Title
Pages of Our Lives... Farming: a Way of Life (p. 104)
Description
[page 104]
[corresponds to page 101 of Pages of Our Lives]
Lovett Murphy: A Step Back in Time
Bearded and bit rough in appearance, Lovett Murphy, a lifetime resident of Sunbury
occasionally stops by the Sunbury News office to say "hi" to the staff and to rest
for a bit, before heading back home to his Murphy Road residence.
To look at the man and listen to him talk, one sometimes wonder if he's related
to the legend Daniel Boone, or the famed Davy Crockett, "King of the Wild Frontier,"
because if the subject is nature related, Murphy seems to know the answer.
But then nature seems to be the natural love of Lovett. In fact he admits,
"I like to work in the woods, I've generally worked in the woods more than any other
job I've ever had."
Though Murphy claims to have experienced a variety of jobs over his lifetime,
including sawmills, driving a taxi cab loading explosives from boxcars to trucks,
and planing logs for log cabin homes, talking about his experiences as an Alaskan
firefighter and visitor among his favorites.
Murphy says that's because he found the people so interesting back in the year
1960. "People have said the that New York is the melting pot, but those people
never saw Fairbanks during that time," he remarks.
Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, native Indians, New Yorkers, Canadians,
Californians, whites, blacks and others all flocked to Alaska in the late 60s
due to the "oil rush" according to Murphy. Amazingly, little to no racial tension
existed among the dwellers, even though many lived in tents or out of vans, he says.
Although oil wasn't the attraction that drew Murphy to the state, he too
ended up in Fairbanks a town that at the time was a somewhere around the 18,000
mark or roughly the size of Delaware, Ohio, he notes.
Soon after his arrival "the worst year for fires Alaska or on the North
[Photo]
[Photo caption]
Lovett Murphy
American continent" broke out, he explains. "Fires burned all over Alaska" which
were causes by "lightening" he continues. "A great deal of them were range fires
as opposed to forest fires, he recalls. Range fires tend to smolder more, he says.
In need of employment, and having a love for the woods, Murphy says he soon
joined in the fire fighting duties. Hours were long and hard as 16 to 20 hour days
were frequent, and fire fighters would often be dumped off at a site for weeks
at a time, not knowing when someone would be returning for them.
Murphy notes that the fires ran fire fighting teams all over Alaska. Much
of the time, workers were hauled by bus to the various locations, although at
least once, they were transported by helicopter, to a camp established on the top
of a flat mountain.
Lovett says the "big bosses" were "sore" at most of the workers for a drunken
incident that had occurred shortly before being flown out, so when the workers were
dropped off, they were told that they were told that their bosses didn't care what
they did. "They told us that they didn't even care if we fought fires, but we were
going to get awfully hot if we didn't," he laughs.
Murphy says he remembers looking over the edge of the mountain at about that
time, and seeing the fire approaching from every direction.
Taylor Highway, which runs east and west across Alaska, according to Murphy,
also carried them some 700 miles to a fire near Eagle, Alaska once.
A fire named the "Fishhook Fire" which at the time was labeled the biggest fire
to ever burn on the North American continent, according, to Murphy, also had them
giving assistance to fire fighting efforts another part of the state.
The "Fishhook Fire' finally burned itself out, but Murphy, a squad leader, and
one of the oldest fire fighters there, adds that a rain assisted in the effort. He
adds that smoke from the fire hampered both fire fighting efforts as it made a
dangerous journey for planes carrying water to douse the flames, and stopped other
commercial flights from leaving the Fairbanks airport.
Workers had only the bare necessities for survival, but that didn't bother
Murphy. Most of the time workers ate "C" rations and slept on bed rolls which
were placed on plastic, and wore heavy clothing to stay warm.
Lovett says some of the men were scared of grizzly bears, which grow to 400-
500 pounds inland, compared to the same bear that reaches weights of 1000 pounds
on the coasts due to the plentiful supply of salmon. As a result, some of the men
put up tents, although he elected not to do so simply sleeping with his head
covered by portion of the bedding.
Not all of Murphy's Alaskan adventures were fire oriented. Lovett implies
that he enjoyed the beauty of the land in other ways, in the days following his
firefighting excursions. He says that he and usually two or three others would
trek across the land, using cabins for shelter, if possible. He says they ate
available "C" rations and carried light sources of food, such as dried apples
and pancake flour.
Appendix -101-
