Vinroe’s Home Cookin’

Working the swing shift alongside a Louisiana baker had its advantages in 1981. We didn’t necessarily like each other. However, we had to get along since we lived in the same Connex trailer and worked the same 6 p.m. – 6 a.m. schedule on a remote North Slope exploratory drilling camp called Ikpikpuk. Usually, we worked 16-week shifts together.

Our transportation to and from the camp was provided by a Hercules C130 Aircraft. According to airplane manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corporation, the plane was designed “to land and take-off from unprepared runways.” It was decidely the best plane for the job on frozen tundra.

When oil exploration was at its peak near Prudhoe Bay, most of it happened during the winter when ice runways allowed transport of people and equipment. Access to remote drilling locations was limited because of the soft tundra. Building roads on the squishing marsh wasn’t possible because of federal laws designed to protect the environment.

I was an oil-field bull-cook. My job duties included washing the dishes, mopping the floors, hauling the trash to burn dumpsters, changing the camp’s sheets and putting up with a pile from 60 drill-hands in the camp whose job titles included Tool Pusher, Rough Neck, Roustabout and Derrickhand, among others. Whatever their title, they were always above my rank and way above my pay. They knew it, too.

Vinroe was a bootlegger turned baker. Or maybe he was a baker who never got over being a bootlegger. Whatever the case, he was a good at cooking stuff up. Thank God I had a high metabolism at the time. It was all I could do to resist eating less than a half dozen of his steaming breakfast rolls as they came fresh out of his oven every morning at 4 a.m.

It turned out that Vinroe’s home cooking didn’t stop there. We were both sleeping in our bunk beds when an explosion woke up the entire camp. The blast came from the kitchen.

Our room was next door to the kitchen which made it especially shocking. We both ran to see what happened. I saw sticky, sweet smelling fluid everywhere. It was on the ceiling, the dining room tables, the grill and prep areas. It coated the kitchen top to bottom. I didn’t know what to think. Vinroe, he looked dumbfounded.

It turns out, Vinroe had been defying a prohibition on alcohol. He was secretly distilling Applejack under the hot oil French fryers. The heat, combined with fermenting apples, raisins, sugar and yeast in tightly sealed bottles had announced itself to everyone. The containers couldn’t hold the pressure of his yeast-fueled concoction.

As the camp bullcook, I was the lucky guy in charge of cleaning up the mess. Vinroe - he was given a one-month suspension. He wasn’t fired because his cinnamon rolls and Cajun-styled prime rib and Lobster dinners were too popular with the hands on the rig. And, it’s not entirely improbably that Vinroe was supplying happy hours to the folks who ran the camp.

Mopping up applejack that day seemed like a nightmare at the time. Now, it's a sweet memory.