Two Updates

First Update:

 

Pablo has an appointment next week with He-Who-Shall-Not-be-Named to continue our search into why Pablo's air sacs are extended.   That's what I'm calling the guy in Anchorage who will administer a sedative (that should be interesting!) and then, when the beak is no longer a consideration, deflate my inflated bird.


Once that is accomplished, He-Who-Shall-Not-be-Named will take a blood sample from Pablo's jugular vein (ACK! ACK! ACK!).  Said blood sample will tell us what we need to know, including whether or not I need to feminize Pablo's name.

Please don't tell Pablo about this.   Although, I suspect my anxiety about the procedure will let him in on the whole deal.

YOU AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE WITHOUT ME!   Pablo camps on the hated Teal jacket.

Second Update:

The Good News:

A total jackpot of $318,500 has been gathered, all with the sale of guessing tickets at $2.50 each, for the Nenana Ice Classic.

This is one of a very few lotteries we have and of course it's guessing the time to the second that the ice moves the four-legged tripod on the Tanana River in Nenana  far enough to trip the timer.

I'll have to do some research.  I can't think of any other statewide lotteries up here.   Raffles, yes.  Casinos, no.  Lotteries?   Hmmm.   After the wild and wooly territorial days, there was a big Federal clampdown on gambling.  Old Stuffy-Heads.


The bad news:

It's going to be a while before that little town of Nenana has its 15 minutes of fame.   As of yesterday, the ice was 49.2 inches thick and showed no signs of melting on the top.

The Nice Day for a Drive Journals, Ch. 6, Nenana on the Tanana

We need to be rolling along on this road trip we’re making, otherwise you aren’t going to care one whit about the next town we’re going to visit.

Why should you care about it anyway, you ask?   Because any day now, this little settlement that straddles the Parks highway is going to have its annual 15 minutes of fame and someone will be a third of the way to being a millionaire.   Or, maybe a whole bunch of people will become flush enough to pay their property taxes this year, which is what my mother once did.

The town I’m talking about is Nenana.   Blink and you miss it.  Not to worry--the bridge will wake you up.   The bridge is at the juncture of the Nenana and Tanana Rivers.  This is going to get confusing.

There’s something very peculiar about this town.   See this:  Nenana  and Tanana.   They look like they  rhyme, don’t they?   They don’t.  Nenana is pronounced Nee-NAH-nuh.   Tanana is TAH-nuh-naw. 

The tripod on the ice and the highway bridge.

Here’s the tricky part:  Nenana is located on the banks of the Tanana River, mostly.  The other part of it is on the Nenana River.

Early in March of every year, a bunch of cabin-fever-crazed people gather on the Tanana River in Nenana.  Out on the ice of the Tanana River, pockets are cut into the ice and a tripod (which is really a quadropod, but who’s counting?) laid on the ice.   Then, all those crazied people grab hold of ropes and pull until that four-legged tripod (!) is standing upright.   Then they all drink.....hot chocolate, of course, because it's fifty below zero and mighty cold out there.

Now, is that a tripod, a quadropod, or--counting the smaller interior supports--an octopod?

Buckets of water are poured into the pockets, which will freeze in thirty seconds and hold the four-legged tripod in place.   A cord is attached to the four-legged tripod.   The other end is attached to a timer.

Then everybody goes home to wait a couple more months.

Along comes spring, the Nenana and Tanana rivers start to thaw, and BINGO!  The ice on the Tanana River “goes out,” moving the tripod downstream which makes the cord tighten and trip the timer and somebody becomes one-third of a millionaire because he happened to buy a ticket and guess the correct time all of the above takes place.

Or not.  Lots of people form pools, and frequently a bunch of people all guess the correct time –to the month, day, hour, minute, and second—and the pot is shared amongst all of them.  Like I mentioned, my mother guessed a time of her birthday and won enough to pay her Anchorage property taxes one year.

Then everyone forgets about Nenana until next March when the crazies come out of winter hibernation and it starts all over again, carrying on a tradition that started, as many things do in Alaska, as a barroom bet.

Oh, and here’s one more thing:   It’s called the Nenana Ice Classic, except the ice is the Tanana River, not the Nenana River, which is under the bridge (or across the highway).

So, any day now.   

At the time I made this original ice trip—late March—the ice was 48 inches thick.

This is from Wikipedia, but it was  written by an Alaskan so it's probably true.  Then again, this is a betting game, so maybe it isn't:

The Ice Classic began as an ice betting pool in 1906 with six entries: Adolph Nelson, Jim Duke, Gunnysack Jack, Jonesy, Louis and Joe Johnson, and the first winner, Oliver Lee.^[1] After coming the closest to betting on breakup of the Tanana ice, Lee won an equivalent amount of "a couple of rounds at the trading post bar."^[1] The ice pool subsequently became inactive until 1916.^[1] In that year, railroad workers revived the betting through ticket sales at Jimmy Duke's Roadhouse, but limited the betting to Nenana residents.^[1] After word of the lottery spread to towns along the local railroad by Alaska Railroad Commission workers, the lottery was opened up to residents of the Alaska and Yukon territories in 1917.^[1]

In 1917, railroad engineers bet $801 on when the ice would break. In 2009 the 93rd annual prize money was $283,723. Since the Classic's beginning in 1906 over 10 million dollars in prize money has been given away.

Last year nearly 280,000 guesses were made on a record jackpot of $350,000 and only one winner, Thomas Waters, emerged with the correct time of 7:39 p.m. on April 23. Waters walked away with $242,000 after taxes.   (It also paid out about $30,000 to charities."




And one more thing as we leave Nenana and head north to Fairbanks (which the Tanana River runs through), here's a photo of the sun with sun dogs on each side.

A Town Called Nenana

I've been workin' on the railroad....

Actually, not me after all. My dad. My dad worked on the railroad from June of 1948 until he retired thirty years later. I came close. In the late winter of 1976, I was standing in the employment office of the Alaska Railroad, handing in my sure-thing application to be a cook on the railroad for the summer extra gangs.

Then came a phone call from my mother. The dispatcher at the Operating Engineers Union hall in Fairbanks had called and offered me a job on the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline. And that simple phone call changed my life. But, that's another story. Today's story is about a small part of the Alaska Railroad, and a continuation of my trip to Fairbanks over last weekend.

There have been almost 500 wildfires in Alaska this year, and many of them are still active. The largest, the Railbelt Complex fire south of Fairbanks, has burned more than a half million acres and remains out of control.

As I neared the town of Nenana, sixty-five miles from Fairbanks, I saw what looked like a large black rain cloud, so my hopes rose about avoiding the smoke I’d heard was limiting visibility. If it was raining, I thought the rain would lessen the smoke.

Eventually, I realized the black cloud was smoke. A temperature inversion layer was holding the smoke close to the ground, and I entered the smoky area before I reached Nenana.

With the discovery of gold in the Fairbanks area in 1902, miners rushed to the Interior. A trading post/roadhouse was established in 1903 at what became the town of Nenana. St. Mark's Episcopal Mission and school was built in 1905.

I want to tell you something about Nenana.

There is a town called Nenana, pronounced Nee–NAN-uh. There is a town called Tanana, pronounced TAN-uh-naw.

There is a river called Nenana. There is a river called Tanana. The Tanana River runs through Nenana and empties into the Nenana River.

Nenana sponsors the annual Nenana Ice Classic, a game of guessing when the ice will go out on the Tanana River. Go figure.

Legend says two bored railroad workers in 1915 started the whole thing by starting a pool on when the ice would go out.Actually, with the winner getting more than $300,000 in prize money,who cares what the town and river are called? My mother, along with a number of other people, won one time with a guess on her May 5 birthday. She said she got enough to pay her Anchorage property taxes for that year.

Each winter a huge tripod is placed on the ice, frozen into place, and a wire attached to a clock mechanism. Once the tripod has moved a hundred feet with the out-going ice, the ice is declared “out” and spring is here. So, for two bucks a ticket, you place your guess and you takes your chances.Wanting to get a photo of the tripod, I pulled off the highway, drove down the main street of Nenana, and parked next to the Railroad Museum that’s located on the banks of the Tanana River.

Then I visited the Railroad Musuem. The Alaska Railroad played a prominent part in the history of Alaska. From its inception in Seward in 1903 as the Alaska Central Railroad, it was owned and operated by the federal government, eventually becoming the Alaska Railroad. With crews working north from Fairbanks and also from the south, the golden spike was driven at Nenana in 1923 with President Warren Harding attending the ceremony.

The president left Alaska, and died of food poisoning in San Francisco. Just thought I’d throw in that little tidbit.

In the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964, damage to the railroad was estimated at $30 million, with a substantial portion of that in Seward where the rail terminal was hit by a tsunami. The railroad was up and running within two weeks.

Ownership of the railroad was ceded to the state in 1985. Since then, it has become a symbol of pride for the state. It hauls a tremendous amount of freight, and has been declared one of the best passenger railroads in the country. Recently I heard on the news that the ride between Seward and Portage has been named the premier train excursion in the U.S. I took that ride some years ago, and though I am almost jaded by the incredible scenery around me, I found that to be a jaw-dropping excursion.

The railroad has been important to the town of Nenana also, so it is fitting that the museum is located in the old station house there.

I found a number of interesting things inside, including a framed newspaper front page bearing the tragic news of the plane crash that killed Will Rogers and Wiley Post in northern Alaska in 1935.

In a glass display case, there are two old concertinas. I took pictures of them and e-mailed the photos to my friend Polka Dan as soon as I could.

A tiny cook stove that probably burned coal or wood.

There was also a newspaper with a photo of a white moose.

And a “telephone” that looks like a character in a Pixar movie.

With a last look around Nenana, I pointed the truck and trailer north and headed out of town, over the bridge spanning the Tanana River that runs through Nenana. That's the old station house, to the right of the crane, which houses the museum. Click on this photo to enlarge it to full screen and you'll see St. Mark's church left of the crane, and the top of the black and white tripod left of that.

The smoke from wildfires became more pronounced, looking like a thin, low-lying ground fog, but smelling of burning wood. Once I reached the top of a ridge that runs towards Fairbanks, I glanced over my left shoulder and saw this:

And into the Valley of Death rode the Five Hun.... No, it was just Pablo and me, actually.

(to be continued)