THE EDUCATION OF A CAMP COOK

"I'm a cook," I announced confidently to the union dispatcher in Anchorage. "I'm looking for work."

"Cook, huh?" She looked me over like if you've seen one greenhorn you've seen 'em all and referred me to a long list of names on a clipboard. "You'll have to sign up on that sheet with the rest of 'em."

With sinking hopes I looked at the list of about thirty names. Next to each name the applicant had written down the kind of cooking job he was qualified for. And each one had written in the mysterious words "BULL COOK." The term sounded ominously professional. I figured that was the end of any hopes I had of getting sent out on a big-paying camp job.

How naive I was to think a city boy like me could come up here and compete with all these veteran bull cooks, these old time sourdoughs who knew all about baking bread and cooking moose underground packed in mud.

I was ready to drag my carcass back to the lower forty-eight. But I added my name to the list anyway, and timidly followed it with the single pomposity: "Chef." Oh, how these Alaskans would laugh upon seeing that title. It was like walking into a Russian tractor factory and applying for a job as a seamstress. "Oh yeah, cheechako, let's see ya skin a moose!"

I was plenty worried. Suppose I did get sent out on a camp job. I'd look great out in the bush stirring beans over an open fire with the snow falling off trees and putting my fire out. Then some woodsman would probably drag a grizzly into camp and want me to cook it underground with a secret method known only to bull cooks. They'd laugh me out of camp. I wondered if you were supposed to take the hair off it first.

Two days later, with no offer from the union and my money running low, I was preparing to call the airport and head for the lower 48. The phone in my room rang. It was the union dispatcher. "I've got a job that pays fifteen hundred a week but they've run off the last three characters I sent out. They're a little rough on cooks. You want the job?"

"Is there a mustache in Iraq? When do I start?"

"You fly out to Nome tomorrow morning on Air Alaska. When you get to Nome you grab a charter out to someplace called Granite Mountain. That's a hundred and fifty miles out of Nome."

"What about tickets?" I asked. "I'm just about broke."

"The company's paying for all that. You just be there."

"What happened to all those bull cooks who signed up ahead of me?"

"Bull cooks?" she said. "You ARE from outside. Hell, all the bull cooks do is wash dishes and make beds. No, these guys want a real cook, and you're the only one signed up."

I hung up, amazed that they were going to spend all that money on plane tickets for a big phony like me who was sure to be unmasked the minute I showed up. I just had time that afternoon to rush out and buy a couple of how-to books on camp cooking. I opened the first book and read the blurb:

"CAMP COOK'S INCREDIBLE TALE OF HEROISM! The heroic tale of Sourdough Bill McCrafty, veteran of hundreds of lost expeditions, who snow-shoed out alone to rescue THE LOST JAPANESE EXPEDITION from a Frozen Hell, even though he lost both feet to frostbite doing it. Then this incredible man of steel ran down a polar bear, strangled it with his bare hands and cooked it underground wrapped in sourdough puffpaste! And Sourdough Bill had only one match with him too.”

I opened up another book. "CAMP COOK KNIGHTED BY QUEEN! The nerve-shredding tale of Sourdough Jack McGurk, the 80-year-old veteran who survived 90 Days Of Frozen Hell on an ice floe! Unbelievably, this magnificent example of Arctic culinary pluck actually chopped off his own foot to free himself from a bear trap. Then in his struggle back to civilization this iron man happened across the LOST BRITISH EXPEDITION. It seems the Brits had run out of tea. Touched by their plight, this tough miracle-man struggled 280 miles through a raging blizard to get the tea, then returned to the starving British and cooked them a walrus underground. ‘Hell,’ said Sourdough Jack, ‘I knew they couldn't make it out there without no tea! And I only had one match to cook that walrus, too!”

Next morning, just like I knew what I was doing, I caught a two-engine prop job at Anchorage and flew out to Nome. The Nome Airport was 25 below and I was still shivering in cowboy boots and a thin jacket. Carrying my small suitcase, I met the pilot of the single-engine Cessna at the strip. He looked me over doubtfully and noted my cowboy boots. I think he could see right off he thought maybe I was the sole survivor of the 1908 Swedish Disaster.

"I'm Bubba," he told me. "Dead Stick Bubba." (I knew his name wouldn't be Theodore the Timid) "You the cook for Granite Mountain?"

Shivering in the wind, I managed to silence my chattering teeth long enough to admit it.

"By God,” said Bubba, “if this don't look like it's gonna be another short trip. Where's your gear?" I held up the small suitcase. He shrugged his shoulders. "I guess you know what you're doin'''. Climb on board then."

When we got in the air, Bubba said, "They're sure gonna be glad to see you -- if you know what you're doing, that is. I'm gettin' tired of flying cooks out there and havin''' to go pick them up again next day. Everyone of 'em lookin''' like a whipped dog, too."

This cheery news just about finished off whatever confidence I had left. What kind of a crafty old veteran of the Frozen North were they expecting? And what did they do with impostors out there in the bush? I hoped the trip would be a long one. I'd brought along my books and wanted plenty of time to look them over. I concentrated on a chapter called "THE GREAT NOME MASSACRE OF 1901, a gripping tragedy about a cook who put baking powder in the biscuits of a one-legged trapper called Sourdough Jim.

Our airspeed was probably about 160 mph. We were flying through a wide valley, whose bare mountainous walls rose abruptly from the plain. Not a tree in sight. If you've ever flown in a light plane you know how the landscape seems to crawl by. The illusion is that the plane is hanging in the sky, hardly moving at all. This was all to the good; it gave me plenty of time to contemplate the fate of cooks who made biscuits with baking powder.

An hour and a half later, I finished the tale of the death of the unfortunate cook and suddenly we were there. In the middle of nowhere, that is. Bubba glided in low over a cleared space in the snow, looking to see if he could land without cracking up. I looked around and saw nothing for miles in every direction. Not a tree, just the vast expanse of tundra surrounded by low mountains.

"We're gonna land here?" I asked. "Where's town at?"

"Ain’t no town. This is the place. I'm looking for holes in the runway, or snow drifts or maybe a dead moose." Satisfied,, he banked in a long circling glide and whooshed down on the strip. We taxied over to the one deserted wooden building and got out.

Standing on the tarmac in my thin-soled Los Angeles cowboy boots, this California child recognized immediately that the human body is vulnerable to low temperature. In minutes my toes were frozen, my ears were brittle appendages that could drop off. I realized that Alaskans don't wear heavy clothing of sealskin and wolverine so they'll look good on a postcard. I was in pain. A person could die out here.

I looked enviously at what the Bubba was wearing: Arctic boots made of caribou tops with waterproof rubber soles; a knee-length parka insulated with goose down; and over his head a wolverine-fur-lined hood. I asked him where everybody was and where the site was and he waved vaguely toward Granite Mountain.

"Well, wasn't somebody supposed to meet me here and tell me which way to walk?"

"I dunno," said the pilot calmly and warmly as he climbed back in the cockpit. Alarmed, I said, "You're not gonna leave me out here, are you?" I was terribly afraid that this bush pilot figured a man was on his own out here and ought to know how to take care of himself. I wondered if I could break into the building and start a fire. Would they find me in the spring?

"Hellfire, man," said the pilot. "I'm not gonna leave anybody out here alone, I just wanta get on the radio and tell 'em I'm here and find out when they're coming out to pick you up."

Then I heard the roar of a motor and in a minute I saw a bulldozer crawling around a snowbanked road and heading toward us. Bart Mahaffey a bearded, belligerent 250-pound driller with a smashed nose and broken teeth, was at the controls. Seated alongside him and climbing down now was a whipped dog, who I assumed was the departing miserable failure of a cook. The whipped dog didn't look at us, he just pulled his hood over his face, climbed in the plane and sat there, looking out at me and shaking his head. "Go back now," he called out to me, "while you've got a chance. "Those guys are crazy!"

Mahaffey unbuttoned his bright red parka and flapped it in the breeze, airing it out. "Hi, Bubba," he greeted the pilot, "you got some joker of a cook here by the unlikely name of Montana Jones?"

Bubba jerked a thumb at me. "There he stands, but I don't think he's ever been to Montana dressed like that.” Mahaffey looked me over and growled, "You the cook?"

I answered, "Who, me?"

A look of great incredulity spread over the big man's face. He wrinkled his brow, then shaded his eyes with a hand and turned around in a circle, peering off into the distance at 40 miles of tundra, elaborately pretending to search for someone else he might be talking to. He turned back and barked at me, "How do you make your pancakes--round or square?"

"Huh? Why, round, of course," I said.

"Hurray," shouted Bubba. "You're in!"

"What kind of food do you guys like?" I ventured.

"We like good food," Mahaffey roared, "and plenty of it! Get in!"

(END OF PART I)

We climbed in the cat and took off. "One thing we might as well get straight right now," the big man warned me. "Breakfast is the most important meal out here, and we've gotta have plenty of coffee so we can fill up our coffee thermoses and take 'em with us out to the drilling sites. There's twenty-five of us drillers out here. We're out at the sites all day and we don’t come back to camp until dinner, so we like to take plenty of coffee with us. You got that? We like plenty of coffee. That last greaseburner couldn't never make enough so that's why we ran him off. Besides that, his pancakes was square!"

We arrived in the center of a large snow-covered compound. Mahaffey got out and walked off, giving me a final glare of menace. "See you in the morning," he muttered, daring me to show up, I suppose.

On one side of the compound, I was to find out, was a log cabin for the geologists, and next to it were indoor shower stalls and a long bunkhouse for the drillers. On the other side were the cookshack and a separate log cabin which was my sleeping quarters. This setup is similar to the army practice of keeping the cooks separate from the troops. Next to my cabin was a small log structure used for a freezer. Anything you put in there just naturally froze.

The official reason given for the universal practice of keeping cook's quarters separate from the troops' is wrong. The army thinks cooks need a private room because they have to get up before everybody else and can't get any sleep listening to card games and carousing all night in the barracks. But the real reason for separate quarters is to prevent the crew from having the cook conveniently at hand to bitch at all night about the quality and quantity of the food. Tempers can get short. And not just when a bad meal has been served. It's common practice everywhere for crews to ride the cooks; it's part of barracks humor, usually good-natured, sometimes not. But the them against-us syndrome is wearing.

Any old-time cook knows he's the natural target for men who want to strike out against somebody because of their dissatisfaction with the system in general. That's why, in self-defense, most cooks become muttering old grouches, like I figured I was going to have to do.

An old-timer's standard response to complaints about the food is: "You guys act like you think I give a good goddam if you like my cooking or not," or "You guys know I can't cook." This shuts the crew up for days while they plan new strategy. No fun riding a cook who doesn't give a damn.

Bob Hooker, the camp supervisor, emerged from the geologists' shack and tramped up to me. He was a short, dark-faced man with stringy black hair over his eyes and a habit of blinking furiously when he talked to anybody. "Guess you're Montana," he said, blinking rapidly and offering his hand. He had a cold cigar in his mouth. "I'm Hooker, the supe. Glad to see you. I hope you're the man we've been looking for. The crew's been in such a bad mood I can't hardly get any work out of them." He sighed. "We've had one big problem nobody’s been able to handle. If you can't solve it, no hard feelings but I'll just have to call into Anchorage for another cook."

"Well," I said, "I guess it all depends. If you guys want everything cooked underground I'll do the best I can, but in all this frozen tundra out here. Where's the firewood?"

"Underground?” said Bob Hooker. “Firewood? What in hell are you talking about?" He blinked even more rapidly, then seemed to decide he hadn't heard me right. He motioned with his hand. "Come on, let's go in the cookshack and get you orientated." The door to the cookshack was frozen shut and we had to put our shoulders to it. Inside, the supe said, "Look, Montana, let me give you a tip ... these guys are basically okay, but let me tell you, in the morning they're always in a bad mood. Most of 'em have smuggled hooch into camp and they play cards and drink all night, then they've got a rough day's work ahead of them and they're in a rotten mood and they'll be looking for a handy target. That's you."

At my nervous nod, he continued. "You've got to keep your oven on all night or your supplies will freeze." He looked at me expectantly. "Course you know all that."

The cookshack had a propane stove with an oven and four burners. The crew's long wooden dining table ran down the center of the building. Against the wall were shelves with canned goods, and on the floor were large cans with powdered milk, flour, salt and sugar. There was a case of eggs on a top shelf where they wouldn't freeze. I looked the rest of the supplies over: peaches, tomato sauce, canned soups (canned soups?), pancake mix, blueberries, vegetables, canned pork and beans (canned beans?). Well, at least there was one thing I could cook above ground. Maybe I could handle this job after all — until somebody dragged in a grizzly, that is.

Then I noticed the coffee percolators, about a dozen of them scattered around the kitchen. I indicated them to Hooker and asked him why so many. He took the cigar out of his mouth, scratched a match on the stove, blew out a cloud of smoke. "Oh, yeah, that's why they ran off the last cook. Poor devil." He shook his head sadly. "We’ve never had a cook out here could make enough coffee or have it ready on time. I don't know what you're gonna do about it, but everything kinda hinges on what you do about the coffee problem." He stared at me mournfully, blinking and dragging on the cigar. "I don't even think they'll care if you can cook or not, but if you can't make enough coffee ..." He sighed again. "A supe's job is hard. Well," he said as he went out the door, "your quarters are next door. I think you'll find it comfortable. Good luck and see you in the morning."

After he left I checked the oven to see if it was burning properly, then went outside to my shack. All it had was a bed with a big red sleeping bag on it and that was it. I lay there thinking about rivers of coffee and planning the best way to make enough coffee so I wouldn't get run out of camp.

At six I woke up and pulled on my clothes, ready for my first trial by fire. I darted out of my little log shack and around the corner into the cookshack. I got the burners going and looked around for the sink. Found it after a short search. No faucets. Therefore no water. How was I to make coffee without faucets? I panicked.

Just then the cookshack door scraped open and the two yardboys, college kids, came in carrying four big buckets of water. "Hi, Cookie, here's your water." They'd lugged it up from the creek where they kept a hole open in the ice all winter. They set the buckets on the floor, went and got some more bucketfuls, then left to do camp chores.

I looked in despair at the assorted little percolators. I'd never be able to make enough coffee in those dollhouse pots. It looked like I was going to be on the next plane out. I looked around and found just what I was looking for, a ten-gallon soup pot. I poured it full of water, put it on the stove and turned the fire wide open. I found a big can of coffee and dumped several big handfuls into the water and stirred it up, then turned to other matters.

I looked around and found a sack of potatoes. I sliced them up, skins and all, and put them on to boil in another pot. Luckily the stove had a grill on top. I found some bacon and eggs and started frying off the bacon. When the bacon was done, I found some pancake mix and a couple cans of blueberries. I started cooking blueberry pancakes in bacon grease and while doing that I found a gallon can of half-frozen syrup.

To warm up the frozen syrup I floated the whole can in the same pot I was boiling the potatoes in.

Now my coffee began to bubble, I gave it a stir, poured in a pint of cold water and turned the fire way down to let the grounds settle. Meanwhile, I found a roasting pan and put it in a slow oven. I kept cooking blueberry pancakes and throwing them in the oven. The potatoes came to a boil. I had sliced them thin so they cooked fast.

I took the syrup container out of the potato water and placed it on the table so it would be handy for the crew. I grabbed a big collander, put it in the sink and poured the boiled potatoes in it. All of a sudden my feet got hot. I looked down and saw the boiling water running over and under my shoes. I looked under the sink and saw an open pipe leading to a single overflowing bucket. What do you know? No drain.

I mopped up the water, then dumped the potatoes on the grill in some bacon grease and chopped onions. They browned nicely. I put them in a big stainless steel bowl and shoved it to the back of the stove.

Next I scraped the grill clean and scrambled five dozen eggs with some water to keep them soft. I put them in a container and pushed them to the back of the stove. I opened some canned peaches and put several bowls on the long wooden tables. Seven o'clock. Where was the crew?

The two yardboys entered and picked up their plates. "Oh, boy! Yippee! Blueberry pancakes! Bacon and eggs! Home-fried potatoes! All right!" They loaded up their plates and dived in. One of the boys looked up from his plate, his mouth full. "This is great, Cookie! But what are you going to do with all the rest of that stuff?"

I said, "What do you mean? I've got a whole gang of hungry drillers coming in here for breakfast in a couple minutes."

The boys laughed. "Those guys never eat breakfast. They're so hung over from drinking whiskey and playing poker all night, all they want is to fill up their thermoses and get out of here. The coffee keeps 'em from freezing to death out on the sites."

They looked at the empty percolators. "Uh, Cookie, shouldn't you be making some coffee? Those big drillers get kinda mean if they don't have enough coffee and . . .

So this was the big breakfast I'd worried about. I motioned the boys over to the stove and showed them the soup pot full of ten gallons of steaming black coffee. They looked at me in astonishment. "Cookie!” they cried. “You're in!" ##

Copyright 2000 by Vince Johnson