I was in attendance at the Grand Opening of the new Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge. Among the invited guests were the local residents of Talkeetna and that is where I first met bush pilot Cliff Hudson. Apparently the guests were told to come as they were; some of them did.
Cliff is a teller of stories, a good teller. He did not repeat himself although he would on occasion chase the rabbit down a different path, but he would come back to his intended subject. He includes details, minute details. Cliff stopped flying 3 years ago, “eye sight,” he said. He is lucky by Alaskan standards--a bush pilot who lived until retirement. His last birthday, “73 or 2, I don’t keep up with that,” he related.
Cliff spoke of a load of chickens which fogged up his windows “to the left of” Denali (Mt. McKinley) and cut his visibility to zero before he realized what was causing it; of being a gandy dancer on the railroad early in his life at Curry, Alaska; of hunting eagles for the bounty (due to their damage to salmon, making the salmon unmarketable); of his particular method of bare handedly suffocating wolverine in the snow. Wolverine are notoriously the meanest, hardest fighting animal per pound of any animal, including bear. As he talked he showed concern for people in the rescues on Denali and other mountains and plane crash rescues. He showed concern for the animals, the bears that have been shot “for no good reason”.
He spoke of his brother who first came to Talkeetna and started the Hudson Flying Service. Because of his brother, Cliff came there, well before statehood, and learned to fly. You could see the hurt in his face as he talked of his brother’s fatal crash on the mountain and the trash and sand found in the fuel tank of his brother’s plane shortly thereafter. In Cliff Hudson I found honesty and honor. He said he had found that cheating and stealing were not required to be successful in business. I find that, above all else, honorable. May he live longer and prosper.
At Nikiski, Alaska, on the Kenai Peninsula, I met Gilbert Veal while he was working on his airplane, a six-place Cessna 206, doing an “annual”. Said he has had it for 24 years. Has four planes in all now. Gilbert says, “With the road system improvements, airplanes aren’t as important in Alaska now - unless you have to travel to the villages.” Gilbert is a mechanic and lifelong missionary--doing what he can as he lives his life. He gave me a book, The Prayer of Jabez.
There have been many books written about Alaskan bush pilots. This is a story of two of them; I feel privileged to have briefly known them.
(Tom Crangle is a Signal Mountain businessman who often visits a land he loves - Alaska.)