Adventure Stories

Alaska Bound

We had not stood more than 15 minutes on a major street with a sign with red lettering which said "ALASKA BOUND" before a pickup stopped. "Hop in!", said a man. "I aint going far but I can take you out of town. Alaska, huh? Wish I could go with you." Out of the city of Lewiston, Maine, we quickly picked up another ride which took us close to the Canadian border. We walked to the Canadian border where we were asked what we were about, how long we were planning to stay and how much money we had. At first we were denied entry because we had only $200 between us. "Insufficient" they said. Then I remembered that I had dual citizenship--I was a Canadian and American citizen. I gave the immigration officer the information he needed. We waited 3 hours before he could check the records and the laws and finally let us through. The $200 was sufficient to allow Joe Caron entry. The rule did not apply to me, since I was a Canadian citizen. We were warned that hitchhiking was illegal in Canada, as it was in the states.

We hiked 5 miles before resuming with the sign. By midnight, we found ourselves in Sherbrook, Quebec, about 200 miles from home. We ate a healthy piece of my mother's fruit cake with a good spread of peanut butter and continued to walk, hopeful that another ride would come. By 1:00 A.M. A van stopped. "Where are you going?" they asked in french. "Alaska" I said (in French). "hop in". We slept all the way to Ottawa, through innumerable stops to drop off newspapers at key points. They were kind enough to take us to the the other side of the city on the outskirts, where our chances for a ride were best. It was not long before a traveling salesman stopped and offered us a deal. Help drive, he said, and we could make it halfway across the country in two days. We did and found ourselves two days later in Regina, a small gold and copper-mining town above the great lakes. People here were not very friendly--very distrustful of strangers. No rides all day but several drivers tried to scare us off the road. One of these drivers continued to come by several times, driving within inches of our bodies. I later recognized him as the man who invited us to stay in his establishment for the night, the constable who gave us each a jail cell so that he could "get a night's rest". In the morning, he escorted us out of town.

We were thankful for the ride. The next ride was with a retired man in a small pickup truck. He wanted Joe to drive--but no more than 40 miles per hour as the cars passed us at 70 miles per hour. I had to ride in the back of the truck with my poncho over my head to keep out the cold rain. How I wished I had a pillow for my rump! On occasion the man would go to sleep and Joe would speed up to 60 miles per hour. The man was generous to his driver and passenger--bought us a meal and let us sleep on the floor of his motel room. On the second day we could take  the snail's pace no longer and thanked him in Saskatoon, Saskatchuan. We were tired and wet. Our gear was damp and it continued to downpour. We set up the ponchos into a tent and bedded down for the night. It was a miserable night with little sleep. We were both edgy. We quickly caught another ride in the morning which took us to Dawson in the Yukon. Here we spent the night at a hotel to lift our spirits. Our skin still burned from the toxic chemicals in the river water where we bathed beneath a bridge in Regina.

We tossed a coin for the first to use the tub. While I took a nice hot bath, Joe went out and bought us a nice chinese meal. In the morning we were rejuvenated and in high spirits again.

We did not really experience many significant events so far on this journey but somehow time had become distorted. It felt like we had been on the road for months and we somehow felt like we had assimilated more knowledge than we could recognize. For sure we had seen things which we had never before seen like the inside of a jail, the intimidations of a constable, the chemical burns from a toxic river bath, the midwest desert of wheat and endlessly boring roads, the replacement of the beautiful eastern trees like the paper-birch and maple by poplars. We saw rivers of caterpillars which were so thick on the highway as to make driving and walking hazardous. We met friendly young waitresses drawn by the allure of adventure, vicariously taking the trip with us away from their humdrum lives. We drank much free coffee loaded with sugar and cream. We met people of Russian, French, English, Chinese, and Swedish decent and many Native Americans. I really felt sad for the man and his family in Sault St.Marie. They had a beautiful expensive camper on the back of a pickup-truck. The fuel pump had failed. He jury-rigged a can of gasoline under the hood to gravity-feed his engine. As he started the engine the can exploded under the hood spreading the instant fire all over the front of the cab. They barely had time to evacuate with the two children before everything went up in flames. The woman tongue-lashed that man without mercy before the crying children. What a way to spend a vacation. We saw a car hit a bear which rolled over the hood and flattened the top of the car, locking in the passengers in the overturned vehicle. No one was seriously hurt. The victim bear lay in the road suffering for an hour before being dispatched by the bullet of an RCMP. We only saw small events in a slowly turning world but strangely felt older and wiser, as if we could see things through new spectacles.

I shall never forget the marker in the form of an obelisk at the center of  Dawson. Here visitors  would hang a sign to show where they were from. The traffic island was littered with signs--a legacy of people from around the world. We felt that a new chapter of  adventure was before us--past this Mile Zero Post on the Alaskan Highway.

Richard Nadeau

Sardines?
What will happen next? What can I do? As I peered through the sunlight filtering through the cracks, I huddled in the sandbox at mile XXX (my memory is fuzzy as to mileage) on the Alaskan Highway. It was past midnight in this land of the midnight-sun and I had given up hope that a car would come.

Now I wished that Joe was with me. We had split up at the hot springs thinking that we would have better luck getting rides. We had agreed to meet at a hotel in Dawson in two days. Right now I had little hope of seeing Joe or my family again.

It was total silence except for  my pounding heart and my stifled breath -- and the sniffing and grunts outside.

I don't know why I took refuge in the sandbox. I knew better but did it anyway, not knowing what else I could do. For the past two miles, since opening the can of sardines, I knew that something was following me. Only twice did I hear muffled sounds of breaking twigs. Once, I saw motion through the trees.

It was an eternity before I heard the sound of an approaching car. As the sound grew louder, I listened for the sniffing and grunts. Nothing. I waited. As the car was approaching within 200 feet, I lifted the cover of the sandbox and popped out, waiving my arms and hollering. The car came to a halt. Three innebriated young men and Two women couldn't believe their eyes! "Wow!" the driver said looking at me, "Did you see that Grizzly? He musta weighed 800 pounds."

I was very happy to see Joe at the hotel in Dawson. He had pictures to develop and show me. They were of a sow black bear and cubs which he treed after being frightened from his tent.
Richard Nadeau

Hobo sapiens

Richard in the red hat, Joe on the right in Hobo Jungle.

On August 31, 1962, (my 22 birthday) at a time of high unemployment, I along with Joe Caron, who had just returned from his service in the military, decided to tour the country. With $100 each and a 20 pound knapsack of gear and provisions, we hitchhiked from Maine to Alaska in a loop which entered Canada in the East to Alaska, then south by freight train along the Pacific coast and then on  Route 66 across the South and hence North on Route 1 along the Atlantic.

We beat the U.S. mail to Alaska, making it in 10 days. It took 11 days for the postcard which I sent from Alaska to arrive in Mine. The total trip lasted 8 weeks. We  primarily lived off the land (raiding fruit trees and farmer's acreage as we traveled). We bathed in the streams and rivers and filling-station restrooms. We visited the state and national parks along the way and attended the World's fair in Seattle, Washington.

The trip has always been memorable for both of us for the beauty we saw on this continent,  the diversity of people and their outlook on life, the richness of fauna and flora, and what we learned along the way. The most important lessons which I learned was that one can survive quite comfortably with very little and that I did not want the humdrum life of most people living in 'tickytacky houses on tickytacky streets'.

I probably learned more from Hobo sapiens then any other group of people. The West coast (at that time, anyway) was very tolerant of  hobos since it's history owes a great deal to them. Only in the West were hobos allowed to hop freight. The South put them on chain gangs. The East beat them and the North chased them away. Hobo sapiens were a very diversified group of only the male gender, representing ministers without a church, prisoners without a prison, teachers without a school, doctors  and lawyers without an office, workers without employment, dreamless dreamers, voyagers without a goal, and so on... They differ from bums and vagrants in that they were constantly on the move, mostly by freight train,  and were as a group more diversified. They hopped freight from mission to mission for warm food and bedding and lived in hobo "jungles" between. These "jungles" were located just outside the loading areas of freight yards under cover of trees or bridges. They were comfortable areas, often containing old car seats, sofas, beds, makeshift fireplaces, firewood. It was an understood rule to add something to the site, such as firewood, and always leave it clean. People came and went with the movement of the trains, which could only be boarded after the train was in motion and had to be exited when the train came at halt--to avoid being bludgeoned by nightsticks of watchmen. The hobo is essentially a solitary creature, sometimes traveling in pairs, although found in groups. They were very helpful to us, telling us which areas to avoid, missions that offered the most, trains to hop for our destination, schedules and dangers to avoid. Most were very well dressed, many in suitcoats, sportjackets, and shoes with a spit-polish. They were always clean, shaven, and always carried a newspaper or two.

The newspaper was the single most important possession to the hobo, more than the jackknife or match. He  used them for pillows, covered his sleeping head, stuffed them in his clothing for warmth, used them to start fires, read them, patched the soles of his shoes with them, used them as table mats for his meals, as insulation to hold a hot can of coffee, used them for sanitary needs, and even used them to brush his teeth and wash with after rinsing off the newsprint. He often carried a small paper bag with coffee and a little food. The coffee was his main beverage. In two weeks traveling with many, I never once saw one with an alcoholic beverage. He took particular care in the making of the coffee. An appropriately-sized clean can was filled with water and put on the fire. As soon as the water started a boil, the can was removed and the coffee grounds were added. The can was then quickly rocked in the hand so as to make a cumulative wave in the center of the can. Foam was produced, at which time the can was set down on a newspaper to allow the grounds to settle. The can was covered. After 10 to 15 minutes the best coffee in the world was sipped to warm our hands,  hearts and the soles of  our feet.

Richard Nadeau

A Glorious Hole

My buddy, Joe Caron, and I before hiking down the Canyon.

"Clicaty.....clicaty.....clicaty.....clicaty".  The monotonous sound of  the hot iron wheels on the joints of the iron rails seemed to count the spans of time as we headed toward our immediate objective--The Grande Canyon. "Why in hell do you want to go see that infernal hole in the ground?" asked my hobo neighbor in the dusty box car. "Just curious", I  said in amazement. I had read a bit on the geological history of this Chasm and wanted to hike down through the two billion years of Earth history. I wish that I could have stayed longer to see and experienced more. Standing on the edge and looking over the immensity of it all and hiking the Kaibab trail can only be called a "religious" experience. It took Joe and I just 3 hours to hike to the Colorado river, even allowing for time to poke into rattlesnake holes and upturning stones in search of scorpions. As we walked the dust on our clothers and faces reflected the colors of the rainbow marking the layers of  Earth history. We camped along the river at the bottom and fished using the scorpions for bait. We were the only humans there for the two days and shared our space with the unhurried Mule deer that made us feel that life was superficial in this inverted mountainscape.The ascending trip was much longer! We took advantage of the numerous rest stops to study and collect fossils along the trail. We found an incredible record of  ancient life that made us resolved to visit the Smithsonian for more information.

Life takes on new meaning in experiencing such places. The telling of it only frustrates. It needs to be experienced.

Richard Nadeau

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