Yukon College Papers by Murray Lundberg, 1993-1994

Bob

Murray Lundberg
(the Bob being described is Murray's father)

Yukon College
ca. 1994

    Bob is 71 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall and about 170 pounds. He is mostly bald, with just a fringe of white hair. He has a white goatee, and looks rather like Colonel Sanders (Kentucky Fried Chicken). He usually wears dark slacks and light patterned dress shirts, and is never without his cowboy boots. His eyes are brown, and he has a good set of teeth. On the inside of his right wrist is a jagged scar about 4 inches long, running up his arm.

    Everyone seems to get the same impression when they first meet Bob: "Colonel Sanders reincarnated." Although Bob is mostly bald, the round face and white goatee are distinctive. Sitting down for coffee with Bob is like an afternoon with the perfect grampa - his brown eyes sparkle as he relates dozens of marvellous adventures in the British Columbia wilderness. When he arrived in Vancouver in 1928, the wilderness was close at hand for a 6-year-old boy, and he seems to have never lost that spirit of adventure. Sharply dressed in dark slacks and a light patterned shirt, he doesn't look like has had led a very active life, until you notice his beat-up cowboy boots. When they are mentioned, their significance becomes clear - those boots have seen, and are constant reminders of, many of his adventures over the past twenty years or so. From gutting a moose on a remote northern lake to gold-panning in the Fraser Canyon, they almost take on a personality of their own. The long jagged scar on the inside of his wrist is the result of being a witness to a plane crash; a piece of torn aluminum ripped him open while he was helping cut out the victims. Bob has become like a good book to me - a constant source of stories of adventure and often inspiration.

See a pdf of the paper.