Captain Phil Harris (24 page)

Phil then calmly marched back to the car, got in, looked at Josh, and said, “Motherfucker owed me some money.”

By then, a woman from the store was out in the street, screaming at Phil.

“Might get in some trouble for this one,” he said as he hit the accelerator and took off.

The police indeed came to Phil’s house and lectured him, but that was the end of it.

Again, no consequences.

•   •   •

No immediate consequences. But as Phil saw Jake and Josh emulating his behavior, even he began to doubt his lifestyle. The problem, Phil realized, wasn’t the crab fishing. It was him.

“Once he started to see the effect he had on us,” said Josh, “he changed.”

Phil realized that, for him, it was time for the party to be over. His resolution to tone down his wild ways coincided with his decision to remove Teresa from his life, which made the transition much easier. The final years of his relationship with Teresa had been long and emotionally taxing, but when Phil finally split, the elation that overwhelmed him wiped away all the fears and negative thoughts. His dread about the financial cost of divorcing her was gone, along with the shackles of his suffocating second marriage. His ongoing success at sea would keep him afloat and still prosperous.

His close friend Dan Mittman invited Phil to move into the new home Dan had recently purchased on a scenic parcel of land outside Seattle. Phil appreciated the offer but declined, zestfully proclaiming, “This is the first time in my life I’m totally free.”

What would he do with the freedom? Having already enjoyed spaciousness and luxury in the home he shared with Teresa on Echo Lake Road in Snohomish, Washington, a home that included a waterfall and a pond, Phil decided that a simpler lifestyle was a better fit for him at that point in his life. After so many years in his captain’s quarters with anything he needed within arm’s reach, he felt a fifth-wheel recreational vehicle would be an ideal counterpart on land.

He bought a massive, luxurious motor home that set him back nearly two hundred grand and featured granite countertops, a fireplace, and granite steps leading up to his bedroom. Phil also purchased two lots in Lake Conner Park, a private camping club located in the city of Lake Stevens thirty-six miles northeast of Seattle.

“He didn’t need to impress anybody,” said Jake, “so he got a place he really liked.”

With sixty-foot trees looming over the park, moss and ferns dominating the surrounding foliage, spectacular views of the lake from every slice of property, and an abundance of wildlife roaming the area—from deer to cougars to bears—Phil felt he had finally found a
haven from his hectic life. It was the perfect place to recharge when he was about to be overwhelmed by stress. Nobody had to remind him that he was in his late forties. There were days when he felt twenty years older, the mileage piling up on a man who had been in the fast lane since his teens.

At the entryway to his fifth wheel, partially shielded from inquisitive eyes by a hedge, Phil placed an imposing suit of armor to stand guard.

Anyone looking inside would have no doubts about who lived there. Pictures of Phil with celebrities and with his boys were plentiful. NASCAR racing memorabilia were everywhere. The closet was jammed with Harley clothing, and his trademark cowboy boots were parked by the coffee table, ready for action.

Next to the trailer, he built a gazebo and installed intricate decking around the fifth wheel. As he explained to visitors, “I need the deck so I can ride my bike right up to the fucking door.”

Phil no longer needed a refuge in the backyard to escape Teresa’s wrath. But by now, building his birdhouses, the excuse he’d used to disappear out there, had become a treasured hobby. So he constructed a toolshed on the Lake Connor property in which he kept turning out his mini masterpieces.

Phil also put in a platform for his Bayliner cruise boat and a carport for the designer golf cart with chrome mag wheels that he used to putter around the park.

“To me, it was like a little mansion,” said Jake. “It was really quiet out there. Nobody fucked with him. He just chilled with his motorcycle, his dog, his golf cart, his boat, and his birdhouses.”

“When he came home from a fishing trip,” said Lynn Andrews, Phil’s personal assistant, “he just wanted to turn the world off. He sat in front of his fireplace, turned up the heat as high as he could, smoked, and watched TV.”

But it wasn’t always quiet and peaceful around Phil’s lair. One night, Lynn, with Phil gone for the evening, was engaged in the
never-ending task of cleaning up the mess her boss had left behind. As always, she kept the front door open to counteract the stifling temperature generated by the heater and the fireplace.

She would toss the trash onto the front deck and then scoop it up and dispose of it when she left.

On this night, Lynn heard rustling sounds coming from outside. Figuring Phil had returned early, she went to the front door only to discover a bear on the porch, munching on a piece of salmon.

“I was completely freaked out,” said Lynn, remembering how she slammed the door and hunkered down inside, afraid to venture out into the dark park.

Close to midnight, she heard Phil pull up.

“What are you still doing here?” he asked when he found Lynn inside.

“I didn’t want to get eaten on my way to my car,” she said after telling him about the unwelcome visitor.

“Oh,” said Phil, “so you just waited for me, figuring he would get me on the way in.”

After adding his trademark giggle, he walked Lynn to her car. Once again, this grizzly had shown that, deep down, he was just a teddy bear.

But with Phil, it seemed, there was always another side. Lynn might not have thought of him as being so warm and protecting if she had known it was no accident that the bear was prowling around. Ever mischievous, Phil deliberately left fish outside in order to lure bears so he could watch them strut and growl.

While his neighbors respected Phil’s privacy, snooping fans were not as considerate. They would drive through the park and pause at the famous fifth wheel, trying to get a glimpse over the hedge of the captain in his natural habitat, like tourists on a Hollywood tour of the homes of the stars. One overzealous fan pounded on Phil’s door at six in the morning, demanding to shake his hand. What he got instead was a shaking fist.

Phil’s invited guests got a lot more. In case they decided to spend a few days with him, he installed another massive fifth wheel on his next-door lot.

•   •   •

By 2008, at the peak of his fame at fifty-one, Phil finally seemed at peace with himself, whether in Lake Connor or still reigning as the master of the Bering Sea.

But while he appeared to be sailing on calm waters, inside him a storm was brewing, fueled by decades of self-destructive behavior.

When it came to the surface, it didn’t seem that serious at first. Phil had been experiencing aches in his legs for a while due to a minor design flaw in the
Cornelia Marie.
The configuration of the wheelhouse makes it difficult for the man in control to stand up. His knees would be pinned between the bolted-down chair and the control panel. Sitting is much easier, but over a prolonged period it can be hard on the legs.

What might have been nothing more than an irritating inconvenience for someone else soon grew into a potentially deadly situation for Phil, worse than any wave he ever faced. He developed blood clots in his knees from sitting in that chair day after day, month after month, year after year.

Of course, it didn’t help that, while he was sitting there, he puffed away on pack after pack of cigarettes. Phil could go through five packs a day. His record was eight.

Add the drug addiction, alcoholism, and a lifetime of eating junk food, and it’s hardly surprising that his body wore out prematurely.

The blood clots spread to Phil’s lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism.

He was at sea when he was stricken. When he began coughing up blood, he refused to head to land for treatment. He tried to rationalize his condition by insisting he was merely suffering the aftereffects of a rib cage injury he had suffered a few days earlier when a powerful
wave had banged him into the side of the wheelhouse. It was going to take more than a little blood to blur Phil’s tough-guy image.

But soon, there was more than just a little blood. Red was becoming the dominant color on both his chin and his blue shirt. His breathing sounded more and more labored.

But Phil’s first concern remained the
Cornelia Marie.

“My dad always put the boat first before his own health,” Josh said.

Finally, Phil conceded this could be far more serious than any of the countless injuries, including many broken bones, he’d suffered over the years.

This was a man who was once in extreme pain from an abscessed tooth while in Dutch Harbor. With no dentist within eight hundred miles, Phil ordered an emergency medical technician to remove the tooth with a pair of pliers, a claw hammer, and a chisel without the benefit of anesthesia.

Grudgingly, he had to admit that this time he was in need of more than a pair of pliers. He agreed to cut short the trip, no small concession for Phil, and head for St. Paul Island, largest of the four Pribilof Islands, located north of the Aleutians. From there, he was flown to Anchorage, 775 miles away.

It didn’t take extensive tests for doctors in Anchorage to realize this was a man in serious need of a stress-free environment, a healthy lifestyle, rest, and exercise. They wanted to take away two of Phil’s greatest joys, fishing and cigarettes. He was grounded indefinitely and told to quit smoking.

He tentatively agreed to go home to Seattle to recuperate, but give up smoking? No way.

Phil wasn’t about to give up his more serious vices either, as Mary was to discover when she came to visit him on his first night back in the fifth wheel at Lake Connor. She stayed over, waking him every hour because he was still coughing up blood and she wanted to make sure it didn’t seep into his lungs.

When Mary came in to check on him one time, she caught him doing coke.

“Damn you!” she yelled. “What’s wrong with you?”

Phil had alarming health issues, and he paired them with an equally alarming tendency to deny reality.

“He never took care of himself,” Mary said.

Nevertheless, being off the boat at least removed the stress of his job. It was absolutely what Phil needed at that point in his life. It just wasn’t what his heart and soul demanded. He was Captain Phil Harris, and crab fishing had defined him long before fame had come his way.

Phil may have been the star attraction on
Deadliest Catch,
but nobody connected with the show was rooting for him to return anytime soon.

“He wasn’t well and we were really concerned,” said Thom Beers, the show’s executive producer. “Concerned about him, not the show. We loved it when the doctor told Phil he had to stand down. It was amazing that the guy had even lived through that first attack.”

Phil later admitted to his friend Mike Crockett that even he was surprised that he’d survived.

“He smoked more cigarettes in a day,” said Phil’s father, Grant, “than most people did in a month. And he did it day after day.”

Though he knew the futility of trying to change his son, Grant tried.

“How much longer do you think you can do this?” Grant would ask him. Grant already knew the answer, and it scared him.

Phil’s friends also appealed to him.

“Phil knew that he needed to cut down on his smoking, but it wasn’t going to happen,” said custom design artist Mike Lavallee. “I told him, ‘You’ve got to be careful. You need to ease off on all this stuff you’re taking. It almost killed you this time. You dodged a bullet.’ ”

Phil would growl, “I know, I know.”

It was his standard response, a way to placate friends, but nothing more.

Because his shop was inundated with paint fumes from floor to ceiling, Lavallee prohibited smoking on the premises, but he made an exception for Phil.

“Whenever he left here,” Lavallee said, “it was like the place was on fire.”

When Phil was nervous, he would light up three or four cigarettes and keep them all going at the same time, a nicotine juggler.

It wasn’t hard to spot the remains of Phil Harris’s cigarettes: they had distinctive marks on them because he didn’t like dangling a cigarette from his lips. Instead, he kept it firmly gripped in his teeth. If Phil didn’t finish his smoke, he would offer it to his friends. But after they saw the trademark punctures down each side, Phil got no takers.

“I remember one of the last nights I was with him,” said his friend Jeff Sheets. “We went to the Tulalip Casino. Phil was really nervous that night. His leg was jiggling a hundred miles an hour and he was chomping down on a cigarette. That’s how he coped with things.”

Nowhere more so than in his wheelhouse. Phil would get in there, kick off his shoes, put on his flip-flops, make sure the windows were tightly shut, turn up the heat, crank up the music, and light up his cigarette.

His lair was nicknamed the “cigarette sauna” by
Deadliest Catch
producer Jeff Conroy. It would be eighty-five degrees in there with no ventilation, the cigarette smoke sometimes so thick the wheelhouse looked like a London street on a foggy morning.

•   •   •

While removing him from the cigarette sauna certainly figured to improve Phil’s health, removing the key items in his diet would have been just as beneficial. His favorite foods were jumbo hot dogs, pizzas, and barbecued pork. He loved greasy food, the greasier the better, and washed down most meals with sodas or a cold brew.

“He had the worst diet ever,” said Tony Lara, relief skipper/engineer on the
Cornelia Marie
. “And he never really reflected on the effect it might have on him.

“Maybe that changed when he got sick. But before that, it was high speed all the time, balls to the walls.”

Phil’s time on hiatus was a period of great frustration, and reminders of his new limitations often caused that frustration to boil over. One such moment came on a trip Phil and Russ took to Las Vegas for an appearance by Phil at a motocross race. As they were driving down the Vegas Strip, Phil got a call informing him that Sig had been selected to be the 2008 grand marshal of the Seattle Seafair.