Alaska, second segment.

The picnic was a one day event. The 4th of July was on a wednesday, so the next day it was back to the real world, driving nails, framing houses, not knowing that one day in the not too distant future, I would be driving big trucks instead of driving nails.

During the Christmas Holidays, I visited the home of a family I had been around since little league, the Hodges. Robert and Danny had played L L baseball at the same ballpark and we’ve  been friends ever since.

David, an older brother was home from Alaska , where he worked for a company that handled food service for all the camps on the Alaska pipeline south of Fairbanks. We were listening to his story’s of his experiences on the pipeline, when he mentioned he could not get good help up there. Robert and I looked at each other and said problem solved. We told him we’d be glad to come to Alaska and be the good help he so badly needed.

Robert, my older brother James, another friend named Moreno and I were ready to leave in a week. We traveled  out to Anaheim, then on up to Seattle, in a gold 4-door Buick. Robert sold it in Seattle and we caught a plane to Anchorage, then on up to Fairbanks.

We took a little over a week to get there, and while we were traveling , the Environmental Department of Alaska had made the determination that the sewage facilities in the camps were inadequate for the amount of personnel living in the camps south of Fairbanks, so they shut them down.

We shifted to survival mode. We rented two rooms in a motel, The Tamarac Inn, that was probably built in the 1920’s. After a couple weeks, David called his brother and said he could hire one person, so the next day, Robert left for the big money.

A few days later the motel doubled the rates, to get the people already staying,  to move out, so the pipeline personnel could move in, as Alyeska, the pipeline company, was footing the bill.

My brother James, Moreno, and I slimmed down to one room with 2 single beds and a rollaway. Moreno and I hired on with Haliburton, working in a warehouse where we mixed three components together in a big hopper to make a special cement for caseing the wells on the North Slope, that would expand when heated without cracking. It was necessary to heat the oil so it would flow easier.

James had gone to this church, and met the young preacher and his wife, and they had him over for Sunday lunch. He told them our story and they said there were two bedrooms upstairs we could stay in, just put a hundred dollars in the basket each week and that would be enough. Couldn’t have worked out any better for us. We were able to live comfortably and save some money. Turns out the preacher had to do the janitor work, so we took that over as well, as a show of appreciation.

One Saturday I was walking about town and noticed a poster that said there was a seminar that night that was going to touch on spirituality and psychic abilities. I immediately got excited. I am an intense spiritual person, and open to such thangs. I let the substance and the way it makes me feel, and a little discernment, be my guide in such matters. At the very least it would be interesting.

The school where it was being held was just a short walk from the house, and made shorter as a result of the excitement and anticipation I was felling, finally having something to do, and maybe meet some folks.

There was a good sized crowd when I arrived, with only a couple of seats left on the front row. I normally set in the back at such gatherings because if there is audience participation, it usually comes from the front. Now I had to make a choice. I didn’t want to stand up through the whole thang, so I walked down to the front row and took a seat, risking audience participation.

My Mother, who had made transition in 1972, had been spending a lot of time with me in my dreams, very vivid dreams, since I had been in Alaska. When the woman presenting the seminar was introduced, I was stunned at how closely she resembled my Mother.

Her presentation techniques made everyone comfortable, and there was a lot of audience participation, which created a high level of energy.

At the end, she said she would give private readings down stairs for 20 bucks. For twenty bucks I was all in. I joined her and told her my name was Michael. The first few minutes she spent telling me about my name. Then she started talking about guardian angels. She said everyone has one, most have two, she said I have six I could call on anytime. Well I’m thinking, maybe so, maybe no. I couldn’t prove her wrong, and she couldn’t prove she’s right, but it felt good, so I was Ok with that.

The session lasted about twenty minutes, a buck a minute, it all sounded good to me, so I thanked her for a wonderful evening of entertainment, paid my 20 bucks, and I was gone. For a five dollar cover charge and 20 dollar bill, it was a very, very interesting evening.

A couple nights later, Moreno came upstairs at two in the morning, and woke James and me up. Said we needed to come down to the church parking lot, the Northern lights are happening bigtime. Sure enough, we get down to the parking lot and look up, and there they are, a most wonderful  sight to behold. Mareno, who had not smoked a cigarette in 3 years, turned to James and said , I think I need one of your cigarettes.

There was one very complete, a colorful curtain across the sky, complete with trim on each end, like the curtain on a presidium stage. There was another one that was halfway across the sky and had the same patterns as the first one. By the time the second one was complete, another one had started across the sky. This went on for a good hour. There were five in all, right above us and we could look between them. They were so complete and perfectly semetrical, with magnificent colors, and movements. I could even hear them crackle. I have never seen a picture of the Northern Lights as complete as these. Truly a once in a lifetime experience.

During the next few nights, I had a couple of dreams that seemed to have a continuity between them. In both dreams I was unloading equipment, moving equipment around on a stage, setting up equipment, and loading trucks. Both dreams lingered through the next day and left me with the feeling and excitement that I was going to be in the music bid’ness.

It gets better folks, join in and enjoy.                                                                                                                                    Michael, AKA “The Happy Texan”

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