Speaking of Chester Russel a few episodes back, I told you about his unique background. Then I told you how he stumbled into “Catskinning” (operating a bulldozer) by accident.
In his interview with Earl Brown and Hank Bridgeman Chester remembered details that no book of Alaska Highway history includes. And speaking of Chester’s experience paints a picture of life on the project.
In early spring, on the way to Fort Simpson, Chester and his friend Cecil Elliston encountered a trapper going the other way, heading for Dawson Creek. Learning that the trapper planned to return in a couple of months, Cecil gave him $20 and asked him to bring back a case of whiskey.
The trapper returned with the whiskey as promised, but Cecil had landed in the makeshift Army hospital at Ft. Nelson. Chester and his friends drank the whiskey without him.
Years later, when Chester organized a reunion of friends from the Highway, he all but begged Cecil to attend, planning all those years later to pay back his $20.
Cecil, still angry, refused to come.
On another occasion, not much after the Fort Simpson trip and long before the trapper arrived with Cecil’s whiskey, a ten-wheeler Studebaker truck full of fuel wound up in Ft. Nelson.
Soldiers working up near the Liard River, desperately needed fuel, and an officer commandeered Chester and a Sgt. named Grocke to drive the Studebaker truck up to them. They would drive 180 miles over the very muddy rough draft of a road unspooling behind the lead companies, and Chester hadn’t driven a truck like that before, but what the hell, Grocke probably had.
A couple of hours up the road, Chester offered Grocke a chance to drive. But Grocke, from New York City, had never driven a vehicle in his life, not even a car.
Flabbergasted, Chester negotiated the entire distance to the Liard, slipping and sliding, at ten miles an hour.
The good news? When they finally arrived at the Liard River camp, they put Chester and Gronke’s sleeping bags in a Quonset hut. That night Chester slept in a building—the only time that happened during his entire time in Canada.
I met Chester when he went north I believe it was in 92. It is a good book.
That’s pretty cool. His son contacted me through the blog a few months ago. And we talked on the phone. Chester was still alive but nearing the end. Fascinating life.