Captain Phil Harris (12 page)

Hugh saw other sides of Phil that were never part of his public image. Many times, they would take Phil’s small Bayliner boat out to Puget Sound and just hang out, Phil guiding the boat by the stars. He and Hugh would watch television and talk about all sorts of subjects while fishing for salmon.

Their discussions even included spirituality. While he didn’t consider himself a member of any particular religion, Phil believed there was a Higher Power in the universe, a force that controlled life on earth. He knew he had been lucky in a lot of ways, and he spoke often about how he believed his deceased mother was looking down on him, watching his back and bringing him good fortune.

Mary wished Phil had turned to that spirituality when he was tempted by his addictions. But he at least had the ability to sense when she had had enough. Inevitably, Phil would reach out, even across the thousands of miles of land and sea, to reel her back in as he had reeled in so many fish in his life.

One time in 1985, right after Jake was born, Phil called Mary and
told her to turn on the radio. He had dedicated a song to her, “Behind Closed Doors.” And he soon followed that up with another dedication, “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

“I could never stay mad at Phil,” Mary said. “He’d get angry quickly, yell and say a bunch of stuff he’d later regret. But he never stayed mad at anybody very long. And if you apologized, he’d always forgive you.”

Phil was a loving dad, but he was hardly a conventional father. From the time Josh was around four, Phil, after going out with his buddies and returning around 1:00 a.m., would wake his older son up, set the groggy-eyed youngster on the couch, and flip on the TV.

Josh was grouchy, of course, as any four-year-old would be after being awakened from a dead sleep. But Phil would solve that problem by pulling out a large package of candy he had brought home. He would invite Shane and Meigon to join in as well, but at two, Jake was too young to enjoy the kiddie party.

Josh distinctly remembers watching old reruns of
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
with his father until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., two kids munching on their candy, one four years old, the other a sea captain acting like a four-year-old.

“It would drive my mom up the wall to see that,” Josh said. “She would be so mad. ‘Don’t get the kids all jacked up on candy,’ she’d yell. It was a wild time.”

And a special time for Josh, because with Phil out at sea so much, every moment he got to spend with his father, even in the middle of the night, was something to treasure.

While Phil often had unusual ways of showing it, he thoroughly loved his two sons. They in turn brought both him and Mary great joy, but Jake, in his early years, was also often a source of concern.

As a newborn, Mary recalled, “He cried so softly that you could barely hear him.” And as he grew into a toddler, Jake was silent much of the time. At first, Phil and Mary thought he might just be slow to speak. But when he became three, then four and five, his vocabulary
at any given time still consisted of only a word or two. His parents began listening to others who wondered if the problems ran deeper than just shyness, perhaps involving a learning disability or some brain defect.

Ultimately, Phil and Mary found, to their great relief, that Jake was simply a very quiet soul trying to find his comfort zone in a very loud family.

One early spring evening as a heavy rain fell, Phil and Mary took the boys out to dinner. It may have been a wet, bleak night outside, but in that restaurant, the cloud that had long hung over Jake was about to disappear.

When the waitress asked Jake, then five, what he wanted, Josh, as he always did, ordered for his brother, asking for a tuna sandwich. But as he did, Jake cleared his throat and, as if a dam had burst, a torrent of words came out. “I don’t want that,” he said forcefully. “I’m tired of that crap! Give me a hamburger.”

Three jaws at the table dropped, quickly replaced by three smiles. Finally, the littlest one had joined the family.

Phil loved being a family man, but not enough to totally give up his dark side. He still clung to booze and he didn’t hide his drinking problem from his kids.

“We would watch him wake up in the morning,” said Josh, “and immediately pound down half a gallon of vodka without taking a breath. I could just hear the gulp . . . gulp . . . gulp.”

When Phil did finally catch his breath, he would realize there were two wide-eyed sons watching him.

“Here’s a hundred bucks,” he’d tell them. “Go get some lunch.”

Then Phil’s head would plop back down on his pillow, his eyes would slam shut, and he wouldn’t be heard from again all day.

“My dad was out of control,” said Josh. “He was always partying.”

•   •   •

In 1986, Phil and Mary bought a house in the May’s Pond area of Bothell, a two-story, 3,400-square-foot structure, and the days and
months that followed were, in Mary’s words, “the happiest time of my life.”

Her son Shane came back to live with them. With Shane, Meigon, Phil, and their boys all under the same roof, Mary’s home was complete. Mary took charge, redecorating the house, filling it with new furniture, and brightening up the garden with new plant life.

There were family barbecues spiced up with a Phil Harris specialty, his “Bering Sea butt fucking sauce.” There were long football afternoons that always drew large, boisterous crowds to watch the games. And there were parties, of course, but they were tame in comparison to the wild affairs of the earlier years.

The genesis of the new atmosphere in the Harris household was Phil’s decision to finally deal with his addictions. Seeing how Hugh had changed after rehab and feeling the responsibility that came with an expanding family, Phil agreed to seek treatment for drugs and alcohol. He checked into a rehab center in Port Angeles, Washington, where he stayed for three months.

“There were no drugs or alcohol around after that,” said Mary. “Everything was wonderful. Only close friends came by, but nobody else from the old crowd because there was no drinking, no coke.”

How did Phil get his kicks in those days? No longer by causing mayhem, just observing it. There was a hill near the house and, in the wintertime, snow and ice would make it extremely hazardous for motorists. On days when the weather was particularly bad, Phil would position himself at the bottom of the hill to watch the inevitable car wrecks.

His kinder, gentler side came out when he discovered Bottles, a homeless man who lived in a cardboard box behind a local supermarket. Phil was constantly bringing the old man care packages of coffee, soup, hamburgers, and assorted leftovers.

One brutally cold Christmas morning, as the family celebration whipped into high gear, Phil’s eyes suddenly went wild.

“On no, Bottles!” he said. “I hope he hasn’t frozen to death.”

Phil rushed over to Bottles’s makeshift shelter with hot food, a sleeping bag fit for arctic conditions, and a bottle of Crown Royal to enable the poor man to better celebrate the holiday.

Phil had made a major turn. The ensuing five years were smooth sailing, but Mary knew better than to expect only calm seas ahead.

Sure enough, one day in 1991 as the family was packing for a trip to Disneyland, minus Phil who was up north fishing, there was a knock at the door. There were two men standing there, asking for Mary. She didn’t know them, even when they identified themselves as former crew members on Phil’s boat, but she still invited them in.

“What do you want to talk about?” she asked.

“Your husband,” replied one of the men. “Just thought you should know what a bastard you’re married to.”

The other man handed Mary a large manila envelope containing twenty-five letters.

“This should be self-explanatory,” said one of the men, “unless that’s the kind of marriage you have. In that case, maybe you and I should get together, too.”

“I don’t fuck the crew,” replied Mary before kicking the pair out.

The envelope sat there. She took a deep breath, opened it, started reading the letters, and the tears began to flow.

“I was in shock,” she later said. “I was looking at love letters to Phil from the ship’s cook, a woman named Susie. I thought we finally had a perfect marriage, but he had been having an affair with this woman, who worked in the galley, for a year. How could I not know this?”

As Mary kept reading, the phone rang. It was Phil. He was in a great mood, calling to say he’d be home in a few days. Not knowing how to react, she hung up. He called back a few times, only to wind up with a click and a dial tone each time.

There was a phone number on one of the letters. Calling it, Mary discovered she was speaking to Susie. Mary invited her over and they talked all night. Before she left, Susie asked if she could leave a note under the wiper blade on Phil’s car. That was fine with Mary.

When Phil returned home, Mary wasn’t at the airport. When he pulled up to the house in a cab, she could see fire in his eyes.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked. “Why did you keep hanging up on me?”

Mary tossed him the envelope. Phil looked at it but didn’t speak.

“Please tell me this isn’t happening,” Mary said. “Why, Phil? Do you love her?”

“No, I don’t,” said Phil. “How did you get this?”

“A couple of your crew members, who you apparently fired, decided to make a special trip over here,” Mary said, “to personally deliver this and then make a pass at me.”

Mary told Phil about his girlfriend’s visit to the house.

“She wanted me to let you go so she can have you,” Mary said. “Because, according to her, you think I’m such a bitch. Is that what you really think of me?”

“No,” insisted Phil, “you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

Mary wasn’t buying it this time.

“You love how I make you look,” she said, “what I do for you, the home I keep. I spend every day and weekends with the kids. I sit by the phone for days waiting for your call. My friends make fun of me and call me the Stepford Wife because I try so hard to be perfect. After thirteen and a half years, I deserve better than this.”

Phil asked for one more chance.

“No, you can’t have it both ways,” Mary said. “Not at my expense. I need you to leave for a while so I can think.”

“Oh, come on,” said Phil, “you’ll get over it. You always do.”

Mary grabbed a picture off the wall, threw it at him, and yelled, “Get out!”

Phil stuffed some clothes in a bag and went out to his Corvette, only to discover that Susie had left a nasty letter under the wiper blade and a ten-pound salmon in the back seat. With a parting snarl, Phil jumped into the car and roared off.

He rented an apartment in Juanita Beach, in Kirkland, Washington.
Four days later, Mary heard that Phil was seeing his new next-door neighbor, Teresa. And a week later, Phil moved into Teresa’s condo.

“Phil had the audacity to bring her to our home when he stopped by to get some of his things,” Mary said. “He didn’t skip a beat. He just went on with his life as if I had never even mattered.”

The split was more than Mary could handle.

“I totally lost it,” she said. “I went to bed, curled up into a ball, and watched MTV twenty-four hours a day for weeks. I could barely get up to care for the children. I just couldn’t pull myself together no matter how much I wanted to for the kids’ sake.

“He called and asked if I was sure I really wanted a divorce. I said, ‘You are unbelievable. You’re living with a woman. Do I want a divorce? What do you think?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t want one. Maybe we could try a separation until you get your shit together.’ I said, ‘Oh, till I get
my
shit together? Fuck you.’ ”

And then she hung up, on the call and on the marriage.

Phil’s tumultuous life with Mary was over.

They divorced in 1991, after nine years of marriage and nearly fourteen years together overall. But Mary figured that, taking away the time Phil was at sea, they were probably physically together for just three years.

Still, as Phil would soon learn, his time with Mary would seem like the good old days compared to what lay ahead.

Every ocean has its own wave characteristics. The
Cornelia Marie
fits well into the wave shape of the Bering Sea.

It treads water very effectively because of the shape of its hull. It doesn’t move very fast because it’s kind of a blunt instrument, but that’s not a top priority when you are crab fishing. First and foremost, because you are idling your engines much of the time, you want a boat that is good at riding over the waves. The
Cornelia Marie
is like a big washtub, giving it a very stable platform on which to operate.

For some guy in Alabama, where the boat was built, to come up with that hull design makes him either a genius or damn lucky. But it works. The
Cornelia Marie
has one of the best hull designs in all of the Bering Sea.

—Tony Lara, relief captain/engineer on the
Cornelia Marie

Every fan of
Deadliest Catch
has heard of the
Cornelia Marie,
the ship that will forever be identified with Phil Harris.

But what many fans don’t know is that there is a real-life Cornelia Marie. Though born in San Francisco, she is as much an Alaskan as any native from Juneau to Barrow. Her family moved to Yakutat, an Alaskan fishing village southeast of Anchorage, when Cornelia was
two, and there she stayed until moving to Kodiak Island off the Alaskan coast in 1979.

Although she had been around boats since she could walk, it wasn’t until she met and married Ralph Collins on Kodiak that Cornelia became involved in the fishing industry. Ralph owned the 60-foot fishing vessel
Predator
when they first met. As his business flourished, he was able to move up to a larger boat, the 72-foot
Milky Way
. Cornelia didn’t know much about catching crabs, but she knew how to balance books. So while Ralph coordinated the crews and led the voyages through the Bering Sea, Cornelia served as his accountant.