It has been said that good stories come from past experience, as one perceives the events that happened, not necessarily the actual way they did. So, here is my story, the way I remember it, as close to the truth as I perceive it to be.
It’s one of those cold fall mornings when all seems right. The sensation the air has is similar to the feeling you get when splashing ice-cold water on your face. The coffee seems to taste better on mornings like this, especially out of a thermos. I’m rushing around getting the boy (3 years of age) and the girl (1 year) over to their sitters and myself out to the airport with enough time to make the flight to the village of Ruby, Alaska. As I drive to the airport, I recall 3 years prior when I first heard of a Command Car at the gold camp in Long Creek. It sounded as if the rig had been abandoned and was up for grabs. I flew out at that time on recon to see what, where, how, and who. Turns out it was a WC-53 Carryall owned by Al Kangas, who after contacting through a friend, said that if I had the ambition to get it from Long Creek to Fairbanks to go ahead and take it. Its been three years of going though the first phase of the disease Rick Shirey describes so well in the March 1995 issue of the Advertiser. My duration in the first phase was so long due to finances, offspring status, and the situation of being in phase two of the disease with a 1954 PW and phase three with my 1956 PW. Now, I’m finally on my way to Ruby to retrieve the Carryall.
The distance from Fairbanks to Ruby is about 220 miles by air, close to 300 miles by river and no roads between the two. The plane flies over the small village of Ruby, which is on the south bank of the Yukon River, nestled on the side of a hill. The population is about 250 and there is a roadhouse, grocery / hardware store and Laundromat. The plane lands on the gravel airstrip, Jay (another friend) is waiting to pick me up. We run up to his place to get the gear required to retrieve the rig: chainsaw, generator, air compressor, axe, maul, tools, gas for the gen set and chainsaw, hibachi, and wieners are all loaded into Jay’s ¾ ton Suburban. We head down to the village where we fuel up the suburban and have a short visit with some other friends I know from Ruby.
While having coffee, we get word that moose hunting had just opened early due to the bad salmon run. In the bush, hunting and fishing is not done for sport but for necessity. The next stop is the Game Wardens cabin to get the special moose tags. Then back up to Jay’s to get his 375 magnum. We are going to do some hunting on the way down the trail to Long Creek gold camp. We are just starting our way down the 30-mile trail to the camp when James (Tiffy) stops us by blocking the road. Tiffy is an Athabascan Indian that wants to be a part of the adventure. Tif says, “Take me along for the ride, bro.” We figure if we do get a moose we could leave Tif to clean and quarter it while we go for the Carryall. We pour Tif into the back of the suburban with the rest of the gear. When we finally get out to the gold camp, I take a long look at what we have to deal with. There is a 15 foot birch tree growing up between the front bumper and the left fender. The Carryall has sunk into the ground clear up to the frame. The condition of the tires is unknown because half of each tire is underground. There is a rodent nest and old rodent bones under the seat, and old pull top Olympia beer cans littering the interior. The lift gate and tailgate are gone and the door on the right is not from a Carryall. We notice that the state is putting in a culvert about a half a mile up the road before the camp and there is a very large front end loader idling a couple hundred feet from the Carryall. The state guys are gone to lunch it seems, it is that time of the day. Jay says I should run him up to the loader and we can make short time of pulling the WC-53 out of the hole in which it has settled into over the course of the past 25 years. So, taking a last look around for the state guys, I run Jay up to the loader and he’s bouncing down the road in no time. About half way down the hill with the loader we see the state boys returning from their grouse hunt….eerrr…aahh... lunch.
Jay is standing next to the loader by the time they pull up and they are curious to know if we knew how the loader got from where they left it to where it is sitting now. Jay tells them that it was there in the road when we got there and it would be nice to use it to pull the Carryall out of it’s hole. I explain my intentions, dreams and desires to them and they tell Jay to go ahead and use the loader. “Just put it back where you found it.” Chain goes around the front bumper to the hook in the loader bucket, bucket rises, Carryall does not, bumper has a new twist on life. Chain is moved to around the frame, bucket rises, Carryall rises, loader swings the front of the Carryall around so that it points in the direction of Ruby. Loader goes back up the hill. Tif takes one look at me then looks awhile at the Carryall and turns back to me saying, “Holy @%*$ man, your wife’s going to divorce you when she sees this piece of @%*$ in your yard!” In assessing the condition of the WC-53, now that it is out of the hole, we note that the steering is tight, the glass is broke, the metal is dented and there is only one flat tire. Out comes the gen set and air compressor. After a little work on the points of the gen set, the compressor is compressing. Forty psi later, we spark up the hibachi and cook up some wieners. Check the tire and it’s holding at 40 psi. The day is going good.
Plan A is to run a 15 foot chain from the burb to the Carryall and I’ll sit back and drive the WC-53 in tow, using the E-brake to keep the chain tight on the downhill grade. Plan A was working just fine at first but after a few miles the brake was no more. We stop at the top of a long 3 mile shallow hill and it was decided to tighten up the band of the brake. I put a wrench on the lock nut and loosened it up. I put a wrench on the nut and a socket on the bolt, turning the ratchet I hear two halves of a bolt hit the road next to me. Now, I have no brakes. We dig around in Jay’s hell box for a replacement bolt and find one twice as long as needed, a few oversized nuts to shim it up and we’re back on the road going down the hill. Plan A was not working any longer. The cab of the WC-53 is filling with smoke that smells like a burnt shoe. The back of the tranny is on fire! There is so much smoke that I fail to see that the rear bumper of the suburban is now making abrupt contact with the twisted front bumper of the WC-53 but I do notice that forward movement has stopped. I jump out and rub my watering eyes. Jay is laughing and asks me if I’m on fire, I say no and that it appears the E-brake got alittle hot. We put the fire out with a couple cans of Olympia beer. Plan B is to stick a rimless 9:00 x 16 tire that we acquired back at the gold camp (just in case) in between the two rigs and chain em up tight. Plan B is a much better plan than A and the rest of the trip was for the most part uneventful. We take our time as we head back. The road twists, it turns, it goes up and then back down. We stop every three miles or so to stretch. I use the time to brush off the dust that the suburban and the Carryall have kicked up and found its way though the open front windshield and the large gapping hole in the back of the WC-53. I am beginning to look like Pigpen from the Peanuts with a cloud of dust looming around me wherever I go.
Rolling through Ruby we head down to the bank of the Yukon River. There are a lot of locals pointing and laughing. A few even ask what I ‘m going to do with Al’s old ambulance. I tell them, they laugh and walk away calling me a crazy cheechaco. We park it close to where Inland Barge docks and put a sign in the front windshield telling the Captain were it needs to go and who they need to contact when it gets there. It has been eight hours since I arrived in Ruby, not too bad I think to myself.
Three days later, the WC-53 is at Inland’s docks in Nenana. John (another friend of mine) and I are heading down the road with a trailer in tow. Nenana is about sixty miles by road from my garage. Plan C is to pull the 5700 pound Carryall up the trailer ramps with a 1500 pound winch mounted on the front of John’s 4 wheeler which is strapped in the back of his truck. I’ve never been accused of being the brightest bulb on the tree. Plan C does not work, the 4 wheeler winch pulls the Carryall to the bottom of the ramps and I swear I hear laughing coming from the Carryall. We end up pushing the WC-53 up the ramps with Inland’s forklift. It’s taken 5 days, 30 miles in tow, 300 miles on the barge and 60 miles on a trailer. Lessons learned…. It would be pretty tough to get anything done without good friends and a lot of luck.
-Originally published in the Power Wagon Advertiser
-September 2, 1998
-Cary J. Meier
-Alaska
