Friday night we went and talked to him the first time when we came up in the 50’s, he was coming up the highway. Where the heck we meet him first….. down by…. Ashcroft. Somewhere this side of Ashcroft we met him on the road and talked to him. He has this team of wagon and this flat bottom boat and he was pickin’ beer bottles up, walking along the side of the road. When we come back he was up past Clinton already and we stopped and talked to him up there and he took and sold us all of his beer bottles. He bought himself another horse and he had $50 dollars left over. I think he sold $200 worth of beer bottles. They were worth 10 cents a piece you know, at that time. He was just a young man, I think he was about 21 at the time.
– Kenneth Linde recalling his encounter with the man who eventually inhabited “Mad Russian Island”. Kenneth did not know his name. Interviewed July 6th 2017.