Slippers in Alaska

Barbara 'Sue' titled this image "Steve talking, girls don't care." Yeah, but just look at those bearded boys raptly paying attention as I told my tale! Thing is, I'm still talking and what a story it is. This shot is in Alaska the summer of '81. Holy crap, I guess that makes us friends for life. We were hanging out at an obscure abandoned mining site near Fairbanks. There was an old dredge, a crane, a sifter and other giant things. These relics were an a grand scale. Things are big in Alaska. The next pic shows us on top of the crane. It was really huge, the tallest crane I have ever seen before or since. And I've seen some big ones. I picked up clients at the airport in Las Vegas in the mid nineties during the crazy building boom that expanded the town over towards the airport. I counted eleven cranes from one vantage point, all big, all busy swinging around like hyper tether balls. None were as big as the rust frozen one in AK. Not only is the abandoned stuff big in Alaska but there is plenty of it and it is of a certain vintage and/or genre. I ended up living on Cranberry Lane out past Airport Way in a , well, I always call it a cabin but old photos verify that it in fact was a cabin only in the sense that it had no electricity or plumbing. In all other respects, it can honestly only be called a shack. But the word shack brings up semi romantic images as well, you know, like, chicken shack or something, admittedly not nearly as many as the word cabin. But, truth be told, my place was not a cabin nor a shack but a lowly shed. Shed does not sound romantic or rustic. It was on the Chena River and the government issue mosquito repellent that Barbara Sue gave me worked well. It also melted plastic. Of the giant eccentric structures on the property, I most remember the big barge crashed on river right. Apparently it couldn't negotiate the curved waterway or maybe it was intentionally scuttled. Trees were growing out of it and silt was gathering in an eddy at its bow. The size of the property was actually increasing. There was also an old fuselage laying out in the woods. I love Alaska for this and other reasons. I've still never been back. It's a long expensive ways away unless you hitch-hike like I did. Aspen to Santa Barbara to Fairbanks with a guitar I didn't know how to play. Four thousand miles in three weeks. But therein lies the tale I might have been telling as we stood young and adventurous together in Alaska for an epic split second of all our lives.