STORIES FROM THE DISTANT PAST: EARLY YEARS IN ANCHORAGE: COMPLETING THIS CHAPTER

((This is the final segment of the first chapter of my book of short stories. I will post a chapter at a time in future, instead of breaking it into smaller segments.))

Many Alaskans we knew were outdoors people - you had to enjoy the harsh weather and pioneer living conditions or you wouldn’t survive in the ‘olden’ days - and we were certainly no exception. Our family used these small aircraft much as the average family in the South 48 used their automobile: We took our weekend trips in a plane. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of trips we took in one or another of these vintage airplanes. We often went to the tide flats southwest of Anchorage where we fished for salmon using gill nets.

Since these craft were primarily two seaters, we made our way to and fro using the shuttle system: With my father at the rear seat’s controls he would fly my oldest brother and me to our destination, then return to pick up my mother. Lastly, he would make the final trip with the two middle boys. Skip, the oldest of us boys, was proficient with the rifle and he would take it with him on every trip. It was his responsibility to set up camp and watch over me until my mother arrived on site. He often went exploring after being relieved of his childcare duties, carrying the Winchester .32 caliber rifle over his shoulder as I later saw Daniel Boone do on the television show. What was he looking for? Often black bear would come down the steep cliffs to feed on fish that got left behind on the beach. He wanted to bag one for himself.

Our favorite fishing area was on Turnagain Arm. This is a broad body of water similar to the fjords of Scandinavia that, together with Cook Inlet, forms two of the boundaries of the triangle of land upon which sits the city of Anchorage. The third leg of this triangle is the Chugach Range of mountains some fifteen miles east of the confluence of these two bays. The Arm’s size and tidal flow misled its early explorer, Captain James Cook, who tried to navigate it in the 17th century as though it were a channel surrounding an island. Local legend has it that Captain Cook first sailed into the larger of the two inlets, which he later named after himself, believing he would be able to circumnavigate what he believed to be a large, low lying island. In fact, he sailed right up to the mouth of the Knik River and had to turn around and sail back down the inlet. The Knik River flows southwesterly from the Chugach Range, and is the northern side of the triangle.

When he reached the second bay he sailed southeast down it as well, again believing it to provide a means of circumnavigating what he thought was an island. When he reached the end of this waterway he was forced to turn around again, hence the name Turnagain Arm. In fact, this Arm is just a backwater for Cook Inlet. It has no river mouth at its end, as Cook Inlet has the Knik River, so tremendous tidal flows work up and down this basin with no place to go when they reach the end. These tidal flows create incredible undercurrents that can suck a person, or a small boat, under water instantly. And the tide created by these flows comes in to shore faster than a person can run. We often heard in the news of someone - usually a “cheechako” from the South 48 - who had been far out on the mudflats at low tide and was overtaken and drowned as the tide came rushing in.

The topography of the tidelands surrounding Anchorage is interesting and challenging. When the tide is out, both Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm exhibit large mud flats that are cut deeply by streams. These stream beds may be six, eight or even ten feet deep, and usually have very shallow water draining down them. At low tide one can easily walk far out the flats, wading across these stream beds. The mud is firmly packed in most areas so you don’t sink into the muck more than several inches. The ease with which you can traverse this ground is fatally deceptive.

When the tide begins to come in - and the tides around Anchorage can measure twenty or more feet! - a huge undertow is created by the incoming water meeting the flow of Knik River’s water and the standing water of Turnagain Arm. This undertow creates a large wall of water rushing ahead of the tide, a wall we called a riptide. This riptide raced along the flats at amazing speed, catching and ensnaring anyone who was careless, or inexperienced, enough to be far out on the flats when the tide turned.

And while one could easily navigate the flats at low tide, once the water covered the stream beds a person was doomed to step into these deep, watery graves.

Well, putative genius that was my father, he decided that the best place to fish was on Turnagain Arm, and the way to do it was to fly to the beach just as the tide was going out, set up the gill nets several hundred yards out on the mudflats, then fly out before high tide. Hence, our frequent flights to the beaches.

These beaches, at low tide, might be a hundred or so feet wide. On one side was a high, vertical bluff with beautiful and intriguing strata of coal and shale visible. Close to the bluff the beach was sandy and much too soft to land our plane. The sand was littered with huge trees, branches and other flotsam deposited there by the tides. At the high water mark the sand would be wet but hard packed; it was upon this narrow strip of wet sand he would land. After shuttling the whole family from Merrill Field - some thirty minutes away - he and the older three boys would slog a quarter mile through the thick muck of the tidal flats and string the net. Then they would return to a picnic lunch my mother, with me distracting more than helping, had set up for them. As the tide started coming in you could hear the loud, low roar of the riptide. The sound sent chills up your spine even though you knew you would be long gone by the time the water got to you. Long before my dad heard the tide coming he would reverse the order of shuttle and take us all back to the airfield. Although the riptide itself never reached the beach where we landed, the water rose quickly as the tide came in, and there was no time to dally once we started shuttling back to the field.

On nearly every fishing trip his plan worked wonderfully. He read the tide tables and arrived with the first pair of us just as the tide had receded sufficiently to land. And he left the beach with the last two of us just as the tide had gotten within some yards of the plane.

Except on one trip. On this particular trip the tail wheel broke off as he took off from Merrill Field after having ferried the second of the three sets of passengers. With the tide coming in and no time to land and fix it, he flew back to the beach and made a two-point landing. Using the stick to keep the nose down and the tail in the air as he slowed the plane, he dropped the tail into the sand just as he applied the brakes. With the engine running, he opened the door and yelled at Skip to grab me and run to the plane as fast as he could. Skip threw me onto the front seat and squeezed himself in beside me, shouting to our dad to “get a move on” as he closed and latched the door. Waves were beginning to lap at the waterside wheel as our father raced the engine and tried to taxi on the hard packed mud. But the broken gear would not support the weight of all of us, and it stuck in the mud.

He raced the engine again, braked hard and tried to use the stick to raise the tail of the plane so the gear would come up out of the mud, but he had to abandon this effort. He was afraid that if the gear popped loose suddenly he could not react fast enough to keep the plane from nosing into the beach and breaking the propeller. If that happened, we’d all be drowned.

And we weren’t far from that, anyhow, as fast as the tide was coming in.

Finally, in desperation, he told Skip to get out of the plane, go to the back and lift up on the tail. Gunning the engine and keeping his feet hard on the brakes, he held the plane level until Skip climbed back in. Then he released the brakes and we started down the beach. By this time the water was several inches deep and we could not see any dry ground anywhere around us.

We plowed through the water for what seemed like hours until he gently pulled back on the stick and our wheels came up into the air. All of us inhaled deeply to make ourselves lighter as the little plane struggled to rise above the deepening water. Ever so gradually we climbed, with churning water underneath and beside us, and the sheer cliffs menacingly beside and in front of us.

At the last possible instant he banked hard to the left, out over the broiling tide, and leveled off. We were most likely a hundred feet up in the air. The engine was laboring loudly and Skip and I were sweating when from the back seat we heard our father arrogantly announce: “Just like I planned it!”

I wasn’t too keen to be in the last group to be picked up any more, and I began riding with my mom after that.

- - - - - - - - - -

I was perhaps nine when my oldest brother got married. He was in the Army, and had been stationed at Fort Richardson for most of his hitch before being transferred to the port town of Seward.

While at Fort Richardson he had undergone basic training - going for five mile runs through the deep snow in subzero temperatures while carrying his fifty pound backpack; as punishment for some minor infraction, doing pushups in the snow while wearing only his regulation tee shirt on his upper body: More than once he went to the infirmary with frostbite on his hands, arms and nose from this form of “training” - and having survived those torturous seven weeks, was made into a cook’s helper in the kitchen. He had always been an iconoclast, an independent spirit, a thinker, a hippie before there were hippies, at least in Alaska. This individualistic personality was considered a disorder in the military, and he definitely did not get along with the institution of warfare.

Once he was reprimanded severely for chasing the cook around the kitchen with a huge meat cleaver, threatening the poor bugger with decapitation for something he had said or done. How Skip had talked himself out of brig time I never learned, but he did have a gift of gab and I’m sure that helped.

The brass at Fort Richardson were happy to transfer him out of their command and Seward seemed as remote a station as any.

While in Seward he visited frequently at the children’s home run by the Methodist church, Jesse Lee Home. Having been a senior resident of the Home several years before, he was a welcome visitor. It was there he met a young schoolteacher from Boston with whom he shared visions of world change, and they decided to get married.

Came the big day and my father used one of the small planes - he no longer had the flying school but still had his pilot’s license - to shuttle the family on the several hour flight from Anchorage to Seward. To drive the distance would take a day, and besides, he preferred flying. He took my mom and second oldest brother, Dick, in the first trip. Dick was best man and mom was, well, Mom.

Then, with me and my next oldest brother, Ernie, all scrubbed and dressed in our finest wedding outfits, he loaded us into the front seat and took off. This should have been an uneventful flight since the wedding ceremony was just several hours hence and, as father of the groom, he had important things to do upon our arrival.

But my dad had a bit of British prankster in him which proved his undoing on this trip.

Flying along the Turnagain Arm he shouted above the roar of the engine to us, “Look at the Dahl sheep over on that hillside,” and banked the plane sharply to one side. It seemed he would crash us on the mountain as he buzzed the barren land where no sheep walked today nor had one walked, we were certain, at any time in history. “Look at the bear on that mountain,” he shouted again, and banked sharply the other way to zoom across the water for a look at the fauna of the other side of the Arm. Back and forth across the waters he jockeyed the plane, climbing and diving for a better look at these nonexistent animals, having the time of his life taking his two youngest children on the ride of their lives.

Then Ernie covered his mouth and we heard his muffled “I’m sick. I gotta barf.” My dad yelled something to him that sounded like “Hold it till we land.” Again Ernie shouted “I gotta barf NOW!” And with that he unlocked the door and folded it up. Leaning out the side of the plane he let loose a stream of vomit - right into the sixty mile an hour propwash. The wind blew the sticky mess straight into the back of the plane, covering my dad, his suit, and everything else in its path.

It was over in a minute or two: The fresh air helped and having emptied the sour contents of his stomach, Ernie sat back up and was ready to finish the flight. I hadn’t been in the ‘line of fire’, so to speak, so I was still fine. But our dad was dripping with disgusting droplets of regurgitation. He glowered and raged. He threatened and cursed. His humor had suddenly left him.

Silently we flew on to Seward.

When we touched down my mom was at the small field with Skip’s car, ready to take us to the church. When she saw Ernie get out of the plane she whimpered: She knew by his pale face and splattered jacket that something was wrong. Then when our father climbed out she cried: His face and suit told the story better than any of us could have.

She and father went to the small shack that served as the operations office, got some water and a rag and she wiped him as best she could. She grabbed my hand and led me purposefully to the car and put me in the back seat. “Sit,” she commanded. Ernie was standing by the plane, alone and sheepish, looking very sorrowful and forlorn.

But there was no sympathy for him that day. Father told him to scrub himself and scrub the inside of the plane until it “smelled like roses”. Then when he was done and cleaned up, he could walk the mile or so to the church downtown and “don’t be late for your brother’s wedding!”

Perhaps this incident was a harbinger of things to come: The wedding stunk, literally; we didn’t like Skip’s mother-in-law - she was, after all, Proper Bostonian! - and she certainly didn’t like her daughter marrying some Alaskan “Eskimo” whose father smelled foul; and Skip and his wife parted company after having six children faster than you could say “irresponsible.”

I have always dreamed of being a pilot, flying a small plane to quiet environs nearby. The remembrance of the good times I had around a Piper Cub warms my heart. But then I remember this trip and the odor of vomit fills my nose. And I can’t bring myself to get back inside one of these little planes.

- - - - - - - - - -

Amongst the sad tales I can relate about my early years in Anchorage, the story of how our family lost the flying school is perhaps the most pathetic. And perhaps the most indicative of the kind of angst that was to beset us throughout the 1940s and ‘50s.

As with many, or most, small businesses then and now, the flying school business was aided greatly by the financial resources of the local bank: The National Bank of Alaska. The wealth and future of the territory of Alaska, as it was known until it achieved statehood on January 3, 1959, was personified in Elmer Rasmusen, president and owner of this prestigious landmark.

Even as a small child I remember him as being tall, wiry, and finely dressed. He had graying hair that was neatly trimmed and combed, and his facial features were aristocratic. His voice was always well modulated and his language cultured. He was the antithesis of what one would expect an Alaskan to look like, sound like and most likely, smell like.

(In my teenaged years I would have described my father as being tall, wiry and well dressed, with graying hair that was neatly trimmed and combed, with facial features that belied British aristocracy, a well modulated voice and a vocabulary that disguised his lack of formal education. And I have, since my teenaged years, wondered if my father knowingly or unconsciously tried to emulate Elmer Rasmusen.)

How indebted we were to the Rasmusen bank, I don’t know. Even my older brothers, who were more involved in the family business and remembered the after dinner discussions, could not tell me how much of the flying school was owned by the family and how much was owned by the bank. We believed that our parents had purchased the old Lars Larson flight school that had trained such famed bush pilots as Don Sheldon and others, and had most likely borrowed most of the cost of the flight school from the bank. But the National Bank of Alaska owned an order of pontoons, and that was sufficient.

Alaska has been known as a sportsman’s paradise for many decades. Part of the allure of this land is its many lakes and numerous broad rivers. Alaska has more lakes than Michigan which is known for its “10,000 Lakes.” It has more navigable rivers than any other state; claims the highest peak in North America - Mount McKinley, at 20,320 feet - and two more of the highest five North American peaks; is renowned for its lake trout and river salmon, and its incomparable elk, moose, reindeer and Kodiak brown bear. It is, without question, a hunter’s Valhalla. Since before Wiley Post crashed his plane in Nome, killing himself and Will Rogers, sportsmen have preferred airplanes as a means of travel in the area. Small planes like the Aeronca, Piper Cub, Taylorcraft or Aercoupe which our flying school used, could land on and take off from unimproved fields; fitted with skis they could use a level patch of snow as a runway; and fitted with pontoons, or floats as they were sometimes referred to, they could turn a lake or river into a private airport.

Not far from our first home in Spenard was the aptly named Lake Spenard and its larger sister lake, Lake Hood. Located near what later became the Anchorage International Airport, Lake Hood was home to the largest concentration of float planes in the United States. In fact, Alaska boasted, and perhaps can still boast, of having the highest number of float planes per capita of any state, or territory, in the Union.

After a couple years’ ownership of the flying school my parents decided that they would expand the business and offer more than just instruction. They would offer aircraft repair and parts. And the parts they decided would sell best were pontoons. For they knew that, parked at Merrill Field, were dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of planes whose owners would pay dearly for a set of pontoons so they could land on and take off from any body of water around the territory.

There was no supplier of pontoons in Alaska at that time. If you wanted pontoons, you ordered them from a “stateside” supplier and installed them yourself when they arrived. Or you flew your plane back to the manufacturer in the South 48 and had them installed. Then, you returned home. Since the pontoons had wheels attached, the planes could use both conventional runways and waterways on their return journeys. In fact, my father and a friend of his did just that in the fall of 1948, flying along the Alaska-Canada Highway - known to all of us as the Alcan - until they reached the South 48, heading to Ohio somewhere, and returning along that same route. They may have been going to see the pontoon manufacturer for all I know. I do remember the constant tension that seemed to surround my mother during this trip: It must have had some risk.

So, putting his genius to work, my father put in an order with a manufacturer and became the exclusive distributor in Alaska for a certain brand of pontoons. Not having the cash to pay for these - they cost something like $2,000 a set in 1949 - he set up a credit line at the National Bank of Alaska. The line was secured not just by the pontoons but by the assets of the flying school. Maybe even by the title to our Spenard house. Maybe even by the title to our vehicles. Certainly Mr. Rasmusen had a reputation for lending money at rates and on conditions that were most favorable to his bank. You don’t get to be the largest bank in the Territory by being kind and generous, right?

The terms of the note were simple: Without regard for any delays from any cause, or for the results of any “acts of God”, or anything else, the note was to be paid within one hundred eighty days from its inception. My father had contacted the supplier in early spring 1949 and was assured that if he placed an order by a certain date in April, they could ship his order of pontoons within thirty days. This would give us time to take orders, sell, install and collect funds for all the pontoons being ordered and pay the bank well before the term of the note came due.

Thus, the note was drawn up, the order was placed by the April cutoff date, ads were run on the radio and in the two local newspapers, the Anchorage Daily Times and the Anchorage News, orders were taken, deposits were banked and we waited for the arrival of the pontoons.

And we waited. And waited.

The thirty days passed and my parents called the manufacturer. “There is a temporary delay in manufacturing,” they were told. “Don’t worry, we’ll be shipping in a week or two.” So we waited.

June came and went without the arrival of the pontoons. We were now ninety days into the term of the promissory note and we couldn’t deliver the first pontoon.

July was hot, the mosquitoes were out in full battle dress and the flying school was busy. But the pontoons weren’t on this cargo plane or that one which landed at Merrill Field, just in front of the flying school’s front door. Nor were they on any of the cargo ships that docked at the port of Seward.

Came August and September, the hottest months of Alaska’s short summer, when bush pilots are the busiest ferrying their paying customers, hunters and fishermen alike, all around the wilderness, and we still waited for the pontoons to arrive.

By early October many of the customers who had made their deposits asked for a refund, as winter was upon us and they had never received the pontoons. Came the 180th day of the note and Mr. Rasmusen showed up at the door of the flying school.

“I’ve come for payment on the promissory note, Dave,” he said.

“You know I haven’t received the pontoons yet, Elmer,” my father replied. “Can we rewrite the note, since my deposit is still with the supplier, so I can take delivery of the floats next summer and sell them then? I can pay you the note and the extra interest next summer.”

“That’s not what we agreed to, Dave. I want payment now, or I’ll take all the collateral you put up.”

And with that we lost the flying school, the house in Spenard and much else that we owned at that time.

I know that we moved into a house in town that was owned by the parents of Kay Andresen, a schoolmate of mine and a girl that I thought was just perfect. Her parents went to the same Methodist church we attended, and they had decided to travel to the South 48 for the winter to visit relatives. We house-sat until they returned the following summer, whereupon we shared the house with them until moving to Seward the next year. I had my eighth birthday in that house, and while there my father got into the plumbing and heating business.

But he left his heart, and our family left its pride, in the small log cabin by the dusty gravel runways at Merrill Field.