In country: Part I

In his 1976 book, Coming into the Country, John McPhee captured Alaska. I came into Alaska in 1977. I had just finished undergraduate work at Indiana University at Indianapolis. I was 38.

After high school and time in the USAF, including assignment in Libya, I worked 11-12 years in Midwest factories. Jobs included laborer, apprentice pattern maker, pattern repairman, mold shop machinist, and while in college, machinist in the Indiana University Medical Center’s Orthotics Lab.

At IUPUI—it was a combination campus with Purdue University—I used part of my GI benefits to get a writing degree. My extra curricular activity included writing for the college newspaper, the Sagamore. During my last semester, Spring of 1977, I looked at job offers in Alaska wherever I could find them. One seemed to be continually open; it was a writing job advertised in the Editor and Publisher periodical. It was a part time newspaper work with the Susitna Sentinel.

Our children and I joined my first wife in Anchorage on July 22, 1977. She had finished her degree in nursing the previous December and headed to Alaska early in the year.

In late August, I went to work for Thor Brandt-Erichsen, owner and publisher of the Susitna Sentinel. Thor also worked full time at Color Art, a print shop in Anchorage. Working for Thor provided the best introduction to Alaska a flatlander could want.

My reporter’s beat was Palmer to Cache Creek on the Parks Highway. It included photo work. I had purchased my first 35mm camera while in Libya in 1958. My first real Alaska experience, Termination Dust came to the Chugach Mountains on Labor Day, September 5, in 1977.

The printing was done by a Linotype machine which at that time was fading from use worldwide. With Linotype each line in a story is cast in hot lead and set in story order. Lead spacers were used to arrange stories to print. The technology was nearly 100 years old in 1977 having been patented in 1884.

The Sentinel came off the press on Wednesday night as I recall for distribution on Thursdays. I drove Anchorage to Palmer to Cache Creek once or twice a week.

One trip, Nancy, Thor’s wife, guided me to the distribution points along the route. She introduced me to community leaders and writers and advertisers.

As she drove us north along about Mile Post 118 on the Parks Highway a black bear lunged across the road and into the woods.

Nancy stopped the car, but the bear was gone,. No photos of bear were taken that day.

In addition to covering news, Sentinel distribution soon became one of my tasks along with picking up advertising copy and stories from community members along the route. Covering the Capital Site Planning Commission meetings was one of the more interesting and time consuming stories in 1978. Personal comment here: a state that does not have its Capital on the highway system is not a state with government by or for the people.

Part II will report a few experiences that coming into the country provided.

Budd Goodyear is a local freelance writer who has had articles and photos included in publications throughout the state. Goodyear moved to Alaska in 1977 with his wife and children, and has worked in the Valley, Anchorage and Palmer. Goodyear contributes historical pieces to the Frontiersman.