My Brother Henry Lynn Tomingas
Henry
must have directly inherited the wild spirit in Tiina Kinna, while there
may be a younger brother that looks similar and sounds similar, there isn't
another like this guy anywhere. He seems to stir things up where ever he
goes and then he's on to something else. Even as the younger brother to
Robbie, he had the power to convince him of some great adventure just right
for them to take on. I call him a "situation creater", you might
add an "outdoors man" to that. What Henry remembers about his
toddler days is that he was always falling down, and in pictures it looks
that way, but I think that is characteristic of the "Full Steam Ahead"
attitude he has. I like to take my time and never fall, very cautious,
very careful, bit by bit and never practice in front of anyone. My brother
on the other hand attacks with a vigor and assurance that frightens most
people. As far as falling down, he seems to have overcome that.
Once upon a time there were two very close brothers, Henry and Robbie,
Robbie was sincere and earnest, Henry was mischief in it's truest form,
always plotting, planning and testing limits. Henry and Robbie spent the
first ten years up at the Elk Ranch, then when I came along, about the
time we moved to Jackson.
My mom remembers always being in a panic when Henry first learned to
ride a tricycle. Invariably, he always headed straight for the creek. Water
has always been a major feature in his life and maybe it started here.
Every time she turned around, zoom, there he went as fast as his stubby
little legs would pedal, straight down into the creek and crash, over he
would go. But he never stopped, later in life he achieved many firsts on
rivers and now on the oceans. He's picked up a little more caution though
as the stakes went up, he just looks dangerous.
Robbie had managed to break his arm doing something, Henry had bashed
his head and had a big bandage around it, so they looked something like
that civil war picture except they were only ten or so. Dad was working
and Mom had to run into town for a few minutes, so Henry talked Robby into
going over to the next farm and pretending they were in a car crash so
they could get some cookies and milk, maybe even cake! So they banged on
the door and told the nice woman and husband that their parents had just
got killed in a car crash and they hadn't eaten anything all day. And they
did indeed get cookies and milk, and cake too! But then they saw a dust
storm approaching, it was mom and was she mad. The lady or her husband
had called a friend with the story and the friend ran into mom just after
talking with them. She told mom that someone said she had been killed in
a car crash and how they thought Robbie and Henry were orphaned and the
nice couple in the next farm were taking care of them.
Moms wrath didn't faze Henry, he was already plotting the next adventure.
To this day he will drift off when talking with someone, you just have
to wait a few minutes for him to come back, sometimes he even remembers
what you were talking about. What he's really doing is plotting and planning
something. Usually after one of those episodes or one of his dreams where
he is conscious but can't get out of the dream, he comes up with something
brilliant and quite often off the wall new idea. I drift off a lot too,
but unlike Henry, I have no idea where I go, usually it's some random full
color snippet from my past that may be absolutely humdrum. I used to be
able to call it artistic license, but since I went legitimate, I don't
have any excuses left to stand on. The strange thing is Henry never stops,
always creative and finding some unique and daring plan amidst the confusing
mass of normalcy that makes up everyday in most of peoples lives.
After Robbie was gone, Henry started spending a lot of time in the wilderness
with Hawks. This was during the DDT problem creating thin egg shells. Usually,
a bird family will hatch more than it can support, then kick out the weakling
of the group. Henry watched for these and then would take them home and
raise them, teach them to hunt, then when they were mature enough, he let
them go back to the wild. He raised Red Tail Hawks, Sparrow (Kestrel) Hawks,
Owls, Prairie Falcons and even a Golden Eagle. Sparrow Hawks are thee personality
in the bird kingdom. These guys are hilarious and very smart, we called
the first one Dinky and it fit. Hoot was another personality, a Great Horned
Owl, Hoot had a favorite trick. My brother would get his rifle to go chizler
hunting for Hoots dinner, put on his old felt hat and Hoot would silently
glide up onto the hat. He would stay there until after Henry shot, then
he would go fetch his dinner. There's a great photo of Henry with Hoot
perched on his hat.
When H. was 12, he had saved his money and bought a Jeep. For two years
he would sneak out to the Elk refuge before anyone got up, then come home
after dark when no one could see him. At that time, we had good old Woody
Wormal as the town cop. He lived on the side of Snow King with his nice
wife. Woody was a huge man and luckily, he never needed to run his bad
guys down, he could always outsmart them. When Henry finally turned 14
he went to Woody to take his driver test to get his license, Woody said,
"Oh you don't need to take the test, I been watching you for two years
and your a careful driver so here you go". Woody it turns out, had
very powerful binoculars and got up very early indeed.
An excerpt:
This is an excerpt from a little booklet I'm planning for the
Jackson Hole area about the history of the Snake River canyon, it turns
out that Henry was a pioneer.
A Rapid History of the Snake River
ALL RIVERS START SOMEWHERE
The Snake starts somewhere up near the bulge of Yellowstone, you could
probably pick any one of several candidates that merge to finally form
the river, most people agree on Hart Lake. When the huge Glacier that moved
into the Jackson area from up in the Bear Tooth mountain range, it brought
with it tons of oversized hard cobble rock but no one can explain where
it came from, perhaps an extinct mountain chain that was reduced to rubble
and only the hardest rock remained. The glacier may have rounded the rock,
but it is also possible to imagine a violent gigantic river smoothing huge
boulders. The giant river could have been created when the hot spot that
is Yellowstone moved in under a large glacier. Now that would have been
a river to run, maybe somebody did. The have found Indian fire pits up
on the sides of the Tetons that they think were there during the glacial
period. After the glacier vanished, it left a legacy, the Snake river sitting
on a cobble rock valley under the Tetons.
EXPLORATION OF THE NARROWS - Circa 1850
An early group of explorers the Astorians, found out about the narrows
in the worst possible way, they built rafts with all of their supplies
and headed down the Snake. It's a bit of a mystery why anyone would want
to risk their necks in a narrow granite and limestone canyon in the first
place, maybe they were just bored with the every day humdrum and wanted
some adventure.
The very name Snake river is somewhat of a small mystery. This river
has a braided appearance, not that of a snake and due to the cold winters,
there just aren't that many snakes in the area, the name "Snake"
river just doesn't work. As it turns out, the Indian sign language for
snake, wind and fish looked very similar, you held your hand flat and on
edge and then wriggled quickly like a fish or swept back and forth like
a gentle breeze, or you slowly wriggled toward someone like a snake with
a purpose. The Shoshoni Indians ("snake eaters" possibly from
the same misinterpretation) really didn't spend much time in Jackson, too
cold and you can't grow anything to eat there, but they had given the river
it's name, I would like to think it meant wind river, not snake or fish
although the latter is very likely due to the abundance.
As I was saying, the early Astorian explorers headed by John Jacob Astor,
built this raft, loaded all their supplies on it and set off, they all
nearly died in the river, and the ones that survived nearly perished from
lack of provisions, but they were a tough breed used to this kind of treatment
from the elements. There's a swimming pool, a few miles before the put
in for the narrows where, when they were digging the pool, they found remnants
of the boat construction from that ill fated party.
EARLY YEARS - 1940-1950
Pauncho Royce, Boots Allen, Phil Kent and Cookie, let's call them the
first modern generation, all colorful names for bigger than life colorful
characters with stories of their own and they all contributed to legacy
of river rafting in Jackson Hole. My brother Henry, Davy Hansen, Denny
Becker, Dick Barker and Frank Ewing belong to the second wave of rafters.
After World War II, people like Pauncho and Boots were eking out a living
in Jackson, Boots sold fishing worms and parlayed that into a major store
in town, Fort Jackson, while Pauncho simply kept fishing on the river.
They were looking for something to eat without spending any money as there
wasn't any now that the state was finally closing the illegal gambling
casinos in Jackson. You can't raise anything out of the ground as it's
giant cobble rock straight down for more than a thousand feet, maybe lots
more, possibly the height of the Grand Teton only straight down. Old war
surplus was about the only thing anyone could afford and that included
rubber boats. They proved tough and provided access to fishing. Pretty
soon a few guys were getting paid by tourists to take them fishing too!
Even more amazing was that a few people were willing to pay just to go
look, and that really appealed to anyone who has ever had an amateur fisher
onboard, in fact you can always spot a fishing guide, they walk all hunched
up, and jerk around a lot, and their attire, dark glasses, hat, long sleeve
shirt, long pants, beard if they can grow one, and a leather jacket and
gloves, no matter how hot the weather. Fishing guides also flinch a lot
when a bug flies by. Oh yes, they also have many small scars on their face
from enthusiastic fishermen.
NEXT YEARS - 1950-1960
Well, when Phil Kent saw another guide going down the river on a hot
day with his shirt off and a pair of shorts, with a paying customer, he
knew he had found his calling. Phil was one of the types of guides who
drives his boat down the river rather than flowing with the current, so
he finally got tired of manhandling the 1600 lb. rubber duck and rigged
a motor on the back. My older bother Henry worked for him for a couple
of years around 1965. Phil would hustle business in the bars and Henry
would float them down the river the next day. Later, Dave Volsic (of Harris/Volsic
Advertising in Salt Lake) joined the Phil Kent float business. Dave had
quite a time, he looked, acted and sounded like he was 25 or 30 and had
a special wit. That combination charmed many a female, of course they never
realized that mature Dave was actually all of 14. A year or so after that,
I was also floating for Phil Kent with Dave, cooking fried chicken at our
food stop and generally getting in enormous water fights between boats,
which incredibly, both guides would emerge from, without a drop of water
on them, the customers rarely got wise to this. Phil has some pretty famous
people go do the river in his boats, but for some reason, he suddenly sold
the business, just as it was booming. But even then, there was one place
on the river nobody went, and certainly not in a big slow rubber boat,
the narrows.
NARROWS CONQUERED - 1962
In 1952, my brother Henry Tomingas was running rivers by himself at
age 10 or so. He and Jimmy Guest floated the river one December in the
dead of winter. Now days, this sort of thing is done because it's known
that it's possible, but when they did it, it was an unknown and considered
foolhardy, "Gol'darn ice flows 'll rip a rubber boat to shreds".
There must have been some of that early explorer in them because they both
survived.
In 1962, my brother Henry and his pal Jimmy Guest were trying to prove
who had the most experience on the river and who was the most macho. In
all of their bragging, the inevitable subject of the harrowing narrows
came up, neither wanted to admit they had never been through there, certainly
no one else ever had been and lived to tell about it. So they set off each
thinking the other had already been down the narrows. They would come around
a corner, and say something casual like, "Hmmn, don't remember this
one, do you?", "Not really, maybe it's new". Their youthful
skills and enthusiasm got them through all of them until from around a
corner came a very different roar, deeper, richer, louder, deadly. A dread
filled them something like a T-Rex coming up the trail after you, the pitch
steepened and the water began to rush toward the white froth, they looked
at each other and said something like "Uh oh", "I thought
you had been down here?", "Well, I thought you had been down
here!", over the enormous roaring my brother yelled "Oh man,
this is out to lunch", there were a few more unprintable comments
as they swept into the first monster, there were two more equal monsters
waiting their turn in succession. The name was refined to "Lunch Counter"
as that's the shape of the rock ledge that creates those callosal waves.
The idea of taking a small surplus military raft down through the narrows
was unique as no one knew if it was possible, let alone if it was "safe".
Two years later, my brother opened Jackson Hole River Trips ready for
business, it was a long winter and it rained the entire month of June,
steady rain, few customers, big water, plenty of time to practice the narrows
especially as he was planning something special, Henry decided to commercially
run the narrows, but he needed consistency. The river was big that spring
and the little surplus military boat was dwarfed by the immensity and roar
of the broad river forced into a narrow passage. I still have the picture
that we later put on his business poster that shows this scene. The rivers
personality changes enormously depending on the river level, high water
can drown out certain waves, low water looses it's speed, but this particular
volume had all the elements at full tilt. He made it through that time,
but the next two or three attempts turned the boat over even though he
hit it straight on. He tried several techniques, but then he decided he
needed someone to jump on the nose of the boat as they hit Cohuna (didn't
have a name yet and we used to spell it Kohuna) and try to dive submarine
style through as the biggest wave as it was simply too steep and the short
boat would turn over if you hit it head on.
As he had survived those early trips, he used that as proof to convince
his friend Davy Hansen into coming along and becoming the "Mast Head
Nose Man". After a lot more tests and dunkings, (Davy learned to hold
his breath a long time) it turned out that while the waves were big, the
currents were generally forgiving and didn't dash you into the rocks which
is the essential knowledge that allows people to dare try this adventure.
The shock of going into the cold raging waters is interesting, you would
think the panic of "I'll be killed" or "The boats going
to leave me", "I didn't get a breath and I really need one bad!"
or the pain from cold cramps that would occupy the majority of your attention,
not so. The reality of the power of the river is brought home to you by
the incredible roar of huge boulders crashing into each other on the bottom
of the river as they are hurled down the river bed by the sheer force of
all the weight of the river behind it and making a steady deafening roar/hiss
in it's passing. The second noticeable item is the disorientation and muddy
color everything has, finally a millisecond later you get the full force
of the other things crashing in on your senses, like not being able to
breath, all at once, in full better than digital, state of the art, spare
no amps, non-virtual reality! It can be a little unsettling.
My brother finally found a consistency to get through the narrows and
gained that precious knowledge that it can be done. He took a member of
Kennedy clan John Lindsay down the narrows and many other people. Then
the River Kayaks came out, they started trying out the narrows and actually
did rather well, that is if having to wear a crash helmet as you spend
most of the time with your head under water whilst bouncing along the rocky
bottom, is considered to be doing well. In fact, Ted Kennedy used to be
a river rat and floated the narrows in a kayak, sometime in the late sixties.
This was long before the bigger boats with self bailing floors and ballast
that absorb much of the rivers punishment. At first, we just stuffed everyone
in our 65 Fastback Mustang with a boat trailer on the back, later we got
a little more sophisticated. He started naming places like the Lunch Counter
in honor of the now legendary Macho trip a few years before. There have
been some fanciful renditions of this including it was somebodies lunch
stop, don't believe it. Champagne he named because it was full of bubbles,
several years later, some rafters, Denny Becker or Charlie Sands I believe,
started calling this section Rope due to the braided current. But Henry
actually named all the significant areas during this time in 1966.
He took a lot of people down through the narrows for the adventure of
their lives, Davy Hansen and I worked for him, but I generally took the
easier family cookout trips, I had this thing about survival, although
after eating my cooking, I'm not certain which was more dangerous. We added
another friend as a guide for the upper river section and he turned out
to be a disaster and had to be let go, some people learn how to read water
and others don't, so be careful. But we should have guessed about his abilities
at the helm, this guy had totaled out 6 sports cars in 6 years.
One group my brother took down the river, was the singing quartet called
the Diamonds, they had hit songs such as "Little Darling", "Blue
Moon" and others. They had just returned from an engagement in Hawaii
where anything big and really bad was called Cohuna. Well they took an
all day trip with the highlight being a night with a full moon providing
light as they roared through the narrows. They were having maybe too good
of time in fact, because as the big wave in Lunch Counter approached, they
finally sobered up suddenly and said "Uh oh, here's comes the big
Cohuna!", and it did, in fact it dumped them all out of the boat into
the moon lit water, somebody started in burbling "Blue Moon"
as they floated along, Henry, to universal approval, saved Jack Daniels
first, then the girls.
Many movies have been shot in the Jackson Hole area, many locals get
jobs as extras, I've been in "Then Came Bronson" and the "Monroes",
but my dad and brother beat those jobs hands down. In fact my dad was the
original river runner of the family, he was born in Wyoming and lived the
vast majority of his life in Jackson. He rigged and ran a big Cat underwater
so they could film a movie "The Big Sky" with the boat going
upstream supposedly pulled by a bunch of men, but it really was my dad
driving the T-14.
My brother has the distinction, thanks to the making of the movie "Mrs.
Pollifax - Spy", of being the only person I know of to raft a boat
through the narrow backwards with a full size movie camera strapped in
the boat. As the rocks approached and the safe line of attack drifted away
they would invariably yell, "Five more seconds in this position, don't
move". They were doing "plates" to put in back of Darren
McGaven and Rosalund Russel to make it seem they were going through the
narrows, so it had to be shot facing upstream.
DANGER BELOW:
Henry also had the distinction of saving several boaters who made life
threatening mistakes. One family was in a canoe (Why do people take canoes
on strong rivers!? And why do they take their children on dangerous adventures?)
two little boys a father and mother. We had just loaded our rubber boat
and he saw them and recognized they were already in trouble, I didn't notice,
they looked fine to me, but that's Henry, I think his mind operates a third
again faster than mine. He jumped in the car and drove around up on the
bridge so he could watch them and make sure they were okay, they weren't.
They turned over, one 5 year old headed down one channel and the other
toward a log jam, both certain deaths, which one would the parent pick
to save if he even could? Henry unlashed the rubber boat and got in the
water just as they went by, the river runs about 12 miles per hour that
time of year and just try to keep up with it by running along the bank,
you will fail. Henry caught the first one just before he went into the
log jam.
A moment to explain, if there is an obstacle in the river, the river
has all the weight of all the water in back of it pushing on that obstacle,
that isn't pounds per square inch, it's tons plural per square inch and
the strongest man in the world has no chance against it. So it holds you
where ever you become wedged, if you block the waters flow, it will try
to go through you, around you, and over you. If it goes over you, you are
dead, usually it does. If your ever in fast water, never try to
grab onto something, the water won't hurt you if you don't hit anything,
wait for a calm place you can swim to. So a little kid about to hit a raging
log jam has no chance at all, none. Now that he had one kid in the boat
he had to get the boat out of danger as well, the Snake River has turned
trucks into balls of tin foil, rubber boats it permanently paints on the
rocks and trees if the guide makes an error. If you have ever rowed a rubber
boat, you may have some idea of the amount of effort it takes to go upstream
with one, it's next to impossible, but he did, and saved the other little
kid and the canoe and even the paddles.
One of the drawbacks to being thee expert on the river is that your
asked to recover bodies. He and a friend went down and pulled a badly beat
up body off of a log jam. Besides the pounding the river gave the face,
the body was bloated and green moss was hanging out the mouth. As they
were pulling the body into the boat, my brother in a desperate attempt
to keep his own lunch down got one of his most devious looks in his grey
eyes and shouted, "Quick! Give him mouth to mouth!". The friend,
I think it may have been Davy Hansen, lost his lunch and his appetite for
some time.
COMPETITION EN ROUTE - 1966
Up on the northern part of the river by Flag Ranch, Denny Becker was
advertising a white water run, but it's vastly different than the narrows.
Sometime during the year my brother was commercially running the narrows,
Denny came down and went through in his own boat. The following year, or
maybe it was 1967, Denny came down to the narrows and started running it
commercially. In that year, my brother renamed his business, High Country
Guide Service and had a custom office on the town square, the year was
good and business thrived. Barker-Ewing, as with Charlie Sands started
running down the narrows much later after there were many outfitters running
the canyon. Dick Barker and Frank Ewing came in with a splash, with specialized
boats, protocols and procedures, rescue boats standing by and commercial
floating in Jackson changed dramatically. Barker-Ewing had the distinction
of naming "4OarDeal" when they were testing these fancy new world
class river rafts with a boat load of their best guides. They thought they
would go to the other side of the river and try one innocent looking wave
that no one ever seem to bother with, four broken oars later and a whole
bunch of jumping from one side of the boat to the other, they finally managed
to get out of the suck hole that "little" rapid provided, it's
now off limits.
Davy Hansen still runs the narrows, he has "U-Paddle" type
trips that are very popular, he can rightfully claim the longest history
on the river in that section as my bother left Jackson years ago, and Jimmy
never ran commercially. Dave's business is simply called Dave Hansen White
Water, Denny can claim second. The river trip business boomed and there
were dozens of operators trying to cash in on this new source of income.
Stoic Pancho still takes fishermen and is as cantankerous as ever, Boots
son, Joe still floats, Boots passed on few years ago, no one has heard
of Phil for a number of years, Cookie was a funny guy, highly educated
and intelligent, he amused himself by pretending to be a bumpkin with tourists
on his boat and teasing them with riveting questions, his daughter married
some prince somewhere and he died a few years back. Many years later I
floated for Barker-Ewing for five summers and well over a thousand river
miles in their boats, although they got wise to my cooking and hired professionals
that prepare gourmet meals to die for. And, I now have a whole set of stories
just from that era as well.
A NEW CHANNEL TO FOLLOW - 1969
All too soon, my brother Henry heard the call of Alaska and there was
trouble was brewing in Jackson. He tried to convince the Forest Service
that they should issue a limited number of permits to run the narrows to
keep it special and safe, this is what the Park Service did on the northern
section. The Forest Service thought my brother was after an exclusive hold
on the area and instead opened it up to anybody and everybody. After my
brother left, they offered commercial licences for the narrows, but left
it open to amateurs, now I hear they are rethinking as this year, 1995
has been a pretty big river, similar to 1966 and people have been hurt
or killed. Winters, which determine the size of the river, have been in
a mild phase for about 20 years around there, maybe it's going back to
it's old ways. But right now we have a steady stream of boats bumping into
each other all the way down the river, amateurs and professionals all edging
for a piece of river action. My brother simply got in his Land Rover and
drove up the AlCan Highway and has been there ever since. He traded in
his rubber boats for steel ones and now owns several ocean going vessels
and does science research and education in Prince William Sound Alaska
and the Pacific Rim. He has also collected some amazing adventures on the
rivers of Alaska.
COLLEGE & HIGHER EDUCATION:
The following contains excerpts from pending motorcycle magazine
articles, you may notice a style change.
My brother went to college a long time, seven years plus. To keep from
getting bored, he and his pals threw a lot of parties, now that I think
about it, it is entirely possible that it was the other way around, that
the parties were the real reason he went to college for such a long time!
Bandit, that was Jimmy's nickname, Twink, I never really knew him by any
other name, Zero and several other characters really knew how a party is
supposed to be run, they lasted days and covered many miles.
They had the Indian motorcycle handy as well as Ol' Blew. Ol' Blew was
a 52 Chevy which had been customized during one of the bashes. They had
taken axes and literally "chopped" the top off. For a final touch
they had painted a stunning pink racing stripe sort of along the middle
of the car right through the windshield, dash, floorboard and seats and
back over the trunk in a line straightness that all persons taking a sobriety
test would follow perfectly after consuming a fifth of Gin. As you can
tell, they took this party business rather serious.
The party flavor extended to their garments as well, they all had made
gigantic Elk hide boots and generally looked like a bunch of Vikings on
a mission. In fact they weren't all unlike the Vikings, there was that
episode in some tiny town in Colorado where they managed to empty a bar
of all the men, not the women which was true to Viking tradition who always
kept the women when waging war. This little antic caused a three state
bulletin to all enforcement agencies who swarmed into the town searching
for the gang of terrorists. Unfortunately the entire deed was done by two,
brother H. and Jimmy which were never found. Long before the bar clearing,
the two of them had gotten separated from the main party which moved on
to another town stranding them. The next day, not really being bad sorts,
they went back to settle up the damages, again, the noisy bar went suddenly
silent when they entered, people cleared out of the way, the bar tender
gulped and when they asked how much to right the damages, it was a surprisingly
small number. Interestingly, it was all done with bluff, not a blow was
thrown. Actually, that wasn't the first time that had happened, we'll talk
about that in a moment.
As I said, my brother is a "situation creator" because he
always stirs things up and finds interesting things to do. He was the one
that came up with all of the motorcycles, the K-Model, the Indian, the
Stroker 80, the Panhead, he talked me into going in halves on a brand new
65 fastback Mustang V8 (it cost a dollar a pound, $2800.00 for 2,800lbs)
then a water ski boat, I was 14 to 16 during all of this. He also has talked
me into a lot of crazy things but that's a lot of other stories. Most of
our stuff came from getting something someone else broke, it seems we inherited
our fathers "fix anything" ability. But with our arsenal of toys
and ideal location, we had a lot of fun.
While at college, Henry attended Reserve Officers Training (ROTC) near
the end of that, you go to a boot camp for a month and they run you through
some field tests. H. didn't quite fit in the grand scheme of the military
personality, too independent, too willing to let people do what they do
best and not form them into something else. To say he wasn't approved of
may be a bit of an underestimate. But when his platoon started doing better
than everyone else a general alarm shuddered through the rest of the officers
and old guard. The individual tests included sharp shooting and running
through unknown territory where cardboard snipers and pop-up attackers
were laid out. A judge ran along with you, the person to make it to the
goal quickest, shooting all pop-ups and snipers without delaying long enough
for the pop-ups to theoretically shoot you, won. The last days of the camp
was where everything came together and they ran war games.
First place in sharp shooters out of the 200 or so contestants went
to brother Henry, the old guard started turning red around the collars.
The problem was they didn't know that H. had always provided our meat and
foul in the winter, with limited resources, so every shot counted, and
his long distance vision is exceptional. H. seemed to get a lot of all
night guard duty about then. When it came time for the timed field trials
through the pop-ups, the judge was just mulling around and my brother finally
said, "When do I start?" the judge (one of the old guard) casually
looked at his watch and said "Oh, the clocks been running awhile already".
In full pack, helmet and boots, H. took off at a dead run, shot several
of the targets from the hip at full tilt, and set a new camp record over
all the thousands that had been before him on that course and his record
may still stand today. Things weren't going well for the old guard, so
they put him on full time, all night guard duty the last four days before
the final test, the war games.
Henry knew his platoon well by now, and they knew what the old guard
was doing and they were all mad. But H. is a great logistician and with
no sleep at all, laid out his battle plan, he had several guys who could
effectively lead the platoon. So the plan was they would stay just below
the ridge and he drew out a map of activity and told them how to run it.
He then added the topper, he would not be in the group with them, but moving
out of sight either above or below them. As they had seen his stealth skills,
they knew they wouldn't see him and took this as a strong vote of confidence
in their ability. The exercises began and sure enough, they never saw him,
although they all had bets on to be the first to spot him, but none of
them did. They did however, spot all of the enemy and won the war game
with ease. The reason they never saw Henry? Well, knowing his state of
alertness was gone and he would likely be liability, after the platoon
set out, Henry crawled under a truck and got some well deserved rest, he
slept through the whole war game and won it besides.
Great Possibilities
The motorcycle adventures all started around Christmas 1963 with my
brother arriving home from college in his wonderful green and white 56
Studebaker Power Hawk. From the extreme lift of the front bumper to the
tail dragging rear bumper it was apparent that he was carrying something
very special in the trunk or else he had decided that the lowered rear
end look of the 50's was back in style. In the trunk, or rather hanging
out of the trunk was a big old black motorcycle. Not just any motorcycle,
but a fifty two dollar, 52 K-Model, Harley-honest-to-gawd-Davidson.
Where we grew up, it snowed a bit, at 4 feet on the valley floor and
around 20 feet on the mountains, Jackson Hole is known for it's abundance
of snow and mountains. It was the dead of winter, and a warm day, about
10 degrees above zero, sun shining on the glistening snow, perfect weather
to try out this new adventure.
There were a couple of minor details, for one, the K had the lower bolt
broken on the casing that held the clutch adjustment so that it did not
adjust, in fact it meant the clutch was engaged, always. A second item,
the rear wheel, which started life as a respectable 4 ply was now on it's
last ply although I suppose that the exposed cord helped traction a bit.
And lastly, every night I ice skated down those roads, they were hard snow
packed and slick as -- well, you know, great for ice skates, not so great
for motorcycles with massive bundles of torque on tap.
But kids and idiots just laugh in the face of problems of that sort,
not enough dings in the head to know any better I guess. We worked out
a brilliant strategy for launching the K in spite of winter pressures.
We would fire the beast up in neutral, push it as fast as we could run,
kick it in gear, and as that slippery rascal spun away, you swung up on
it with a whoop, frantically trying to compensate for the erratic slipping,
sliding and roaring off in a cloud of blue smoke and glory. Incredibly,
neither of us ever crashed doing this, I guess foolish confidence can pay
off now and again. We both agreed with huge grins, that this new adventure
had great possibilities.
Summer found us at Jackson Lake every spare moment. Jackson, being a
resort area, is full of temporary workers young, healthy, athletic, fun
loving and often good looking. So it was a pretty effective combination,
"Ya wan'na go up to the lake on the cycle and go water skiing?".
Unfortunately, the 90 Day Wonders, ah yes, I mean Park Rangers, took
a dim view of our fun and high speed games. We tended to go through the
entry station at a margin slightly higher than the posted speed limit let
alone the stop sign. I also remember one futily chasing me on foot along
some of the designated walking paths around Colter Bay, but the smoke screen
from the Harley helped me make my escape and nearly choked my pursuer to
death. These and many other insults to their dignity certainly got them
in a huff, unfortunately, they could never seem to catch us in the act
of doing anything wrong, there was some frustration brimming under those
hats.
Framed
52 K-Model frames are not what they're cracked up to be, but mine attempted
it. My pal Vic was a hungry kid, not for food, but cars, machines anything
that would go, but his parents were on the old fashioned side, and took
a dim view of his interests. His dad nearly skinned him when he took the
hubcaps off their old Buick, "The lug nuts will rust solid!".
Vic was also blessed with just a touch more bad luck than most.
We had gone over to see a girl that had just moved in on the outskirts
of town. I was attempting be cool and casual while talking to her and bloody
Vic-maniac-let-me-have-wheels kept on bugging me to let him try the K Model.
I finally gave in, something absolutely unheard of, I never let anyone
touch anything precious to me, but there was this girl you see --. So,
I told Vic, "FIRST, turn it around, then keep the brake on because
it creeps in gear" oil had gotten into the clutch of course. A dollar
for gas was precious in those days, so you can imagine how important this
$50. HD was to me.
Vic in all his great wisdom, did neither item, (maybe it wasn't bad
luck that he was blessed with). I looked back around and was stunned, he
got it started but, not only had he not turned it around, but he already
had it in gear and was out of reach from my strangling fingers. The creeping
clutch already had zeroed in on an innocent victim, me, as that was my
bike, Vic got what he deserved.
All I could do was watch as he gave it so much gas that he was jerked
back on the seat a ways, then he let off the throttle too much and was
thrown forward. This happened oh, maybe three or four times while he was
trying to turn around on the dead end street and amazingly he got it all
the way around and then really cranked the throttle up, the jerk lifted
the front tire off ground ever so slightly as Vic in all his glory toppled
off the back of the Harley Davidson onto his empty head, leaving the throttle
on full.
It probably wouldn't have amounted to much if the bike would have fallen
over, but woe it did not, it stayed upright full throttle (this K-Model
and perhaps all of them, did not have an automatic return to idle spring)
and took off in a rage down the street. Once it nearly fell over, but bounced
off a butane tank which up righted it perfectly. With an awful bang it
ended, head on into a parked truck, full throttle. I was so mad, I knew
that I had better not go see if Vic was all right or he wouldn't be, instead
I picked up my abused K that now had an enormous dent in the gas tank.
The K hit the truck so hard that it broke the ignition wire, but other
than the smashed tank it seemed OK. When I rode back into town, it seemed
to shake, I thought maybe the front rim.
The next morning bright and shiny. Before I woke up, my brother took
off for Jackson Lake on the K, his pal Jimmy was on an Indian vertical
twin made by Royal Enfield. The last corner before getting on the highway
was fortuitous as we went up to the lake at 90mph consistently, 1964 was
prior to the snarled snail traffic and gendarmes swarming everywhere. The
last corner was fortuitous in that both Jimmy and my brother really got
on the throttle, by the way, our standard attire for biking was sweat-shirt,
Levi's and tennis shoes, he said that it all turned to slow motion as he
saw the front wheel sort of sickly slide out in front, a colossal racket
ensued, and he was suddenly holding on to the front forks like a kids tooth
that is attached by just a thin strand a skin, as his lower body and the
rest of cycle powered on by.... Jimmy said that my brother was a great
flyer. After a few aerial flips he came down hard on his elbow (but he
bounces real good) which looked like a balloon the next day. The K was
in two pieces.
In a small town like Jackson, and with an even smaller bank account,
we couldn't find anyone to fix the K, I took care of fixing Vic myself,
but we had to get the K running again, it was high summer! So we finally
talked our dad into trying to right the damage. He put steel tubes inside
the frame tubes at the breaks which were right at the head, and welded
it shut. Which, in the end, allowed us to wreak even more damage to this
wonderful machine in the name of fun and glory.
The Case of the Exploding K-Model Case.
We started hearing a jingling sound and it was no where near Christmas.
It took awhile to track the sound down, it seems that a bolt had come loose
in the primary chain case and had been rattling around getting pretty beat
up and doing a little damage of it's own. I still have that mangled bolt
along with a lot of other similar trashing trophies from the K and other
vehicles. You can imagine our surprise when the errant bolt won the battle
of the beatings and the primary chain broke. Here's what happens when you've
cranked it up a bit and the P. chain lets loose, the front sprocket coils
the chain up into the front of the chain case. Which by itself sounds OK,
until the explosion of the aluminum chain/clutch cover and a piece or two
of the main engine case scatters all over the highway with a gawd awful
bang and a spray of oil. H. was the lucky one to be driving when calamity
struck.
Well, my brother and I inherited a talent of being able to make anything
run, despite it's injuries. Now that may be curse as we can really run
something into the ground because we can always get that last gasp or two
out of it. So we tossed the pieces into the bed of our 28A Ford pickup
which was similarly customized by the brothers Crash Inc. That pickup has
a whole set of stories too, like the time the rear fender came off and
chased a woman carrying groceries down the street.
The K Model primary chain case cover is only held by three bolts. The
front end of the case was now gone including the front bolt and there was
a finger size hole into the main engine crank case. While we worked on
the case cover with sheet copper, poprivets and plastic aluminum, we found
we could get the primary chain back together although it looked like Jimmies
front teeth after he hit that tree skiing, a few important links were gone.
So, we drove the K without the case cover on for a few months while tinkering
with the case cover and trying to locate a new chain. We would squirt some
oil on the chain to keep it happy.
Right now, K Model and Sportster owners should guess what happened next,
no I don't mean the loss of a few pantlegs! One day we could only find
high gear. The reason? Simple once you know it, the oil that is in the
primary chain case also feeds the transmission. We thought the transmission
and main case used the same oil, not so. The method HD used was a fifty
cent coin size hole hidden behind the clutch.
The transmission is mounted on two main shafts, an upper and a lower,
the lower one on the right side, destroyed its bearing (or bushing, there
wasn't enough left to tell which) which tore a hole in the case and allowed
the lower gear set to drop down out of reach of the other gears. As I said,
even without money or resources, we can make most anything run. If you
take the end of a steel pipe and weld it onto a flat piece of steel, it
can work as a bushing. A few sheet metal screws will hold the patch/bushing
on to the case. It's a little tight in there as the secondary chain sprocket
is right there in the way, but we did it without taking the cases apart
nor was the engine ever taken out. In fact we drove it for years that way.
The gasket leaked which oiled the secondary chain. Every now and then you
had to take a sledge hammer and (I think I'll write this anonymously) pound
the bushing back in as the torque would force the lower cluster down after
some hot starts and it would loose the other gears. I still have a picture
of our dad laying a sledgehammer blow to the makeshift gear case bushing.
The picture also notes the visegrips used as a shifter, the fire-extinguisher
gas tanks and exhausts that were a total of one foot long ending in huge
trumpets, I don't know how we ever survived in that town driving it around,
you would have thought somebody would throw a stick of dynamite at us.
SPUDS & SUDS
We had our favorite beach on Catholic bay, it got it's name from a little
log church that used to have the interesting name "Our Lady of the
Tetons" in honor of the location. It was several years before someone
who was versed in French and was brave enough told them how that title
translated out. They immediately changed it to "Our Lady of the Mountains"
and maintained a wary view of any other French name in the valley and there
are several other nearly as funny, Gros Ventre means big belly, Nez Persez
is sharp nose by an older translation. And then there is Les Trois Teton
or simply Tetons, imagine if you will, lusting husky tough French fur trappers
out on the land for months on end with nary a female to be seen, they came
over a rise one day and there sticking up in front of them were three gigantic
sharp pointed objects thrust out into the sky. Now knowing their frame
of mind and their penchant for naming things after body parts, well you
get the idea.
There was a steep slope, almost a cliff, that you descended to get to
our spot. I remember once Jimmy came out of the night in his boat, no lights
of course, well beer filled and misjudged the beach and bonfire, he crashed
onto the beach and slid right up by the fire. He casually looked through
his bleary eyes at the fire and held out his cup for a refill. Maybe he
didn't misjudge it now that I think about it, we were brewing Teton Tea
(tea and all the wine you could find). The water skier he was pulling did
the same sort of slide up the rocky beach but without as much grace or
cool. These parties got a little out of hand, but again, we had a lot of
fun.
Over several tankards of brew, my brother and Jimmy got into a loud
shouting match about the virtues of a good motorcycle and proceeded to
crawl over and onto the cycle and decided to see how well they could sort
of reverse jump by going up the cliff and landing in the parking area.
With a mighty roar and huge cloud of blue smoke the inebriated pair full
throttled up the cliff with the rest of the beach party cheering. Of course
you couldn't actually see the landing area, up they went popped
up into the air engine screaming, rocks and dirt flying. I've suppose the
campers who had put their cooking fire right in the middle of the trail
thought some great calamity had befell them upon what must be sacred burial
grounds as the earth under them rumbled and roared and lo and yea out of
the sky a wheeled chariot with two great menacing thunder gods came crashing
down right in the middle of their fire and food spraying hot coals, pork
chops and potatoes, I know the menu because barefoot Jimmy had potatoes
in his toes. An eerie blue mist settled on the scene which was now stone
silent in the wake of the deafening devastation.
Bull
Just like magic, another motorcycle appeared out of the back of that
Studebaker trunk. The first time it produced a Harley Davidson K-Model
which we still own today. This time, it was only a $35. purchase and it
brought home the Bull. This motorcycle was famous, a flathead stroker 80
HD that had compression that would launch a rocket, it had devastated more
owners in a shorter period of time than perhaps any other.
The first owner that we know of, bought it from someone who died on
it, literally, something to do with going through a truck door at a high
rate of speed. The second owner rebuilt the engine and added a lot of horse
power. It was a sub zero night when he finally got it back together, so
he thought he would just start it in the garage just to see if it ran.
It fired up nearly knocking the back wall off the garage with all that
compression. It had a quirk, the throttle was not stock, it was off of
some other bike, probably an Indian, the original donor of that throttle
handle may have bit the dirt too hard at some point with some unknown hero.
But more than not stock, the throttle was unique, it worked backwards,
rotate up and you went faster not slower, but hell, anybody with a sense
of cool can handle that mental exercise on the fly, besides the handle
was red which was a dead give a way. Anyway, this guy sat on the Bull rumbling
and roaring under him and he stepped on the clutch and popped it in gear
just to see if that was set up right too. It wasn't. The Bull launched
itself at the closed garage door with a ferocity that only a machine with
a killer instinct can have, and the Bull won. It made it through the garage
door and out into the cold black night, the guy who had been sitting on
it would up in the hospital with a brand new broken arm and a brand new
regard for red throttles. The Bull had a brand new owner the following
day.
This brand new owner assumed the previous owner was a jerk because he
was dumb enough to put it in gear in his garage, so he started the Bull
out in the clear and aimed the right direction. The throttle was giving
him fits as he could not seem to break the habit of rotate up to slow down.
Still he got it down to the court house to get it licensed. It was a big
fancy new court house with big wide dignified steps leading up to the plate
glass doors. He pulled up right in front of the steps but got a little
off balance. Now this was the old foot style clutch so he had to put that
foot down to catch himself, there was a sudden surge as the clutch re-engaged,
he quickly rotated the throttle and he proceeded to do the Bull tango right
up those dignified steps and right through those shiny new plate glass
doors of the court house. My brother bought the Bull from a man with a
lot of scars on his face for $35. It was a great era for buying old motorcycles!
Launched
Now my brother knew the stories of those bold and foolish few who survived
the Bull rages, so he approached it with caution and not a little apprehension.
So we aimed the Beast toward the street and brother H. (he was older than
me, you would have thought he would have conned his little brother into
taking all the risks, now that I think about it, that may have been when
some of my own risks started, hum) swung his leg over this low monster
with the suicide clutch and maniac throttle. He turned on the gas and with
some effort, pushed it through a cycle without the ignition to prime the
pump, he then took a long deep breath, rose up high on the handle bars
so he could really give it a really good kick, he drove down on the kick
starter with commitment. A rude bang belched out the carburetor and brother
H. went straight back up with even more commitment than before and flew
over the handle bars with the greatest of ease, upside down. He came down
with a heck of a thud, flat on his back. My dad and I broke up laughing
which is probably the only reason he got back on the Bull.
There was a buck and pole fence that ran along side our yard at that
time, the kind made with logs that form an X and three long poles connecting
all the X's. As I said, we had pointed this thing towards the street. H.
got back up, dusted the grass off and climbed back on, he was a little
pissed now. This time he remembered to check the spark advance and retarded
it, fully! The Bull came to life as a monstrous rumbling roar. I noticed
that my brother thought about it for a long time then stepped on the clutch,
popped it in gear. So far, so good. He tried to ease the clutch out, but
if you've never worked one of these before, it's a bit hard, the rear wheel
started dancing on the grass, which looked slicker than the winter snow
had been when we learned how to ride the K-Model. He of course, got off
balance as the rear slipped one way and then the next, there was no chance
of ever getting his foot on the clutch again. And now the throttle, the
crazy mixed up backasswards throttle reared it's ugly head. BRRAATTTTT,
BRRAAAATTTTT, three or four of these were enough to introduce the Bull
into the Buck fence. The front tire went under the lowest rung of the fence
but the fender went over, as my bother slid gracelessly off the bouncing
Bull, the wedged front end kept it from falling over, it mowed along the
fence stripping bark and wood. My brother had the misfortune of sliding
off the wrong side. The Bull came after him while he was on the ground,
slipping struggling to back crawl out of the way of this monstrosity that
was raging towards him. Ah those were the days, and at times, it pays to
be the little brother watching big brother.
We finally got so we could drive it. None, not one, of our bikes ever
had a working generator, so we drove them on battery, and sometime we pushed
them back, but we learned to always drive up hill, that way, you could
always
coast back. I fixed the suicide clutch by slipping a length of conduit
over the hand lever and running the cable straight to the clutch, and hooking
the foot mechanism onto the gear change mechanism, nothing tricky and it
worked great. I had converted the maniac throttle by then as well.
We sold the Bull a few years later to Kinky. On his test ride, he was
gone too long, so I went looking, he was at a gas station trying to fix
the clutch cable. His technique was unique, he took a torch aimed it at
the solder and dripped it onto the clutch cable. Feeling a little mischievous,
I asked him where he learned to solder like that, he said he was taking
a college career shop class in Utah, I wondered how much they charged for
that college career shop class. Less than a month later he decided that
as he was now a mechanic, he would rebuild the Bull, maybe soup it up a
bit. Of course, I doubt that the Bull had more than 500 miles on that fresh
engine, but I suppose a lot of noble bikes die that way. He later traded
the basket of parts for 22 rifle.
PanHead
At one time, we had three HD's and one Indian with one battery and one
license plate between them, we just rotated which one was today's legal
(sort of) ride. An amazing day was when we had all four of them running
at once, I imagine the neighborhood remembers it well, only one had mufflers
and it smoked so bad that oil drooled out of the exhaust tips.
That Pan Head Harley with the killer engine had a thing about doors,
I don't know why it disliked doors so much, I guess it was because it was
related to the Bull which had demolished a garage door and a large plate
glass door within one month while carrying two different helpless owners.
You know those suicide clutches are on the left and that causes a unique
phenomenon which I will call, "Left lunge". If you are leaning
to the left, you need to put your left foot down to stop from falling over,
however, before you can make that emergency check, you have to set the
clutch to neutral, kind of a "catch 22" with a fall instead of
a catch.
My brother had the good sense, based on experience with the Bull the
year before, to take this Pan Head out into the street, far from doors,
to start off. Unfortunately as he got up town, there were a lot of cars
around, cars with doors. He was cool, he even stopped on a sidewalk to
chat up some lovelies.
A Buick Riviera with two very sedate middle class, mature couple was
carefully winding their way down the busy little boulevard when all of
the sudden the Pan Head saw their door, worse a door on a moving car with
it's window rolled down. That's enough to make any motorcycle mad, but
on this cycle, the Pan Head was raging!
My brother was on a driveway and had just finished talking to the girls
and was about to ride off to glory, when the Pan Head spotted the door
within 10 feet, the Pan Head neatly hooked it's frame on curb lunging to
the left, my brothers foot instinctively came out to stop the fall, the
gas mysteriously went on full, and my brother, not so mysteriously went
head first in through the window of the Riviera.
The woman's poodle was yapping wildly and snapping at my brother ears
while the woman herself was screaming and beating the willies out of him
with her purse as brother H. tried in vain to find some place to put his
hands that wasn't the woman's private parts, so he could shove himself
back out of the window and onto the raging monster that was still churning
away, burning up the pavement trying to shove the door clear through to
the other side.
We avoided doors after that but the Pan had many other tricks in it's
arsenal.
CHRISTMAS CAROL
Winter comes a lot around Jackson Hole, but you learn to have fun with
the elements. My brother and a blonde girl named Carol decided to get in
the spirit of the season one year and went around town Christmas Caroling.
That would have been okay, but all the roads were hard packed snow/ice
and they in all their great wisdom, were on the cycle. The proof of their
great wisdom was that everyone seemed to think it was pretty neat, and
so invited them in for hot toddies, at every house, they stopped at a lot
of houses that night. Except for the magneto, the electrics didn't work
on the cycle but the clever devils had solved that problem by taping a
flashlight to the handlebars. Somewhere near midnight they finally crashed
in the town square under the main stoplight, right in front of God and
the police who just hung his head and shook it slowly back and forth as
they cut loose with a rousing chorus of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"
at the top of their inebriated lungs. Try as they may, they couldn't stand
the cycle upright again it would topple over the other side, of course
they would follow suit and topple over as well. "Motorcycle s'ad too
many hot toddies!" was their shrewd determination of the problem.
As I've mentioned, Jackson is host to a lot of movie productions. Spencers
Mountain was being filmed and Henry was at a party in Battle Mountain in
the middle of the winter with Hank Fonda and all the other movie stars.
There was a very pretty girl, Margene, deep dark flashing eyes that had
danger written all through them, Hank Fonda was beginning to drown in those
eyes. Brother Henry decided there is a challenge worth rising to, besides,
he could save Hank Fonda at the same time, sort of a stand in for the dangerous
parts. But the problem was, how do you impress the socks off of someone
surrounded by movie stars. Typical to his style, H. walked over, picked
her up walked out on the balcony, the place had turned stone silent as
he threw her off the second floor balcony. She was screaming bloody murder
as she hit the big snow drift. Then H. jumped off as well. The people standing
in the bar were dumbfounded, they didn't know about the snow drift. Everyone
rushed out on the balcony, just as Henry swooped up Margene still assaulting
him with murderous threats, sloshed through the deep snow to a cabin, kicked
the door open and took her in to bed. The balcony erupted in a thunderous
roar of approval that even made Margene giggle.
ALYESKA:
After college, and after pioneering river trips down the narrows and
many technical innovations for running rivers, in 1970 Henry abruptly drove
his Land Rover to Alaska just as winter was coming on, it got so cold that
he got into his sleeping bag and took the big defroster hose, shoved it
inside the bag and continued driving up the AlCan highway which was all
gravel or less in those days.
He nearly starved when he got there, no jobs unless you knew someone,
he didn't. Finally he got on with the oil pipeline project. They would
get a chain saw and a file, and he who covered the most miles won, Henry
won. He said that as the trees were not very thick, if you kept your saw
sharp, you could just sweep it side to side as you waded through waist
deep snow.
Besides timber, he also cleared a few pipeline bars, the drinking kind.
When he arrived at the camp and saw the sort of macho he man types there,
he knew he had to do something distinctive right away or there would always
be trouble. So when he first walked into the noisy bar, he pulled out his
axe, which all he men carried on their belt up on the north slope, and
heaved it across a packed bar room with all these bruisers watching. The
axe stuck squarely in a narrow post on the opposite side of the room. The
place got stone quiet, and smoothly emptied out completely except him and
the bar tender who gave him first class service. Years later when he had
been running his ocean boats, somebody told him the legend about this big
bad monster pipeline worker that had cleared the toughest bar on the north
slope by throwing an axe across a whole room full of toughs and stuck it
squarely in a narrow post.
The Susitna river is world famous as a deadly river to run in any kind
of boat. The pipeline had lost several boats and maybe a few people before
they asked Henry to survey it. He took a jet boat, a pair of hip boots
and guided the boat down the river by hanging off the back in the water
and steering it with his legs. Part of the problem was that you had to
stare directly into the sun to go downstream as it was way up north where
the sun doesn't go up very high, it just spins around in a little circle.
While the technique sounds outrageous, he got the job done where no one
else could. He also designed a new stove for the pipeline, that won some
award for engineering and is used in the most extreme conditions now.
A co-worker and Henry were on a long expedition surveying or cutting
a path, and they started talking about the superman of the animal kingdom,
the Alaskan Brown Bear. My brother told him how when he was a kid he was
fishing and was charged by a mad Moose, he had a 22 pistol, but that's
about like using a BB gun, useless against something big, like a bear,
you just can't outrun a Moose. So, Henry held his fire until he could see
the "reds of it's eyes" and placed a single bullet squarely between
them. The Moose dropped right at his feet. They started wondering if you
could do the same with a Brown, shortly there after they got their chance
to find out, they must have walked too close to a game stash of the Brown
and here he came at full tilt. Now the co-worker had the magnum that each
group was assigned in case of bear attack, my brother had a 22 again, no
where to run and no time to think. The co-worker despite all his tough
talk about dealing with Alaska Brown Bears took off at a "dead"
run, with the magnum. My brother dropped the Bear with a 22 but it nearly
made it to him unlike the Moose.
My brother, like myself really doesn't want to kill any animals which
is odd considering where we grew up, sentiments like that are almost sacrilegious.
But there was one time while working the pipeline that he did want to kill
a varmet. A squirrel ate a hole in his brand new tent to get at some food.
H. though okay, I'll leave food outside for you, but don't chew another
hole in my tent, the next night a new hole appeared, that was irritating
plus it was raining a lot. So, he blocked things up and left food in a
different location, next night, same thing, now he was mad. So he tried
to catch the varmet, no luck, just more holes, he tried to trap him, again
no luck, now Henry was over the brink and getting wet. He decided to go
after him, "where ever he goes, I go" was the blood oath. He
spotted him and chased after him, he ran up the only tall tree in the area,
so H. went up after him. Finally he had the little bugger corned out on
a limb right at the top of the tree and was closing in. The squirrel simply
jumped off all the way to the ground and ran away, next night more holes.
Henry had the magnum this time and stayed awake all night, nothing, but
the next night. The shadowy antagonist appeared right at his feet, H. sighted
in and squeezed. The sound and concussion of a magnum going off in a tent
would have to be experienced I think to appreciate. There was not a single
piece of the varmet left, but H. wondered who had really won that battle.
BOATS, BOATS, BOATS:
Henry tells me to watch out, a fanaticism will hit me at age 45 just
like it did with dads photography and Henry his boats. But he was always
that way, boats, boats, boats. After making a good income on the pipeline,
Henry bought a lot of real estate, then started selling real estate, but
he's not one to be consistent and reliable on returning calls or mailing
letters, when he was in the mood, he was great at it, but otherwise, think
boats.
We were both having our mid life crisis about the same time so he suggested
I come up to Alaska and we could throw up a green wood cabin on this piece
of land he has, and that would give us a project while we think about what
to do with our lives and how to fend off our dragons. Well, the green wood
cabin wound up being a two and half story, all glass pagoda on Tomingas
harbor in Katchemak bay. Obviously we had a lot to think about, it took
us a couple of years.
Henry had bought a fishing boat, the F.V.Robby. It had a big diesel
V8 and a deck big enough to hold a ½ ton truck. Unfortunately, he
had bought it with a friend and the friend only had the best of intentions
and could never deliver on his end of the bargain. The boat deal broke
the friendship and therefore became a sore part for Henry. But that all
changed, we loaded the boat with several tons of rough cut wood and set
out for Bear Cove and a little harbor that now bears the Tomingas name.
Henry had searched for land that was ocean front for some time, you
could buy some for outrageous prices, but my brother is always looking
for a deal, he found one. He found an ocean front homestead that had been
defaulted on (they left and never came back) in 1936. The time for which
the government was going to allow such homesteads was about to run out
as they had changed the law. Even though it was winter, Henry rented a
skiff, and set off down Katchemak bay trying to figure out from the map
where it was. He found a likely spot and staked it out, as it turns out,
he was exactly right. That night he went over the hill and stayed in an
abandoned log cabin that didn't have a door or windows. As the night progressed,
he heard a rustling outside, he looked straight into the face of a 700
lb Alaskan Grizzly bear. It started circling the cabin, it kept circling
the cabin. He knew what this interest meant.
Henry had worked with Frank and John Craighead on the Yellowstone Grizzly
bear study, perhaps you have seen the National Geographic special or the
issue where they were tracking the bears. He has told me how you would
have a beeper to track them, and often there was an awful snow storm so
that you couldn't see but a few feet ahead, and you didn't know if the
bear became aware of you and circled around in back or not, very unnerving.
Also, when he was on the pipeline there were many bear encounters, in one,
he and a girl were walking along a railroad track and from behind them
came a grizzly stalking them.
A grizzly has a huge heart and lung capacity that, in proportion to
it's size, gives it power close to impossible, it's as close to Superman
as you get. Grizzlies used to be plains animals that ran to catch food,
one technique is to outrun an Elk and slap it on the back so hard that
it breaks the back of the Elk. Power, speed, there is nothing as deadly
as grizzly, luckily, they don't usually hunt humans, we smell bad to them,
too many varieties of food, but they love the candy bars in our pockets
or sweet cooking smoke on our faces! What the grizzly doesn't do well is
see, nose and ears are fantastic, but the vision is pretty bad. The bear
stopped for a moment to smell, well, where my brother had relieved himself.
When the bear looked down, my brother and the girl hid behind the one very
scrawny little bush in the whole area, it was the only one within miles
and no trees. But that was all it took, it looked around, didn't see them,
and probably decided there were tastier tidbits on the other side of this
wicked river that paralleled the railway. Even though it was full of huge
ice flows, the bear plunged in without a thought, swam to the other side
knocking big ice flows out of the way, caught hold of the ice edge, the
river pulled hard at the body and it slipped under the ice a bit, then
the bear heaved and up out it came. Shook itself off and sauntered off
casually as can be. Henry and the girl didn't manage as casual of saunter.
But the bear circling the cabin was not sauntering off, it circled all
night. Henry sat all night with his machete in hand. He has this theory
that if you can get the first blow in with a machete across the nose of
a bear, they won't be able to see or smell you or breath. The problem is
in getting in the first blow, animals don't understand a fake which is
to our advantage, but they are so fast to react, that it doesn't usually
matter. Finally at dawn it left. But the adventure was just getting started.
Now, he had to get back, he got in the little skiff, Homer was about two
or three hours away if the tide is against you, but the governments time
frame was also against him. As the tide was coming in and he was going
out, the waves sprayed over the bow and soaked him, this winter time and
cold, it's cold on the water even in the summer if a wind and spray is
up. After a long time, he finally saw the buildings, but they looked bigger,
more like sky scrapers. The water became dead calm, and then he saw why,
the ice pack was moving in. The sky scrapers were glacier size hunks of
ice in the water. They were crashing into each other and smashing their
sides in as they josseled into the bay. Henry jumped up onto the first
one and jerked his boat through each passage after the ice rebounded from
a blow. Somehow, he got through that, but now thoroughly soaked, the wind
was a gale on the other side and he was still a long ways from Homer. At
two in the morning he putted the little skiff into the harbor. He was so
stiff, he could hardly get out. Walking up to the car seemed near impossible.
At that hour, there wasn't a soul anywhere. He finally got to his car and
faced the worst problem, his hands were too cold to unlock the door. He
tried and tried, then he got mad, after all of that, to die because he
is too weak to turn a key in a lock, he bit down on the key with his mouth
and snapped the lock open. About five miles out, Henry started to unthaw,
he says that was some of the worst pain he has ever had to endure. But
that, is how there came to be a Tomingas Harbor in Katchemak Bay Alaska.
Henry has done a very nice water color of the Tomingas Pagoda in Tomingas
Harbor. He has always been good with art, I have several excellent water
colors that he has done, but the Pagoda remains my favorite.
CLEAR WATER
The next year, Henry found a luxury boat that was very fast, it was
in a law suite and he thought that it looked like an interesting challenge.
He went to the bank and showed them contracts for work that he could do
if he owned the boat. He basically said what do you want to do, have it
cost money by leaving it tied up, or make money by giving it to me, they
gave it to him for a song and threw in some cash to get him started.
Having pulled that one off, the next year he set his sights a bit higher,
and chose the largest (90 feet) charter vessel in Alaska as his target.
It has an elegant bow and inclosures for the deck, but it was tied up in
a bankruptcy. This boat on this scale had a whole new set of rules and
requirements, it needed a crew to run it, provisions, paint, fuel on an
astronomical scale and maintenance schedule of ten helicopters, plus safety
inspections, regulations, Captains license and other little items of the
sort.
But again, Henry walked into the bank and said I have contracts where
you can make money on this boat, do you want to let it be a negative flow
or positive flow. But the timing was a little off on this one, he wound
having obsticles at every turn that seemed like the end of the deal, but
somehow clear up to the last moment he kept plugging along, think boats.
The last day, he had a crew load food and supplies on the boat and the
customers showing up in a few hours and the judge had not come to a decision.
A half hour before they were due to set sail (figuratively) the judge cleared
the transaction and away he went.
The next year he decided he needed an all steel vessel, so he got a
110 footer that people get lost on it's so big, there's three levels with
big sealed doors and engines, has it got engines. Two huge Cat engines
the size of a large truck each with superchargers on them. Plus he's got
four or five other various engines for generating electricity of all kinds
and pumping and such. The smallest is bigger than most truck engines. He
lands helicopters and launches submarines from this one.
This year, well he's into so many projects I can't keep them all straight,
there's a 200+ foot ship ($1.5 mill) in the Aleutian Islands, there's the
South Pacific working on a project near Easter Island, of course the 110
foot Bearing Explorer is in Prince William Sound this summer, the 90 foot
Pacific Star is there too I think. He Captains whichever needs him and
has a couple of other Captains working for him along with a few crews and....
You know what's funny? With all of this stuff, you would think he would
be rolling in money, but he keeps buying another boat instead! Boats, boats,
boats, drives me nuts, he's got a bloody fleet out there, but it makes
him mucho happy and mucho occupied. The logistics of keeping all of this
on straight schedules must be outrageous.
Learning the sea in Alaska is a crash course on how to stay alive, such
simple little things and a long list of big things, can get you killed
out there, there's lots of ships each year that fail the course and lie
at the bottom. The tides are so enormous, that you can be in 20 feet of
water 20 miles in, and in a few hours the whole thing goes dry, and it
reverses every six hours, and then of course, there's the Alaskan weather.
Henry has taken to it, he's very careful now and plenty resourceful. Somebody
was introduced to him recently, and they said "Damn, your a legend
up here", it was news to him, he's too busy with boats, boats, boats.
You wouldn't think so, but big brother Henry, he is six years older,
has always had this 'thing' about being the big brother. When he found
out I was in my senior year at college about to get my degree, he ran back
to school and took the last unit needed to get his Experimental Psychology
degree. It just wouldn't do to have little brother beat him at anything.
So when I had a daughter after being with Jane for 20 years, he showed
up with a daughter the very next year, his first as well. Maybe I should
run a test and sign up for the French Foreign Legion, no boats. As you
can tell from my jokes, two brothers couldn't be closer.
Building the Pagoda was good for the soul, we battled our dragons with
chain saws and used foot long spikes as swords. We moved 2 ton rocks and
4 tons of wood with a broken back and it changed our lives for the better.
Now, we are both sleeping easier, but we also know that dragons only pretend
to sleep.
