It was the summer of 1975, work in the lower 48 was terrible and a gas shortage was causing a lot of jobs to be shut down, and jobs were hard come by. I decided to give Alaska a try, for if I stayed home I would surely go broke soon. There was notices saying work was not that good now and it is so expensive to live, don't come up as many people are not working and you will go broke up there with the high costs. So the stubborn person I am, I borrowed some money from my brother who was in the navy and I bought a one way ticket to Fairbanks Alaska. On the day I arrived I went to the union hiring hall and put my name on the "C" list at number 1283. I had no idea of what it would take to get a job as there was like 50 pages of names on the "A" List (that's the residents and people with over 3 straight years with hours worked. On the "B" list was those in their third year, and there were a lot of them also. In order to get off the "C" list I needed to work in 2 years straight. After signing up at the union hall I went to find a place to stay. Just down the street was a hotel called the Alaskan Motor Inn. It was $45 a night for a single room that was just barely big enough for a bed and chair; it did have a bathroom. This was a very cheap room for many had to pay a lot more I just hit it lucky. I had no idea what was about to happen but I kept praying that I would be able to find something as money would not last long and I left my wife and 2 children home in Arizona, and I did not have a return ticket.

      After I had been there for 2 weeks and no sign of work I was beginning to get nervous. I made friends with the night clerk at the hotel; we would sit and talk all night about everything under the sun. Then one day he finally got the job he was waiting for and was going to leave. He asked me if I would like to have his job as he was going to ask the hotel owners if they would like to hire me. I was so happy as money was about to run out. God must have been watching over me, I started work the next night and he showed me what to do. I received a free area in which to sleep in the basement where it was nice and warm, and enough money to live on plus send some home to my family. I worked all-night and slept during the day while waiting to get a job. While working at the hotel I met many men who were trying to find work, many went home broke. I also met a lot of the locals who have lived there for years. They used to call the pipeline workers lower 48ers, or outsider's. Then the hookers and rift raft that followed the money showed up and the town was not safe anymore. Robberies, muggings, and everything else was starting to run wild and the local police could not keep up as the town was growing so fast and people from every walk of life was descending on Fairbanks looking for work or a quick buck.

      I spent the next 14 weeks working and sending money home to my family before I finally got my first job. On a Saturday morning in November I put a bid in on a job and got it. No one knew just what the job was except it was on the North Slope for a company call ACI. I had to go to their headquarters there in town and get my paper work and then go to the arctic cold weather-training center at Fort Wainwright Air Force Base. I spent the next day in 8 hours of classes so I could work up north in Prudhoe Bay, right on the Arctic Ocean. The cold weather training was very intense they even checked our hearing, eyesight, and for physical disabilities. The hearing was for when we wear our arctic gear we can not see that well and all the equipment have alarms on them so we can hear them and not get ran over. Working in the extreme temperatures is very hard on the human body, so one must be in very good shape. I said my good byes to the hotel owners and thanked them for letting me work there. They were as happy for me as I was to have a chance to say I worked in Alaska. I also went to all the places that I have made friends at and told them I was going up north to work in the oil fields. I called my wife and told her I had a job and hopefully it will last for awhile then I can come home again for a visit. I had already bought my parka but I had to buy my down paints. A guy who was in the air force gave me my bunny boots, as he was taking my place at the hotel for some extra money, that was a super surprise as they cost over 150 dollars to buy. They would not let anyone go to work unless you have the gear to survive in. Since many did not have the clothing the let us buy it and it came out of our first few paychecks. Then I was off to my job on the North Slope right on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

     I arrived in Prudhoe Bay at the Dead Horse Alaska airport in the early evening, we taxied up to this small building and they put the stairs to the side of the plain. As we was walking down the steps forklift's were lifting up boxes to the luggage door and the guys inside started unloading our baggage. Inside the building I saw a man with a sign that read ACI. I went up to him and said I had a work referral for the carpenter's and I was to go to GC 1 (gathering center 1). Since I was the only one on this flight both of us stood in line till the baggage arrived. Then we piled into a big stretch van and he took me to a man camp called CCI it was a 2 story orange trailer type portable building. The driver was our camp expeditor and his name was Ruben and he also used to live in Arizona and from the same town I was from. We hit it off pretty good, on future trips I would bring him a case of Coors beer, and he would take me to the camp I wanted. That first night I was assigned to a room on the 2ed floor and I had to share the room with another guy who was working at the same site. His name was Steve and he was a pipefitter who had just been there for 5 days. We became friends and he helped me get to know my way around and showed me the things to do in camp. He showed me the mess hall, game room, showers, and laundry room. Then when I got my things put up we went and watched a movie. The camp had a big game room with Ping-Pong tables and pool tables. There were also 2 TV's with some reading chairs on the one end. The TV was ok except the news and the programs that was playing by tape broadcast, was usually 2 to 3 weeks old. That was a big advantage on gambling on football games when you just got back from R&R or a fresh newspaper. If you ever wanted to play someone in a game of Ping-Pong or pool you never had to look far. There was also a weight room for anyone who wished to work out.

      Early the next morning, I woke up and went to the mess hall to have my first meal at camp. They had everything you could want eggs, omelets, bacon, ham, pancakes, french toast, all made fresh to our order. This was something I could get used to, as it tasted really good. For evening meals we had steak 3 times a week, prime rib on Sundays, crab, lobster, frog legs, ham, roast, chicken every week. We also had everything else to go with it. This top-notch food was cooked individually to your order. WOW we were sure lucky we didn't have to pay for it. Plates full of lobster and crab legs. For special occasions we had hamburgers and hotdogs cooked over open bar-b-que grills. It sure is funny how the simple things tasted so good after having all the good life food every day. We even had cake, ice cream, popcorn for the movies, and cookies of every kind. The only thing we needed to buy was our personal items like tooth past, shaver's, magazines, books, and things like that. We had to pack our own lunches but there was anything we wanted for lunch too, some men used to get extra steaks and wrap them in foil and take to work and warm them up in little ovens. After breakfast I went back and got dressed, grabbed my toolbox and headed to the bus that was scheduled to go to the job site. Each job site had their own busses and the drivers took us to the main lunchroom at the job site. All the busses would leave in convoy style and they all got to camp at the same time. In the dead of winter when the weather was real bad they would drive really close together so no one would get lost and if there was a problem they could all help out. Then once I finally got to the job site I went into the lunchroom and I met my boss who then took me to the carpenter shack. Once I got to the shop I put away my tools and filled out more paper work and learned what time everything began and who my partner would be. I was introduced to the others all 5 of them. The General Foreman explained the rules for the site and the do's and don'ts. Seems that they were just getting ready to build the gathering center and they just had a skeleton crew so far. There were 3 of us who were the hired journeymen, Joe the union steward, Al, and myself. The foremans name was Ross, and Paul was our general foreman. The job superintendent Jim L. came in and introduced himself and then he went over what was going to happen to this site and what our jobs would be in the making of this gathering center. It seemed he just got back from Anchorage at the main office, he had just picked up the newest plans and was given our schedule as what was to happen and when. I was partnered with a big man from Idaho who was a bit older than what I was, and his best friend was the foreman for the project. Big Al was his name and he owned the AT connector ranch in Idaho, where he raised Appaloosa horses. He lived in a small town called Peck outside of Lewiston Idaho. Al and I became pretty good friends and he showed me how to do rigging as I had never done any of that before, and he was an expert. Al used to work dams in Washington and Oregon so he did a lot of rigging. One of the other journeymen was Joe the union steward that had been there for just 3 days. It seems they all came up from anchorage to start this phase of the project. The rest of everyone was to be hired from Fairbanks as that was the hiring hall for this part of the pipeline, I think they called it north of the 64th parallel. Below that point everyone was hired out of the Anchorage hall. Alaska used to be a sub hall from Seattle but since it was growing so fast they got there own charter. Fairbanks Union Hall was Carpenters local #1243.

     Our first jobs were to go inside the big buildings that had been set on piling the past summer. We had to start stripping out the shoring and bracing from the packing they did before these huge modular buildings were shipped by barge. When we opened the doors to the inside of these units it was the first time anyone had been in on since they were built and sealed up in Washington state. They built these big buildings in the main land, then put all kinds of different types of shoring and bracing to make sure they did not get destroyed in the trip. Everything was fastened down either by cable or in big boxes that was sealed up and tied up to the structure of the building. The doors were all inside these big wood crates and the hardware was in smaller crates beside them. Everything was marked. The grating for the cat walks was banded down in bundles on some of the framework. The stairs were all in place as was most of the piping and electrical. After we got the doors all on and the grating all set the trades began to do the hook up of all the parts in the modular building. Lots of electrical go the power rooms, and the piping needed to be connected to the different phases of the process. These buildings were very cold as there was no heat yet and everything felt frozen. Inside it seemed like there must have hundreds of miles of pipe and grading catwalks everyplace. We also saw some big vessels where the oil was going to be cleaned up before being pumped to the pipeline. We had to go inside a few of these big tanks and erect scaffolding so they could put more finish coats inside these tanks to keep the oil from eating trough the skin. Everything was so large I had never been around anything with piping like this before. They also had these huge electrical rooms and there was conduit that ran everyplace. The electricians also came in with us to get the power ready to start so we could warm these buildings up and get them ready to go online. These huge modular buildings were carried by a machine called a creepy crawler to where they were set. A creepy crawler was the frame of a huge track type crane and in the middle of the body was this huge piston that could lift or lower the buildings on to the pilings. Some of the buildings had 4, 5 or 6 of these creepy crawlers caring them from the Arctic Ocean to the site. The pilings had a gravel mound built up around them, and the crawlers climbed up the mounds and sat the buildings then drove off the mound on the other side. After the building was all set the laborers started clearing out the mounds of gravel so we had the clearance needed under the buildings. Before the put the stairs up to get in we climbed up ladders to open up the units. The reason they were put on high piling was when it snowed up there the wind would blow and blow (seems it blows 24 hours a day 7 days a week all year long) and the snow would build up and cover the buildings. So by putting them on the piling the snow would drop when it hits the side and blow away under the buildings. The buildings were full of huge tanks, piping and everything that a gathering center would need to gather the oil and clean it up some and add the additives to the oil and send it to the pipeline. The remainder of the buildings was to be set this coming year and finished the next year.

     The carpenter shop had been started the summer before last and we were going to make it bigger as we grew and started to do more. It was used the past year as shelter for the carpenter's that helped move the buildings here to be set on the piling. They kept the bottoms enclosed so the creepy crawlers could move and stay warm. They had to keep it contained in the dead of winter so they could get the buildings set so we could get them ready to operate the following year. They had the very first big building set and the shop was on one corner of this building and we were going to enclose the whole building for the shop. We enclosed the rest of the underside of this building that was going to be the operations building. That was where the gathering center operators would live and monitor the oil as it flowed into the center and then pump the crude to the pipeline just down the road. There was about 12 other men hired that week and we started to work in many places around the gathering center. The carpenter shop was finally completed and we got a huge shipment of big saws and drills for the shop. We also had to make our own lockers for the men who were going to be hired. Each man had a large toolbox that need to be locked up in his personal locker so we made lockers all around the shop area. The Lunchroom had picnic tables and a small oven to warm up food, it also had 3 coffeepots but one was just hot water for hot cocoa or soup. We always had a large supply of crackers and peanut butter, and some sardines. We installed some good heaters so we could dry out our gloves and facemasks when they got frozen. Gloves was the hardest things to keep dry as we had to touch everything and they would freeze then when they thawed out they would get wet and turn to ice. Most men had 5 to 8 pair of gloves that they would alternate all the time in order to keep their hands warm. Grabbing the nails was about the hardest thing we had to do while wearing gloves, as the gloves were pretty thick for the cold weather. But you could not touch anything with your bare skin in the winter or it would stick to you and instantly freeze you. Once we had a man turn a propane tank upside down because it sounded funny. It had become so cold the propane became liquid and it poured out on his arm and he got instant frostbite and ended up loosing his arm to just below the shoulder as it turned gang green.

     The days were getting shorter as the hard winter was coming on fast. It was starting to get colder and colder the more it got dark and closer to the end of the year. The barges have all been unloaded and the tugs and barges all headed south so the ice pack coming back in wouldn't crush them. The ice pack is like a glacier moving with the tide and winds, it will move anything that gets in its path. The past year the ice pack came in too soon and crushed a lot of barges and a few tugs. But a lot of the tugs dumped the big barges and took off as fast as they could travel so they could get around the tip of Alaska and head south. A lot of times they brought in icebreakers to help them make it back.

     Later that winter we started to work out side making shelters for the pipefitter's and electricians so they can make their penetrations under the modular buildings. As the time went on I was so thankful they made us buy the arctic gear before we came up to work, It was freezing cold and this body of mine still was used to Arizona and not an ice box. We started enclosing the bottoms of the buildings and also huge shelters over the pipe rack. This was where the fitters were getting ready to weld the pipe that would send the oil from the oil fields to the gathering center, and the pipe that would carry they cleaned up oil to pump station 1 down the road. One of the prettiest sights I saw that first winter was the northern lights, they seemed to dance and wiggle across the entire sky. When we got away from the activity to where it was real quiet we could hear static electricity snapping as the northern lights crossed over head.

      Another thing was we never shut off the vehicles because they would freeze up and crack the engines if they got shut off. When they needed maintenance they brought the vehicle into a heated workshop. There were men called oiler's who come by every day to fuel up the generators, trucks, and anything else that needed to be kept running. When we had to work out away from the main job they sent a bus with us so we could warm up in them. They always had places for the men to come in and warm up and dry out their clothing, gloves, and so on. Most the places had hot coffee, chocolate or tea, some had soup too so you could get something warm into your body. The bunny boots as they call them were the best investment a person could buy, as nothing else would keep your feet warm in the extreme temperatures. Bunny boots were all white rubber with an air valve on the side to open up if you were in an airplane. They had a huge felt bottom formed between two pieces of rubber so you did not have the cold coming up and freezing your feet. The sides being 2 pieces of rubber with air in the middle caused some friction when you moved so as to keep the sides of your feet all warm. My feet never did get cold with them on. But they were so big; we called them our clown shoes. When you walked on a hard surface it felt as if you would bounce.

     As it got closer to the end of the year it kept getting darker and darker and finally it was dark 24 hours a day. I had a friend take a picture of me at high noon on the 21st of December, the shortest day of the year. It was pitch black, as we did not even have twilight in the dead of winter. My first year I had to work through Christmas as I did not have enough hours in to be eligible for my R&R, I had to wait until the end of January to go home. It was so cold then too we had lots of days where the temperature was 50 and 60 below zero actual, and the wind never did stop blowing. The wind chills went to 100 below at times and that was really cold, the coldest day I experienced was a wind chill of 127 below, the actual temperature was around 80 some below. White outs from the huge windstorms were common, along with the Ice Fog from the extreme cold that was another wild experience. Building the pipeline and the gathering centers was not an easy task but in spite of everything we did it anyway. It was tough while we were doing it but once we got done it didn't seem that bad, we was just happy it was over.

     Staying through Christmas that year was pretty hard as I missed my wife and 2 very young children at home in Arizona. But they had a good Christmas and my wife was going to leave the tree up till I got home so we would all have another Christmas together. That Christmas the camp was pretty empty as a lot of the crew went home, we did have Christmas carols playing and a small tree. The camp cooks made a special dinner for all of us and we just sat around that night and listened to the songs and some even sang along. They also had a special Christmas move too, I didn't go as I was to lonesome and I went to bed early. Our General Foreman stayed with us that year too, as we had to have someone in supervision to watch over the workers and give us our assignments. Working in conditions like this and staying with each other we all became like a big family and watched out for each other. After being with these men for almost 3 years we made life long friendships. A few of my real close friends have died now, as it has been a while since we were all up there. I was the youngest one of the group being almost thirty when we were building the gathering center.

     My time for R & R came due about the 28th of January so I got my plane ticket and flew all the way to Arizona to have my first reunion with my family in a long time. The temperature when I left was 72 below with the wind chill, when I landed in Phoenix it was 62 degree above, what a change. I had 2 weeks of enjoying my family before I had to go back. It had been about 7 months since I was last home and that R&R went by way to fast. We celebrated Christmas with my presents under the tree they left up for me. I brought my presents back from Alaska and they had mine waiting for me. It had been a long time since I saw my family and the kids had grown so much I hardly believed it. The 2 weeks went by so fast, it seemed like I had just arrived and now it was time to go back. At the airport seeing them crying, going back was the hardest thing I have ever done. Leaving them once more and going back to Alaska was rough but there was no work in Phoenix at that time and the economy was still real bad. After I was in the air they were all I could think about, but once I got back to the job site I started to get my mind off of being home again and back on the job.

     As I got back and settled in, about 1 week later they called me into the office one morning. It seemed they liked what I have done and wanted me to be a foreman for the utiliway crew. Utiliways are underground wooden chases built for the electrical and piping from building to building. We made them out of 12" x 12" timbers 20 feet long. They had to be cut into the sizes needed, they were also notched on the ends so they overlapped. Then we drilled holes through the timber and put a fence post through the hole deep into the frozen pad so the timbers would not float up in the summer months when the surface thawed. We covered the utility tunnels with 6" x 12" timbers so we could drive a truck over them. The heat piping ones had ¾" marine mahogany plywood on the bottom, sides, and top to make them waterproof. We sealed them with a mastic to make sure no moisture got in. If any moisture got in to the utiliway it would crush the pipes and the pipe insulation for the heating or the drinking water. Another of my jobs was to figure out just what electric cable tray went to what building so the lines would not cross. Each line needed to be fastened to the cable tray in proper order. This was a major job as at some intersections I had them go 4 layers deep. Each layer that had to cross was dropped at a 45-degree angle under the trays above them and after the transition back to the surface again. I had a large labor crew digging and chipping the ground for the timbers and then they filled the sides back in again. There were actually miles of utilities to put in as that was what powered the gathering center and heated it. When these cable trays ended under a building we made racks for the electric flex cable to turn up in to the electric room to power that building. We had electric power, controls, and monitoring wiring all running from one building to another so they could keep informed as to how everything is working.

     We had semi trucks bringing timbers one after the other all summer long and we stored the timber in huge piles all over the site. We also ordered 25 Stihl chain saws to notch and cut the timbers, they would be running all day long on 2 different shifts for a long time. The Utiliways kept a large crew real busy. I had to make my own drawing's so the men to follow where the timbers were going and which cabletray went where. I made a drawing of each layer and numbered them so they could see which timbers went where and how many levels. We also had a sawman working all day long maintaining the chainsaws and sharpening the chains.

     Besides the Utiliways we had scaffolding to put up every place for the pipe fitters, painters, insulators, and electricians. Then we had to finish the rooms with ceiling tile and hang the doors and hardware in the operation centers. We also had to build shelters for the pipe fitters to weld the pipe up outside in the cold. (The Alamo pipe weld station on the pipe rack which carried the oil from the field wells to the gathering center) They had to be built so good that they could heat them up to above freezing and then cool it down to out side temperature over a period of three days. We did this so the pipe would not shatter from the quick heating to instant freezing, it would break just like glass if we didn't do this. Seemed like the carpenters had the duty of making sure all the other trades stayed warm.

     We started hiring men at a rather rapid pace right after I arrived so we could keep up with all the workload. At one time I had 95 men working on the Utiliways. That was Carpenter's, Laborers, Teamsters, and Operators. I learned how to do paper work pretty well. As I also had to make sure the warehouse had tools on hand to replace any that the men broke. There was no way back to town to replace their tools when they broke. It was in the contract for free replacement of tools used in the extreme cold and away from town. In the extreme cold a lot of tools would just shatter like glass, especially the hammers. We worked 10 hours a day 7 days a week year round in double shifts with no days off for anything. It did not matter if it was a very HOT 40 degrees or a super cold 127 below we worked and kept everything going. In some of the very big wind storms a few of the shelters started to come apart and the carpenters had to go out and secure it so the pipe and welds would not be damaged. We even had to put a scaffold up in 60-knot winds at 80 some below zero, because the insulation was starting to fall off our water tank at camp. If it had come off the water would have frozen solid and there would not be any water left for us in camp. That was a scary experience erecting a Safeway scaffold up 50 feet in the air on the side of a tank and you cold hardly stand up. We did it, but it took a while, and we were called the heroes.

     There were a lot of very colorful men who work for me, from every place in the United States even Hawaii. I even had a man named Noel from French Quebec, and Ben from South Africa. The worlds greatest sawman came from Finland, Eric could do anything with his tools, I have never seen a man like him before or since. He could also sharpen a saw or chisel so well it was better than new. He trained in Sweden as a cabinetmaker and did his apprenticeship living in a building over the cabinet shop. Eric could make anything with his saw, he made jigs and guides for all the repetitive things like picnic tables for lunchroom, gang boxes, crates, and cabinets. By having men from all over was quite a learning experience for me, as I found out there was so many different names for the very same tool. I guess it was from where the majority of immigrants came from in their part of the country, and the names they used for that tool in the old country. There were also men who had been in other professions before coming up here to go to work. I had a mortician from upstate New York working on the crew. We called him digger O'Dell and he came from Fort Ticonderoga a famous place from the revolutionary war. There were 2 Hawaiian boys that came to work up here too, they did well in the cold. One of the oldest guys we had was Jerry an ex bar owner and carpenter from Indiana, he had more stories and jokes than anyone I have ever known. He kept us laughing for hours on end I really like old Jer.

      Big Jim was the man I counted on the most. He loved to read and study the stock markets and do things for the youth back in town, he loved to help people out. Jim was a huge man and so strong. He once picked up one end of a 12" x 12" and put it on a scaffold and crawled under it and carried it about 100 yards across the pad he was working on. Jim and I would play pool together in the evenings and sometimes we'd just sit and read. Every year he liked to go to Germany for Octoberfest. I had him be my replacement when I left on R & R. To this day he was about the hardest worker I have ever met. Jim also had a handyman service in Fairbanks called the Fairbanks Handyman Service and his motto was "What your husband starts we'll finish". He was a great worker and a better man, I learned a lot from him. A lot of the laborers I had came from New York where they worked in the tunnels. Irishmen, who loved to work hard all day and drink all night. There was of course the occasional fight. I got the biggest kick out of them arguing who's county was the best or who's town was best. I also had a few Eskimo and Athabaskin Indians work for me. At first they were very quiet and did not talk much. I got the feeling the white man intimidated them. It took a while but they finally warmed up to me, and we became friends. I also found out they were much better craftsmen than everyone had said or believed. It pays to treat others, as you would like to be treated. One I particularly remember is old Charlie an Athabaskin Indian from the interior, who used to work on the Alaskan Rail Road, he lost his leg when a train car ran over it. You would never know it for the way he moved. I found out he had an artificial leg one day when he stuck a knife into it as he was eating, scared me to death. He got the biggest kick out of seeing me yell and run to him as fast as I could, I even dropped my lunch. After I got done yelling at him to warn me first he said relax and let nature guide me on my path, and to take what nature gives me and never be sorry for it. He had more wisdom than I will ever have no matter how much I try to get.

     There were a lot of great guys who worked for me. I'll never forget them as long as I live. Like Jim D. an engineer who was training the whole time to climb up Mt. McKinley. He finally quit one day and went with a group he was associated with. They did the climb bid did not make it as the weather turned real bad. I had a lot of fun with him we used to hike all over the roads from camp to camp, but he carried a back pack with 45 pounds of lead weights, he eventually got up to 100 pounds just before he left. A lot of men came for only a short time as they got the itch and went home. The residents left when we got the cold snow so we used to call the snow termination dust as that was when a lot of them drug up and went home for the winter.

      While I was working on the job I did not get a lot of chances to take pictures, as I didn't have that good of a camera. I did get to take a picture of the very first oil well drilled on the North Slope it was on the Arco side of Prudhoe Bay. In the dead of winter it was too cold to have a pocket camera out side, my lens kept breaking or the inside action would snap. I did manage to get some good shots at times. I saw some strange things while working up there, like 2 suns in the sky at the same time. It was reflections off the ice crystals in the air. Another crazy experience was, one day on the docks someone saw a town out in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and they called a few of us to come and see it. There was a car going down a street and there was smoke coming out of house chimneys. Later on some arctic scientist told us it had come from another country, like Iceland, Greenland, or maybe even Canada. The air was just right to make a projector out of the sky. Another time in the summer months we woke up one day to the amazement of big huge trees all over the costs line. The thing was no trees grew that far north. Come to find out they came from the Mackenzie River in Canada. The Mackenzie River flows north and dumps into the arctic ocean. Seems they had a big storm and the trees got washed away from the logging companies as they were storing them for the mills to be sawed into lumber, and they floated north right out into the Arctic Ocean and the current of the Ocean carried them our direction. The Eskimo's liked the trees as they started dragging them up the beaches to their village. This was free firewood and material to make more shelters.

     Some of the prettiest scenery I saw was the endless supply of wildlife. Grizzly bears chasing the old, sick, or lame Caribou. Arctic Fox pure black in the summer and pure white in the winter. Birds of about every kind you could think of. The Caribou was a magnificent animal, they were so big and the antler's were just huge. Most of the time when they first arrived to the North Slope the velvet was falling off their antler's. One time everyone got held up at camp at the doorways, as a big Mother Polar Bear and her 2 cubs were looking for food. The fish and game came and tranquilized the mother and the cubs followed her into the big helicopter and they took them out to the polar ice cap. Another time I saw a few different types of seals and a couple walrus. I also watched the migration of lemmings to the sea. I also had the privilege of watching 2 little old Eskimos make an igloo, and I even got to go inside to see how it looked. Amazing how fast they did it and how nice it was inside. It only took them a better part of a day. They were on a journey to barter island to visit with some relatives. The winter was the only time to travel out to the Island, as the water was froze up solid. Once on a trip home for R&R we stopped at Point Barrow and I got to watch the village land a whale and how the cut it up for the whole village, I have never seen anything that big disappear that fast. Once I also got to view the Eskimo Olympics, that must be one of the wonders of the world. I could not believe a person could stand on a disk then jump straight up and kick another disk over their head and land back on the same disk on the floor. The guys turned completely upside down and twisted in all sorts of directions. The blanket toss was another site to behold. They would all gather around a large blanket and begin catching a person in the middle and pull back hard to toss that person into the air a long ways up. I also liked watching the Eskimos etch the ivory from walrus tusks or from some old bone, that was a special treat. I wish I could have afforded to buy a baleen basket, they are made from the straining strands in a whales throat. When it dries and hardens it get like bone, they are just Beautiful.

     For entertainment during the summer we played volleyball in old buildings that was used for storage and warehousing. We had a big annual raft race that my roommate beau and I won the very first race. The race was through drainage tubes under the road and it finally ended just before the Arctic Ocean. The water was pretty cold but as long as it was moving fast it was not that bad, friction seemed to warm it up. At least that's what we used to say until we stopped. Making the rafts and our own paddles was quite a challenge. Another time I got to swim in the Arctic Ocean, not long mind you, just long enough to jump out as far as I could from the dock and then jump right back up again and strip off my cloths. That was the coldest water I had ever been in. It did get a laugh from the rest of the guys who let me go first to see how bad it was. During the summer months we used to talk with some of the scientist that were doing some studies up there. They showed us some things we would never have seen if they would not have pointed it out to us. Like the small fish and shrimp that freeze in the ice and go into hibernation, then wake up the next year and do it all over again. There was a lot more sea life than I would have ever guessed. The arctic char looked just like a rainbow trout and tasted just as good. We went fishing a few times in the summer and the camp cook make us a treat.

      We even had a free concert one summer day by John Denver as he was passing through with Jacque Cousteau and he wanted to see the oil fields and the pipeline. He offered us a concert so they pulled a few flat bed trailers together and then he sang his heart out. We did not have amps just his vocals and his guitar, it was GREAT and he was a super performer with tons of energy.

      Shoot we even had a couple of good old boys from Louisiana who made a still, damn they made some good shine. If anyone wanted to gamble there was about anything you could want up there. I worked to hard for my money to waste on another mans game. There were some very good guitar-playing singers up there too and we had our own little concerts every night. Beer was too expensive to ship up there so the drink of the day was a little rum, vodka or whisky

     At the job site the carpenter shop we stored all our lumber and scaffolding for the site. It was also our duty to keep an inventory on where everything was and how much we had in reserve. We not only kept track of the work, we also had to keep track of the materials, tools, and man-hours. I was in charge of the Utiliways so I had to keep a good set of redlines (that is where I draw over the existing drawings how we actually built it) this way we could make a good asbuilt set of prints when we finished. Since carpenters had to supply their own tools they were one of the few trades who had their our own lunchroom and lockers. Every trade on the job site had a different color hard hat so you could tell just who was what. Electricians had Yellow hats, Ironworkers had red, and teamsters had black, carpenters blue, laborers white, Insulators gray, Painters brown, and Pipe fitters had green. The foremen of every craft had a triangle on the side of their hard hat, and the general foremen had squares. The main supervision all wore gold hard hats. The company I worked for was ACI (Alaska Constructors Inc.) Which was a branch of Brown & Root. Every thing we got up there had the letters BPANSP because we were building the gathering centers for the British Petroleum Company. It stood for British Petroleum Alaskan North Slope Project. The exec's that came up there stayed in a special man camp called the BP Hilton. It had an indoor swimming pool, trees, and a putting green. Only the supervision and the oil exec's could stay there. That's where the doctor was if you got hurt or sick.

     I ended up staying in the crazyhorse camp the most because that was the one I liked best, as it had its own sauna in it. The biggest camp was the Parsons Prime camp, which is where most of the ARCO workers stayed.Our camps were CC1, CC2, and Crazyhorse. Some other camps we used were Mukluk, Mukluk 2, and the small Haliburton camp. Haliburton camp was also called deadhorse camp. This is where the oil well technicians stayed when they came up. The oil field fire fighters stayed there too. The nice part about all the camps was they had staff people call bull cooks who changed your beds and washed the sheets. They cleaned the room's everyday and kept the camp in shape. I used to give one 20 dollars to do my laundry for me as they were washing the sheets in my wing. The cooks at all the man camps were some of the best around as all the food was real good, it had to be otherwise the men would most likely burn the place down. Some of these guys were the most crude and wild people you ever saw.

     One of the fun things I did one day after work that first summer was a couple of us got a rubber raft and paddled out to a plane that had crashed up there when they first started drilling. The name on it was the Colorado athletic club, and some one who got caught was trying to steal the drill heads and get the diamonds out of them. But it seems the load shifted and the plane crashed into the tundra and got stuck in the middle of a large pond. We got to check out everything from the propeller to the tail section. Some even took gauges as a souvenir. One guy Henry took a seat and put it in his room as a smoking chair.

     In the summer months it does not get dark as the sun never sets from May 11th till August 2nd. This is when people came on tours to see how the pipeline was developing. One summer day a few of my crew was putting the siding on a new storage building with some ironworker's, when a bus load of site seers came by and stopped to take pictures of them installing siding the building. Three of men on the highest perlin dropped their pants and mooned them. I don't think they liked it to well as they all climbed in fast and left. That created a big laugh all around camp as everyone heard about it as the Tour Company complained to the officials of the camp about the lewd behavior of the workers. I loved the summer months both of them, as the whole county up here was unbelievable. Caribou, birds, Grizzly bear, fox, and so many other things. One day a few of us was on the dock and we spotted 2 huge whale's surface and play around gray whales I think they were. Another time we saw a few killer whales chasing some seals on the iceburg's floating around as the ice pack was starting to come back in. We even had a couple of wolf's show up for a few days. Once I managed to get a picture of a bald eagle on the docks. The first summer I was there I saw what was left of some barges and a couple tugs that got trapped in the ice flow and crushed like aluminum cans. I got to talk to some of the driller's from the oil wells, and a couple of testers who ran sound tests to make sure the drill pipe was going straight and not curving sideways. Those guys really had to work hard for their money and for many hours on end. The drill rigs where all insulated and they worked inside too, so they could avoid the extreme cold and continue drilling. Once one of the wells blew up and caught fire and it lasted for a few days until they got the crew who put those type of fires out up there to snuff it out. We could see it for miles and miles, as the North Slope to the Arctic Ocean is very, very flat. I believe it was Red Adair's crew that came up.

     During the summer months they moved the big buildings off the barges and put them on the docks and storage areas close by. The first priority was to unload fast so the tugs and barges could get back around through the Bering straight before the ice pack came back in. Once they got the equipment and buildings unloaded they started moving everything to their final resting spot on the slope. Like I said earlier they use what we called creepy crawlers. The top speed for one of them was about 1 to 2 mile and hour. It was a hard task to get them down a make shift road to a site and up the pad and set them on some pilings with a bolt pattern and make sure it fit. It was slow going but it always went well. It was just amazing to see what they developed to do this type of job in this type of country. There was one big rig that had tires across the entire frame of the cab about 8 feet wide and 8 rollers one after the other. They was made out of material just like a nerf ball you could stick your finger into them a long ways. But they would not cut the tundra surface and sink in; they would glide and float on the top. If they cut the tundra surface it would fill with water and freeze and thaw year after year and form lakes that keep getting bigger and bigger. What drew my attention to these were men sticking their arms under the tires as they rolled over them. They had to do that to protect the survey marking's. Another thing I liked to do was watch the big semi trucks come up the haul road. They were so muddy you could not even tell what names were on them. They only came up in the summer and the roads were dusty or muddy and it was a very hard trip. In fact on some hills through the brooks range to the south of us, the hills were so steep they needed huge wenches on the mountain tops to pull the trucks up and let them back down. The haul road was built to bring the 48" pipe to its location to be set for the pipeline and for bringing materials to the pump stations along the way.

     As the gathering centers were coming to an end, we had to remove everything from inside the buildings and put it outside in storage. The big day was soon to arrive. Last minute checks and little tweaks making sure everything will go off with out a hitch. Even the flare pads are roaring, burning off the excess natural gas. The flare stacks were about 50 feet tall and about 6 feet in diameter, and the gas coming out of them made flames over twice as tall as the stacks. The noise from the flare pads burning off the gas could be heard for miles and seen in all directions. All the tests, and pre runs went off with out a hitch, we were ready for the big day.

      The day arrived and the oil began pumping to pump station one just down the road the first stop in the pipeline on its way to Valdez. As the oil was being pumped we could not hear a sound, it moved through the pipes very quiet. The monitoring control room was busy at the gathering center as they could control the flow of oil from here or from some place on the other end of the pipeline in Valdez. A major achievement had been accomplished. It was not long after the oil started that the animals started to arrive up here on the North Slope. The thing that amazed us was the amount of caribou that came this time, more then all the other years together. Just the opposite of what the environmentalist claimed would happen, this was the largest migration in over 100 years and the pipeline didn't slow them one little bit. After the oil started flowing we geared up on a new site called GCIII as the gathering center I which we just finished was completed, and GCII was almost done just a few months away. Prudhoe Bay was changing shape and starting to become a town now.

      One thing I learned to do while working up there was to write letters. I would write everyday to my family at home. I called once a week to say hi and see how everyone was and so I could hear there voices again. I also made sure my check arrived OK. I used to look forward to my goody boxes the wife sent me. I would get some of my favorite snacks and pictures from home along with some fresh baked goodies. I got a chance to read a lot too especially in the wintertime, as we did not go out except only when necessary. I only had two carpenters that worked for me as roommates, as they did try to keep the supervision apart from the working hands. In August of 77, I was getting kind of homesick and things started to wind down. This is when I decided to come home for an extended vacation about 4 months long. Then in January the coldest part of the winter I would go back again and work as a carpenter. The crews were winding down and I got to see a lot of my old friends again. We were really coming along on the new gathering center it would be finished in a couple of months. I left for good that summer after I had an accident while working. We were erecting a scaffold in the top of a modular building and we were passing scaffolding pieces up the metal stair way to the top about 40 feet high. I was about 1/3 of the way up when one of the men at the top dropped a section pole and it came down and landed on my hand. End first while I was holding on to the handrail. It broke my hand my writing hand at that. It was hard to do anything so I left and came home to Arizona for good. Some times I miss being up there but the cold winters I don't miss at all. The friendships I made and the wildlife is something I will never see again. The scenery was spectacular but the winters are too harsh for this old Arizona man now.

      One special memory I have is walking out into the tundra into a small herd of caribou and taking their picture. They did not really do anything they just stood there, as I moved slowly as not to scare them. They were a lot bigger than I thought. To see one close up all we had to do was reflect the sun at them in a mirror and they would come right up to you. The antler's were so huge it's a wonder they could hold their heads up. Another memory I have is of the poor little arctic fox. The scientist up there was tagging them to see how they migrate and survive in the arctic. Some of the poor little fox used to tingle all over as they put lots of tags on them. We used to say they would scare their food away from the noise, and we did not see how this was helping them at all. Another special moment was one day in the dead of winter I found a group of men with lights shining on a huge seal that was crawling inland a long way from the ocean. Come to find out from the wildlife people it was an Atlantic seal and it was crawling inland to die of old age. They took it back east to Canada where it came from, as it was most likely sick and not dying like it may have thought. The poor thing was most likely freezing to death, as it must have been 50 below.

     One sad memory I have is that of a teamster named Steve who used to make 3 quarters (25-cent pieces) rotate around his hand in his fingers at the same time. One day during a white out he was hooking up the chain to the lead car bumper when the bus backed up and with his hand through the chain and it pulled his hand right off. Everyone on the bus saw him standing there and waving to back up. Another incident was of a pipefitter. I saw him in the restroom shooting up some drugs, and a little later in the lunch hall he fell over dead from an overdose.

       Another sad but happy experience for me was when an equipment oilier came by to refuel the generators and trucks he fell off the top of a generator onto a pile of frozen pipe and broke his back. I organized a group and we put him in a stretcher basket and brought him inside a building to warm up as he was under dressed and he would have frozen to death if we left him there. I received a letter of commendation from the company and thanks from the family. In my safety training for being a supervisor I learned how to move and pick someone up with a broken back. The doctors said we saved his life and did no damage in how we lifted him, a job very well done. I also had this one old Indian man that loved to drink every night, one morning he came in still drunk and I told him not to run the chain saws that day till he sobered up. He was one of the best men I had to run a chain saw, he was a master. But on that day he picked it up as soon as I left and it kicked back and cut his ear off and dug deep into his shoulder beside his neck. He was sent home and never allowed back again. I never did hear how he made out or what happened to him. There was also one other incident that happened near the end. An electrician whom I didn't know slipped and ran his screwdriver into an electric panel and it burned him so bad they cut both arms off below the elbow, he was only 20 something, with 2 small kids at home. The only bad thing that happened to me was one morning after a whiteout. I was digging out my pickup truck to go check out the off site jobs. I got over heated and lifted my facemask to breath a little and the moisture on my nose and checks frozen instantly I was not thinking. I was rushed to the doctors with frostbite. It was very sore for a few days but it was not a bad case but bad enough to make me blister. Stupidity was the cause of my cases of frostbite up there. I was lucky they did not send me home that day as they did in a lot of cases, for once you frostbite your cells are much more susceptible to be frozen again, and I was not healed that well for a long time.

     My memories from this time are things that I will take to the grave with me. It was an experience I will always cherish, and it was where I grew up as a craftsperson and a person. The friends I made I may not see anymore and a lot have passed away to another world. Their memories will be with me forever and the smiles of them are mine forever.



I Crossed the Arctic Circle on the 13th day of November 1975 on my way to ACI job at GC 1. We ended up about 350 miles north of the Arctic Circle right on the Arctic Ocean.


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