My First Trip to Alaska, Part Twenty-Two

Sadly, I can no longer check my memory against Dave’s recollections, as he flew on to bigger skies several years ago. Big, strong and seemingly indestructible, Dave, or “Big Dave,” as he was known, was younger than Bill, Terry and me, but age appears to have little influence over such matters, no matter how much we might wish it were otherwise.

Once thick as thieves, Dave and I had grown apart, largely because of poor decisions I had made. Accordingly, we had unfinished business in need of attention. Those matters were never resolved, and with Big Dave’s passing, must now remain forever so. It is my hope that, wherever he is, Dave is now engaged in pursuits so much more satisfying and all-encompassing as to render miniscule—too insignificant to warrant a passing mention—the concerns of us earth-bound mortals.

Though the passage of years may have dimmed my memory, I will never forget the joy I experienced being in Dave’s company, nor his generosity of spirit, child-like curiosity and zest for life.

Big Dave was one of those larger-than-life characters, a man possessed with boundless energy. His presence in the world drew attention no matter where he went or what he did. Well-liked and well-respected, Dave’s good-natured approach to life made him a valued member of whatever community he joined.

Bill and I have been friends since high school, where we were in the same graduating class; Dave was a handful of years younger. He and Bill had known each other growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where their fathers were mates in a sailing club competing in sailing races on the Bay. From an early age, both boys were filled with a love of adventure and drawn by the call of the sea.

I first met Dave through Bill when he and his parents came to visit Bill and his mom and dad in Squabbletown, the site of a former Gold Rush town outside Columbia, in California’s Gold Country. In Bill’s time, little remained of the old town but rockpiles, memories and, for those who believe in such things, ghosts. Their home sat on an easy slope rising up above the flat where the town once stood.

Bill’s parents, Liz and Geoff, had a refreshing unconventionality about them; Geoff, a skilled shipwright, learned his craft while serving an apprenticeship in his native England. He had come to the Gold Country, also known as the Mother Lode region, to work as a master carpenter re-building old doors, windows and sash as a part of the restoration work then being performed at Columbia State Park.

Geoff had been associated with the Communist Party in the 1930s, and was involved in the civil unrest following the attempt to unionize dock workers in San Francisco during that period. He and Liz’s familiarity with the songs of Pete Seeger hearkened back to that time, about which they and Pete shared common cause. Bill’s parents’ awareness of the music of Pete Seeger was fascinating to me, since I’d never heard mention of him from my parents, and they were of the same generation as Bills’ mother and father.

Geoff cut a handsome figure, with his David Niven-esque moustache and thick shock of greying hair, his English accent only adding to the overall effect. Liz, though originally hailing from Kern County, CA., had affected her own version of an English accent, perhaps owing to her years spent with Geoff.

Bill’s mother was literally a force of nature! Smart as a whip, Liz could crack that whip with the speed of a rattle-snake strike, effectively vaporizing the confidence of anyone foolish enough to provoke her ire. I experienced the sting of her whip on more than one occasion.

Tolerant, if not entirely forgiving (I was never sure which), Liz could be equally charming. Her keen intelligence and intellectual depth, combined with her outspokenness, made her a formidable sparring partner, but also one not to trifle with. With Liz, there was no winning; the best one could hope for was to hold one’s own. And, with her, that was saying something. Liz was also known for her memorable and remarkable gin & tonics!

Coincidentally, and quite by chance, one of their neighbors living just up the creek from them was Patrick Clark, a man with whom Geoff had attended grade school in England. In his retirement, Pat had constructed a miniature Elvin village beside his house, purely for his wife’s enjoyment. Sadly, she had passed just after the project’s completion. When I visited the site a few years later, it had fallen into disrepair.

Pat was a beloved character in Columbia in the 1980s, where he would entertain the tourists with his ukulele-playing and his charm. On one occasion, Pat served as grand marshal of Columbia’s annual Easter Parade.

Adding to the mystique of Bill’s parents, they lived “off the grid” long before that term came into common parlance. Between their acreage being landlocked and having no secured, legal right-of-way over which to erect utility lines, Liz and Geoff lived sans electricity or telephone service.

Access to their property was via a deeply rutted and eroded dirt track accessible only by vehicles equipped with four-wheel-drive like the old Army jeep Geoff and Liz used to go to the store for groceries or visit their favorite tavern for a few beers. They heated their house with wood, burned oil at night for lighting, and used gravity to pipe spring water to the kitchen sink. Waste elimination was accomplished via the same means employed when Squabbletown had been awash in miners—the reliable, old-fashioned outhouse, spiders and all.

Each year, Geoff grew a remarkable vegetable garden among the ruins of old stone buildings that once serviced the needs of the area’s miners, now reduced to heaps of rocks tracing the outlines where walls once stood.

One of my iconic memories concerns an evening I spent at Squabbletown in 1960 or 1961. It was a couple of days after Thanksgiving, and I’d been invited to dinner. Friends of Bill’s parents were visiting for the weekend. After the meal, one of the guests, Joe Glickman, entertained those present by playing flamenco music on his classical guitar. Joe was a friend they’d known since the 30s, where he and Geoff had met while participating in a dockworkers’ strike.

I can still visualize Joe, guitar in hand, mesmerizing those in attendance with the thrill and drama of his flamenco artistry, in a small room suffused in the amber-colored glow only oil lamps can provide, with the reassuring smell of oak burning in the woodstove and the rest of the world completely out of mind.

***

When they were older, both men served in the Viet Nam conflict, Dave as a Marine paratrooper and Bill as an army captain piloting C-130 transport planes from Okinawa to Saigon. Dave’s war experiences parachuting behind enemy lines left him forever wary of his surroundings; he instinctively chose seats in public places that afforded him the ability to sit with a wall to his back while allowing him to monitor all the activity in the room.

Dave’s experience of the conflict also helped form his pragmatic approach to life and gave him the freedom and confidence to embrace the fate-tempting lifestyle typical of those who aren’t intimidated by participating in risk-taking activities.

Bill was the first to relocate to Nome. Once established, Bill began encouraging Dave to uproot his clan and follow suit, which he did a few years later. Terry, an RN, secured a job in public health in Nome and her new employer provided funds to help them move their belongings to their new home. Dave successfully re-established his general contracting business in their new community.

Bill had a Cessna-130 and, before long, Dave had purchased one too. He would later supplement his house-building income with moneys earned working as a bush pilot for a local flying company ferrying people and freight to and from the outlying villages.

Whenever adventure beckoned, Dave was quick to answer the call. He never shied away from challenges, manning checkpoints along the course of the annual Iditarod race with the same enthusiasm he employed when erecting houses in mind-numbing temperatures or while flying fearlessly into freezing rain. Spending time with Dave was interesting, often exciting and always rewarding. And, I might add, memorable!

Tim Konrad

(To be continued . . )

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