My “Alyeska” Back Pages - Bigotry & Prejudice Alive and Well 800-miles Long!

In 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan sounded out aloud about a “Maggie’s Farm” culture and it was in the same timeframe wherein “My Back Pages” found fame. From my testament working for Alyeska, that “Maggie’s Farm” song would ring true, a rude awakening midol operandi of the Bragaw Street brats’ “Mismanagement Mindset Menstrual Mentality”. That would one day “too soon” succeed in exhausting away the good will of the “Pipeline People” and weaken to smithereens an obligation, and that one day commenced to allow a drunk Captain Joe back aboard his EXXON Valdez…the rest is history. Yes, that “Wreck of 89” was Alyeska’s “fault” and fruit of your labor - as in the “organized labor” busting racket. Had Alyeska been “Unionized” in Valdez, that “Wreck” would still be but for a worst-case scenario for practice recon drills only. If you so choose to deny that fact you were deceived and besieged, by a corporate culture that also thought it was building bridges against “half-wracked prejudice”. Yes, denial sucks, especially when the “golden handcuffs” supported that mentality to fruition. I stayed with Alyeska during these trying times, always working against the grain in hopes this one individual could change that destructive mentality. I didn’t lose, even when I was forced to “quit” after refusing to change the pump station “shit bag” after 11-years of “Exceeds Expectations” in performance. On my anniversary, the audacity of the station supervisor demanding I “eat shit”, what a celebratory piece of cake! So I was sent back to “Basic Training”, because I did not learn the rules of the road with respect to “bigotry & prejudice” when I attended that school many years back. Get the point with that “respect”, as that is what Alyeska was all about, a corporate culture respecting “bigotry & prejudice” in the workplace. Look, the “Wreck” is testament that Alyeska set its sights on the wrong damn targets - the dedicated workers trying to make a difference. But what can one really expect, as at the same time a company maturing as one that condoned “bigotry” and condoned “threats” to dedicated quality control inspectors that were warned their next career move would be through an open hatch of an airborne helicopter, for refusing to sign off on compromising structural integrity issues. Yes “Maggie’s Farm” was here to stay with Alyeska in that “Shoot the Messenger and Kill the UNION”. My first day on the job back in 1979, I saw “bigotry” firsthand when some punk kid of a 5th Floor Bragaw “muckety muck” protested over being partnered up with an “Alaskan Native”. This was at “Basic Training” up at Pump Station#5 and instead of the instructor sending the bigot to the unemployment line…I felt sorry for Frank the Athabaskan. And I was the guy that ended up with this punk kid the sonny-boy bigot of some fat ass manager with a southern drool that carried around a “bible” for protestant protection. Funny, that my partner never attended any of the training classes and when graduation came, he was given his “Station” assignment? WTF! Everybody that had spent the last 2-weeks 15-hour days “brain storming” to struggle through all the required training modules, dumfounded that this constant “No Show” was given a “Pipeline Technician” diploma! And over the years we all would come to understand who this punk was, preferential daddy treatment his entire career with Uncle Al. I would become friends with Frank the Athabaskan, as he was assigned to the Valdez “I&E” detail. Wow, did the bigots loose out, as Frank was a very gifted individual - with a special kind-heartedness and braveheart associated character, a few and far between aspect in homo sapien qualities this day and age. Yes braveheart, as putting up with “bigotry” in life, it makes an individual a stronger human being.  I was cherished and honored to have had the opportunity to be friends with this Athabaskan - and he had one hell of a smoked salmon curing recipe handed down through the generations, which he shared with me. He rests in peace this day. But the “bigotry” didn’t end there with that single incident, so conveniently shoved under the rug by the rats. I also witnessed a similar unabated ugliness down in Valdez, screaming that way with the oil, like a benzene carcinogen in cancer from the “pipeline”. When rejected “pipeline managers” were reassigned to the END of the line. There was this cantankerous feisty old fart of an operator that nobody liked working with, up at the OM&S office. He would come on shift and place all the “process controllers” in manual to purposely produce smoke signals out of the John Zink “stacks”. Then to prevent this new-hire new kid on the block from intervening to STOP this negligence designed to recklessly pollute the air, well a newly hired black kid that wanted to do his job, Mr. Bigot Bob would write “NO NIGGERS” on the Control Room chalk board. Yes, it was 1982 and this was well known to the Alyeska management, but nothing ever done about it. For some reason, the local Alyeska management - the pipeline rejects out to pasture in Valdez so don’t rock the boat - yes don’t make waves just let that retirement fund for future fun stack up. Alyeska had become a testing grounds for re-writing the corporate mentality on how to silence troublemakers. Same scenario with the drunk tanker crews returning from shore-side furlough that couldn’t walk a straight line. Yes, a few bad apples here and there. And the sad fact of the matter, what should have and could have been done to STOP it, neglected. Why so, because Alyeska’s 5^th Floor Bragaw transformed into the Filth Floor Bragaw and had its posse of wannabe corporate climbing dweebs and poster child Bills, beggar’s banquet, and instead of addressing the “Real McCoy” problems the “dweebs” instead wasted resources to attack guys like myself, because we decided on a face off on things like drunks and bigots. For real, when the chalk board in the Vapor Recovery Control Room advertised “No NIGGERS” in big “white letters” of chalk, I refused to work on any control problems as I refused to work with Bigot Bob. And when those “smoke signals” alarmed the residents across the bay in the City of Valdez and the DEC received complaints and then Alyeska was being confronted with a barrage of calls from angry citizens, well “Missing Finger” Larry came a begging to me for help to get things back in control, I told him to get fucked in sign language - I did not give a rat’s ass about it until that “Bigot” was off-shift. And I knew Larry could not give me that middle finger back! And Lynn McArthur had my back and was “with us in solidarity”. So for days on end, same old smoke signals 0600 to 1800.  This is how Alyeska handled things, and why the scar of the EXXON Valdez lives on forevermore a stain upon a once good culture choked by an ass kissing mentality and “golden boys” that would do anything and everything to please the “Executive” cesspool - that 5^th Floor Bragaw. I spent time up there, in David “Pitchfork” Pritchard’s office voicing my concerns, the whiff of “Fromunder” always present. The funny time is when Pritchard found a “surveillance bug” in his office, as he was about the only Alyeska President that wanted to change that gone astray “culture”. Those Alyeska managers, the corporate “whores”, they know who I am talking about and is that retirement worth it? As that bastard oil still lingers on killing once living things in the “Sound” and it all could have and should have been avoided, but hiding the truth of what’s the matter and holding on to that fantasy that “Management” gives a rat’s ass, why bother to speak up as keep thou peace this “cashist of cash cows” handout, which seemed to allow George Mucous Nelson to thrive and continue to shit and ejaculate on humanity, so who really gave a fuck about “black boys on mopeds”!

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth, "rip down all hate, " I screamed
Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull, I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now - B. Dylan