DOUGLAS -- This month marks 22 years since our family made the journey from Southern California to Southeast Alaska in a truck carrying two young children, a black lab and camping gear on an Alaska Marine Highway ferry from Bellingham, Washington, to Juneau. What distinguished us from other passengers was our irreplaceable vehicle. And when it suffered an unexpected demise a few years ago, a chapter in the book of our family history closed for good.
That truck was impressive. We didn't know just how impressive until November 1992, when we rolled off the ferry and into downtown Juneau and Douglas. Locals seemed more interested in meeting our truck than us. "Where'd you get that rig?" was a familiar greeting, usually from a non-smiling male with his arms crossed over his chest. Fresh off the boat from the Lower 48, I'd never heard our Ford Ranger referred to as a "rig."
You see, this wasn't any navy blue Extra Cab. It was the result of a vision my husband Karl had in 1990, when we lived in Southern California. He wanted to make our truck the ultimate road trip machine. The way to do it was to cut the Ranger in half and stretch the cab three feet.
My initial reaction was that the truck was fine as is. I was still sentimentally attached to the old Ranger — the truck in which Karl picked me up from college when it was shiny and new. We drove our first baby home from the hospital in it.
Frankenstein of the freeway
The blue truck was a veteran of the road, visiting places like the Baja Peninsula and New Mexico. We'd already added a steel canopy over the bed; the same shell used by the California Highway Patrol. It had windows that flipped up on the sides and back with little screens that slid open. Those were enough of an upgrade for me.
Karl found an Anaheim, California limousine maker who said he could do the job. For about a month of nights and weekends, my husband babysat the surgery and customization. When the transformation was complete, Karl must have felt like Dr. Frankenstein driving his monstrosity down the L.A. freeway while lesser vehicles parted for his creation. There was nothing like it, svelte and shimmering in the California sun. The cab was more like a mini-living room, with fake fur-covered seats, between them a table with drink holders and a ridiculous amount of leg room for two young children.
Soon we were taking our son and daughter on their first ski trips, over a pass on a windy road to a little ski area with a rope tow. Five-year-old Kaitlyn grabbed onto that rope tow and never looked back. At the time, 3-year-old Kanaan wasn't convinced that skiing would be fun. He became a formidable skier eventually, but his first association with skiing was carsickness on the Angeles Crest Highway.
On a weekend trip, my sister came along. She tried to chat up her young nephew, who was slumped in the spacious cab and unable to see out of the windows, which made him even more carsick. He stuck his fingers in his ears and had two words for her: "No Talk".
Two years later, we were residents of Juneau, and still better known for our rig than anything else. The rig was a familiar sight around town and at tailgate parties in the Eaglecrest ski area parking lot on Douglas Island, where beer-sipping skiers would hit a tennis ball for our black lab. In 1999, one of Karl's ski patrol colleagues nicknamed it the Y2K Assault Vehicle. The moniker stuck.
Not for sale
If that rig was well known around Douglas and Juneau, it was a rock star in the Yukon. We'd take it up to our Canadian neighbor on soccer team road trips. And it patiently waited for us when we went hiking or backpacking. When we'd stop for a pee or a view-break, Yukoners would actually pull over and jump out of their vehicles. "Where'd you get that rig?" Then they'd make offers. It wasn't for sale.
The last family road trips in the Y2K Assault Vehicle did not go far. But it came full circle. We parked at the Auke Bay ferry terminal where we'd first arrived in Juneau from California years earlier. We rolled our bikes onto the ferry headed north to Haines and a long weekend at the Southeast Alaska State Fair, where we'd find a sliver of grass for our tent.
By now, the kids were in high school and college. Our daughter was sharing a separate tent with her boyfriend, our son doing the same with his girlfriend.
So there's Karl and I, the spacious family tent all to ourselves. Karl genuinely asked me, "Where are the kids?" I had to break it to him. "Honey," I said, gently. "They grew up."
Soon the truck was relegated to the far edge of our Douglas driveway behind Gastineau School. It leaked too much oil and guzzled too much gas. The Y2K Assault Vehicle needed one repair after another. We didn't take it out much anymore.
Clear skies and a full moon graced the evening of June 16, 2011. We had recently installed a new accordion shade over the sliding glass door in our bedroom, which led to a deck overlooking the driveway. I am a light sleeper. Karl was sound asleep when I woke up around 1 a.m. to a crackly whooshing sound.
Fire!
Our new shade was bright orange. Afraid to slide it back, I ran into the living room and looked out the windows. Flames were leaping out of the hood of the truck, high enough to singe electrical wires crossing the road. Pointed the opposite direction it surely would have ignited our bedroom and the house. I ran back into our room. Karl was still asleep. "Wake up!! The truck is on fire!!!"
It was the summer after our son had graduated from college and returned home. I burst into his room.
"We have to get out of the house!" A procession of siren-blaring trucks finally appeared. The fire was soon replaced with billowing gray plumes of flame-extinguishing chemical smoke and an acrid smell. In a minute, arson had reduced the holder of a quarter century of family memories to sagging wreckage.
Standing barefoot in the front yard, our son looked over at the charred shell and uttered the same two words he had as a carsick three-year-old 20 years before.
"No talk."
Freelance writer Katie Bausler is a devoted resident of the island kingdom of rainy Douglas, Alaska.