Amazing Pipeline Stories,

by Dermot Cole

Book Review by Sundown Stauffer
Where were you on June 20, 1977? Were you living in Fairbanks twenty years ago? In another state? I was a little over three years old on that summer day when the oil started its long trip down the Prudhoe Bay-Valdez axis, beginning its seminal flight to resuscitate the OPEC-plagued American petroleum industry. The previous three years had seen some mammoth changes, as Alaska was invaded by scores of Texans, Oklahomans, as well as the roughnecks of Wyoming, Arkansas pipefitters and welders, and jobhunters, hippies, and freebooters from the entire West Coast strip. The Fairbanks population exploded, as it has in booms previous, but on a scale never before known.

Urban legends, historical facts, folklore and local color fill the pages of Dermot Cole's book, "Amazing Pipeline Stories." The title itself sounds halfway like a 1950's science fiction pulp and Western dime novel; maybe it's a bit of both. The pipeline was the biggest construction project ever undertaken in Alaska, possibly in the United States. I wondered why Cole, a local journalist who came to Alaska around the pipeline years, chose to write about the pipeline. The subtitle of his book is, "How Building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Transformed Life in America's Last Frontier." Despite the radical years of 1974-77, the real "transformation" rather prosaically referred to here occurred in the state's high-profit years of the 1980's. Still, there is something characteristic about the building of the pipeline. It was indubitably an Event. About 8 billion dollars were spent, which would be about 20 to 22 billion in today's money. The 800 mile pipeline

...crosses three mountain ranges, the Yukon and thirty-three other rivers, and eight hundred streams. It bisects Alaska from Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope, to Valdez on Prince William Sound, carrying about 10 percent of the oil consumed every day in the United States.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline affected the lives of everyone living in the state. Historical accounts have been written, and there will be more to come. Cole's account looks a little bit more at the anecdotal, colloquial aspect. The book's sections include "The Work Force," "Skinny City," (a nickname for the continual encampment up and down the site of the pipeline) "Sudden and Unexpected Wealth," and "Growing Pains." The focus is on the human impact of the pipeline. Included are portrayals of the powerful aristocracy of the pipeline years, men like Senior Engineer Frank Moolin, Jr., depicted in anachronistically heroic proportions (which was an apt approach), and Teamster leader Jesse L. Carr, a magnate of the days when the union owned lear jets, hospitals, and $100 million trusts. But Cole also writes about the women who entered the male-dominated construction world, much as their mothers might have done during WWII. There is an account of Melva Miller, who went from a cleaning job to become an apprentice Ironworker while working at Pump Station #1.

Cole writes his book in a relaxed style, reminiscent of his newspaper columns. There is a journalistic clarity and organization that makes the text easy to skim. When Cole is at his best, there is an eloquent minimalism that suggests the complex layers of the history of an event that Frank Moolin, Jr. described as "...impossible for a hundred people to fully comprehend..." At the same time, though, the book is occasionally too lightweight, reading like a coffee table picture book. It can be digested in one or two sittings. There's nothing wrong with that, as it's in keeping with the format, but considering that this project was basically the biggest deal in Alaskan history, I sometimes wanted more meat and potatoes for my $14.95.

I have to applaud Cole for describing with good humor and an even hand what many would consider a dark and difficult period of time. Describing recent history is never simple. Some of the subjects Cole tackles-the rise in prostitution, violence, and vice in Fairbanks, the economic impact on the state, the troubles ordinary residents faced-this could be considered an unhappy era of Alaskan history, but Cole handles the complicated vicissitudes of power and development with common sense and a reporter's acuity. However his account describes the pipeline camps, and the impact on the Interior, and beyond that the text practically stops at the Fairbanks city limits. There is a small amount of coverage of Valdez and almost none of Anchorage. Alaska's largest city, Cole argues at one point, was better equipped to deal with the influx of people and power, while Fairbanks endured the most radical changes. What really comes through authentically is Cole's description of Fairbanks in the mid- to late '70's.

There is a great picture that graces the back cover of Amazing Pipeline Stories. It depicts Alaska's wild card senator Mike Gravel, a man whose political career could not have possibly existed outside the 1970's, astride a finished section of pipe. He has a gambler's win of a grin on his face and he's waving his hard hat victoriously. He looks like no one so much as Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, riding the H-bomb down to planet Earth. But don't get the wrong idea-the picture is really funny. The pipeline is now twenty years old. With declining oil production, the historical significance of this magnificent engineering project is also probably waning. Alaska's economy is practically on the rocks, due to years of inexperienced spending decisions made by the state during a time when it seemed like the money would never quit. Despite whatever frontier beliefs Alaskans profess (mostly for the benefit of tourists), we have had to grow up as a state. Dermot Cole's book is a touching recherche of modern Alaska's adolescence. I think everyone ought to read it.