Insulator Adventures 7

Soon it was time to be on the road again. We followed the Alaska Railroad south past Potters Marsh and on down to the little coastal village of Portage. Some of you reading this may remember the Good Friday Quake that hit Alaska in 1964. The original townsite of Portage was inundated with water when the landmass dropped 18 feet. The old towns decaying buildings can still be seen from the rebuilt roadway. What an errie site.

The lines and tracks for the Alaska Railroad continued with us till we arrived at the Tidewater Café. We had sandwiches for lunch and I sat and read the vintage newspapers that were kept for the wondering tourists' reading pleasure. When I went back to return the papers to their place I found [guess what] clear insulators and a couple of odd shaped porcelain pieces for sale. I got two and went out to photograph the surrounding area. You can see by what was on the pole behind the restaurant [which, incidentally, is right next to a spur of the ARR] where these might have come from.

Steve fished at different rivers and I photographed all kinds of scenery as we traveled the Keni landscape. There was a museum in the town of Seward where they displayed pioneer artifacts. Among the items to drool over were a Stromberg-Carlson candlestick and a nice phonograph. They have recently completed the Sealife Center. A multi-aquarium facility for the study of Marine life in the Prince William Sound.

S-C candlestick telephone in Seward, Alaska museum

Eventually we made our way back north to Anchorage and on down Old Seward Highway. This brought us to a few little antique stores. One lady had a shop with vintage furniture and quite a few 102’s, 202’s and a few other wall models that had been restored and converted to modular use. Pretty but pricey. A few miles down the road was a lone building with a wooden porch that had been taken over by two antique dealers. One place called Alice’s Antiques was a dusty treasure trove. After looking around for a while I asked if she had any old phones. She said she thought there might be one upstairs. Things where tightly packed up there with stoplights from the 1940’s butted up against what was once fine dining furniture and old woodworking tools. I wedged my way through and around. Presently I came upon this phone shaped item, covered with dust and mold. There was a space on the front where I guessed a number cardholder should have been. It looked like a missing dial to novice phone collectors and unknowing antique dealers. Eureka!
Quickly hauling my prize back downstairs I asked the lady what she wanted for it.
She looked at the dust and mold on it, “Gonna use it for parts huh?”
I made a non-committal noise in reply.
“How about $20.00?”

I gave her $20.00 and moved off to “Remember When Antiques” next door. We didn’t even have to go inside for me to make another dusty discovery! Out on the porch- among other things-was two dusty wooden crates filled with insulators. One had Hemi-45’s and 16’s in clear. But the upper box had aqua ponys with two wire groves. BROOKFIELD embossing and, as a matter of gossip, where said to have come from the WAMCATS line. I had to have at least one. It now rests in a place of honor atop my Julius Andrae, although a little research has given me doubts about its involvement with that historic line. I was interested in the Hemingray-16’s because they had no drip points, just little ridges around the bottom.

On the way back to the truck Steve asked me why I wanted to pay twenty dollars for that sorry looking phone. I told him to watch. Inside the truck there were lemon scented hand wipes. These must be great for plastic because I used them as preliminary cleanup for that old phone. Under all that was a shiny non-dial 302. “Wow! That looks pretty good!” He said. It was hard to get him to react to anything! The Find a 302 non-dial

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