I used to manage Begich Tower in Whitter

One day I was sitting at my desk over on lower Spenard (I was a property manager for Marston Properties) and I get a phone call.
"Hi Mike this is Dave in Whittier."
"Yes... "
"We have a bear in the building."
"WHAT!!!"
"We have a bear in the building and I need to know what you want me to do about it."
"WHAT!!!"
"Dave can I get back to you on that?"
I go to Brook and ask him what I should do.
I get Dave back on the phone and ask him the question that I know I don't really want to know the answer to.
" Dave, how did a bear get in the building?"
"Well someone left the door to the trash garage open and the bears just came in"
"WHAT!!! Bears now we have Bears as in more then one!!!"
"Yes"
"Dave"...
"Yes"...
"How many bears are in the building?"...
"Three"...
"WHAT!!" (Say "what" one more time MF!!)
"Yes a momma bear and two cubs"
"WHAT!!!!"
This has gone from bad to really really bad very quickly.
"Dave"
“Yes”
“Are there any bears in the the residential part of the building?”
“No”
Some good news
“Dave I need you to post someone at the door that leads from inside the building to the Garbage pins and not let anyone in”
“OK”
“Dave, do not shoot the bears or let anyone else shoot the bears. We don’t want a wounded bear running up and down the halls of Begich Tower or someone shooting up the place.”
“OK”
“Go to the Harbor Master. He has firecrackers about the size of a large M-80 that are used to keep seals away from fishing nets. Take about five of them and light them all at the same time and have who ever is watching the door open it quickly and toss all of them in at one time, and shut the door.”
“OK”
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
“Dave”
“Yes”
“Did it work… are the bears gone?”
“Yes”
“Dave”
“Yes”
“Shut the outside door”
“OK”

Here is the skunk story

When Hannah was in the first grade, she came home and asked me if I could come to her school and talk to her class about what it was like growing up in Alaska. I told her sure and asked when and what time. So I show up on the set day and time. After I told them all about my childhood in Alaska I asked if anyone had any questions. Well one little girl raised her hand very politely, I called on her and she very sweetly asked if it was true that I was sprayed by a skunk when I was little? I told her that yes it was true and asked if she had a question about Alaska. She said no but she would like to hear the skunk story. Then everyone in the class started saying how they wanted to hear the skunk story. I looked at the teacher Mrs. Norris, she nodded yes. Ok here is how it happened…

When I was about 8 years old we were living in Denton Tx. Like many people from Alaska we did the yoyo thing and my step-father was military so we did a lot of moving around. Well at that time my parents were not getting along very well and we would do anything not to be in the same room with them much less the same car. Our house was walking distance from our church if you cut a cross a cow pasture.

So one Sunday, my older brother asked if the two of us could walk to church and not ride in the car. My mom said yes and my step-dad said we had better not be late and no excuses. We said ok and started off to church.

Well we climbed through the barb wire and into the pasture and here came the dogs. They all about how much fun they were going to have following us to church. Next thing we know the dogs freeze and are looking at something further out in the field. Well the dogs tear out after what ever it was they saw and barking at the top of their lungs. When we get a little closer we see it is a skunk and having just gone through this whole dog and skunk thing about a month earlier, we were all like holy crap! We tore out after the dogs and our fate.

We had four dogs and they were not that bright as they were going after a skunk when they had so recently been on the business end of one.

When we caught up with the dogs they had the skunk surrounded and were barking their heads off. I grabbed two dogs by their collars and my brother grabbed the other two. We were trying to get the dogs away from the skunk but all the skunk saw was that reinforcements had arrived. He started to turn in a circle and let loose with a spray of skunk juice.

When I told this story to Hannah the first time and then to her class I asked if anyone had ever seen a movie or TV show where some one got hit by a skunk and they always show it in slow motion. Everyone always tells me yes. Well that is how it really is, the world just about stops. You can see the droplets coming and all you can do is say “HHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOO NNNNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!.” And BAMB its over and the dogs are heading back to the house at a dead run with their tails between their legs and the skunk is scampering off to reload.

Well we are standing there in the middle of the field wondering what we should do. My brother said “dad said no excuses and this looks like an excuse to me… lets go.”

So we arrive at church a little late and the music part of the service has already started. So we slip in and take seats in the very last or first bench in the back of the church. My dad turns around and gives us that scowl that told us that after church we were going to be in trouble.

Now as we sit there we can watch the movement of our sink as it moves from bench to bench and people turn around to see what the heck was smelling so bad. First it was the bench in front of us then the bench in front of that one and so on until it reached the bench my mom was sitting at. She just kind of turned with sense of “my what is that”. This immediately changed to the look of horror of “MY GOD…. THOSE ARE MY CHILDREN!!!”

She jumped up and came back and got us and took us out of the church and when she ask what on earth possessed us to come in to the church in our condition we said “ well dad said no excuses.”

How many people have tried to do a sourdough starter only to have it blow up?

In winter 1983 I was going to show my new wife how we Alaskan men can fend for ourselves and can cook. So she wanted sourdough pancakes. I said "Sweetie you can't just whip up a batch of sourdough pancakes. First you have to make the starter."

So I gets me a crock with a wire latch and make me a starter... nothing... it does nothing. So I call my grandmother and ask what is the deal. She told me I keep my house too cold. I need to put it some where, where the heat is a constant temp at about 70 degrees. That is no were in my house, we keep a constant 60 degrees.

So it hits me... the refrigerator the back of it stays warm that's why the kitties are always curled up there trying to stay warm. So I set it on top way in the back so it can grow.

About three in the morning we hear this BAMB!! in the kitchen. I grab a hand gun from the night stand and go to investigate. The two cats, Percy and Frodo, blow past me on their way to the bedroom like the devil him self is on their tails. I go out to the kitchen and nothing... just me and a strange new smell. I go back to bed my wide eyed wife asks me what it was? I was like "nothing... but the kitchen stinks."

The next morning she come to me in the shower and tells me she knows what happened last night and I have a big mess to clean up. I go out to the kitchen and say "what?" She points to the wall above and around the fridge. There is starter dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls behind the refrigerator. I had to pull the refrigerator out and scrub the walls. It was nasty. The top of the crock had blown off in the middle of the night.

Needless to say when we wanted sourdough pancakes from then on we went to Gwennie’s.

Kit Kat Club

When I was 15 and working for my dad he took me here after work one day. We went in and it was very dark and when my eyes adjusted I could see that there were a bunch of ladies walking around in negligees. I knew this was going to be one of those "rites of passage" things.

There was this lady doing a slow dance thing on a stage. she was dark haired and dark eyed and maybe 35 and had large... well... and was probably very pretty when she was 20. She had on this cape like thing that she was dancing with and it was cut round with a hole in the middle of it for her head, kinda like a satin poncho. She starts spinning like a washing machine on the spin cycle and the silk poncho starts to get higher and higher and my eyes are getting wider and wider. And then BAMB!!! Just like that I have seen my first real... well, naked lady.

I look like a deer caught in some ladies head lights and in this case she had her high beams on. My dad looked at me with my mouth gaped open and said "boy... I think maybe you need to go wait for me in the truck" and he handed me the keys. So I go out to the truck and contemplated what I had just seen and I knew right then at 15 years old that I was gonna like girls... A LOT!!!!

The Sand Lake Boys.

It was 1978 and the summer between the 10th and 11th grade. We were living in the Sand Lake area of Anchorage, Just down from “four corners” and just off of Raspberry Road. A bunch of us guys who went to diamond had taken to calling ourselves the “Sand Lake Boys”. We were told there was an older group of guys more my brother’s age, early 20s, that were calling themselves the “Sand Lake Boys”. Since we could never find anyone who admitted to being one, we wrote it off as a urban myth. We were the “Sand Lake Boys”. It was me, Greg Ebbert, Mike Ebbert, Tracy Ebbert, Danny Scarpella and sometimes Jim Ross. We roamed the streets of Sand Lake looking for mischief to get into. We always felt sorry for the kids who lived in Brentwood like David Ziemer. Their parents kept them in the neighborhood, I guess so they wouldn’t get dirty.

That summer I was working for my father, who was a builder, hanging sheet rock so I could buy a car. It was a hard job, but after a while he trusted me with the taping, bedding, and texturing so it got a little easier. I worked my butt off 12 hrs a day, six days a week and got off at 5 o’clock on Saturday afternoon. The first thing I would do is head over to my friends house and we would figure out what we were going to do for the rest of the weekend.

I also had a new form of transportation. I had bought a Yamaha 175 Enduro. This was my first venture into motorized transportation. I did lack some of the essentials that normally are associated with this form of transportation. In this case… a drivers license, insurance, a fully working exhaust system, and a license plate. But the guy who lived two houses down from us always claimed he flew his floatplane without a license so I figured I didn’t need a license either, especially when all I was doing was riding a motorcycle, And I was only 15 so what’s the most they could do to me.

I had bought the Yamaha with my own money however my dad said there were two rules that came with it. 

First rule… was if I ever got arrested, I was just to stay there. I was not to call home, I was not to ask anyone to come and get me. If I had gotten myself into jail, I could figure out how to get myself out of jail. 

Second rule… was, if I get a ticket on the motorcycle he was going to take it up to the mine and leave it there and he really didn’t care who paid for it. I think he was just looking forward to himself having my motorcycle.

Once we all hook up, usually at Greg Ebbert’s house. We would hang out play poker where we used homemade chocolate chip cookies instead of money, listening to music. The big bands at that time where The Cars, Queen, The Electric Light Orchestra, Fleetwood Mac and of course Led Zeppelin. This was a great time to be a teenager.

After eating dinner (Greg’s mom made the best lasagna I have ever eaten) and hanging out for a while listening to music, we would all head outside, hooking up with the rest of the Sand Lake Boys. We would walk around the neighborhood, bored as any teenager would be. Sometime after about 11 o’clock we would go “tin canning.”

“Tin Canning” was a practical joke that we would pull on people who were driving through our neighborhood. You need about six pop cans and some mono filament line. For those people in Whittier… Fishing line. You take one end of the fishing line and you tie three cans together. Then go to the other end of the line and tie the other three cans to that end the line. Now you should have a lot of excess line. To take in this line and you wrap it around the cans loosely. You go out into the street and you find two mailboxes that are directly across from each other on opposite sides of the road. You place one set of cans in one mailbox, run the line across the street and put the other pop cans in that mailbox the string between the two mailboxes at its lowest point in the middle the road should be about 12 inches above the asphalt. Then you hide and wait. Sooner or later a car will come along and will hit the monofilament line pulling the cans out of the mailboxes entangling the fishing line in the wheels the bumpers and the undercarriage as they are going down the road tin cans make it sound as if they've just gotten married. When they stop to see what has just happened to them. Then everyone jumps out of the bushes screaming and laughing at the top their lungs. Then everyone runs in different directions. And that was pretty much the extent of our nighttime shenanigans. I know we were hooligans.

One time we set our trap and a guy on a 10 speed bike came down the road and we tried to stop him. I think all we did was scare him because all he did was go faster. He hit the sting while he was looking back at us and never saw it coming… what a mess. The string was all in his gears and chain. But we helped him get it all off his bike. At the time all I could think was this stuff is a pain in the ass.

One Sunday afternoon we were hanging out, when Mike Ebbert said he wanted to go up to the Quick Stop up at “four corners.” So he could buy some cokes and potato chips. He asked if I could give him a ride to the store on my motorcycle. I said sure and we went out hopped on my bike and headed off to the convenience store. We went in and got our stuff and then got back on the bike we were heading down Raspberry Road with Jewel Lake behind us and Cranberry Road in front of us. We were riding on the trail that ran beside the road that in the wintertime the snow machines would ride on and in the summer was pretty much reserved for three wheelers and dirt bikes like mine.

As we were riding along we were about halfway down Raspberry when I hear over a loudspeaker… “You, on the bike... Stop the bike and get off.” I looked over my left shoulder and saw two things the first was an APD cruiser and a police officer with his microphone up to his mouth. The second thing I saw was Mike “flipping off” the police officer. I knew right then and there this was not going to be a “stop and talk.” Because of Mike’s gesture. I knew our parents were going to have to pick us up at the Fifth Avenue jail. In my case I was going to have to stay there until my mother came and got me, and my dad now had a reason to take my motorcycle up to the mine and leave it there for his own personal use.

Mike then slaps me on the right shoulder and when I turn that way I see that he is pointing across the potato field that is beside us and starts jabbing at the air with his pointed finger. Suddenly I saw what he was pointing and we took off across the potato field, this potato field is where Linden Park is now, as fast as I could go. We knew there was no way for the police officer to bring his car into the field trying chase us. The ditch between the dirt bike trail and the road was too deep and if he tried, the soil in the potato field was too soft and the car would sink. We were heading towards two houses that had just enough room between them that a motorcycle could easily pass between them but there was no way a police car could. So now I saw my out!! I headed for it! 

We went speeding across the potato field bouncing and flew between the two houses, my knobby tires tearing up the grass as we went. The police officer had turned on his lights and was racing to try to get to us before we came out the other side. This was going to be totally impossible. He had to go down Raspberry turn right on Cranberry turn right again on W69th and there was absolutely no way that was going to be possible. There was one more element to my plan. 

When I had left home I had left the garage door open, and I hope my mother had not put it down. We came around the corner and saw that the garage door was still up I killed the engine and quietly flew up the drive into the garage, kickstand down, and nearly knocking Mike off the back of the bike as a threw my leg over the back of the bike trying to get off as quickly as possible. I hit the garage door down button and the garage door started to slowly close, we had made it, now it was just a race between the garage door and the police car.

We hid down below the windows of the garage door until we thought enough time had passed and the police officer should be gone. We then slowly peeked out the glass… and there he was sitting in the middle of the road with his car turned off and his window rolled down… just sitting there. He then gets out of his car and turns in a slow circle with his hand cupped up against his ear. What in the hell was he doing? It dawns on me he is listening for my jacked up exhaust system, which is about three times as loud as it should be. I think… I really need to get that fixed. After a few minutes the officer gets back into his car and drives away. In about 10 more minutes Mike and I finally start to breathe again. Then the dull boredom of a summer Sunday afternoon returns.

My dad eventually got to take my motorcycle up to the mine but it wasn’t because of anything I had done wrong, it was because I had got my first car. It was in 1966 MG Midget. He was so impressed with how hard I worked all summer he agreed to pay for half the car, which for him was a really big deal. I never ran from a police officer again, and I would never recommend it to anyone else.

Annus Horribilis September 1979 – September 1980

It was the beginning of school, fall 1979. There was a teacher strike, and it was my senior year. We sat in the grass in front of school playing guitar singing songs and supporting our teachers. Alaska was after all the richest state in the union and probably could afford to break off a piece and throw a couple extra bucks to the people who were responsible for shaping our lives and the states future. As we sat carelessly in the warm fall sun I had no way of knowing there was a storm on the horizon. It was going to swallow me whole and spit me out and permanently change the course of my life, it was called Vice-Principal Luce, and this first semester of my senior year would be my last semester at Dimond High.

We already had one run-in with Vice-Principal Luce. Due to some family issues, I had spent the summer living with my ex-stepfather at his home in College Gate. When I enrolled at Dimond High as a returning student, Vice-Principal Luce felt that College Gate was in the East High school district and I needed to go East High School. My dad argued that this was just a temporary arrangement and that I would be back at my mom’s home and would be attending Dimond High my senior year. He felt there was no reason for me to transfer to East High for only a month or so and then have to transfer back to Dimond High. I had my own car, so transportation was not going to be an issue. The school administrators over Vice-Principal Luce agreed with my dad. 

This was strike one!

At Dimond High we had Principal, Mr. Savage. He was as far as I’m concerned, the coolest Principal any school ever had. Mr. Savage love music and drove a Mustang Mach 2. The relationship that I had with Mr. Savage could best be described as the relationship Juan Epstein had with Principal Lazarus at his school in the sitcom “Welcome Back Kotter.” Anytime I would wind up principal’s office Mr. Savage and I usually wound up talking about music and then he would send me back to class with the casual warning “behave yourself.”

Vice-Principal Luce and I however had a relationship that would be best described as the Vice-Principal Murney in the Vin Diesel movie “The Pacifier.” Vice-Principal Luce seemed to be a man who felt that his authority should not be questioned and to do so would probably lead, in his mind, to anarchy and a complete breakdown of the system. I had already questioned his authority and won. It was simply a matter of time until we clashed again.

About halfway through the semester good friend of mine, Greg Ebbert (Yes that Greg Ebbert), and I decided to skip PE. This was the class we had right before lunch, and go to A&W and have ourselves a two hour lunch? As we started to leave from the boy’s locker room we noticed our PE teacher Ms. Swatich was sitting on the bench out in the breeze area in front of the gymnasium. There was going to be no way for us to get past her without her seeing us. If she saw us we couldn’t skip class. Then Greg says let’s go back into the boys locker room and go out the side door that leads through the swimming pool area. We will go out that way. I thought this was a great idea.

As we were walking through the pool area, the swim class was in the bleachers. As we were walking by several people called out of the class “Hey Byers!!” and “Hey Ebbert” we just laugh it off and pretended like we were celebrities walking the red carpet at the Academy Awards and waved. When we got to the area right in front of the office the coach who was responsible for that particular swim class at that particular time intercepted us. I’m going to refer to this coach as “Coach R” he was a short man with a bad attitude. He proceeded to chew us out for interrupting his class. I pointed out to him that class hadn’t technically started yet and that either way I apologized and told him it would never happen again. I thought that was the end of it. As we turned and started to walk away he told us to stop and go back the way we came. If we had gone back the way we came we are going to have to go to class so that wasn’t an option. So I just said “No, I don’t think so” and kept walking towards the door. “Coach R” reached out and grabbed me by the sleeve of my coat. What he said next shocked me. He pulled me towards him so his face was right up close to mine and said “Look… faggot go back the way you came!” In one fluid motion I spun my arm around on top of his and yank down toward causing him to lose his grip on me. Then I gave him the finger and said very loudly “F**K YOU!” I then turned and walked away out the main door of the swing pool area. I went out to the parking lot got in my car and drove to A&W for lunch.

After lunch we headed back to Dimond. I parked in my regular parking spot and walked into the school. I was greeted by a member of the security staff. We all remember Shaft… tall black guy that always wore sunglasses inside the building and never really said a lot but he could stand in the hallway and look real cool. He told me to come with him. He then got on his walkie-talkie and informed someone on the other end that he had found me. A woman’s voice answered back and said vice principal Luce is waiting for me in his office. I knew the rest of the day was going to suck.

Shaft took me to the office and made me sit on a chair outside vice principal Luce’s office. After about 10 minutes “Coach R” came into the office area and went into Mr. Luce’s office. In about two minutes Mr. Lewis called for me to come into the office. When I came in I was told to shut the door and sit down.

Vice-Principal Luce stared at me for about a minute and then said “Coach R” has brought to his attention that you disrupted his class this morning and when he spoke to you about it you became very belligerent and told him to F*** Off and made a threatening gesture towards him. Is this true?” I told my side of the story as I saw it… yes we had walked through his class but the bell had not rung. So class had not started yet, when “Coach R” confronted me about interrupting his class. My first response was to apologize at which point “Coach R” actions, I felt were intended to humiliate us in front of his class. When I refused to do so he grabbed me and called me a faggot. Vice principal Luce looked at “Coach R” when I was finished and asked if this was true. “Coach R” denied that he ever used that word with me. My response was “so now you’re going to sit there and lie about it?” Vice-Principal Luce then looked at me told me this was not over and I was to return to class.

About five minutes into my last hour class there was a knock on the door. It was Queen B another of the schools security personnel she told Ms. Ditter that I was wanted at the office and that I should come with her. As he started down the hall she told someone on the other end of her walkie-talkie that she had me and that we were on her way. I woman’s voice came back and said that she was to take me to the cafeteria.

When we entered the cafeteria it was empty except for one person it wasn’t vice principal Luce. It was Principal Savage. He told Queen B that she could leave and that he wanted to speak to me alone. After she had left Mr. Savage told me he was disappointed in me. He understood how I was upset about what “Coach R” had said to me but he couldn’t overlook the fact that had I not been skipping class the situation would not have presented itself. He said he had talked to several students that had been in that class and that they confirmed that class had not started and that everything had been low keyed until “Coach R” grabbed my arm and said something to me at that point whatever it was he said seem to had upset me greatly. 

No one in the class that Mr. Savage talked to had heard what “Coach R” had said, but it had clearly changed the tone of the confrontation. Mr. Savage told me I had to, by the end of the day, make amends with “Coach R” and to bring this situation to its conclusion. I asked him what he felt I should do. Mr. Savage told me to go to him and apologize. My response was… “a person calls me that to my face and then I have to apologize to him?” Mr. Savage said “Mike I can’t have my student body declare war on my teaching staff… And that’s what you did. If you apologize this end here today.” I assured him I would.

At the gym I asked where I could find “Coach R”. His last Class was sitting in the same bleachers and he was giving them some kind of talking to. When I walked through the door he stood there looking at me with something between distain and disgust. I walked over to him and told him there was something I needed to say to him and maybe we should walk over towards the office. His response was “No! What you said this morning, you said in front of my whole class so anything you have to say now you can say in front of my whole class.” All I could think is… my God this man is such a pompous ass and I am going to let him have it.

So I let him have it. I told him, I was here to apologize for what I had said. I told him I still felt the same way but as a student I was wrong to express it. I told him that in doing so I had lowered myself to a level that he was very familiar with and I assured him that the only reason why I was there and apologizing was because he had the ability to have me expelled from school and that’s what happens when you give power to a little man. I then lead forward and whispered very softly to him that only the two of us could hear it that if he ever called me anything like that again to my face I would kick his ass. I then smiled broadly so everyone could see, turned and went back to class.

The funny thing is that after school that day I had diving practice. Some of the kids in “Coach R” last class were also on the swim team. They came up to me and said “dude what did you say to “Coach R”? I told them “that that was between him and me.” They said what ever was it really pissed him off because they spent almost the entire class just swimming laps and he was angry for the rest the class. 

When I think back on all those years and it’s been 35 years and if “Coach R” was, let’s say 35 years old he’s probably pushing and 75 years old now. In the back of my mind I have this image of him in some geriatric ward of some nameless hospital in the Midwest lying in a pool of his own urine while being ignored by his own children and grandchildren. I don’t need anyone telling me that I need to let that go and I shouldn’t harbor ill feelings in my heart. But I am an Alaskan who doesn’t hunt therefore I have plenty of karma to spare.

With Vice-Principal Luce this was Strike Two.

The rest of the semester seemed to progress uneventful until right before Christmas break. Me and some friends got this idea and pulled a shenanigan that was to have huge repercussions. I’m not going to go into what the shenanigan was because many of the people involved are on this site and are still friends of mine and as for the target of our ill thought out prank after all these years I want to extend my ongoing apologies. At the time it didn’t seem that bad. But many times people over react, police are called when no police are needed. I found myself in Vice-Principal Luce’s office again 

(Strike Three). 

This time Vice-Principal Luce made me an offer that I could not refuse. It was pointed out to me that I had enough credit hours to graduate. If I went ahead and graduated the topic would be dropped. If I decided I wanted to remain in school he would start procedures to expel me and all my friends who were involved. That would mean five other people would be at risk of being expelled. So I went ahead and agreed to graduate. I got my diploma and when on Christmas break. Everything was fine until all my friends went back to school.

After my friends all went back to school, my dad approached me and asked me what my plans were. I said I really didn’t want a job, and the truth was I was just a little scared to go to college. So I told him I wanted to go to Europe. He informed me that I was not going to sit around the house and he was not going to pay for me to go Europe. Then he said “what you need to do is go into the Army. Think about it, you can go Europe for more than just a couple of weeks and you have a job when you get there.” All I could think was… what a great idea. Not realizing that my dad had just played me like a 5 pound trout caught on a 3 pound test line.

So the next day I went down join the Army. 17 is the perfect age to join the Army or any military branch. You’re in the best physical condition of your life and you’re used to people telling you what to do. So I was off the basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. After that AIT (Advanced Individualized Training) Fort Gordon, Georgia. Then in August I touched down in Frankfurt, Germany. It had been a long road but it was worth it. I was assigned to my first duty station and immediately sent to the field. The first three months in Germany I lived in a tent. I met Colin Powell. He was a General and used our site as his field headquarters. He was a two star general at the time and was simply my commanding officer. I met Gen Powell three times. People ask me what it was like to meet him. He was a General and I was a PFC and I did my best to blend in to the wall of our Ops tent.

After we came in from the field, we had a person who came in to rotate back to the United States. He had been on an EDCN site (early deployment communication network). I had performed so well in that prior field exercise, I had been chosen to replace him and was sent once again to the field where I would spend the next two years living in a tent. As bad as that sounds it was actually the best duty I ever had in the Army. No sergeants, no officers, no saluting, no formations, no inspections, no G.I. parties, just get up every day and do your job and when you’re off you are off.

One day the support vehicle that brought us our supplies every two weeks which included C rations, mail, and replacement parts for our radios showed up with a new guy. The new guy was a sergeant and immediately told me that he heard all about me and that I was somebody who could drink just about anybody under the table and he was looking forward to taking that challenge that evening. Now all I could think is that someone back in our headquarters was messing with me by way of the sergeant. The reason for this is that I do not drink and never have. I am the easiest person to drink under the table. Or maybe I should say I am the hardest person to drink under the table because I’m not going to play that game. But he kept on pushing the issue until I told him okay he was on, but only under my rules. He agreed I told him that we would go to the Gasthaus in the little village and have dinner and there we would drink schnapps and we will see who is the last person standing.

So that night after my duty was over and shift change had been made. Everyone went down to the Gasthaus, so there was about eight of us. We referred to this Gasthaus as “Gasthaus Ingrid” and the reason why is because the owner of the Gasthaus had a very pretty daughter same age as me whose name was Ingrid. Ingrid was pretty much the first German girl I ever got to know, she was really nice and really sweet. When we came in she came to our table. Being Americans that far out in the countryside we always traveled with a certain air of celebrity to us. The Gasthaus was full and everyone heard what I said next. I told Ingrid that “we’re going to have a drinking contest. That this man, as I pointed to the sergeant, believes he can drink me under the table and I was here to prove him wrong and that we were going to drink schnapps, and what I wanted her to do was to bring everyone at the table a shot of water except for the sergeant. He was to get a shot of schnapps each time.” I told her this in German. So every time around was brought out we all got water and he got schnapps and all the Germans were in on it and they would gather around our table when Ingrid brought a tray of drinks out. And they would all sing at the top of their lungs “Ziga Zaga, Ziga Zaga, oi oi oi!” Then we would all down our shots of water while the sergeant drank his schnapps.

I won the drinking contest or to better put it the sergeant lost. After dinner we put him in his Jeep with his driver and sent him back to headquarters. I never saw the sergeant again he had been such an embarrassment that they transferred him to another unit. I jokingly said after that you don’t want to go talking smack to someone who…

1. Smarter than you 
and 
2. Speaks the language.

In hindsight I know that we were actually lucky he didn’t die on the way back. It was about a two-hour drive and we ran a very good possibility that when they got back to our unit and they try to get him out of the Jeep. He could’ve been dead from alcohol poisoning. But I was only 18 at the time and that thought had never entered my mind.

My last summer in Fairbanks or The day my dog dug up the body in our backyard.

It was the summer that I turned 10. We were living in Fairbanks, and the whole family had decided to move to Anchorage. When I say everybody... I mean everybody all my uncles, my aunts, my cousins, and my grandmother the whole family en masse were moving to Anchorage. I was looking forward to the warm subtropical temperatures that Anchorage promised. But for now my mom was expecting my youngest sister Heather and we were not going to move anywhere until she got here. 

This was to be my last summer in Fairbanks!!!

Our house had a large backyard that backed up onto the yard behind us. The house had recently sold and the people who lived in the house directly behind us had a large shed that backed up to the chain-link fence that separated our two yards. With my mother being pregnant, we spent most of our time playing in the backyard. On occasion we would slip out of the yard and sneak down the block to the weird guy who had an airplane parked in his front yard. The airplane was an old DC-3 cargo plane from the second world war and as any 10-year-old little boys would, we would spend our days bombing the Germans, the Japanese, the southern rebels, the wild Indians out West and anybody else we could think of… they all got bombed by us. We believed Custer would have won if he had just waited for our air cover. 

Then we would sneak out of the airplane and head home for dinner under the bright daylight of the Fairbanks midnight sun.

We had a tan dog named Buddy. He was a boxer and as dumb as a box of rocks. One day we noticed that Buddy was chewing on something in the backyard. We were afraid that it might be a chicken bone or piece of plastic or something else that could get lodged in Buddy’s throat and require trip to the veterinarian’s office. So we went over to investigate what we found was Buddy was chewing on a bone… the bone was human! 

Well… The summer was about to get very interesting. 

We investigated and saw that Buddy had dug under the chain-link fence and then under the storage shed that belong to the house behind us. We collected up all the bones in a box and took them to my mother who was nine months pregnant with my sister, to see what we needed to do in this situation. My mother saw the box of bones and realized two things they were human bones and they were real.

Needless to say my mother lost her mind, and called the police. We were not allowed to go to the backyard until the police got there. When the police arrived they took the investigation away from us and started it all over on their own. The police did something very interesting as part of their investigation as not to give away their presence. They asked us if we were sure that we had collected up all the bones and there were no more bones in the backyard, we assured them we had. They then turned Buddy loose in the backyard and from the safety of the window above my mother’s kitchen sink they watched the dog, while staying concealed from the neighbors. Buddy ran around the backyard little bit then started sniffing around. Then as sure as anything down that hole he went and about a minute later he came back out with a bone in his mouth. I believe this one was a femur. The police had my mother open the back door and call Buddy. The dog brought the bone into the house which was a little bit freaky. The police now had probable cause that a crime had been committed and the proximity of the body.

Needless to say this was the coolest thing that ever happened on our block. And we were right in the middle of it. We figured we had helped the police bust a serial killer and made our mark on Fairbanks history. Years from now I would be sitting in a bar and people would, “say hey do you remember that summer in 1972 when those kids helped the police bust what turned out to be the worst serial killer Fairbanks history.” I would smile wide and say, “yes… Yes I do. I was one of those children.” I could already see there were probably going to make a movie out of this and I wondered what childhood star would get to play me.

The police waited in our house until more police had arrived. When the new police had arrived they went into the backyard and hid behind the shed. While the police that had been in our house went around to the front of the neighbors house.

We were thinking how cool this was our serial killer neighbors were going to get into a shootout with the police, and we had a great view of everything. This surely was going to be the greatest summer ever!!

Then something happened that we didn’t expect the police came out the back door in to the back yard with our neighbor and he was not even in handcuffs. Our neighbor and the police were talking for a little bit and our neighbor did not look happy. The police officer who had just been in our kitchen pointed to our house while he was talking to the neighbor. All I could think was “oh no he just told the serial killer where we lived.” The officer who was in charge then walked over to one of the officers who had been hiding behind the shed told him something and then pointed to the house. That officer then came to our back door and asked us for the box of bones. I asked what are you going to do with them? The police officer said “we’re going to give them back to him.” I said but those are evidence.” “Normally they would be” said the officer “but in this case he has a permit.””

Now this had just gone off the weird charts. A permit?? How do you get a permit to be a serial killer!!

It turns out our new neighbor was a professor of human anatomy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The bones were part of his teaching props and although they were actually human bones he had a permit to possess them. Now they were damaged and had been half eaten by our dog. He was not happy with us at all. Needless to say my parents had to make restitution. 

We finally made it to Anchorage I noticed that Buddy didn’t make the trip. When I asked my mother where our dog was she said Buddy had decided to stay in Fairbanks. 

I was kinda ok with that because Buddy was as dumb as a box of rocks.