Salmon (COMING BACK 2021)

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In 1964, my grandfather Jameson Ludwig left the small state of Louisiana with nothing but an empty fish tank, a small luggage bag, and with just enough money, paid for a plane ride to Alaska. He was a laborer in this tiny, near irrelevant home town, and would work menial jobs to get by every single day. No matter how worn out he was, Grandpa Ludwig would always walk with his Berkeley pole and tackle box to a river a mile away the old southern style home that had been passed down through the Ludwig patriarch. He could truly have fished forever if you didn't remind him it was near dusk. 

Grandpa Ludwig loved fish. The taste, strangely the smell and how each type looked and stood out. But the tiny body of water he would spend his time at was becoming scarce of fish so he grew tired and decided that was a good enough excuse for him to pack his bags and move across the country. There wasn't a lot left that tied him to Louisiana, his father had long passed from pneumonia and his older brother had moved to Georgia and started his own family. He never met his mother Katja, there was not a lot of talk about her because she left them shortly after his birth. Whispers in the family told of a curse of the Ludwig men. 

The women always leave. Always.

His mother Katja Wolfsenn was from Denmark, she had came from a wealthy family who had visited the South  for a few months to do business. At the time, the Wolfsenn's provided the best agriculture machinery to the world. Katja was in her early twenties when she saw my Great Grandfather Samuel Ludwig. He was a clerk at the fancy hotel they were staying at. Both young and attracted to each other, Samuel would always find an excuse to talk to the Wolfsenn's eldest daughter; and she would have her younger sister Marta cover her absence to do who knows what in the nearest empty room. The story of young love is as old as time.

You could imagine the look on Katja's parents faces when she told them she was pregnant and staying. They disowned her immediately and went straight home without her. Samuel was fired and the two moved in the dirty home that was left by his father. As Samuel tried to make money, her belly grew bigger and bigger.  He returned one day with a simple gold ring and proposed to her and they got married that evening at the courthouse. They had a neighbor be their witness, and in the middle of their "I Do's" her water broke.

After three years, Katja woke up in the middle of the night and left. I always wonder if she ever hesitated leaving or even stopped to look at my three month old grandfather in his crib. We will never know, the consensus is that she left to go back to Denmark and be with her wealthy family. The Wolfsenn's company was bought by a bigger company twenty or so years later.

Once arriving in Alaska, Grandpa met a Japanese woman, she was a runaway bride with hair dark as night. Her makeup smudged across her sharp cheeks and her nose was swollen from the crying. They had crashed into each other at the airport, both of them eager for escape. She had been pressured to marry a man she did not love and never wanted to marry anyone for that matter, but nine months later my grandfather married my grandmother Asami and suspiciously less than five months later, my father was born.

Grandpa had always wanted to open an aquarium full of exotic fish and mammals.  In 1973 Ludwig's Aquarium was bought when Grandpa was walking home from work and saw an old building on its last legs for sale. Grandma Asami was livid at the impulsive and very expensive buy with money they did not have but he assured her it would work.

Grandpa Ludwig always wanted a daughter but was gifted three sons. He wished for a granddaughter named River. One with large eyes, orange hair (like his) and freckles upon the nose-- He wanted a fish for a granddaughter.