Dale Hanson

Whoa.

And that's the first time I ever

put a dollar value or figured that there was a monetary value on something I did and never thought of it.

Then about two days later, I was carving a whale in ivory.

Again, I don't remember where I got the ivory, but I was carving this whale.

And I must have done a pretty good job because I didn't have it on a base yet and I didn't have an accent under it.

And he said, Dale, he said, that's really good.

He said, let me have that for a minute.

He went down to one of the gift stores and he sold it to them for $100.

Come back, gave me the $100.

And he called me up that afternoon to say the gallery had already sold it for $200.

And then there was a fourth thing that happened that same week.

A guy I never met before, who was the premier carver in Alaska, a really great carver, a good man.

And he came by my house, he knocked on my house.

I never met him in my life.

And I opened up the door and he come in, headed for my table, my kitchen table.

And he says, my name's Jim Fleshman.

And he walked over there.

And he had a lard can, those big ones they had in the old country, full of lard.

And they're about that tall.