The Pittsburgh Press (February 17, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – Except for our little side trip to the House of Mystery, I drove straight through from Portland to San Francisco – two and a half days.
On this trip I had a traveling companion, and a very pleasant one. There’s a slight difference in our ages, but he’s one of the best friends I have. A few of you with elephant-like memories may remember a column I wrote about him one summer from Alaska.
His name is Johnnie Palm. He has lived in Alaska for 45 years. For most of that time he has carried the mails – by dog team, by nurse sled, on snowshoes, on skis, and by truck. He has lived the toughest, hardest life of anyone in my acquaintance.
Yet today he is so tiny, and so timid and so courteous, and the dresses so meticulously and conducts himself so quietly, that you’d never know he’d ever seen a malamute dog in his life. He is 76.
During most of his years in Alaska he seldom came “outside,” as Alaskans say of coming to the U.S. But three or four years ago he came out to get a set of teeth, and he liked it so well he’s been coming out every winter since.
He and Mrs. Palm are spending the winter at a hotel in Seattle. I ran onto them there, and coaxed Johnnie into riding down with me. He came to Portland by bus, and we started out.
Johnnie is the perfect traveling companion. He talks just enough to break the monotony, but doesn’t keep you talking. He enjoys a moderate speed, as I do. He likes to stop early, as I do. And in two and a half days he can remember an awful lot of good Alaskan stories to tell.
At 76, his health is perfect
Johnnie was up every morning at 5. He’d just sit around in the hotel lobby waiting till I showed up around 7 (which practically killed me). In those two hours he had found out from the night clerk, in his quiet way, everything about the town.
We had a lot of fun. One morning Johnnie was in such a hurry to get down to the lobby to sit that he shaved only one side of his face.
Johnnie is really a phenomenon. Although he is 76, he doesn’t look or act much older than I do. His health is perfect. He has no aches nor pains. He doesn’t wear glasses. He is young in mind and big in soul.
Like most Alaskans, Johnnie was practically raised on the bottle – the whisky bottle, I mean. In all those years behind the dog teams he never went on trail without a quart of whisky on his sled. A quart a day, that’s what he used. Of course he can’t go that strong nowadays, but. as he says, he sure keeps trying.
Seattle is filled with Alaskans down for the winter. Hundreds of oldtime sourdoughs, just loafing the winter away. They have nothing to do all day but slap each other on the back and have a drink for old times’ sake.
And since Johnnie knows everybody in Alaska, that makes it tough. Mrs. Palm laughs and says, “It’s just ‘Johnnie, here have a drink,’ ‘Johnnie, come have a drink,’ from morning till night.” Johnnie just grins when she tells about it.
Johnnie’s home in Fairbanks is rented out for the winter. He was already in the States when Pearl Harbor happened, and he’s been fretting ever since about getting back to see about his business.
Planes substitute for dogs
He runs a small trucking line, and holds several mail contracts. Things are pretty modem now in Alaska. Hardly anybody ever takes a long winter trip by dog team any more. They go by airplane. Most of the winter mail is now carried by air.
Johnnie made his last winter mail trip six years ago – and he was 70 then. It was a run of 180 miles, and his schedule was six days – 30 miles a day.
Johnnie has had a lot of close shaves in his 45 years in the Arctic, but he had his closest one that winter. He was breaking trail and somehow he got himself caught. He worked all day through the snow; finally was so weak he could barely keep going; when at last he reached a trailside cabin they said he could not have lasted another 15 minutes. As it was his hands were frozen and he lost his finger nails. But his hands are all right now.
Johnnie doesn’t like to travel away from the West Coast, because he considers himself so “green” in city ways. He eats nothing but meat and potatoes.
Ordinarily you would visualize an old sourdough who ran behind dog teams for 30 years, who drank a quart of whisky a day, who at 76 can still do a day’s work and drink a day’s share, as a pretty hard egg.
If there has ever been a kinder, nicer-minded man than Johnnie Palm, I have never met him. I admire him so much that I almost have a notion to get me a team of huskies and a quart of whisky for developing my own character. (Note to belligerent readers: Now, don’t write me dirty letters about that. You know I’m joking. Why, what would I do with a team of huskies?)