Even Funnier Than McLaughlin Group

American Experience is my favorite show on PBS. Tonight, the episode is about building the Golden Gate Bridge, which I saw for the first time earlier this year, remarking, "I thought it would be bigger."

I have many fond memories of American Experience viewings, from the sad tale of the Bubble Boy to the sad tale of Mary Todd Lincoln. My favorite memory is from a few weeks back, when I watched the episode about the Alaska Pipeline.



I found a transcript of the show's greatest moment (emphasis mine). If only I could get it in mp3 format...

Narrator: Alyeska finally went to work at the end of January 1974. They had to haul in road building equipment and temporary housing while the ground was still frozen. By spring the tundra would be too soft to drive on. Cargo planes flew in more freight, landing on frozen lakes.

By fall, the 360-mile-long, gravel road was finished, and the race was on to be ready for construction the following spring. Three million tons of pipe, machinery, spare parts, fuel and food would be hauled in over the next two-and-a-half years.

Dave Smallwood, pipeline truck driver: It was just bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was pretty much insanity. It didn't really pay to pass the guy ahead of you. Well, I was living on the road back then. Just one trip after another. We didn't have a scale. We didn't have logbooks. Virtually just lived in the trucks and ate in the camps. I'd get into town and just load and go. If you met another truck that didn't know you was coming, if you just clicked your mirrors you'd call that a good pass. And the motto then was crowd the other guy, not the ditch. Because you'd end up over in the ditch laying on your side. It was a long way down in a lot of spots.

Narrator: At the end of March 1975, it was time to start laying pipe. No one had ever attempted construction on this scale in such an extreme environment... under such intense scrutiny... or on such a tight schedule.

The only hope of finishing on time was to divide the route into five segments and build them simultaneously.

The man in charge of getting it done for Alyeska was Frank Moolin, a veteran big project engineer who had just finished BART, San Francisco's rapid transit system. He was a tireless worker who knew how to motivate.

Bill Howitt: You kind of got the feeling like if you didn't do your part this whole thing was going to fall apart. You know, there's 20,000 guys working on this thing, you know, but, but that's the way you felt when you talked to Frank. And you felt like you didn't want to let him down.

No one worked harder than he did. Friends believe his relentless style contributed to an early death not long after the pipeline was done.