Monday Meanderings - 8.20.2018

Jobs in Alaska.

We were already aware that many of the bus drivers and tour guides that we encountered in our Alaska excursions were college kids working a summer job. Some live there year-round - like the bus driver who had a tip jar labeled "Because winter is coming!!" - but most often you ran into summer hires.

We perhaps did not realize the extent of this part-time work force until we set out to venture inland to Denali. The young man and woman who served as our hosts on the rail car were from Idaho. This was his 8th season as a rail guide, and he had talked his girl-friend-now-fiance into joining up a couple of years ago. The bus driver who met us at the train station and delivered us to the lodge lives in Alaska year-round, teaches school in Fairbanks and works as a summer hire "because that's where the money is."

The Princess Denali Wilderness Lodge (and the other Cruise-line lodges, as well as most of the businesses in Healy) are shut down for the winter, and with the exception of a few maintenance workers, everybody goes home in September.

At the Lodge, we noticed a change in the age of the seasonal employees. There were still plenty of college-age workers - mostly in the food venues - but now we encountered a host of older, retirees. Like the woman who drove the shuttle bus at the Lodge. Her sign said "Carol - Flagstaff AZ" She and her husband drive a camper to Denali each Spring, live in an adjacent RV park, and spend the summer driving shuttle buses. The woman who drove our glorified Park Service school bus on the tour of the Park lives in Maine. She makes the trip by herself every year.

All of the drivers have a spiel. Of course that's part of the job description for the train guides and the Park tour guide, but even the shuttle bus driver is quick to carry on a conversation. In part, because it makes driving the Lodge circuit sixty-six times a day (yes, really) more interesting, and in part because it fosters tips.

All of the motor coaches are equipped with hands-free headsets for the drivers, and they take seriously their role as providers of information. Usually it's abut flora and fauna, but the driver on the McKinley to Anchorage portion of the trip gave us a completer and almost unbiased political history of Sarah Palin as we passed through her former home town of Wasilla.

He also told us about the signboard that operates in the winter that keeps a running total of the number of Moose killed by autos on the highway between Wasilla and Anchorage. Last year, more than 300. There apparently is not a signboard for the number of people killed in these encounters. That may say something about Alaskan values. Just saying,

Then there was Carl, the older gentleman who drove the bus from Denali Wilderness down to McKinley State Park. Carl was originally from Louisiana and when he graduated from LSU, he and his new bride responded to an offer to relocate in Alaska and teach school.  It was unclear from Carl's story just when they learned that his school was going to be a one-room all-grades class on an island in the Bering Sea.  Unlike Sarah Palin's boast that "she could see Russia from her back yard," you really could see Russia from this island. In fact, it was closer than the US. Oh, and by the way, you will need a year's supply of food and necessities, and here's a catalog to order what you will need, and a ship will bring it. Eventually.

The contract was for one year. They stayed six. They returned to the "outside," but it was too late. He and his wife live in Alaska year-round now, in Park Service housing, and he drives a bus and tells old codger stories and bad jokes to tourists. Like:

"My wife and I were at the bank in Anchorage and  a gunman burst in and proceeded to hold everyone at gunpoint and rob the place.The gunman asked the teller if she could identify him. She said yes, so he shot her. He asked the person in front of him the same question, and receiving an affirmative answer, shot him. He then asked my wife if she could, and she quickly answered, "No." But then she pointed at me and said, "But he can.""

And Carl is the one who led the bus in singing, "America The Beautiful." At that moment, in that place, it just seemed like the thing to do.