Alaska Christmas White-out

by Wil Bosbyshell

Allow me to state the obvious, it snows a lot in Alaska. 

My first winter in Fairbanks, Alaska it snowed five feet in five hours; an unbelievable foot per hour. It was amazing to anyone, but to a native Floridian it was magical. During that blizzard it eventually snowed 72 inches in 72 hours with snowflakes three inches in diameter as they fell blanketing Fairbanks. It looked like I was in a magical animated movie!

That same year in Anchorage it snowed so much that even the local wolf packs were impressed. The wolves who lived in the mountains north of Anchorage could not hunt their normal prey due to the snow depth, so packs of wolves snuck through Anchorage eating every dog they came across. Needless to say, many pet owners were unhappy. On the upside – less annoying barking …just saying. 

When I skied at Alyeska Ski Resort that year, over 80 feet of snow accumulated. By March the two-story chairlifts snaked through canyons of snow with the skiing surface above the top of the lifts. It’s hard to picture this: the ski slope was above the top of the two-story lift towers! 

For my second winter in Alaska, I invited my sister Mary Helen to visit. She would see more snow than she could imagine. 

To my great disappointment, a week before Mary Helen's arrival in Anchorage the temperature soared above freezing; over the course of four days all the snow vanished. I was heartbroken. This never happens in Alaska!

I devised Plan B. It may have been a balmy 40 degrees in Anchorage, but it was a pleasant 20 degrees in Fairbanks with lots of snow; we would go north for Christmas! 

On her way up to the un-frozen north, the man sitting next to my sister on the plane proposed marriage. The ratio of men to women is so skewed in Alaska that it was customary practice for a man to propose marriage to a woman on first meeting her. It may be your last chance, after all. My sister turned him down, she was already engaged and was even wearing the engagement ring. 

My sister arrived a few days before Christmas. We toured around Anchorage, and then drove into real winter toward Fairbanks.

My Alaska mode of land transportation was a 1979 Ford Mustang. Not the quintessential Alaska vehicle, but it was fully equipped: roller-ball snow tires with inch and a half metal studs, battery blanket, engine block heater, and extra interior heater. 

Fairbanks was a six-hour drive from Anchorage on the only paved road in Alaska’s interior. You couldn't make a wrong turn or get lost, as there were no roads to turn off onto. We reached the only gas station at the midpoint or point of no return. We got out and took photos in front of the abandoned three-story igloo hotel. The igloo hotel is still there and still abandoned. In the middle of our photo session, it began to snow. 

This is before The Weather Channel and Doppler radar, so we didn't know that this was the leading edge of a blizzard. We headed north straight into the as yet un-bared teeth of the storm: the snow increased, the wind increased, and the temperature dropped… a lot and fast.

I was getting a little worried - not much. I had been in Alaska a year and a half! I wasn't a cheechako, a person who had not survived an Alaska winter. I had been through plenty of blizzards I reassured myself. I heard an army pilot say that they could hear the universe go ‘click’ when their airplane fuel gage reached the point of no return. I heard that ‘click’ now… and it was not a sound I wanted to hear.

I could still see the orange flags that marked the edge of the road. The paved driving surface was indistinct from the tundra, flat and white to each side of the road as far as you could see through the falling snow. I decided to casually and calmly give my sister a description of my emergency supplies in the car's trunk: vapor barrier boots, sleeping bag, tent, stove, rations, etc. My description only scared her. 

The temperature was dropping to dangerous levels. Sevier cold can cause even small mistakes to become life-threatening situations. 

The road was stark white and the sky above the road was light gray, just enough difference for me to steer by. The snow swirled at the edge of my headlights outside of which the day was pitch black. The blizzard was approaching white out conditions. Not good. No cars were coming south, in the opposite direction, which was a bad sign. I slowed down a little as the car slipped slightly in the building snow. There were no cars behind us, an even worse sign. The flags on the side of the road were showing less and less above the building snow. 

A white-out comes with a warning of sorts. Your visibly decreases as the snow creates a curtain between you and reality. Your vision becomes flat losing perspective. That loss of perspective was happening now. 

My driving safety and staying within the boundary of the road was dependent on my ability to see the line where the earth meets the sky with the forced perspective of the road edge markers converging into the distance. 

All that flattened now. There was no horizon line, no road edge, no falling snow – just the white nothingness.

The line between the road and sky disappeared into one white blur; we were in a white-out. 

We couldn't turn back like I said, having passed the point of no return to Anchorage. The snow was overwhelming my one-and-a-half-inch metal tire studs, no ice, just too much snow. I was a very experienced winter driver by this time in my life, but I didn’t want the car to slide into a deep snowy ditch in the middle of nowhere at minus 10 degrees. I eased my foot off the gas, slowing the car but not stopping.

Just when I was beginning to think about panicking, I saw two lights behind us. Bright, high lights. It was a snow grader – a miracle with six wheels! 

It was the kind with the blade in the middle and the cab on top up high. 

I waived it past me, pulled in behind it and let out a big sigh of relief. I followed the grader all the way to Fairbanks, not even slowing down though Nenana’s one traffic light. We never saw another car or person! No one else was stupid enough to be out in this blizzard. 

We had a great Christmas with my friends and fellow army officers the Reagors. She was a helicopter pilot, and he was an artillery officer. By the next day, Christmas Eve, all the roads were plowed, Fairbanks didn't miss a beat. 

We went to the North Pole, the city of North Pole that is, which is just to the east of Fairbanks to visit Santa’s Workshop. Being Christmas Eve, Santa's Workshop was in full swing. I mailed postcards, to be stamped ‘North Pole AK.’ I submitted several naughty lists for my young cousins. Santa would write letters keeping my young cousins in line for next Christmas. We didn't see Santa; of course, he was flying around the world delivering Christmas presents. We talked to several elves, their job was complete for the year, they were very relaxed. Santa's workshop is still on St. Nicholas Drive in North Pole, AK. It has a website and an 800 number. Santa is real; don't let anyone tell you different. 

We drove north of Fairbanks, stopped to take a photo next to the Alaska pipeline. It was very famous, having been recently completed. We then drove further north to where the paved road ended. At the end of the world, I mean road, the Highway Patrol has a special station. To continue north on the road to Prudhoe Bay you had to sign a waiver. The waiver stated that you were certifiably crazy and knew how dangerous it was. The state of Alaska was not responsible for your death if you were dumb enough to preceded. A classic waiver if there ever was one. Only ice truckers used this road. 

After Christmas my sister and I headed for Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood Alaska. The mountain begins at sea level and goes straight up to 4,000 feet. Resort may be stretching the term a little; the hotel rooms were trailers linked by an inside hallway. Mary Helen really didn't know how to ski; she was from the South after all. Nevertheless, she had skied before. 

Alyeska has a Bunny hill, the run would be a triple black diamond on any southern ski resort. Being the worst brother ever, after two runs on the bunny hill I took my sister, who could barely ski, to the top of the mountain. I wanted to ski in the high bowl area, so I gave her a map and made plans to meet her for lunch. Fortunately, she didn't ski off one of the many 2,000-foot cliffs to her death. She was rescued by a man who got her to the midpoint lodge and asked her to marry him. Of course. She turned him down. 

My sister is still mad at me 30 years later about her almost skiing over the unmarked 2,000-foot cliff. I can't imagine why? She lived! It didn't spoil our trip. Does a life and death experience to get between siblings? Of course not! Mary Helen and I had experienced several of those already! 

That night we were sound asleep having worn ourselves out skiing. I woke suddenly with a start as I flew out of my bed and hit the floor hard. My mind slowly grinded its gears: why was I on the floor? Was I drunk? No. I hadn't drunk that much. 

Then Mary Helen landed on top of me, “Ouch!” My sleepy mind noticed that the floor was shaking, I looked around, everything was shaking. An earthquake! I had never been in one, it had to be an earthquake. The safety brief on earthquakes dictated we run for the door frame. Part of my brain told me to do just that. Naturally I ignored that thought; I was 25 and invincible. In addition to the shaking my ears were filled with sound … a roar. It could only be one thing: an avalanche! I had never been in one of those either. 

So, with no logic or common sense I jumped up and ran for the plate glass door on the ground floor facing the ski slope and the 4,000-foot mountain of snow, throwing open the curtains. It was indeed an avalanche barreling and roaring down the mountain straight for us. My sister joined me at the window of death.

Wow, my brain registered the mistake we had just made. Damn, my mom is going to kill me if my sister gets hurt, I thought. Before we could move or tear our eyes away from the wall of snow… it began to slow, then stopped a football field away. Lucky. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell Mama about this,” I said. 

We skied through New Year's Eve. At midnight hundreds of local kids with flashlights skied down the mountain on every run so the entire mountain was bright with the light of the New Year. Beautiful. 

While the band played Huey Lewis & the News ‘Power of Love’ we danced and drank. Mary Helen and I were at a table in the bar watching the spectacle when I left to go to the restroom. On my return all the chairs at my sister’s table were full of men. 

As I walked up, my sister introduced us, “Joe, Mike, Todd this is Wil…” At this pause in her introduction, the men looked at me their faces turning into unhappy frowns. “Damn,” they all thought. I could read their minds, “She already has a boyfriend or a fiancé.” My sister continued the introductions, “Wil ... my brother.” The men's faces morphed immediately into joyous smiles! A single woman! In Alaska no less! I drank for free all night as the brother of the lone single girl at Mt Alyeska Ski Resort on New Year's Eve. And the fact that she was beautiful only added to the novelty. All three of the men proposed marriage over the next few hours. They were disappointed but not surprised at her rejection. 

My sister mailed me photos from Florida a few weeks later. “All my outdoor photos from the trip were ruined,” she said due to poor photo development. “All the photos are so dark,” she wrote exasperated. I wrote back to her saying nothing was wrong with the photos. She forgot that Alaska had no sun in the winter; the sun had set in October. Her photos were dark because it was nighttime during her entire trip! You just grow accustomed to how dark it is in Alaska in the winter.

It was an exciting visit: warm front, blizzard, white out, earthquake, and avalanche … what more could you want in a fun family holiday trip? 

 

“Maura, did you hear a scream?”

 Our Neighbor Ann

by Wil Bosbyshell

Charlotte has absolutely perfect weather. I have lived in places with horrific weather, like Lawton, Oklahoma and Fairbanks, Alaska. In Charlotte you can open your windows open six months a year in the spring and the fall.

To take advantage of the wonderful weather in Charlotte we had screens on all our windows and doors. One evening in the spring my wife, Maura, and I were sitting in our living room reading and listening to music on the radio, windows wide open.

It was dark outside; the tree frogs and cicadas were staging their own ‘battle of the bands’ to compete with the radio. Through the music on the radio, the reptiles and insects outside mating outside, I thought that I heard something.

My ears picked up a scream, I thought. “Maura, did you hear a scream?” “What, no,” she said. I got up and went to our front door I walked outside onto our porch. I looked up and down the street. Nothing. A normal, boring week night evening in Charlotte.

I looked at my left a little longer. We had new neighbors who had just moved in. A young married couple. The woman, Ann, was pregnant with their first child. We were excited to have a couple as neighbors. Our previous neighbors had been two single men we knew from being in the Young Affiliates of the Mint Museum. We liked them and the wild parties they threw, but the house and the yard was not the most visually pleasing, if you know what I mean. Both men have since gotten married, moved away, and reduced the wildness of their parties.

Anyway, nothing going on in either direction on our quiet Charlotte street. I walked inside, “Maura, I swear I heard an exceedingly long scream. It was very faint, but distinct.” We went back to reading. I must be hearing things echoing at a great distance from the major highway in the distance.

Moments later all hell broke loose.

A ladder engine roared up, full siren! Followed by an ambulance and the Fire Chief car, all on full sirens. They all rushed into our new neighbor’s home with lots of first aid boxes.

We ran outside. The entire neighborhood ran outside.

The paramedics emerged from the house with Ann on a stretcher and strapped to a backboard. Oh no. They were in a hurry. The sirens blazed as the ambulance raced away with Ann and her husband.

“What do you think happened?” Maura asked. “I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good,” I said.

We got the full story from her then husband: our pregnant neighbor was moving things around her new attic over her new garage. She had two cats and one ran into the attic with her. Curiosity killed the cat, I heard said once. In this case, the curious cat almost killed the owner. The cat ran onto the rafters, bad cat. Ann went to retrieve the cat and stepped off the attic plywood flooring onto the garage drywall ceiling.

As she said later, she felt like Wile E. Coyote because she stood on the unsupported drywall garage ceiling for a second, then fell straight through. She hit the track of the garage door and bounced off stacked bicycles screaming on her way down to the hard cement garage floor. In a calm voice she asked her husband, who was looking down at her through the hole in the garage ceiling saying to, “call 911, dear.”

Ann was fine; her unborn child, Grace, was fine; the cat was fine. Bad kitty, very bad kitty.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

As I write this now, Grace is 17 years old and a very healthy and smart senior in high school. Ann is in the ICU at Duke Medical Center recovering from open heart surgery. The surgery was not caused by the fall, no, just genetics.

Her husband Greg is keeping us updated and I am worried for Anne. She has been and is a wonderful neighbor and friend. We love her so much. We prayed and she survived falling through her attic to crash on the garage floor when she was eight months pregnant. I'm counting on her surviving open-heart surgery. If you can bounce off a cement slab when you're 8 months pregnant you're pretty tough.

I'm betting on you, Ann.

A boy, his dog … and a monkey by Wil Bosbyshell

A boy, his dog … and a monkey.
By Wil Bosbyshell

I needed to leave on time to get to my 3rd grade class, which was 10 minutes away on my bike. Just like every day, I cautiously peeked out of our side door and looked across the porch. Nothing there. I was looking down as I crept, silently across the screened porch and opened the door to the side yard. The monkey howled just like in Tarzan movies, showing me his four big fangs as he shook the tree right next to the door! He got me again! This was a game we played every day, his game, and he always won. I was startled and truly frightened.

I jumped back inside. “Mama the monkey won't let me leave the house,” I whined. “He won't hurt you, and don't be late for school,” my mom said from the kitchen. No sympathy there; she knew the monkey was playing with me. I stared at the monkey. He stared back smiling a scary monkey grin and showing me his fangs again, In case I had missed them a few seconds ago, which I hadn’t. I took a big breath, ran onto the yard past the monkey and jumped on my bike.

In 1969, I was eight years old and lived in Newberry Florida. Newberry was a very small town then, one traffic light and the main road leading to Gainesville home of the University of Florida. Steve Spurrier won the Heisman trophy three years earlier as the college’s quarterback. My father was studying for his Ph.D. in psychology. We lived in a house that was originally built in 1890 for open pit phosphate mining company. Phosphate was discovered in 1883 in Alachua County in a town just a few miles away from Newberry. The mining was done with wheelbarrows, picks and shovels, then mule-drawn scrapers and finally steam shovels around 1905.

The mine office later became an episcopal church. The mine manager’s house, now the church rectory, had two porches: the front porch and a large wrap around porch that looked out to the back and side yards. Round wooden pegs served as nails and unpainted; cedar shingles seven feet long covered the outside. The mine closed in the early twentieth century and now it was the home of the Episcopal Minister and his family. The small church sat in the front yard of the house surrounded by 10 acres of woods.

On my bike, I rode down the dirt country road, farms and woods on each side. At Mrs. Hunt's house I pedaled furiously. Her dogs barked and gave chase. They never caught me that day or any other day. I thought it was because of my speed. Now I realized they just loved the chase.

Arriving home after school, I wasn’t going to let the monkey surprise me again. I quietly lowered by biked to the ground and peeked around the fence gate on my hands and knees. Where was the monkey? I looked in all the trees in our wooded yard. Nope. My sister was sitting at the picnic table in our yard reading. Ah ha! There he was sitting next to my sister Frances. He had his own book in front of him on the picnic table, turning pages in unison with her. He wasn’t a baboon, but looked like one. He stood 3 feet tall when he walked on all fours but stood close to five feet tall when standing on his two back legs. He sat taller than my sister.

I ran inside to my room. The house was big and dark, my room was the original foyer with double doors that had windows leading into the rest of the house. I threw my books on the bed and went out the front door to the front porch that served as the “puppy” porch. My dog Cissy always had a litter of puppies. I pet each one as they jumped all over me. One of my chores was to hose off the puppy porch every day. I called each puppy by name and cleaned up after them. Finished with my chore, whistling to Cissy, she and I ran through the house and out the back porch door, hoping the monkey couldn’t see me. Cissy was named after a character on our favorite TV show: Family Affair.

We were in luck! At that point, the monkey was busy raking leaves with a rake we left leaning on a palm tree in our backyard. The monkey imitated what he saw humans do in the yard: reading, pushing doll strollers, etc.

My mom insisted Cissy accompany me in the woods to protect me from the rattlesnakes. We passed the fence and entered the woods which were full of 100 year old open mine pits left over from the phosphate mine. The edges of the pits had softened over the years and trees grew tall from the bottom and the sides of the pits. The pit walls were full of caves. Some were just indentations, others too deep and scary for me to go in. Cissy ran around me to scare away the rattlesnakes.

My father and the other men on our street shot at least one six foot rattlesnake every week. My mom saw to it that we had lots of puppies and kittens to distract the snakes from me and my two sisters. My mother is deathly afraid of snakes to this day!

My sister Frances, my friends and I had created paths all through the woods. My mission today was to check each cage set out to recapture the monkey. We had learned he liked to eat oranges, not bananas. Our favorite TV show to watch while we got dressed for school each morning was Ranger Rick. He and his monkey lived in the Okefenokee Swamp and the monkey ate bananas like all normal monkeys were supposed to. We were afraid of our monkey, but we didn't want the research scientists from the University of Florida to catch him.

Continuing on my day’s journey, I stayed clear of the sinkhole pit where the edge could cave in and drag me down to a certain death. I thought about cutting across the cow pasture, but the bull was out in the field. He would surely chase me if he saw me. Again, certain death. I also stayed away from the electric fence that surrounded our neighbor’s hogs. I didn’t stop to swing on any of the tire swings or dig in the Boy Scout fort. After all, I was on a mission and it involved a monkey.

Each trap had been reset by the research scientist that day with fresh oranges. I used a stick and sprung the mechanisms, BANG the doors slammed down. I laughed. Cissy smiled like a dog and panted happy to be in the woods with her boy. Co-conspirators.

A man was standing in the yard talking to my father when I returned home. It was the scientist trying to catch the monkey that had escaped his lab a year ago. The men stood next to the church in our front yard. My father was the minister of three episcopal churches in the area. I stood next to him and listened to the conversation. The scientist was saying that all the traps kept being sprung mysteriously. My sister Frances came up and stood beside Papa on the other side. I looked at her. The scientist glared at the two of us. If adults were talking we were not to speak unless addressed directly. We knew not to make a sound. Papa assured him that we would not interfere with the traps. Papa didn't look down at me and Frances. The man looked hard at my father, with priest collar around his neck, deciding whether or not to accuse the preacher’s kids of tampering with University property.

Just then Mama called out the back door, “Dinner is ready.” Frances and I ran in the house. We escape, the “dinner bell” was just in time.

Our mother put food out for the cats and the dogs before we ate. The cats had a perch so their food was off the ground out of reach of the dogs and snakes.

The dining room had a big window facing the woods. Outside the window was a bird feeder so we could always count on birds to watch while we ate. It was not uncommon to see other animals: possums, raccoons, neighborhood dogs, deer, armadillos and one night even a herd of cows strolling through the yard at dinner time.

Frances and I had convinced our parents we needed to have “backwards” dinner that night. This was a scheme we had hatched so that we could have dessert first before the main course. I can't remember how we cooked up that scheme. As Mama served dessert of chocolate cake before dinner, our younger sister Mary Helen screamed and cried. We were breaking our routine and she was a baby just two years old and just couldn't handle the change. After dessert we had dinner: spaghetti and white sauce with spam cut into ribbons. The very best! In 1969, ministers got a house to live in rent free and free admission to Silver Springs, but the pay was pretty modest. As a boy I didn’t notice.

Frances and I were schemers, and at this point we instituted part two of our plan. “Mama, can we switch back to regular dinner?” we asked. “And have dessert a second time?” my mother inquired. She was not fooled a bit. I looked at Frances and gave her the ‘we tried’ look. “Sounds like a good idea to me” said Papa. We all laughed at how silly we were being. Mary Helen burst into tears again and knocked over her milk glass. She spilled her milk every meal and we were all tired of the spilling. Mama had had enough. She picked up the pitcher of the Carnation instant powdered milk and poured it all over the baby's head. Mary Helen was shocked, the milk ran down her face and onto the floor then she screamed even louder. Mama took her to the bathtub to get cleaned up while Papa, Frances, and I had second dessert of chocolate cake with chocolate icing.

“We like the monkey Papa” I said. “So do I” he said.

After dinner I got a jar and went to the edge of the yard where it met the dark, thick north Florida woods. There was a wall of light made by thousands of fireflies, which made catching them very easy. I put the jar next to my bed full fireflies, donned my pajamas and joined Mama, Papa and Frances in front of the TV. The whole family was excited to watch the first moon landing. We had a black and white TV with “V” shaped rabbit ear antenna on top. The screen was fuzzy with static on the one and only channel. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, but I missed it. I had fallen asleep on the floor in front of the TV, next to my sister. My parents watched the rest of the moon landing after they carried us to bed.

“Bill, you know I saw the monkey walking down the street this afternoon. He looked back at me, turned around and just kept walking,” my mom commented to my father. She continued, “I don't think we will ever see that monkey again.”

The monkey sitting on the picnic table outside the side screen porch. 

 Wil, Frances and Mary Helen in 1969.