There was a period of my life from about 1959 to 1968 that I think
of as my Wild, Wild West days. They begin in December of 1959 when four bored
young adults decided to change their lives and head out West, and they end in the
late spring of 1968 when I boarded a plane with my young family and flew out of
Fairbanks, Alaska.
Some of that period has been blotted out of
my memory, as it probably should be. It was fun, wild and crazy, and it started
when four of us left the security of our small town in New York state climbed
into a rebuilt Mercury and drove to Los Angeles where the sun was like heaven
to four who were use to shivering in New York winters.
There Dick and I lived in
Hermosa Beach, spending much of our time pinching ourselves because we couldn’t
believe we could actually be beach bums and get away with it. But we did.
We would fill our days
body surfing, laying on the beach, girl watching, and drinking strange
concoctions from a plastic pitcher. I can still see Dick standing in the
kitchen of our small studio apartment, a big grin on his face, throwing
whatever juice we had into the pitcher and mixing in a lethal blend of alcohol
from a pint. Satisfied that he’d just made the greatest drink in human creation,
he’d turn to me and say, “I’m ready, let’s rock and roll.” And off we would go
to the beach
Happy hour ended in 1960
when one early June day Dick’s family showed up and yanked him out of
California with the ultimate designation the Middle East. Two weeks later – the
fun gone without Dick to share in it – I left for this state and my wild and
crazy days as a student at Western Washington, where they eventually wised me
up, shoved a diploma in my hand and threw me out.
But the Wild, Wild West
days were just warming up. I migrated back to California for a time, but the
beach life had dulled, and without
Dick, who had been killed in an auto accident in 1962, there just didn’t seem a
good enough reason to hang around. It saddened me to walk the beach because it
brought back memories of Dick, the most carefree, loving and giving person I
have known. It just didn’t seem right for me to be there and for Dick not to
be. So I moved on – not before shedding a few tears.
Next was Oklahoma. Oil
was still flowing in that neck of the woods, though oil wealth was beginning to
shift to Texas. I landed a job overseeing a slew of oil lease meter-proving
drivers we had scattered about Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas tumbleweed. A few times I went out with a driver in the
oppressive Southwest heat. A beer never tasted so good as when you have come in
from a day out among the tumbleweeds with temperatures pushing past 120 and no
shade in sight.
Mingling among the oil
barons was mind-boggling to me, a lowly peon more comfortable barefooting his
way into the foothills of the Alleghenies than hobnobbing with extreme wealth.
I always remember my boss, the owner of the company, telling me to never use
you own money when you can use somebody else’s. And with that comment, he unfurled
his wallet, and a string of credit cards six feet long flopped out to the
floor.
Events were coming faster
than a young kid one year out of college could comprehend. With so much money
surrounding me, it seemed unreal, a dream from which I most surely would soon
awake and find myself back as a young kid walking barefoot across the Allegheny
River on another beautiful summer New York day.
It was wild back then.
Money was to be made. Deals were struck worth millions over napkins laden with
red hot chili peppers ready to be crushed and poured into chili that was
already stinging hot.
Oil companies would
eventually move out of Oklahoma to Houston and Dallas. And when they began that
shift, I shifted. I came back to Washington to get ready for my next Wild, Wild
West adventure.
This one took me to
Fairbanks, where I was to run an office for a liquor distributor. The cast of
characters in that office-warehouse could easily be a model for a TV series
like Taxi. It was not only wild, but very, very crazy, with no rhyme or reason
for anything that was to be done.
Names have been changed
to protect the guilty, but the lead actors were Doogan, Bob and Andy. Bob, in a
coincidental twist, was a fellow Bremerton High School classmate of Fred Cohen,
who is now entombed at Miller-Woodlawn Cemetery. Cohen was shot and killed by a
gunman on January 19, 1970. He was 56. Nobody has ever been charged with his
killing, probably because nobody cared to find the killer. Cohen apparently was
not well-liked, which did not surprise Bob when he was told.
To this lead cast of
characters, I was added for about a year. I was supposed to run the place, but
never could get a handle on the craziness. The Seattle company that hired me
wanted somebody up there who could wrestle control from Bob, a dominant
personality with great charm, wit and intelligent.
I was no match.
Bob, like the rest of the
crew, and most of the town then, were serious drinkers. Bob would make a run
once a month down the 28-mile stretch of the Richardson Highway to Eielson Air
Force Base to take liquor orders. Now, 28 miles should take no longer than a
couple hours or so.
Not for Bob. He would
disappear for three or four days. No word from him. Just gone.
The first time I became
worried about Bob I was set straight. “He’ll be back,” Doogan said, “with lots
of orders.”
Sure enough. Every time
he left, he would come back, storm into the office and start emptying his
pockets. Little slips of paper, some of them mangled pretty good, would flutter
to the floor. Each of them had liquor orders on them from various roadhouses
along the Richardson Highway.
There were always some
pieces of paper that were missing. But that was, OK, too. Bob would just recall the order from his memory, even
if he was still in a drunken stupor.
Then there was the Fairbanks Flood of 1967. An ungodly amount of rain, over 12 inches, fell in four August days. I stood along the Chena River bank in downtown Fairbanks at midnight on August 12, and the river was inches from flowing over its raised bank and into downtown Fairbanks. Somebody said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Anchorage had announced the river was receding.
Fine. So I went home,
about a mile away. About 3 in the morning I awoke in our second floor apartment
to see cars tumbling by the window.
So much for the corps of
engineers.
Bob insisted he was going
to stand guard over the warehouse, full with liquor, wine and beer, afraid that
marauders in boats would clean us out. I felt it best to stand alongside of
him, so I went, too. In fact, we all stayed in the warehouse, for several days.
No food, but plenty of booze. If marauders had come by, we would have been easy
pickin’ for them.
Space doesn’t allow me to
tell you more of this story. Fairbanks’ population had swollen to 74,000.
Workers from the oil and gas fields at Prudhoe Bay flowed in and their money
flowed like cheap whiskey (which also flowed freely).
It was the Wild, Wild
West at its best.
And I was in the middle
of it, as usual.
Have a great month.
You are loved.