Crocodile Rock is a great Elton John song. The first verse has these words:
I remember when rock was young
Me and Suzie had so much fun
Holding hands and skimming stones
Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own
Fifty-eight years ago, the day after high school graduation, I got on a plane for Alaska. I weighed about two pounds and had no idea what I was doing. Ruth thinks my mother was crazy to let me go.
My Uncle Harold, Father’s brother, got me a job in the cookhouse at the logging camp at Thorne Bay, the main camp of the Ketchikan Pulp Company. By the time I got there, the cook’s job was filled, and I became a camp flunky. I was supposed to be a painter, but on the third day, it began to rain. I dried fire hoses in the rain. I helped unload the supply boat every Tuesday in the rain. I roofed in the rain. I put up bunkhouse siding in the rain. I took garbage to the dump in the rain. I even did a little painting (inside) in the rain. The Tongass is a rainforest.
I took Ruth to Thorne Bay the year after we retired. The camp is gone, but there is still some gypo logging on the island. In 1964, Ketchican Pulp was building roads in the forest and trucking logs out to the bay. The logs were built into huge rafts and towed to Ketchican. On the island, they repaired the yarders, bulldozers, and earthmovers. The shop was a big operation.
I was pretty miserable that summer in 1964 but learned that I could handle most anything. I guess everyone should leave the nest and tough it out at some point. I was learning to take pictures, and Uncle loaned me a 4 x 5 Speed Graphic. (The negative size is four inches by five inches.) It is a huge camera, and I lugged it around. It was also the summer I learned to play the guitar.
Mostly I dreamed. I dreamed of Southern California and girls. I dreamed of getting home. I dreamed of my Chevy. It was black, and I spent some of my Alaska money to put dual pipes on it. I also sent my mother, a writer, a posture chair from Sears. She got a baby crib. (Think about it.)
I dreamed of getting on one of the many planes that landed on the bay to bring loggers in and take loggers out. I especially liked the Grumman Goose. It was a quick little two-engine plane that came daily. The Gummans were unlike the little Cessnas that bounced along the bay and then skittered into the air. The Grummans roared out a short way and then took to the air at a steep angle, both engines blowing black smoke. I longed to fly away.
During the move to Colfax, we found my pictures of Alaska. When I saw the one I took of a Grumman Goose getting underway, I decided to type the number N48550 in Google. Bingo, the old girl is still alive and well, owned by Jimmy Buffett.
Here she is in Thorne Bay in 1964.
Dreaming of my Chevy and my old blue jeans…
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