Showdown In Chicken

My Uncle, John Logan (left) and Slim Williams, lost and starving, stumbled into Chicken, Alaska in July 1939.  This photo was taken after their first real breakfast in a month.  "Too stuffed to move,"  John wrote on the back of the photograph. They thought Chicken was paradise. Compared to starving to death in the wilderness, it was.

Chicken looks more like an industrial  dump now. I was stuck in Chicken for 5 days this spring. It felt like a month.

 Yesterday, my good friend Bill Freeman pointed out that Chicken,  (pop. 17) was raided. The Feds charged in to inspect federal land for pollution.  The miners screamed bloody murder. We picture the gold miners as guys with beards bent over a stream with a pan in their hands.

 

 

 

 That was a hundred years ago. 70 years ago, this machine helped make Chicken the dirt pile it is today.  (There's a lot of this junk lying around Chicken.)  This 3 story barge lumbered down the riverbed and chewed it all up.  All of it. Modern gold mining equipment is smaller and equally destructive.

The backside of the barge. (click pic to enlarge)

Picture these buckets, bolted to the conveyer belt sticking out of the front of the barge above,  20 wheelbarrows a scoop, whirling through a river, turning everything from fish and birds nests to reeds and rocks into a muddy stone soup with a wee pile of gold on the side.  Gold mining ranks right up there alongside fracking for trashing a landscape. This particular dredge was owned by a company owned by the Guggenhiems of New York City.  Go gettem, Feds, I say.

I Bought the Wrong Truck

            I bought the wrong truck. 

           Yeah, yeah, it looks tough with that big chrome grill and high off the ground, high lift, tough guy, "my truck is bigger than your truck" attitude.  It’s the big bright white one with the 5.7 liter hemi, 4 wheel drive and a crew cab for all those red neck heavily armed NFL linemen that hang with me. Stand back. It’s a 2007 Dodge 1500 Ram Big Horn, with Big Wheels and a suspension lift kit so you got to stretch to reach the handle to haul yourself up into the cab way high off the ground. Later, after I buy it, I find out it’s about as tough as a marshmallow.   

          The Ram looks like don’t worry about the safe, this mother can haul the bank.  Truth is, it can’t haul the safe.  If I’d have done the math, I’d have known that. Actually they do the math for you. The plate inside the door says “seating capacity 6.”  OK, me and the NY Giants defensive line.  The plate goes on to say that “combined weight of occupants and cargo never to exceed 1232 lbs.” 

           Never?  Say the average weight of the New York Giants defensive lineman is 300 lbs.  I know it’s more than that and you’ve probably guessed that the Giants defensive line is not hanging with me in Montana.  Never mind.  So the total weight of us big hard men in the crew cab is 1725.  I weigh 225 and if I get out of the truck it won’t be enough.  Two of those linemen have to get out and walk before I can put a toothpick in the bed of this pickup truck. 

           We are in the baroque age of trucks.  Your average American pickup now looks like a chrome barn on wheels, way bigger, higher off the road that it needs to be.  One day some truck maker with more imagination and a smaller piece of the market than Ford, Chevy or Dodge, will risk a lighter, lower, smaller truck with way better aerodynamics that will get much better mileage, haul more and haul ass.  But until then, this puffed up mask of American Male Macho whines, “don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me.  Don’t put that big ol’ camper on my back or my wheels will fall off.” 

          You mean a half ton truck will only carry a half ton?  Who knew?

          In 1939 my Uncle John Logan (pic on the right) rode, pushed, carried, floated and hauled a little BSA 250 cc motorcycle from Fairbanks Alaska before there was a road.  His partner from the trip was a 57 year old Alaska Sourdough named Slim Williams.  Given an hour, an axe and a 8x10 foot square of canvas he could build a boat with that axe, shaping saplings into a boat frame and small trees into oars.  And the boat would float him and the motorcycle across a two mile wide river.  Uncle John shot 16 mm. color film of Slim doing just that in nowhere Yukon.

         The film and motorcycle are safe inside the museum of Alaska in Anchorage. But I have the big prize. I have Uncle John’s diary, the story of his great adventure written in pencil night by night by the campfire.  It’s a great story but it needs some local color, a little more detail the publisher says.  So I am going to retrace John’s route, and the marshmallow is my weapon of choice. 

           Plus of course, a camper.  I know, if I were a real hard ass, I’d do it by motorcycle.  But at an age where most men with any remaining sense are creeping into rest homes and learning how to cheat at poker, I am not going to endure unnecessary hardship.  Logan did that trip when he was 25.  His partner Slim Williams, was 57 with forty years of living in the wild Alaska territory, running a 300 mile trapline in the artic winter, and driving a dogsled a thousand miles north to live with the Eskimos. In 1933 Slim drove his dog team all the way from Alaska to Seattle, put model T Ford wheels on his sled and drove his part-wolf dogs and sled on to Chicago for the World’s Fair.  Where Eleanor Roosevelt invited him to the White House.  So he drove his team to the White House where he made the case for a road to Alaska to President Roosevelt.

           I’ve got to go to Alaska to research this story and I am going to take more than a canvas and an axe.  I don’t care what the plate says.  The marshmallow is going to carry a camper on its back. 

A Footnote to Real Survival

Find the trail.  Can't find it?  Never mind.  You can always make your own. The next human being is on the other side of the mountain.

    

Slim Williams and his dogs.  If you squint he looks like Clark Gable.

          Yesterday's blog on Slim Williams (scroll down a page) and my Uncle John needs a footnote. 

          Recently, Discovery Channel had a reality show about trekking in the Alaska Wilderness called The Alaska Experiment  Ordinary people try to survive in the wild. 

           They are tracked by helicopters.  They have guides, fleece, parkas, gps, gas matches, cell phones, hi-tech boots, radios, high tech tents, sleeping bags, etc. etc.

    

            John Logan and Slim Williams had none of that.  Sure John started out looking like a page out of a 1939 Abercrombie and Fitch ("the greatest sporting goods store in the world") catalog.  They dumped all that fancy stuff in a few days.  Their one canvas tarp was their ground sheet,tent and when there was a river to cross, their boat.  Their tools were a rifle and an axe.  They didn't have nylon anything. Which makes their trek of 2,500 miles through the wilderness all the more impressive. And John's diary, written every night in pencil by the fire, a rare document of what survival takes when you really are on your own without another soul for a hundred miles.

                      On that note, the blog is off to Florida for a few days trek by rentacar to friends, family and sandy shores.  We will not be taking a rifle or an axe.  Do not send search parties. 

 

                       But wait, don't go. There's a ton of goodies here. Last week's Blog, for example,  Frank Lloyd Wright's last private house and his big mistake.

        

                     Scroll down for the beauty of a blizzard in New York City the wacky wonderful Coneheads at Silverstone. Or the flip side of that madness to the days of dope and meditation in The Volvo Years.
    

                  if you missed the all-time-record-breaking-hit- monster blog, The Real Allard Story:give it a click.  No, I lied; the tribute to the women who are as"sweet as honey and smile at you like you're made of money," attracted even more hits. And If you missed the 1979 Polish Grand Prix now's your chance.

Or, click on bob judd on the top of this page or slip down the right hand column to click on such gems as  my favorite, How You Look at the Sky.   Or The Kythera Chronicles to shake hands with Barbarossa.

Or just cruise through the links on the lower right hand side of this page, maybe come upon some unexpected little gem like  an excerpt from The Candle,  In Praise of the Belleville Midgets,  The Midgets of Belleville. Part II,  Truth in Grass: a Kansas adventure, The Story of the Larned Eagle Optic, Hollywood Calls, You Pick up the Phone, Hollywood Calls, you pick up the phone part 2 maybe my favorite My Short Happy War in Afghanistan or no, wait, wait, Fangio and the Maserati 250 F for the priceless video of Fangio in a polo shirt and helmet, absolutely relaxed driving a Maserati 250F around a beat up old race track with no run off, no barriers, no safety nothing.  My lunch with Rob Walkeris a good one even though it leaves out the Betty Grable stories. 

       You wouldn't want to miss My Short Happy War in Afghanistan

 

             Then there's Erno Goldfingers house-and-mine, which throws in Ian Flemming, no extra charge. Riding around Laguna Seca with Jackie Stewart was picked up by Jalopnik.com.

              Or Uncle John's Prayer.

               Or Clarence Judd Head-Butts a Truck.  Truck dies. That's a good one. 

             And, of course, the one that started it all, Truck Story.

               Then Virgin calls, and Forrest goes to Hollywood to star with an Electric car. And Forrest does a shoot in bed with Virgin. That one is a lot of fun. 

                Although, you might want to take a look at Pheromone Dreams to see what they are doing in bed in front of a film crew. While you're there it's just a short hop to Nurse Pelvis. 

            Or take a dip in the world's largest concrete freshwater free municipal swimming pool.

           And for a fine rainy afternoon divertimento, click on my dance with a prima ballerina.

 

              For a tasty bite with bon mots check out my friend, Gerry Freeman's foodie blog as  Hungry Gerald globe trots from spa to boites.

             Or go visit Elif Batumen, San Francisco's brightest and funniest writer, a fine lady to curl up with for a good read.  Here's Elif's homepage.

             Enjoy, Have a ball.  See you Monday, January 31 when Juddstory will return.

Slim Williams builds a boat with an axe and a tarp

       
    In 1939 my Uncle, John T. Logan rode, pushed, carried, and pulled, a motorcycle from Fairbanks Alaska to Seattle, Washington to show a road was not only possible, but also, the best route for a road that would connect the lower 48 to the remote northern territory. 

If you look closely you can see the motorcycle his partner, Slim Williams, is loading into a small boat that Slim built in two hours from scratch with an axe and a tarp.

           His partner was an old Alaska Sourddough, Slim Williams.  Slim had done the trip before in the Winter of 1933 by dog sled.  When Slim got to Seattle he took the wheels off a Model T Ford put them on his sled and kept on mushing all  the way to the Chicago World's Fair.
  

Eleanor Roosevelt said Slim and his dogs were her favorite exhibit and invited Slim to the White House.  “The driver has the kind of blue eyes that look away off to distant horizons,” said Mrs. Roosevelt.  “I loved his dogs.  They were grand.  I was careful of them and polite to them and asked if I might pat them.  There were two, only half wolf, that it was alright to pat.” Slim and his dogs went to the White House several times.

 

 Sometimes Slim built bridges with his axe.  It was getting dark and Slim and John were cold and tired and so they waited until morning to cross  the creek on their new bridge

A great cracking sound woke them up in the morning.  The creek was a fast running river and their bridge was gone.

Slim and John crossed over a hundred rivers.  Some of them by a raft they'd build on the spot from trees along the river bank and a tarp they used for a ground sheet or tent depending on the weather. John took photos, and 16 mm movies.  Click on this next link and you can see Slim, building the raft (click on "Access this Item" at the top of the link's page)  to cross the Klappan River, his only tool was an axe, in this remarkable archive film at the University of Alaska's Museum of Alaska.