Gumman Goose N48550

Crocodile Rock is a great Elton John song. The first verse has these words:

I remember when rock was young
Me and Suzie had so much fun
Holding hands and skimming stones
Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own

I went to Alaska when I was 17. I left the day after high school graduation. I weighed about two pounds and had no idea what I was doing. Ruth thinks my mother was crazy to let me go.

My Uncle Harold, Father’s brother, got me a job in the cookhouse at the logging camp at Thorne Bay, the main camp of the Ketchikan Pulp Company. By the time I got there the cook’s job was filled and I became a camp flunky. I was supposed to be a painter. I dried fired hoses in the rain. I helped unload the supply boat every Tuesday in the rain. I roofed in the rain. I put up siding in the rain. I took garbage to the dump in the rain. I even did a little painting in the rain. The Tongass is a rain forest. I took Ruth to Thorne Bay the year after we retired. The camp is gone but there is still some gypo logging on the island.

I was pretty miserable that summer, in 1964, but learned that I could handle most anything. I guess everyone should leave the nest and tough it out, at some point. I was learning to take pictures and Uncle loaned me a 4X5 Speed Graphic. (The negative size is four inches by five inches.) It is a huge camera and I lugged it around and took some pictures. It was also the summer I learned to play the guitar.

Mostly I dreamed. I dreamed of Southern California and girls. I dreamed of getting home. I dreamed of my Chevy. It was black and I spent some of my Alaska money to put dual pipes on it. I also sent my mother, a writer, a posture chair from Sears. She got a baby crib. Think about it.

I dreamed of getting on one of the many planes that landed on the bay daily to bring loggers in and take loggers out. I especially liked the Grumman Goose. It was a quick little two engine plane that came daily. The Gummans were unlike the little Cessnas that bounced along the bay and then skittered into the air. The Grummans roared out a short ways and then took to the air at a steep angle, both engines blowing black smoke. I longed to fly away.

During the move to Colfax, we found my pictures of Alaska. When I saw the one I took of a Grumman Goose getting under way, I decided to type the number N48550 in Google. Bingo, the old girl is still alive and well, owned by Jimmy Buffett.

Here she is in Thorne Bay, in 1964.