I first went to Alaska to go to work in 1975. The pipe line was just getting started pretty good then, and work at home was very poor. Seems that the gasoline shortage took its toll on all construction. I ended up going to work in the oil fields of Prudhoe bay. I went to work there out of the Fairbanks Union Hall.The big job I ended up on and became a foreman and later a General foreman on was the BP gathering centers. This is where the oil from the wells come to before being pumped down the 48" pipeline. It did become very cold there and our job was to build and maintain shelter for the welding. As if the pipe that was welded cooled to fast it would fracture like glass. The extreme temperatures made this a challenge and we arose to the occasion. We also built the utility trenches for the electric and piping to run in from building to building. We made the trenches out of 12"x12" timbers and sealed them in marine mahogany plywood so to keep the thaw water from getting in and then crushing the pipes when it froze. We also built the building we did ceiling tile, doors and hardware, and the likes, but besides the trenches our biggest job was making scaffolding for all the crafts to work on. At our peak we had about 120 carpenters on the site at one time. We worked in 2 - 10 hours shifts with a 1/2 hour lunch period. We also traved back and forth to the man camp to the job site in school buses. When the white outs came the little 15 minute rides became as long as 1 to 2 hours.
I met people from every state in the union and a few from over seas. We had a mixture of many different cultures and construction building types. I had a good time but it was very hard on the workers. Many got frost bite and many, many got home sick . Being away from a town or civilization got to a lot of them, All we did was work and work. Every 9 weeks we got to go home for 2 weeks for R&R. The cold weather made a person so very tired, more so then usual. Working in the artic takes a hard person and one that is pretty well physical fit.
We lived in man camps made up of Trailer units some of which was 2 stories tall with a walk way in the middle. They even had lunch rooms and a movie hall in the camps. The showers and bath rooms was in a seperate unit. All the windows was the double pain glass and very thick walls. Most every room was made up of 2 person rooms. The bigest camp was the Parson prime camp at 1500 man camp. One thing was the food was GREAT. And we did have a rec hall also. TV was taped and we got our programs 1 week late. So when football season was on we knew the scores before the game came on. No one bet on the foot ball games. But there was always gambling going on if you wanted to do that.
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