Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

Our recent trip to Alaska had some interesting experiences.

One was “airport security” in Dawson City in the Yukon Territory.

Airport security here and most places is a tedious process. Empty your pockets take off our belt, remove your shoes (if you are under 75 years old), remove electronic devices like computers and laptops from carry-on luggage etc.

And then there is the long line that snakes to and into the screening areas.

 Dawson City is a town of 2,200. Up until 2019 is sole airstrip was gravel. Even then it was serviced by a charter airline North Country, which used dust suppression equipment on its 737-500.

The airport does not have a large enough terminal to have over 100 people go through security so a plastic table was carted out to the edge of the runway. On it were two plastic trays.

So we went through the same thing, empty your pockets, etc. There was no X-ray screener so a person with a flashlight peered into bags. And you could keep your shoes on because it was drizzling outside and nobody wanted to stand on wet tar in their stocking feet.

After the empty pockets business we stepped aside where another person wanded us. Then we got our gear, walked over to the staircase up and into the jet’s interior.

It was a nice switch from the normal process.

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Before we left on this trip we spent a night in the Twin Cities so we could catch our flight early the next day.

The hotel chain we normally use for trips had been telling us for over a year that electronic check-in was available. In this case I had prepaid for the room so I thought I would try it.

 It was really weird walking into the hotel, going straight to the elevator with our bags, and then going straight to the room number shown on the hotel app on my phone. Sure enough, it worked.

At one point when I left the room and returned it didn’t work, but Mary was in the room so she let me in. After I turned off the phone and restarted it the app worked again.

 It was weird checking in and it was also weird leaving the hotel by walking out the front door and skipping the front counter.

Times have changed. I’m not sure I have entirely.

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Recently I was driving on Highway 55 near the bridge construction and followed a Pontiac Bonneville with the Minnesota license plate LAST YR. I’m not sure if that referred to the last year for that model or the past year for Pontiac so I went to Wikipedia to see what I could find out.

The last Bonneville was made on Feb. 8, 2005 according to that source. The last Pontiac, a G6 model for a fleet customer, was made in January 2010.

Pontiac was a victim of General Motor’s bankruptcy. Oldsmobile had been taken out of production in 2004.

The Bonneville I followed looked clean as could be and appeared to be in excellent condition. It was a V8 model.

A few months ago I had commented on how many Pontiacs I saw on the road even though they have been out of production for some time. I still see a lot of them!

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Years really fly by. Seems kind of hard to believe but Mary and I celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary just over a week ago and the day after that it was the 49th anniversary of taking a job working for Jim Kinney at the Pope County Tribune.