Some of you reacted favorably to my musings of yesterday, so now you are going to have to pay the price for encouraging me. Didn't your Mother ever tell you- "Don't encourage him, he will only get worse". One of the comments was that I apparently liked to write, and it is true, I love to tell stories. The ground outside is saturated with moisture, and I am bored as hell. There is nothing on the 800 channels of TV, but politics, so here goes.
My father was a Methodist minister, and we moved probably every three or four years. Always to rural areas that were pretty poor. There was little to do as far as paying jobs were concerned, and I never worked. Besides I had all the wild game that I wanted to eat or hunt, no reason to do anything else. My father was not prepared by his own tumultuous upbringing to be a parent, and I was one of those accidents that sometimes happen to careless lovers, late in life. My interaction with him was never more than disiplinarian and son. I apparently cut into his time with my Mother quite a lot. Since I had no siblings at home, my Mother filled in as much as she could to attempt to keep me civilized. As you can imagine, she took my side when I deserved it. As I got older, perhaps the irritation became a bit more intense. Learning to drive was an ordeal of the highest magnitude, and the cause of many fights, so I knew nothing of cars, how they worked, their care, nothing at all.
When Karen came to Fairbanks to join me, we moved into a 8 x 28 foot trailer belonging to Jack Oar. ( One of the best falconers that I have ever met.) That problem solved, I had to then get to work at the missile site, South of Fairbanks about 40 or more miles. No problem, I'll just hitchhike.
The people of Alaska at that time were some of the best people on earth. In my uniform, it was rare to have anyone pass me by. Generally as soon as I stuck my thumb out, they would stop and as the weather got colder they would drive out of their way to get me home. As great as the people were, it was still a hassle, as I had to be on the back side of Eilson Air force base by a certain time to catch a ride up above timberline, on a dirt road, to the site where I was assigned. My last night of hitch hiking was in the last of November and the temps were 44 below zero.
One of the Cooks was rotating out, and he had a 58 Olds 88 two door coupe that he sold me for $75.00. He had used it to go back and forth to town occasionally. Unfortunately he was a city boy who knew even less about cars than I did, but it ran after a fashion. It had a fan, but no heater. The frost collected on the inside of the windshield, not outside. The tires were nylon that took several miles to pound them back into their round shape. but its biggest problem was the electric choke. It was always on. The idle screw was backed all the way out as well, so the motor would not idle. With the choke always on full, the car would only do 35 mph, but it was still quicker than hitch hiking.
The last thing the guy did was show me how he started the car. He would go out, lift the monstrous hood, put a can lid, bent into a vee shape, into the carb to open the choke. The car would then start right up, but I was supposed to rev it up high enough to get out, run around the door, pull the can lid, slam the hood and get back in before the car died. Neither one of us realized that if we had loosened the little screw that kept the electric choke full on, the car would then run if the idle screw was turned in a bit. The car would idle with the choke all the way on, just blubbering along at 35. Although it was a hassle, it at least got me back and forth to work on time, and more importantly back home to my blessed answer to raging hormones.
During this time I was still a regular MP and as such, part of my duties was to act as "Gate Guard" to the compound, and Missile site. One evening a gigantic Snow Shoe Hare wandered into the compound. Of course, I cornered him in the fence and grabbed him. I turned him loose in the guard shack and he seemed quite tame, so naturally I took him home with me.
Arriving home about 2 in the morning and not having any where prepared to put him, I just turned him loose on the floor and went to bed. Karen worked days at the Hotel, and I worked 12 Am to 12 PM. We also had a 8 week old Black Lab Puppy as well. I had just gotten to sleep when the puppy started screaming. I got out of bed and found that the Rabbit, outweighing the Pup by about 8 pounds, had him treed on the couch. I slapped both the pup and the rabbit and went back to bed. Perhaps 10 minutes went by when I felt something put its feet on the mattress by my head. I reached out to reassure what I thought was the puppy, and the rabbit bit clear through the end of my thumbnail. Not drawing any blood, I slapped the rabbit and went back to sleep. It wasn't long before we heard one of our "Mel mac" plates hit the floor in the kitchen. In about 2 seconds Karen clawed her way over top of me, grabbed the rabbit by the ears and shoved him into a cardboard box, turned it upside down, climbed up over me again, bouncing up and down a couple of times as payment, and we went to sleep for good.
When we woke the next morning, the rabbit had expired, apparently he had peed on the box and it formed a seal, suffocating him. I remember thinking, "well he wasn't much of a pet anyway". So I decided to toss him out to the first hawk I saw on the way to work.
When my shift was over and it was time to go home, the car was giving me nothing but trouble in my attempts to keep it running. If one slipped on the ice, it tended to slow you down enough that the car would die and you had to go through the same process again. I was sitting there fuming after the car had died twice before, thinking "If only I had something to put between the seat and the gas pedal, life would be so much more pleasant". I looked in the back of the car, and there was the rabbit, frozen stiff of course. I picked him up and his forehead was at just the right angle, and his rear toe nails caught the welt on the seat covers and held the car at a perfect 1000 RPM's. My troubles were over. I wasn't any smarter, but I was a lot more relaxed. We of course named him "Harvey". Naturally he was quite the subject of conversation among Karen's work mates. I managed to freeze the engine block and radiator solid before the spring thaw, but I will always think fondly of Snow Shoe Rabbits.
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