world.  Alaska for all it's beauty has more volcanos, more earthquakes, and more deadly cold weather than any other state in the union.  Yet hardy souls are drawn to it because of it's rugged beauty and pristine wilderness.  People from the south tell me I live in a rugged area, I just laugh.  Heck, people from Lower Michigan can't imagine living up here.  And while it's cold from time to time and some parts of the U.P. get a fair amount of snow, it's nothing compared to Alaska.  Alaska is probably nothing compared to Siberia.  So perhaps it's all perspective and attitude.  If you look at the map you can see where Tom goes to fish every year in Cook Inlet.  Tom, his wife Lynn and their 3 sons reside in Garden Michigan, which is on the Garden Peninsula on Lake Michigan.   I always wondered how frontiersmen lived into their eighties or nineties and survived all the hazards.  People like Daniel Boone.  What was it that they possesed?  Really, really good genes?  Or was it their Spirit?