Goodbye to Clyde

It is hard to believe Clyde Bell won't be cornering me one more time with, "Listen, gal," while he explains where those colorful clouds that he called chemtrails were from. (Chemtrails are like contrails only laced with heavy metals, he said. Clyde believed the military was salting the clouds to alter the jet stream.) When I heard Clyde had been medevaced to the hospital, I figured he'd be back. He died a day later in Anchorage of organ failure. He was sixty.

Clyde and his wife Doris sold flowers and fish, as well as clothes and curios, at Bell's Store. The original store had been Clyde's parents and is adjacent to the newer Bell's Seafood, which is in the old city jail.

Both buildings are decorated with antlers, colorful signs, and lights. There's a barbecue grill and a mechanical horse with a moose rack attached to it out front. Clyde could be found there most days, nursing a can of Hamm's beer.

He also cruised around town with his three-legged dog in the passenger seat of a pick-up plastered with paper signs advertising fresh seafood. He always had time to talk.

After graduating from Haines High in 1968, Clyde went off to Vietnam and came home afterwards. Doris said he never did join the American Legion post next door to the store where his funeral was held. He had some issues with the military. Actually, he had some issues with a lot of things. As his brother-in-law, Roc Ahrens, said, "There were times you couldn't catch air in quite a rant, but if you listened, he knew what he was talking about. Clyde had some extremely good ideas."

Roc said the family had known Clyde was ill. A few weeks before he died, he told Roc that he didn't think anyone would miss him.

That may be why no one was prepared for the standing-room-only crowd that filled the Legion hall on a Tuesday afternoon to pay him last respects. (There were more people out on the sidewalk.) My neighbor Betty is a well-mannered teetotaler. When I asked her why she went, she said, "Clyde was Clyde. I'll miss him." She suspected Clyde gave away more flowers than he sold.

Roc was the fire chief when Clyde, or at least he suspects Clyde, lit a bonfire for a Haines High reunion right downtown. Roc had told Clyde he couldn't burn the remains of a demolished building because it was toxic. "All of the sudden, the thing was on fire and what could we do?"

Fisherman Stormin' Norman said that the last words Clyde spoke to him were unprintable. Clyde was ticked because his fine for violating moose hunt guidelines had been in the thousands, while Norm's was in the hundreds. It wasn't Clyde's first run-in with Fish and Game.

Betty wasn't the only surprise mourner. The banker came and so did the kids in baggy pants who smoke on Main Street. There were young mothers who do yoga, merchants, retirees, and folks from the most conservative as well as the greenest ends of town. Proper British elder Maisie Jones was there, seated near a tank-topped tattooed bartender. There were pressed blouses and sweatshirts. I smelled aftershave, diesel, sweat, fresh shampoo, patchouli oil, and the food for the reception afterwards, prepared with help from the ladies of the Port Chilkoot Bible Church. The mayor said she couldn't recall seeing a group this diverse in the same room before. She said she'd miss arguing with Clyde. "He made me think."

Clyde's opinions were not easy to predict. He hated the new tobacco smoking ban, but sided with environmentalists challenging a proposed hydro-electric plant.

When Clyde brought wildlife park owner Steve Kroschel fish scraps to feed his animals, they talked about organic juice diets and those chemtrails. "There are a lot if unsolved mysteries out there that he was curious about. We would often talk about what happens when you die," Steve said.

The mayor began the service with a few words about Clyde and read a brief biography. Roc said a short prayer, and the American Legion commander presented Doris, and Clyde's son Russ, with a folded flag, saying, "It's from the federal government."