Rely on Reliable

I just finished scanning the pics I got from Roger Calloway, the current owner of Reliable Transfer. Unfortunately, all the photos pre-date the time when my dad and uncle owned the company. Reliable has been around for almost 100 years; in the beginning they hauled everything in wagons pulled by teams of horses. I will take the collection to the elders this morning and see if dad can identify any of the folks in the pictures. Here are a couple of the more interesting specimens.

Advertisement for Reliable Transfer in the Juneau paper. Don't know what year - but must have been close to a hundred years ago.

Again, I have no idea exactly when this was taken (probably the 30's) or who the guys are. The guys leaning on the car seem to have an attitude.

Two Model T's hauling a LARGE oil tank up what I assume is South Franklin. The tank may well still be leaking underground to this day!

Notwithstanding my disappointment that there were no pictures of anyone I knew, the exercise did prompt lots of good memories of my family's relationship with the company. The period of time dad was an owner coincided with my formative years and one of my very earliest memories is sitting on dad's lap in a mail truck on the way to the airport. He let me hold onto the steering wheel.

In the late 1950's Pacific Northern (PNA) and Pan American were the two major airlines serving Juneau. I recall clearly how dad would back the truck right up to the planes to load the mail. Sometimes he would hand me over to the care of the stewardesses who would feed me leftover food from the flight up from Seattle. They had REAL food in those days. Even today every now and then I catch a whiff of something that reminds me of the unmistakeable scent of the inside of a PNA Lockheed Constellation. No doubt these experiences were the source of my life-long interest in aviation.

I rode with dad on the airport mail run for many summers. After I was ten or so and could really help fling freight and mail he even paid me to come along. In later years he made as many as ten trips a day from the Post Office to the airport. Back and forth all day long. Before the Federal Building was built in the mid-60's, the Post Office was located on the second floor of the Capitol Building.

Pan American pulled-out of Juneau at some point and PNA was bought by Western Airlines. Over the years other carriers also served Juneau. Wien Air Alaska took over Pan Am's route from Fairbanks to Whitehorse to Juneau and an outfit called Cordova Airlines flew C46's (similar to a DC 3) on what we now recognize as the Alaska Airlines milk run (Anchorge to Cordova to Yakutat to Juneau). And of course there was mail from Alaska Coastal's PBYs and Grumman Gooses (Eric will probably tell me it should be Grumman Geese) that served all the other communities of Southeast Alaska. I can still see Jim Brown's dad, Dave, leering from the cockpit of a PBY.

These are very sweet memories for me - and for which I have ZERO photographic record. But I digress...

Reliable was more than just a company for my dad - it was his second family. His employees were also his best friends with whom he would go hunting and fishing. And every evening after work there were various forms of adult entertainment at the office/warehouse. Much whiskey and 7-up was consumed - although not so much by my dad who was a veritable teetotaler by the standards of the day. There was a pool table that saw a lot of use and much shooting of dice. And in later years they would play pitch for an hour or two after work.

Amazingly not all the drinking was confined to after hours. The air freight man, Frances Riendeau or "Rie," would sit on his ass at the airport bar waiting for the planes to arrive. Booze and water. Dad would see him there and never said a word. Pretty amazing. Although Rie miraculously never had a serious accident, he did, at one time or another, demolish damn near every marquee in downtown Juneau with a company van. Apparently Rie could handle two dimensions quite well while in his cups - but the third, height - not so much.

Another good Reliable pal was Jack Darnell who hailed originally from Tennessee. He worked for Reliable for many years and met an untimely death when he had a heart attack while on dad's boat over by Angoon. Dad and Jack were fishing for trout from the beach at the outlet of the Hasselborg River when Jack said he had to go back to the boat to get "something." Dad assumed the "something" was a drink. Jack rowed out to the boat in the skiff and just as he was hauling his considerable bulk onto the "Linda M" he threw up his hands and fell over backward into the water. Dead as a doornail.

The ensuing events led to my father's lifelong disregard for the U.S. Coast Guard. Dad couldn't lift Jack back into the boat - he probably weighed over 300 pounds - and leaving a carcass of any kind on the beach of Admirality Island for any length of time is not such a hotsy-totsy idea. Indeed, they had spotted a big brown bear on the beach just a couple of hours before the incident. But since Jack was dead, the U.S. Coast Guard saw nothing in the situation that called for any action on their part. After much heated argument back-and-forth on the marine radio and after securing agreement from dad that he would foot the bill, they finally agreed to call Channel Flying and a Cessna along with a Trooper were dispatched to recover the body.

My favourite of all of dad's employees was Don Bland. Don was always very solicitous of my well-being and was a real character. He always wore just a Hawaiian shirt outdoors - rain or shine, summer or winter. He always fished the Golden North Salmon Derby with us. And I DO have photographic evidence of this fact.

Good ol' Don Bland fishing the derby on the bow of the "Linda M." A fishing pole, a bottle of whiskey, and a radio - what more does a guy need? I distinctly recall him periodically bursting into song - Jerry Reed's "When You're Hot, You're Hot." So this must have been 1972.


Which is a good transition - since this is derby weekend - to the following notice posted on the Juneau National Weather Service Forecast site this morning:

ANOTHER COMPLICATION FOR THIS WEEKEND FORECAST IS A POSSIBLE GLACIER DAM RELEASE INTO THE TAKU RIVER. SHOULD THIS HAPPEN EXPECT DEBRIS WITHIN TAKU INLET FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO TREE BRANCHES AND OTHER VEGETATION DEBRIS, ICE, LAWNCHAIRS, AND OTHER HOUSEHOLD DEBRIS.

Lawnchairs? Sounds like the river-rats up the Taku are going to lose some belongings.

Have a good weekend everyone!