What if Chris had tried to contact his parents?

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GoNorth
Posts: 259
Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 3:47 pm

What if Chris had tried to contact his parents?

Postby GoNorth » Sat Apr 23, 2011 9:34 am

And on it goes with the "what if" series started by Steve. :D

So what if at some point Chris had decided to finally call his folks?
I mean, not in the first months, but later, like just before his Alaska trip or so.

When his body was found in September 1992, according to the book:
Walt and Billie McCandless had by then moved to the Maryland shore and no longer had a Virginia phone number…


Does anyone know when they had moved? I mean there must be something I'm missing, because they MUST have thought about the possibility of Chris trying to call them. They probably didn’t have cell phones at the time, or did they?

SteveSalmon
Posts: 295
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2010 4:42 am

Re: What if Chris had tried to contact his parents?

Postby SteveSalmon » Sat Apr 23, 2011 3:06 pm

~SS
Last edited by SteveSalmon on Thu May 03, 2012 7:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

GoNorth
Posts: 259
Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 3:47 pm

Re: What if Chris had tried to contact his parents?

Postby GoNorth » Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:05 pm

SteveSalmon wrote:If I had to guess, I would venture to say that his parents would have had their old phone number transferred/forwarded to their new address.


Is or was this possible if they moved to a different state? And the book says they didn't have "a Virginia phone number" any more.

SteveSalmon wrote:I'd also guess that Walt and Billie had a pager back then and/or a cell phone.


Yes, that's possible. And cell phones were probably not too expensive for the rich McCandless family anyway. However it would have had to be a number Chris already knew before he left and that they had kept the whole time. I mean, just imagine he spontaneously decided to go to a public telephone and call their number. What if the number didn't work any more? Would he have found a new number, if the authorities weren't able to find it? Or what about Carine? I think she still lived with the parents when Chris left, but moved in with her boyfriend later. So he probably couldn't have found her easily either. Of course, there were still the half-siblings or other ways to find the new address of Walt and Billie, or Carine's. But this would have been more complicated and perhaps too complicated in his situation, who knows.
I mean I don't really think that Chris actually did try to call them - at least not before his arrival in Fairbanks, when he told Stuckey, who had driven him there, that he hadn't contacted them and didn't know if he would. But IF he had however decided to do so, for example later that day, he would perhaps have been immediately discouraged again by the number being out of service.
I mean I just can't imagine any parents who are desperately waiting for a sign of life from their son changing all their contact data and thereby making it more difficult for him to get in touch with them.


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