Chapter One - Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout
In the summer of 1977 northern Alaska was heating up
in more ways than one.
It had started early in May. The eighth of May to be exact. For that is the day when a number of my good friends found themselves carrying picket signs instead of flight bags. :x What was destined to become the second longest pilot strike in the history of the Air Line Pilot’s Association began when my friend Red Hotchkins and almost 200 of his fellow Wien Air Alaska airmen exercised their right to self-help under the Railway Labor Act.
The strike would last for almost two complete years. And for the next 653 days, swatting at mosquitoes in the summer, and breaking small icicles off their beards and moustaches in the frigid winters, they would walk their picket orbits. Every time a Wien Air Alaska jet landed, flown by “replacement pilots” (i.e.
SCABS!
) My friends were there to “greet” it with picket signs held high and proudly.
While not specifically a story about their battle, this story would most likely not have ever come about were it NOT for the fact that the Wien pilots had gone on strike. See, you must remember that in places like Nome, Kotzebue, Barrow, and other even smaller towns; the Wien pilots with their blue, gold and white Boeing 737's were THE lifeline to the outside world. Hence the temporary drastic reduction in service affected everything including our mail deliveries and the freshness and quantity (or lack thereof) of the products on the shelves of Kotzebue’s three grocery stores.
The business was booming for Kotzebue’s charter companies as well. Now, over three years after the start of construction on the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, petro-dollars were flowing (wildly) all over the state. Even the smallest far-flung villages such as Kobuk, Birch Creek and Atqasuk (at-kah-sook), each with populations of less than 100 people at the time, supplied workers for the high paying pipeline jobs. On many occasions the workers might actually make it ALL the way back to their home villages with some money still left in their pockets. This was no small accomplishment given the temptations
of Anchorage and Fairbanks in those days.
Resembling more of a cross between Tombstone and Dodge City or, as some would say, Sodom and Gomorrah, the big villages on the banks of the Chena River and the Cook Inlet offered every possible diversion designed specifically to separate pipeline workers from their hard earned dollars.
One couldn’t walk ten consecutive steps down the sidewalk on “Two Street” in Fairbanks or 4th Avenue in Anchorage without being on the receiving end of yet another sales pitch. Any hour of the day or night, summer or winter, deals were on the sidewalks to be made. “You need a watch? How about a little somethin’ special to smoke....fresh from MAUI dude!” And those two girls over there
...hey....they’re SMILING at me! They must LIKE me.
Oooooh. I bet they’d like to go inside somewhere and warm up a little and get a
.......THUNK!....(darkness).
Yeah in those days of $100 table dances......no...that’s NOT a misprint! You could wave a fifty all night long at the Bush Company and attract nothing more than the cocktail waitress. You want a TABLE dance
you’d best be waving a C-note. (Two would tend to get you immediate attention). And remember, this was 1977!
But, as I said on the occasions where the village pipeline workers actually made it past the last obstacle (the airport bar
) and successfully arrived back in Kotzebue with money, that is generally where it got spent. Before heading back to Noorvik, or Deering or Noatak it was off to the local stores in Nome, or Kotzebue, or wherever to buy (depending on the season) a brand new three wheeler or snow machine. Maybe a sofa or even a refrigerator!
Cabs and delivery pickups would pull in and out of our parking lot all day dropping off CASH customers ready to head for the villages and surprise their waiting families. We were flying just about as much as we could stand. Busy busy busy.
And then there was the weather itself.
In June that year the temperature in Kotzebue hit 63 degrees! There were several days, about half the month, 55 or HIGHER! And the tourists would be bewildered by the sight of a skinny liddle boy (me) clad only in cut off jeans suntanning my brilliantly WHITE body under the Arctic sun laying atop the wing of my Cessna. But after month of frigid temps close to zero, this FELT like sun tan weather to ME, and I didn’t care WHAT they thought.
July was going to be a record breaker too with temps soaring into the EIGHTIES in Kotzebue. And one other significant event was soon to bring REAL heat to the summer of ‘77. But it all lie ahead in the not to distant future as Tim Lay, the SENIOR Gunderson pilot, and I hoisted our second cuppa’ joe
one late morning in the Gunderson Flying Service office. It was the third week of June 1977.