THE FOURTH IN THE NORTH

...I didn't get much sleep last night. Bedded down in my basic steel cot, I must have dozed off at times listening to the arguments outside our tent. Who was the best damn bulldozer or roadgrader operator in the north country? That seemed to be the crux of the loud harangues going on. In my semi-dream I could almost hear guns going off. When my eyes opened next morning after a fitful rest, they beheld there near the peak of our tent the unmistakable pattern of holes caused by the blast of a shotgun! Hooray for the U.S.A.

NELL KELLY, SOURDOUGH

She had taken over a construction base which had been abandoned by the Army Engineers after completion of the Alcan Highway. To the legal eagles she was technically a "squatter". Ostensibly she was the proprietress of this roadhouse in the bush which catered to adventurous spaghetti-eaters from Fairbanks 200 miles away. In reality, Nell could also be called a speakeasy operator. She was capable of filling a bar order after making a clandestine trip to the adjoining building.
Nell was a robust, full-bodied, friendly woman. She had been lately widowed by the death of her Army colonel (?) husband during the fighting in North Africa. Maintenance work and firewood cutting was done by bored GI's from the relatively near Northway Air Base. Evidently, pay was in the form of better chow and certain liquid refreshments.
Accompanied by her huge white Malamute dog, Snowball, this independent lady ran her own trap line come winter. One local Indian was once caught in one of her beartraps. Ouch!
As we were departing for our camp. Nell gave her old friend, Andy the cook, a little black cat. It was promptly named Nellie. Three days later she had her name changed. HE was now Kelly!

A Belated Addendum - March 2004

A PBS Special tonight presented a show about USO celebrities entertaining troops overseas during Word War II. In recalling one of his travels, Bob Hope mentioned stopping at Northway Air Base for refueling in 1942. I was reminded of the evening we drove there from our road camp to get some personal supplies for us and our fellow workers. You might say ours was a "refueling stop", too, as I believe some beer was on our shopping list. Hope said there were only a dozen GI's manning the field but his troupe still put on a half-show for them by popular request!

After his feet healed. Cookie, foreman Bob Swarthout and two others went fishing at Mineral Lake one evening. When Cookie got back to camp he told us he only got one fish but couldn't bring it back with him. " I caught it on the south side of the lake", he reported, " and the car was parked on the north shore. Well, sir, if I had pulled that fish out, the lake would have dropped two feet on the south end. Then we would have had to row uphill towing the fish to the car and that would have been too much work."

BAR NONE

Except for Nell Kelly's hidden cache and the PX at Northway Air Base, there was no offering of legal spirits within 200 miles of camp. But booze could be had. Johnston (I'll call him that) had a rather strong craving for the stuff. And his pocketbook didn't match his craving. So Johnston kept mooching money from the guys till it got to be so old that his credit dried up.

My boss, "Cookie" Allen, had bankrolled Johnston's toots in the past as they were passable friends. So as a last effort to replenish his supply of liquor, Johnston came to the mess tent. There he beseeched another handout from Cookie who immediately escorted him out the door. This angered Johnston who spit out demeaning epithets through the screen, whereupon Cookie pasted him in the nose, the screen not withstanding. Johnston stormed off in a rage.

A few minutes later we heard the foreman yelling. He had intercepted the drunkard heading toward the cooktent with a rifle. Johnston was disarmed and fired from the crew on the spot.

TERRITORIAL TERROR

His partner was found in their cabin still sitting at the table. An unlit cigarette drooped from his mouth. And it looked like his buddy had put a permanent part in his hair with an ax. Outside, the police found that all the dogs had been shot. Word went out to the people in this sparsely settled area of Alaska to watch out for the bush-happy murderer. After a week or so of tenseness, lawmen captured the criminal crossing a bridge over a tributary of the Tanana River. The local citizens expressed their pleasure that the killer had been taken. They were mildly disturbed that he had done away with his partner, but they were truly outraged that he had stooped so low as to kill his dogs!

BITS GLEANED

Cookie made home brew in a 10-gallon butter barrel. He tested it so often that it was gone before it aged.---Guys gaffed 40-pound King salmon---Could barely hear Fred Waring's radio show from KFAR, Fairbanks, on battery set---We leave 12-mile Camp amidst cheers and catcalls---Through Big Delta to Fairbanks where we had reindeer steaks for $2 at the Model Cafe---Saw snow on Mt. McKinley far away---Visited College Museum at University of Alaska---Finally headed home on August 5th.---In unhurried fashion. we toured parks and points of interest, which included Jasper National Park; Lake Louise in Banff National Park; Coeur d'Alene Lake, ID; Yellowstone National Park; and Sault Ste. Marie. We joined our loved ones on August 30th, 1947.---And remember that $200 truck? Well, Bill managed to sweet talk someone and sold it for $480 !

POST SCRIPT

About a week before the end of our travels, we stopped at a little roadside park in Wisconsin. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon after we had gone to church in Lakeview, Minnesota. We were setting out our dinner on a picnic table when a large family group arrived. We noticed that they were preparing to somehow lay out their spread on the ground since there was not another table available. Our crew automatically started moving our utensils and vittles from the table to a spot under a welcoming tree. With protestations, but after our insistence, the family accepted the use of our cleared table. As we were about to finish up our plain repast, the thankful grandmother approached and presented us with an unexcelled example of home cooking, a simply delicious apple crumb pie! This anecdote is offered as the totem of our trip, a thoroughly enjoyable odyssey where we found cooperation and friendliness all along our 10,000 mile route.

Offered December 2001 - email (manyco@manycoups.net)