I own four belts now. I only need one as that’s all I can wear at any given time. But I seem to have accumulated a few spares.

There once was a time when I had no belts. And the day I got a used belt was one of the happiest days of the summer of 1967 for me.

At some point in 1967 my dad snatched me from my mother and sisters and our comfy home in Long Beach, California. It happened quickly. I got tossed into a car with just the clothes I was wearing. I think I was in my pjs. I had no belt.

Mom screamed and stood behind dad’s car and tried to block him from leaving. That image is etched on my memory because for the next year that was the only image I had of my mother.

Dad took me to Juneau, Alaska where he was preparing to salvage a sunken ship. The Katherine sank in 1952 and a company employed Dad to raise it from its watery grave. He was a deep-sea diver. It was pretty cool to have a dad who was a deep-sea diver.

Home was the Coho, a leaking wooden boat in the Juneau harbour. Dad would run off during the day and do whatever he did, and I’d mind the boat. I was an eight-year-old captain of my own ship. My first mate was a seaworthy cat who would keep me company.

My task during the day was to keep the Coho from sinking. I’d connect a hand pump and try to rid the bilge of as much seawater as possible.

When I wasn’t pumping, I was fishing. I’d drop a line over the bow and bring up a flounder every now and then. I didn’t like flounder, but the cat did. Once I pulled out a grey cod almost as big as I was. That was a bit hard. I had one hand to pull the fish in and one hand to hold up my pants.

Dad had a shop in the outskirts of Juneau. He’d bring me there on occasion. He taught me how to properly coil diving hoses. I’d spend a fair bit of the day giving those hoses a quarter turn while trying to make a perfect coil. It was fun.

As the evening approached, I’d go into the Coho’s galley and cook some dinner for Dad and me. It was basically whatever I could get out of a can, but if we had eggs I would cook those up.

Then Dad and I would crawl in our bunks and the Coho would rock us to sleep.

One day, Dad came back to the Coho a bit early. ‘C’mon Mike. We’re going to the city.’ He had a battered pickup truck and I anxiously jumped in to see where we were heading.

He pulled up to a second-hand store. ‘Got any belts for kids?’ Dad asked. Oh yeah. They had belts all right and I found a swell one for five cents. I pulled off the rope I was using and put my new belt on right away and couldn’t be happier.

At one point in the summer, I asked Dad if I were going to go to school. I was in no rush. I was taking a liking to life in the harbour. ‘Yeah, I’ve got to figure that out,’ Dad said.

In late August, Dad said he had to go to Anchorage for a job and couldn’t take me. ‘But I’ve arranged for you to live with a family over there,’ he said. He pointed across the Gastineau Channel to Douglas.

A few days later I grabbed my belt, and we crossed that channel and Dad introduced me to my foster parents. They had been members of the church in Seattle where my grandfather had been the minister. They said they’d look after me till Dad came back from Anchorage.

Dad never came back.

So, my foster family enrolled me in fourth grade at the local school. They had a boy my age, Scott, and he and I spent the next nine months building rafts, hiking in the woods and playing in the snow with Minto, the Husky dog.

For the first few months I’d bike across the channel with Scott, and we’d bail out the Coho. Then for some reason we stopped doing it. Maybe it sank. The cat disappeared as well.

But I had everything I needed and never had to worry about keeping my pants up. But I missed my mom and sisters. I missed my dad. I would cry myself to sleep at night.

The school year came to a close as the summer of ‘68 approached. My foster parents announced that they would take me to California to re-unite me with my dad AND visit Disneyland.

Dad had moved from Anchorage to Los Angeles and settled in without me. He had married an elegant radio actress with a husky voice and divided his time between her flat in Hollywood and his shop and junkyard in Carson. I divided my time in the two places as well. I’d walk down Hollywood Boulevard to a Boys’ Club and spend my day shooting bumper pool. But I preferred staying at the shack with Dad. He taught me about deep-sea diving and threw me bits of scrap iron so I could practice my welding skills. And I got pretty good with a can opener and added a tuna salad to the things I’d cook for Dad. He hired me to collect scrap iron at his junkyard. We’d load up the truck and exchange it for cash. I’d use my earnings to buy a Dr Pepper.

I was a worldly nine-year-old happy to be hanging out with my dad.

The summer was coming to a close and once again I asked Dad if I would be going to school. He hadn’t figured that out yet.

He never needed to.

I was at the shack one morning and cooking up some eggs while dad went next door to the strip tease joint to use the toilet. Mom appeared at the door. She didn’t want to join us for eggs.

The next day I was reunited with my sisters in Wisconsin. But my five-cent belt remained in California.