Anjuli Grantham interviewed Dexter Lorance on June 14, 2015, in Larsen Bay, Alaska, as part of the Kodiak Historical Society’s West Side Stories project. Dexter was born in 1951 in Oklahoma, went to school in California, and moved to Alaska in 1971 with his girlfriend, seeking adventure. He is the cannery foreman at Larsen Bay cannery, but his first job in Alaska was at the Whitney-Fidalgo cannery plant in Anchorage, where he worked long hours processing fish that arrived by rail and tender. He describes some of the differing methods of processing fish and the maintenance of its machinery, differing standards for quality in the past, and the Filipino and Japanese cannery workers with whom he once worked. He reminisces about the wildness of the early residents in the area and the camaraderie between workers, how welcoming villagers were to newcomers who were eager to learn and work as he was, the degree of preparation required in the days before communication with the outside world became easier, and contrasts the greater attention to hygiene with the requirements for treatment of sewage and gurry. He also touches on the introduction of town water;, the Exxon Valdez oil spill; unions, strikes, and splits between different fishing interests of the time; some of the difficulties owners have faced keeping the cannery in business and the technological changes he has witnessed in the area.