News yesterday of the 50th anniversary of the Good Friday earthquake in Alaska -- at 9.2 on the Richter scale the second most powerful recorded earthquake in history -- evoked many memories of the summer of 1964. I had dropped out of the Scholars Program at the University of Denver but was still taking several university-level classes in Denver to maintain my draft deferment and thereby to avoid Viet Nam. Income from a part-time job driving a Yellow Cab barely covered rent, food and beer, so the prospect of better-paid employment in Anchorage was tempting. But many Alaskans lost their jobs after the earthquake and the state employment office tried to discourage people from coming to the state for work. So I stayed in Denver. My hitchhiking buddy Mac loaned me his sleeping bag over the July 4th weekend since mine had been loaned to a friend and was stolen. He was distraught when I returned because he had decided to hitchhike to Alaska and would already have been on his way if he had had his sleeping bag. He was ready to leave immediately but the prospect of a going-away party, a case of beer, thick steaks and fresh asparagus convinced him to wait until morning. A case of beer makes many things seem possible. The next morning I quit my job and school and by noon Mac and I were northbound out of Denver with a sign showing a fist with an outstretched thumb and the message, Anchorage or Bust!. Mac had reasoned correctly that I would be back before the draft board missed me. Sixty dollars from my friend for the stolen sleeping bag would fund my trip until I found work in Alaska, and a roll of two blankets replaced the sleeping bag. The summer was full of many adventures, but briefly, after a slow start out of Denver and passing through Yellow Stone National Park, we caught one ride from Missoula, Montana, to Fairbanks. We continued to Anchorage, where the Alaska Railroad hired me to shovel rock on a section of track further south near Portage. It had sunk 8 feet during the earthquake due to subsidence and was below sea level at maximum high tide. Mac hitchhiked to Brooklyn. I quit after a month (earned as much as I would have earned all summer in Denver) and hitchhiked 4,800 miles to Darien, Connecticut in under SIX DAYS! I had one non-stop ride from Tok Junction near the Alaska/Canadian border to Calgary and another from Calgary to the doorstep of my destination in Darien. Mac, two friends from the U of Denver and I went to the Worlds Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, and then I hitchhiked back to Denver -- over 10,000 miles that summer using my thumb!
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 02:29:44 +0000
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