AUTHOR’S NOTE: Many individuals helped make possible the writing of this story about the lifetime of Poopdeck Platt. Particular thanks goes to Catherine Cassidy, Erik Huebsch, Bob Kanegis, Kenny Moore and the late Kenneth Jones for their many contributions.
As his long life stretched into his later years, Poopdeck Platt once said, “I’m really slowing down. It used to take me around an hour to swim for an hour. Now it’s taking me almost an hour and a half to swim for an hour.”
Clarence Hiram Platt — who preferred to have people call him Poopdeck — may have been slowing down, but he rarely stopped moving. He tried to swim five mornings each week at the Homer High School pool. “Swimming gives me exercise,” he said, “not only on my legs but all over, everything but my brains…. It’s kind of boring in a way, but I feel so much better after I swim.”
Also making him feel better were the nearly 25 vitamin and mineral pills he swallowed every day.
Poopdeck also worked the soil and battled the weeds and slugs in his garden during the summer months. To keep his mind sharp, he read prodigiously and played the stock market. He also enjoyed a social life that included plenty of dancing, lively conversations and the sharing of his homemade wines.
In fact, his social life was so important to him that he made it part of his goal to live for at least a century. In a 1992 interview on KBBI public radio, Poopdeck — age 88 at the time — when asked how he was doing, responded: “I’m fat and sassy, as usual. I don’t change much as time goes on, but I’m working hard at staying in shape so that I can get drunk and go dancing on my hundredth birthday. That’s my hobby at the moment.”
When asked to explain his apparent reputation for dancing and being seen with younger, attractive women, Poopdeck replied, “Well, I’m so dad-burned old that no women, young women, are scared of me, anymore, and I’ve got well enough off that I can afford to spring for a supper or a dance or a drink or whatever every once in a while.
“And so,” he continued, “they don’t mind going with me, because I kind of like to dance. But the only trouble … is I never learned to dance, and the only kind of dancing I can do is these hippie-type dances where you just hop up and down and wiggle your butt. And … there’s a few women around that don’t mind dancing that way and will put up with me. So I don’t seem to have any trouble getting partners for a dance occasionally. Not all the time, but just occasionally anyway.”
In an Anchorage Daily News feature entitled “Lifestyles of the Old and Famous,” Poopdeck was asked about his secret for living such a long and prosperous life. He answered in typical Poopdeck fashion:
“At one time I was one of the world’s smart people. I knew … a whole lot about a lot of things and a little bit about purt-near everything. Well, the older I got and the more I learned, the less I knew and … now I don’t know hardly anything about anything and very little about what I know the most of. So I guess there’s no use asking me about things because I don’t know.”
He did, however, know enough to enjoy the celebrity that came with being admired and respected for so many decades.
In 1984, the year he turned 80, he appeared in a newspaper advertisement for Valdez Airlines. The ad copy referred to him as “a crusty old codger” who mended fishing nets, made dandelion wine, had an old cabin in Homer, planted plenty of spuds … and, of course, knew the value of planning ahead, like many other loyal customers of the airlines.
The following year, Poopdeck appeared in the Caldwell-Rosen Homer Calendar. He was featured in January with of photograph of him smiling while mending a net. Beneath the photo was this quote: “Life’s too short to be doing something you don’t enjoy.”
In 1996, Platt Street in Homer was officially changed to Poopdeck Street, via Resolution 96-79 of the Homer City Council.
In March 1999, Poopdeck and Alaska artist Fred Machetanz were featured in a television segment called “The Pioneers” on Anchorage’s Channel 11 News.
However, despite Poopdeck’s fervent wish for a night of drunken revelry on the dance floor to celebrate his hundredth birthday, he fell short of his goal.
On Nov. 7, 2000, Clarence Hiram “Poopdeck” Platt, age 96, succumbed to leukemia.
In mid-November, a celebration of life for Poopdeck was held at the Homer Elks Lodge. According to his obituary, he had wished to be cremated and have his ashes spread in Cook Inlet so he could “keep on traveling.”
On a calm, sunny day in August 2001, according to Catherine Cassidy and his grandson Erik Huebsch, family members carried Poopdeck’s ashes out into Cook Inlet on Huebsch’s gillnetter. “His remains went into the middle rip along with fireweed blossoms, raspberry canes and plenty of raspberry wine,” Cassidy said.
He was survived by four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
He had outlived his own two children and his son-in-law, both of his wives and both of his siblings. His first wife had lived to age 90, his father to age 91, his mother to age 100, and yet all of them were gone before Poopdeck passed.
Yet his remaining family and his myriad friends have kept his memory alive. His is a story stretching back near the beginning of the 20th century, a story more than 40 years old before Alaska entered the picture, a story beginning in Montana….
Poopdeck Platt smiles for the camera in 1998. (Photo courtesy of the Huebsch Family Collection)
Poopdeck Platt dances with Snooks Moore at the Elks Lodge in Homer during the 1990. (Photo courtesy of the Huebsch Family Collection)
Poopdeck Platt, mending a fishing net, was featured in January in the 1985 Caldwell-Rosen Homer Calendar.
