Harmon and Randall's Voyage…

One is encouraged to discount the advice of others simply by examining the quality of his own. Recently I sent a note to Pinocchio, a boat on the Northwest Passage that would make ahead of us the Canadian harbor of Tuktoyaktuk (known generally as Tuk, pronounced “tuck”), with advice on how best to take fuel there. Pull up to the most southerly pier in front of the Northern general store and jerrycan your fuel from their pumps a mere one-hundred feet away, I wrote. Then I provided a screen shot with handy arrows pointing to the relevant land marks. 

This advice was based on my 2014 and 2019 experiences of taking fuel in this hamlet, located some 500 miles east of Point Barrow, population 977. The advice was wrong in all respects. For starters, the handy screen shot I’d sent to Pinocchio was of a pier and a store in an entirely different part of town. For another, when Moli arrived in front of the Northern store, we found that the pier I’d used previously had been demolished and the store’s pumps shut down. 

So much for expert advice. 

Mo is now moored to a dilapidated pier ahead of the one I’d anticipated and was, yesterday, faced with the challenge of transporting her sixteen jerrycans to a local filling station of unknown location and distance–a problem solved by having her skipper ask the Northern store manager for guidance on both counts with the hopes that someone within ear shot would be a pick-up-owning Good Samaritan. This is how I met Tom and Dave.

Tom was just buying a lottery ticket when I made my questions to the manager in a voice I hoped would carry, and Tom offered to help if I could find no one else. We both turned to look for other customers; finding none, Tom took up his commitment. 

Outside sat Dave in the driver’s seat of a mud-caked white pickup.

“You did what?” asks Dave in disgust.

“We’ll just drop this guy off, Dave. He’s on a boat. He needs to top up some fuel. I told him we’d help,” says Tom.

“Of course you did. Of course! And where’s he supposed to sit, eh?” says Dave with an expression suggesting a man suffering from hemorrhoids.

I look in the pickup to see that all seats save Tom’s are taken by large, unsmiling men. 

“Tom, you’re the littlest, you’ll have to sit on someone’s lap, of course,” says Dave. There is universal grumbling and some shifting in the front seat. I climb in the back.

We stop at the boat to load the jerrycans and then are off.

“Where you from?” asks Tom as we drive.

“California,” I say.

“You taking pills for that?” asks Tom. Everyone chuckles except Dave, who says, “California! I suppose next you’ll say you’re from San Francisco or Los Angeles. I hear you can’t even cross the street there without tripping over a vagrant. And your taxes…!” He lets the latter remark trail off as too obvious to clarify. 

“I been to San Francisco once, Dave. It was a pretty nice town.” says Tom.

“But who can live there, Tom?” asks Dave. “I mean really LIVE there. So many people. You couldn’t pay me…”

“You know,” I reply, “some of us gotta live there cause you fellas sure won’t.” This is affirmed by head shaking and a low chorus of “Damned right.”

Tom explains that the truck’s occupants are part of a crew of twelve on a tug and barge that just pulled into town. Their recent job has been to offload a tanker anchored in a protected bay 30 hours steaming to the west. The tanker is so far away because water in these parts is so shallow. “Usually we work the Mackenzie River bringing goods down, but this is our second year of drought; ain’t no tug traffic on the river this year; it ain’t deep enough now” says Dave.

We pull up to the filling station, a pump situated near a large tank and a shack with “Bob’s Welding” painted on the side in large block letters. All of the tug crew except Dave bail out to unload the jerrycans while I talk to the attendant, who states he has missed a recent fuel delivery and so only has 300 liters left to sell. Do I want those? That is the amount I need, but I don’t want to take from the bottom of the tank. 

“You did what?” asks Dave.

“Dave, the man can’t take the dregs, could be dirty fuel. You know that! I said we’d take him to the other filling station.”

“Of course you did! And where is this damned place anyway?” No one knows except one of the crewmen who suggests it could be a tank near a trailer near the airport, where I am dropped fifteen minutes later after we’ve nosed down several dead ends.

“Thanks for the lift and I’ll find my way back to town,” I say. Tom looks hesitant. 

“Tom, we gotta get the crew back aboard,” says Dave by way of agreeing to my proposal.

Filling stations in Tuk are called “gas bars,” this one, E. Gruben’s Gas Bar. I remove jerry lids and line up the cans for the attendant who mans the hose. He explains that E. Gruben was a town elder who was here before there was gas and who opened this and the now defunct workman’s dorm in back before the attendant was born. “It’s such a nice building,” says the attendant of the dorm. The doors are boarded up; siding is pealing away; some windows have been broken. “When I was a kid, I used their Jacuzzi. And they’d serve me hot food from the cafeteria. The workers are all gone now…when oil went bust.”

“I need some way to get these jerries back to town,” I say. “Do you have a taxi service in Tuk?” The attendant frowns. Yes, there is a taxi, “but her vehicle is such a little Subaru; I don’t think Ilene couldn’t take all these cans. It’s only $7 one way, so maybe you can make some trips?” 

“You know anyone with a pickup?” I ask.

“Maybe I have a friend,” says the man taking his phone from his pocket. 

Just then I see the now familiar mud-caked white pickup pull up to the gas bar, empty of crew. Dave is frowning at me from the driver’s seat window. Tom hops out to load jerries. I throw him a questioning look and then a smile of relief. “Didn’t expect to see you guys again.”

“Yes, I know. Just say it’s cause we’re Canadian,” he says. “We’re taking pills for that!”