Man On The Scene

Excerpt from Man On The Scene...

The Legendary Jim Fitzgerald

Alaska, 1997

While camped near the town of Hope, Alaska, my friend Dusty Decarlo and I happened upon a man named Jim Fitzgerald. Definitely not a famous man by any stretch, but an authentic man just the same. Alaska conjures up images of grizzly bears, wolves, glaciers, sled teams, wide-open spaces and courageous individuals battling the fierce elements. To be sure, those things and much, much more exist in Alaska. But let us not forget about the many tortured souls who migrate to Alaska in order to escape society and in extreme cases...Reality. Jim falls somewhere in that continuum.

   We were contemplating camping in an abandoned (closed for the winter) campground near a creek. When I say contemplating, we were sitting on a picnic table deciding if we should sleep in the cab of the truck, seats reclined, as we had become quite accustomed to, or if we should actually set up a tent...A proper camp. The capsule idea won out, as it did on many a night during the 37-day, 10,000-mile odyssey from Cleveland, Ohio to Alaska and back. Fact was, we wouldn’t have been in the campground at all if we had to pay. We made a pact in the beginning of the trip that we would pay for neither a hotel room nor a campground space on the entire journey. Which by the way, we succeeded in doing. We ended up with a little extra cash in our pockets and a little extra crust on our bodies due to our every-fifth-day-shower schedule.

   Back to the tale. Like I said we were sitting on this picnic table in southern Alaska, which resembles Ireland in a way, with low-growing vegetation, sparse trees, green grass and an outwardly emerald appearance. Adjacent to the little campsite, ran a small creek. Which is pretty ironic, since there isn’t much about Alaska, which is little. The creek attracted the aforementioned figure, Jim Fitzgerald. He was merely attending to his daily chores. We really didn’t think much of it when he pulled hastily into the parking lot in his battered 1973 Chevrolet truck. Nor when he emerged in tattered clothing, minus the elbows, carrying pots and pans toward the creek. He grunted a greeting and walked into the creek, not to the bank, but directly in (remember it was pretty cold out). In the midst of his dish cleaning, he proceeded to warn us about the terrible itch a man can contract from the creek. “You guys better stay clear of this creek, it gives a man a powerful itch”, he yelled over to us as he stood knee deep in the middle of the current. Maybe he was immune? From that time forward, we’ve always referred to any itch that we incurred as the “Jimmy Itch”.

   After finishing up his chores, Jim flopped down belly first on top of his truck hood and conversed with us for awhile. Jim said that he’d been living in a fifth wheel around the bend a ways for the past several months. “It’s not like I’m homeless or anything; I just don’t have anywhere else to go”. Damn Forest Service is kicking me out soon though”, he stated.

   He told us that he had some sort of a mining claim that he shared with his “big brother”, who was coming back sometime soon to pick him up. We were never quite able to ascertain from what he told us if this “big brother” character, was in fact his real big brother, a friend, or a figment of his imagination? He told us that Wednesday mornings were his favorite...The day a ranger named Donna came by to clean the commodes. “Damn fine looking woman that one, even if she is cleaning shitters for a living”. After shooting the breeze with Jim upon the finer points of National Forest living, he retreated back up to his homestead, inviting us up “later on”.

   After eating dinner (probably a can of beans or some similar generic fare), I loaded up my shotgun (always that threat of a hungry bear or a really stupid grouse) and we hoofed it up to Jim’s camp.

   His trailer was nestled among some trees, partially hidden from view, about three hundred yards upstream from Six-Mile Creek. We no sooner came within proximity of the door, when it jerked wide open and a grizzled hand extended outward for a shake. “How you boys doin‘, my name’s Jim Fitzgerald” (Although I’ve been calling him by name this entire time, in truth we never dispensed with formal pleasantries until this point).

   After introductions, we entered the trailer and I placed my pump shotgun next to Jim’s Bear rifle near the door. Great place Alaska, where it’s just commonplace to carry around firearms. Might have been lighter to carry around a handgun, but the Canucks don’t savvy Yanks transporting them across their borders.

   Jim showed us into his modest trailer and directed us to sit down at the table, where he must have spent countless, lonely hours peering out the windows at the beautiful scenery surrounding him. He could have passed for 70, although he was only in his early fifties. He donned an old blue and gray flannel shirt minus the aforementioned elbows. His affable blue eyes were surrounded by a snowy head of hair and a white beard that extended all the way down his throat like a gizzard.

   He wore glasses, but mainly preferred to peer over them at you instead of through them. Jim proceeded to give us a lecture upon the importance of keeping one’s feet dry. Always a good rule to follow no doubt, especially in Alaska. The odd thing was, he espoused these ideals to us while attired in soaking wet socks and tennis shoes, as we sat there in dry boots and socks. Faint images of To Build a Fire rummaged vaguely through my mind.

   We asked Jim if he wanted a cigar, which he gladly accepted, stating “hell yes I smoke, like to smoke cocaine too, but that’s another story altogether”. Jim possessed quite a hack, and we wondered if he might have been suffering from tuberculosis? Jim recounted his life, stating that he was a Vietnam vet, who had broken his neck twenty years prior by diving headlong into a shallow lake, where he landed ungracefully on a brick. He hadn’t worked since “on account of the pain”. Ironically, he found little difficulty living alone in the wilds of Alaska. Jim said he had “pickled his brain” throughout years of binge drinking and heavy alcohol abuse.

   He was however, a remarkable aviation historian, recounting a horde of specifics and interesting stories. He even possessed a small library on the topic. Jim said he needed to “head back to the valley (Anchorage) before the snow flew”. He was just waiting for his “big brother” to come and pick him up. He never did call this person by name. Just seemed wacky to me that he kept calling him his big brother, something a kid might have said, not a fifty-year old adult?

   Jim offered us some burned, raw-in-the-middle, fluffy, volcano-shaped biscuits, that we graciously declined, having just eaten and all. He said it was the first time the stove in his trailer had ever been fired up. We wondered what the hell he’d been eating for the past three months? He asked us if we desired the lights around the table turned on and we said it didn’t matter. He then proceeded to turn them all on...For about two, silent, tense, nerve-racking minutes. He then quickly turned them off and told us how he jumped the trailer battery with his truck battery and vice-a-versa. And what a pain in the ass it was.

   He then broke into a tale about a couple of “German or Swiss guys that had broke down and fucked his gas situation all to hell”. Apparently these guys had broken down and required a ride into the town of Hope for a part some eight miles away. Jim railed on them for a good ten minutes. Telling us over and over how they disrupted his fragile budget.

   He then relayed a story about a friend that had recently been evicted from his apartment in Anchorage. He said that his friend’s landlady had clearly discriminated against him based on his color. “My friend, he‘s a spade, but he‘s a pretty decent guy.” The bitch said he was sellin’ crack, which he was, but what the hell; she didn’t know that, the whole affair was utter bullshit”, exclaimed Jim.

   Soon thereafter, we felt we had stayed our limit. Knowing something about the realm of hermitness myself, we bid Jim farewell. I don’t know how long, nor if Jim is still alive, as his health was poor, but I wish him well just the same. Just another character that didn’t quite seem to fit into the niche of modern Americana...Whatever that may be.