High School
 
The great day finally came when Mother, Ruth, and I boarded the SS Queen for Seattle.  We were on our way to Springbrook, Oregon to stay with Daddy's youngest sister, Florence, and her husband, Elmer Thorne.  They had four children:  Earl and Phyllis, about our ages; then Robert and Doris who were much younger. Ruth and I were both excited to think of becoming acquainted with cousins and a totally different lifestyle.

The luxury of the old ship impressed us.  Also, at each port more young people came aboard on their way "outside" to school, either high school or college.  Their sophistication scared me a little, but Ruth had no problem.

Days before we were to leave a black bass flopped out of the barrel in the Midget when we were fishing.  It caught Ruth in the ankle with one of its spines which became embedded in the bone.  It broke off and we couldn't remove it.   Since it would take surgery to remove it, it was decided to leave it until we reached Oregon. (There was no doctor of any kind in Sitka at that time.)

From the first she was of interest because she was on crutches and everyone rushed to talk to the pretty red-head, to open doors and help her down the stairs when we hit rough weather.

Mother, too, soon knew everyone aboard and was in her element. She never knew a stranger and it was never more apparent to us.

I shuddered because I knew we were ill-dressed and I became tongue­ tied in the presence of these chattering, worldly, well-acquainted young men and women.   It was a trying ordeal and I looked forward to the day we'd gain all that polish.

One of our ports of call was Kake.  I looked forward to it eagerly, wondering if my memories were just fantasies.  The Queen was only there an hour, just long enough to load several hundred cases of canned salmon at the cannery, so there'd be no time to go ashore.  Just the same, I wanted to know what it looked like.

Somehow, it seemed important to me.

Well, it did look just like my memory, all except for one thing.  As we slowly sailed past, I couldn't see the shanty we'd lived in.  Mother said it must have fallen down from age and lack of care.  The long curve of the coast was there, the Indian houses, Kerberger's old store, the manse and the school. I was elated to think my memory had not played me false.  Ruth didn't remember any of it, nor care.  She even thought l was silly to think it important.

When we reached Seattle about 10 o'clock on a drizzly morning we had another disappointment. Uncle Wilfred was not there!  Mother had arranged for him to drive up from Portland so that he could transport us complete with luggage to spend a few days with her mother, Grandma Markell, in Portland.

Mother telephoned.  No answer.  We waited around about an hour thinking he'd been delayed.  Again Mother phoned with no answer.  It was cold, wet and dreary hanging about the docks.  Finally Mother called a cab and took us to the Greyhound station.  We had to wait awhile, but were finally on our way to Portland.  It grew dark early in the rain.  Mother kept exclaiming, admiring the lights as we lumbered along.  They just hurt my eyes and I couldn't see anything all that great about them.

When we reached Portland, Mother again tried to phone Grandma.  Again no answer.  This began to worry her about Grandma as well as Uncle Wilfred and it left her in a real dilemma.  She had to make her money last until she had us safely deposited and then return home.  To take us to a hotel would have dug too deeply into her reserve. Finally she booked us onto a Greyhound going to Newburg and we jostled along again.  It seemed like forever, only it was just about sixty miles.  We were cold, tired and hungry when we reached the station about nine thirty that evening.

Once again Mother phoned.  This time to Aunt Florence and Uncle Elmer to come pick us up.  We weren't expected for a week because we were to stay with Grandma.  I'm sure from the conversation at our end that Aunt Florence was most reluctant, but finally Uncle Elmer was sent for us.  It was cold in that open   bus station and there was no coffee counter.  We were so tired that we could have slept standing up, almost.  Only the strange newness of our surroundings kept us going.  Uncle Elmer was a quiet man, but friendly as he came chugging up in his Model T Ford.  He greeted us kindly, loaded in our luggage, and drove us back the three miles over dirt roads which we came to know well.  Back then it was just an on-going part of the ordeal.

Aunt Florence was pretty crisp when we arrived.   They'd been in bed and she didn't appreciate our early arrival.  We weren't offered anything to eat although Mother made a point of explaining  that we'd had nothing since breakfast aboard ship.  We were ushered up to bed in the room Ruth and I were to share for the year.  Mother and both of us bunked in the double bed.   It was a Saturday night, I remember.

Aunt Florence was still grim next morning, but fixed the best hot biscuits for breakfast I ever ate.  We were to get to know those biscuits well too, as they were the customary diet.  (We also used them for our school lunches.)

Phyllis was there for breakfast, sophisticated,  windblown dark hair, and very quiet.  Robert and Doris bounced down, too.

I helped set the breakfast table while Mother tried calling Grandma once again.   No luck.

I was fascinated by the telephone.  It was the first private one I'd ever seen.   It hung on the wall just inside the kitchen door and rang often.  To my amazement no one jumped up to answer it--not until it gave a special ring--and then the mystery was explained.   It was a four- party line----and a very popular one, too.  Moreover, the other subscribers  often listened in to the conversations.   Now they have soap opera and don't need that
kind of free entertainment.

Around 10:30 AM Mother made contact with Grandma.   Uncle Wilfred had taken her to the beach for several days, getting his dates for our arrival totally mixed--a not unusual occurrence.

No one went to church--a vast departure from schedule that distressed Aunt Florence.  We had almost finished the lunch dishes when Grandma and Uncle Wilfred arrived to spend the afternoon.  Aunt Florence made her displeasure very apparent, but still they stayed until--it must have been six o'clock.   No refreshment of any kind was offered and I know this upset Mother. Both Ruth and I were puzzled.   Florence didn't like people to drop in and never, while we were there, was anyone invited to a meal.  Once the parents of the boy Phyllis was dating came by pre-arrangement on a Sunday afternoon, but they weren't offered anything, either. Very strange!

One Monday Grandpa and Grandma Mills came to call but didn't stay long.  Mother made an appointment for Ruth to see the doctor and I think it was Grandpa who took Ruth and Mother back to Newberg.   She had to have the fish spine removed from her ankle.  Dr. Hester had been the Markell family doctor when Mother was young.

He apparently did the job satisfactorily because while Ruth was on crutches for another several weeks, she seemed to have no further trouble.

Once the surgery was performed, Mother took us back by bus to Portland for our visit with Grandma Markell.   She and Uncle Wilfred lived on a corner upstairs over a closed grocery store they had run on Clinton and (I think) 14th Streets, but I'm no longer sure of the address.

Without Grandpa Markell they couldn't manage the grocery.   I'm not really sure why they left Springbrook and tried to run the store in the city. Grandma wasn't very well and Uncle Wilfred was a salesman for Calumet Baking Powder.  He had been married and divorced twice.

Mother was happy to be in the city.  To me it was just confusing with all the street cars clanging about, the endless noise, and traffic.

Mother took us to visit her cousin, Mabel Jolly, who was at home in traction from an accident.  Then we went to see her Uncle Will Markell's widow, whose name I can't recall.  While there the adopted daughter barged in, demanded some money, and when introduced to us said, "Humph" and sailed out with her nose in the air.   It was embarrassing for the aunt as well as for us. We left too.

Back at Grandma's, Mother's sister Aunt Eva came with Uncle Martin Vollbrecht and their daughter (about six years old), Betty Anne.  They were friendly--we liked them immensely.

Mother took us back to Aunt Florence and then she had to return home to the island.

That year was quite an education for us in more than “book learning." Uncle Roy came over from Salem to see us as soon as he found we were there, taking various ones for a short "spin" in his new Ford.   He looked more like Daddy than his brothers, Lewis and Paul, whom we met later.  He was cheerful and friendly.

Aunt Florence insisted on our attending Sunday School, church, and Christian Endeavor at the Friends Church in Newburg.   Poor Elmer was always the chauffeur.

Ruth and I joined the Girl Guides that were just then being formed.  We were only about a dozen girls.   In order to attend the state convention (a totally new idea for Ruth and me) we gathered at the home of the lady leader on several successive Saturdays to make doughnuts and then peddle them about town.  Another project was to take part in a huge stage production in Portland. Each group was assigned some portion of the show. Ours was to do a very simple dance to "Down by the Old Mill Stream."  Ruth wore overalls, a straw hat, and a bandage on her big bare toe. I had a sunbonnet.

When it came time for the convention, disaster struck.  An epidemic of the "Seven Year Itch" (Editor’s note: Scabies) closed the high school.  Ruth and I both had it badly.  Ruth was slower healing than I and not allowed to go to the convention.   We'd used everything to treat the itch.  Sulfur ointments and even coal tar--horrible, all of them.

The convention was held in Astoria and besides the expected speeches there was a tea hostessed by the governor's wife and a candlelight church service that impressed me.

Grandma Markell and Aunt Eva - our mother's mother and sister - made every effort to entertain us.  They'd phone and we'd go by Greyhound to Portland to stay with Grandma and Uncle Wilfred.  Aunt Eva and Uncle Martin had his sister, Hildegarde, staying with them in their cute little doll house out by Reed College.   Since it only had two bedrooms and Hildegarde used the living room sofa, there was no question of our staying there.

Aunt Eva and Uncle Martin took us to the big theaters in Portland, the ones that had dance revues (a-la-Rockette style) before the movie, up to Mount Hood for the ski exhibition, on tours over Portland parks and other points of interest.  We went out to the Oswego Country Club (they were members) so Ruth could swim, driving up the Columbia River past the falls, and other places I've forgotten. One special thing Aunt Eva did just for me.   She fretted over my limp, straight hair and when the first Marcelling machines became available, took me for a permanent.  It looked so much better, but I didn't know how to take care of it so I guess you'd call it a failure.

Uncle Wilfred was very partial to Ruth and took her to ball games sometimes.

Once I screwed up my courage and took the three different trolleys it took to go to see our cousin Vera Mills, our father's brother Lewis's daughter, newly married and very pregnant.

Our father's brother Uncle Roy, and Aunt Mable invited us to Salem one weekend.  Roberta was attending college at Corvallis.  Ruth and I walked the block from their house to the state Capitol building to climb up into the dome.  We were very suitably Impressed,

On Sunday Aunt Mabel fixed the traditional fried chicken dinner, the table properly set with cloth and candles and flowers. Ila, the younger daughter, was there and we waited for Charles (then 8 years old)--and waited--and waited. Uncle Roy went out searching.  Aunt Mabel called his friends' mothers. No Charles.

Finally they decided we should eat dinner and save his. We'd just sat down when the phone rang--the POLICE!
Uncle Roy took off without a word.  We were just finishing dinner when he returned with Charles, his arm in plaster.   He'd tried to jump on a moving freight train, fallen off, and broken his arm.

Our first big new adventure was provided by our father's parents, Grandpa and Grandma Mills. They took us to the State Fair.  We'd never heard of such a thing, but were enthralled with all the color, the crowds and especially the Ferris Wheel. It was a wonderful day.

On the way home we kept exclaiming over the glorious yellow borders along the road.  Grandpa laughed and invited us to get out of the car and pick some.  We had an armload when we arrived home.  Uncle Elmer (Grandpa's son-in-law) took one look. He snatched them from us and took them to the furnace in the basement.  Scots Broom!  He'd worked for years to rid his farm of the pest. I bet Grandpa chuckled every time he thought about it.

In early October, on a bright sunny Sunday, the Clan Mills gathered at Grandpa and Grandma's to celebrate their wedding anniversary.  Ruth was still on crutches, but I was pressed into service to help serve and WASH DISHES. No paper plates or napkins.  Grandma had prepared gallons of chicken and dumplings.  There were a great many other things like fresh tomatoes, too.

The Clan Mills is huge.  It was the first meeting for Ruth and me and the only one for us with many of the members.  I was totally confused from first to last.  Earlier we'd been approached to pay our family's share of the gift--a davenport.  I've often wondered if Grandma was consulted because it just didn't look right in her house.

Aunt Florence did her best to educate us properly in other ways.  She was horrified to learn we'd never been to a "proper" funeral with the service in church followed by cemetery burial.  She searched the newspaper for the time of a service when we would be free from school. When she found one, for someone she did not know, she supervised our getting dressed (dark dress, hat, and gloves) and took us.  It was a long "windy" service not very well attended, but we tried not to squirm.  The flowers made me sneeze.  Walking past the open casket distressed me.  Why should anyone be allowed to view a body just because the soul is gone?  What about the privacy of the departed person?  My determination to never let it happen to me began then.

Aunt Florence had some very peculiar beliefs and customs which we found quite difficult to live with.  Yet--I learned a lot.  Ruth discovered that she could claim tennis lessons or band practice and escape much drudgery. Unfortunately, that devil conscience smote me.  As a consequence, every Saturday morning I churned butter the old-fashioned way. It does help develop muscles in the arms.  Also, that was baking day. I skinned and seeded Concord grapes for pies.  Aunt Florence made the best I ever ate, but it was a tedious job. Aunt Florence made wonderful pumpkin pie and I've never tasted such good burnt sugar cake as hers.  "Burning" the sugar was another job that became mine, but worth the trouble.

Once each week we had rice.  We often had it in Alaska.  That Chinese cannery cook taught Mother who passed the lesson along.  Not so for Aunt Florence.  After the rice was rinsed under running water it was put on to cook.  A big dollop of butter was added and someone had to stand and stir the whole time it cooked!  It was a glue-like mess we had to choke down.  If Aunt Florence got enough for the butter she sold in Newburg, she bought liver.  This, too, was treated differently from our way. It was cut very thin then put on to fry, someone standing there, constantly turning it until it was hard and brittle.

But biscuits!  No one ever made better than Aunt Florence and they were served every morning with homemade prune butter.  Nectar!

Sometimes dusting the living room on Saturday became one of my chores.  That room was kept sacred almost, for the rare visitor.  I think Phyllis usually did it but sometimes she was excused and I did it.  Just at first I made a great mistake.  As I dusted, I opened the drapes and windows to let the sun in. As I went around I moved things a bit so they'd be more comfortable.  The little   green glass basket with glass sweet peas looked better over on a small table. Instead I filled a large vase with white snowballs from the front yard.   Horrors! They should never be picked.  The windows were closed, drapes drawn, and the green glass basket with the pink sweet peas was quickly back in its accustomed spot. I didn't do that again.

That wise principal at Newburg High arranged that Ruth and I were in separate classes--all except one.  It was called Science--now I think called Social Studies (and not accepted for credit when I enrolled for college).
One of the problems with that class (for me) began early.  When the teacher (I think her name was Miss Butts) discovered we were from Alaska she insisted I stand up and describe our home.  I attempted this--but she quickly interrupted me, "No, no--your real home, not the summer fishing lodge."

I tried again.

"No, no.  Sit down and let your sister tell us exactly how it was done." Well!   Ruth got up and told the most colorful tale of cutting ice blocks, pouring melted snow to seal the cracks--Miss  Butts was enthralled and Ruth could do no wrong in that class.  I barely passed. Still, it wasn't enough to keep me off the honor roll. Ruth had more fun.

Another problem and a class later rejected for credit when I enrolled for college was the math class.  It was a helter-skelter review of elementary arithmetic.   I detested arithmetic, had expected algebra, and just stumbled along. What a waste of time.

Freshman gym was a mess, too—pushups, etc.  Ruth discovered that signing up for tennis exempted her and she enjoyed tennis all year when it didn't rain.  It was also an excuse to accept a date after school and get a ride home with one of the boys.  Aunt Florence accepted that excuse.

If I missed the bus, I trudged the three miles along the rutted road. Once in a while Uncle Elmer would come along and give me a lift in his wagon behind his team of plodding horses. Besides his prune orchard and farm, he delivered mill ends of lumber to the hard-to-reach farms, where it was used for fuel.

Daddy wrote to one of his former pals, telling him where we were.  Sorry, I can't remember his name.  He kindly followed with an invitation for the two of us one weekend.   He came for us and took us to his farm in another community.  He and his wife did their best. There were several children, but my memory is sketchy.  What we did enjoy most was picking the wild blackberries that grew like a hedge to fence the farm.  I hope we wrote and thanked them.

One of the things that stands out in that year was arranged by Mother's sister, Aunt Eva. She had tickets for all of us, herself, and Uncle Martin, Grandma, and Uncle Wilfred as well as Ruth and me.  It was the all-state high school orchestra and the first classical concert I'd ever attended.   I remember how ashamed I was when Grandma leaned over and asked me if I was sick because the tears ran down my face.  I could scarcely believe young people, some younger than I, could produce such magical sounds. It was truly wonderful.

When the school term end neared, Ruth took our hoarded funds and bought our tickets on the SS Northland from Seattle.  Aunt Eva, bless her,   offered to drive us to Snoqualmie Falls to visit our father's older sister Aunt Ella and Uncle Clem(ent) Niswanger and our cousin John. Hildegarde,  Uncle Martin's sister, was on her way home to Olympia, Washington and went with us.

Both Ruth and I related to the rugged mountain terrain as we neared the falls.   It was so wooded and more "our kind of country" than the peaceful Willamette Valley.

We were only there a few days, but once again a new experience.   Aunt Ella was a club woman.  We attended a big "tea" one day.  On another, after a crash course in the game we filled in at a fund raiser playing pinochle.   We'd neither of us played it before and I never have since.  We did enjoy it and everyone was most kind.

The Niswangers delivered us to Seattle and our ship home.  It was a big adventure, going unescorted, home to Sitka.  There were no other young people aboard.   However, there was a tour group of Iowa teachers along with a varied sprinkling of other passengers.   We enjoyed every minute, went ashore at each port and danced every night.  Fun! The two of us were still quite compatible. The animosity had been almost nonexistent all year!

The End

 People
Every community has its own characters.  Among those that were recognized as "different" are those that remain in a child's memory even though other people are probably more worthy and important. Mr. and Mrs. DeArmond (postmaster and mistress) were dear friends.  As a young man, Mr. DeArmond went to Sitka in charge of the Experimental Agricultural Station.  Mrs. DeArmond had gone there as a teacher.  After their marriage they remained there until his death.  She then became postmistress until her retirement when she went to live nearer her children who had each made a home in different parts of Alaska. Robert frequently writes articles about Alaska that are widely quoted.  

Mac (Mr. McNulty) who ran the Standard Oil Dock was the first person we children recognized when old Cynthia would arrive for her quota of gas. He was also the father of the 17 living children we later came to call friends.  His wife, May, became a particular friend of Mother's.  May was a large woman, fat.  Each day she went for a walk downtown. It might be unkind to remember, but if she missed her walk everyone would start speculating, "Was it a boy or a girl this time?" She was so large her pregnancy was well disguised.

Among others that stood out was Mr. Gilpatrick because he wore his hair quite theatrically long.  He also was the owner of the Photo Shop where Daddy got his film, and he was the father of Mrs. Peterson who ran the curio shop.  Her husband was the Territorial ranger and roved the SE  Alaska area in a sleek white cruiser.  They had at least two children, Charley and Lena, several years older than l was. Mr. Gilpatrick took wonderful pictures, climbing all the mountains in the vicinity.  Sometimes he'd enlarge particular views and they'd be for sale in his shop where he did a good business on "steamer days.”

Another celebrity was.Robert Merrill who painted wonderful, authentic pictures that were wildly expensive for those days. (Editor’s note: Photographer E. W. Merrill had his photographs hand-tinted; this memory might have been combined with that of a visiting painter.) How I wanted one!  I remember standing behind him on the green lawn fronting the Pioneer's Home when he was painting the old Tlingit war canoe on the rocky beach.  I know my mouth must have hung open as I watched each stroke of the brush.  No one else paid any attention, but to me it was magic.  His particular companion was Henry Woodruff, a long gray bearded man I have vague recollections had been a miner or prospector.  The two lived together in a one-bedroom shanty across the street from McNultys. (Editor’s note: Etolin Street.) In our second year of high school, Ruth and I lived in the shanty while it was in probate.  We had an electric light, a "one-holer" out back, and a water tap with cold water.

W. P. Mills was the successful businessman..  He and his sister May Mills owned the Mercantile General Store, the more posh of the two shops in Sitka. He always wore a business suit, I remember.  He and his wife lived in a house on a little Islet facing the business district and reached by a Iong board walk on stilts that connected the mainland right behind the store. (Editor’s note: the Mills House is behind the current Sitka Public Library.) He was always called W. P. just like my father was C. Jay.

May Mills lived in a large white house atop a little hill on the street behind the business district.  (Editor’s Note: the May Mills House is on Seward Street.) She had two adopted children, a boy, Laddy Thompson, and a girl, Patricia, quite a lot younger than I was.

There were still, when I was a child some of the old Russian families. There were the Triershields - May McNulty's parents and their numerous offspring; the Marvels - Laurie was in school with us only older, then there was brother Rudy, sister Lulu (married Mr. Wortman, the pharmacist) and others whose names I forget; the Kostrometinofs represented the older more elite Russians who chose to stay when Alaska was purchased from Russia.  The Russian Orthodox priest came from Russia and was rotated once-in-awhile.

 Luba Malakoff shared a double desk when I was in third grade.   I'm sure there were others.  The Herman family was Russian Orthodox, but I don't know when they arrived.   Probably they were of the older Russian group, but diluted by marriage along the way.

There were others, too.  One was universally called "Dirty Dave".  We first became aware of him after we moved to the Island.  He was dirty--but there was a reason.   He was a hand troller with nothing but his rowboat and fishing gear. He had the barest possible equipment, practically no clothing except what he wore.  He spent long hours out there on the fishing grounds, rowing in all kinds of weather for several years before he had enough saved to buy a small very old troller.   While it was tiny he did have a cabin to retreat into for shelter and to cook his meals, and a bunk to sleep in.  He often came our way and I have thought it was as much for the friendly conversation as for the meals Mother always offered.

Mrs. Moleneaux was the caretaker of the Manse and St. Peters Episcopal Church.  I really have no recollections of her until Ruth and I went to Sitka for our second year of high school.  She was elderly then, and had arthritis badly, probably accounting for her unusual figure--sort of a Gibson Girl with thin waist.  She could be very cross and disagreeable, but never with me.  I stayed with her for my junior year in high school.  I'm sure she was not too well paid, but she was generous in housing and feeding me. She also bought me a coat and some shoes.  All I did was a little housework and taught a class in the Sunday School.  I also helped with the confirmation class.  When the Bishop arrived in the spring to conduct the confirmation there was a great consternation.   Everything had gone well--the candidates were in the church waiting when I started across from the manse with the Bishop.

"And where were you confirmed?" he asked me.
"Oh, I've never been confirmed", I answered.  "You see, my father is a Quaker and they don't believe in infant baptism or confirmation."
Well, he stopped right there outside the door, his face scarlet, and I thought he was going to refuse to confirm anyone.   He stamped his feet, growled a little, and finally went in and conducted the service.  A close call!

When we were quite young--first moved to Sitka--there was an old lady and her son who frightened us.  Granny Fix was elderly, wore long black skirts that dragged in the dirty unpaved streets and frequently talked to herself as she walked along.   Her son, poor boy, must have been a teenager then.  He had a club foot that caused him to lurch along.   He was simple minded too.  We all ran when we saw him, but I'm sure he was perfectly harmless.  Some of the bigger boys threw stones at him.  They lived in a little house out in Jamestown Bay.

   The Midget

 It was the third or fourth year on the island that Daddy realized an open rowboat and outboard was not going to be enough to transport us to school and   fish (for fox food) and even go to Sitka when he was away fishing in the summer. He had built a warehouse out on the near side of the dock.  There he laid the shallow keel for a 17-foot boat, quite wide, and with a covered cabin just large enough to accommodate a small gasoline engine.  There were seats all around an open cockpit.  When it was finished we each chipped in suggestions for a name--and almost by common consent she became the Midget.

At first Mother took us the 3 1/2 miles to school, stopping to pick up the Jackson children and Donald Hough, then all the way home, only to do the same route at the end of the day.  3 1/2 miles doesn't sound far to us here in California.  On a stormy day on open ocean with waves so high we couldn't see out of the trough, the wind blowing drenching spray, the rain coming down in sheets, it was a long way, taking as much as 2 hours sometimes because that little engine was only a 5 horsepower.  Still, it was much better than the rowboat and outboard.  With that we had to constantly bail the water that slopped over the sides of the boat. Then there was the problem of a "sheer pin".   If we were not careful and got too near a bed of kelp so it tangled in the propeller a pin would break.  We'd have to lift the motor off the back of the boat to replace the pin while others manned the oars to keep us steady in the water and away from the rocks that dotted the route we used, taking whatever shelter from the wind we could find.  Sometimes, too, we'd get water in the carburetor and have to dry it out   Oh, the Midget was a great improvement. By my last year at home it had become Ruth's boat.

Swearing was simply not tolerated in our house.  Mother actually scrubbed out the mouth of any offender with soap and water.  Once was quite enough.

Of course we heard Chris Jackson and his brothers, Sig and Happy, who had quite fluent vocabularies which they never voiced in Dad’s or Mother's hearing.

When quite small Glen picked up "Oh Heck" for which he was suitably punished, but not too severely, so it persisted.  Mother made him a "Cream of Wheat" man doll which was promptly dubbed "Oh Heck". Cream of Wheat featured, as an advertisement stunt, a 12 inch printed figure on cotton to be cut, sewn, and stuffed all for 25 cents.

Daddy's favorite expression was "Rasp it!"  Once, I must have been about 12, he was seriously provoked about something, We were all getting ready to go out in the rain to work when he said "Darn!"  Absolute silence!  We were shocked.  We didn't believe what we heard.  In unison we turned and looked at him.  In unison we burst into laughter.  So far as I know, he never said it again.  
 
School
 
Names sometimes escape me now.  Somehow they are not always as important as incidents along the way.  Perhaps you will forgive me.

Our first school at Goddard was in a one room cabin along the waterfront with the resort-hotel well above us on the hill.  As I remember it, there were 3 or   4 of these cabins, each with its one-holer out back, that were built to rent to vacationers or people there for treatment in the hot springs.  We had cabin #1 for our school.  Each cabin had a little wood stove for heat.  Desks had been lined up 2 abreast, the youngest at the front by the teacher's desk.

"Tex" (I have never known her given name) Goddard, daughter-in-law of the owners of the resort, was that first teacher.  She was tall, fairly attractive, and I assume came from Texas.  I must confess that I didn't like her, but wouldn't have admitted it even to myself, then.  It was difficult to find teachers willing to work our strange term (Editor’s note: because of the problem of boating in the winter, the Goddard school term ran from April to October) and to work under such conditions.  To me Tex seemed to resent being there.  Of course it was daunting work with 10 children in grades 1 through 4.  Now I think she was brave to tackle it.

The third year, when we had our own school building, we had Miss McCann.  She, too, was brave to walk that mile from Goddard down that trail hacked out of the woods, most often drenched from the drips of overhanging trees and underbrush  only to have to start a fire in the wood stove before she could even think about the day's work.   In April, at the beginning  of the term, it was just getting light and usually raining--in October at the end of the term it was dark and stormy so she needed a heavy flashlight to see the roots, holes, and rocks in the trail.  Moreover, Miss McCann was decidedly lame.  We adored her and had her come for the weekend several times.  She, too stayed for 2 years. She could laugh with us, and made an effort to be interesting in the teaching of the Territory-imposed curriculum.   Then, too, she wore attractive, cheerful clothes. You've no idea how much children starved for excitement and company can gain from that.  It's like a gaily wrapped package.

Daddy had been the prime instigator of the schoolhouse.  He'd read a great deal about the effect of color on the eyes and its effect on the attention span.  As a consequence the room was painted pale green with windows all along the beach front side, just high enough so I had to stand up to see out.  He wanted us to study, not sit and day dream watching the channel or the surf on the beach.

It is unfortunate that girls were still required to wear dresses in those days.  Jumping out of a boat bobbing in the surf, with a basket containing all our lunches was no mean feat when hampered by skirts.  The basket was heavy because it was before plastic.  So the sauce dishes for the canned tomatoes in a glass Mason jar rattled and I had to keep the basket upright too.  Sandwiches were usually wrapped in paper, often torn from magazines, and all was covered by a clean dish towel.  At lunch time I parceled them out to everyone coming back to my desk for his portion.  Almost always we had peanut butter on our whole wheat bread, sometimes with brown sugar or honey added.   Usually we had cookies, but sometimes cake.  Cheese was a rare luxury.  We also sometimes had deviled venison--cooked ground meat mixed with cooked salad dressing until it was spreadable.

Those were the days when we were expected to have homework so each of us carried it home trying to keep the books and paper dry in the almost   constant drizzle rain or storm.  We didn't have fancy rainproof backpacks or plastic covers so it was a real organizing problem.   In stormy weather it was even worse because of the wind-blown salt spray.  Although we had our problems, I'm glad I lived that life and not one the children of today face with gangs, drugs, and crime.  When Ruth and I graduated from 8th grade after taking those exams sent from Washington,  D.C. because Alaska was a Territory, the Goddards gave us a special party.  We didn't go home with the boys (I think Daddy came for them) but trekked up the trail with the teacher (then Miss Whitmore).

Mrs. Goddard (Gaddy) gave us a room in the hotel to stay in until she called us.  We had glorious hot baths and started "primping."

Dorothy Goddard, at home for a visit, came bringing nail pencils and cream nail white so we could work on the ever-present  dark stains under our nails (residue from our rustic life).  Poor Dorothy!  We used almost every bit (and still had stains).  We had with us our best (homemade) dresses to change into and really struggled to look well.

When we were called at last, we were surprised to find Mother had arrived to join the party.  Gaddy and Madge (Clemmons) had really extended themselves to have a special dinner.  Moreover, they gave each of us a glamorous handmade "Teddy", our first really feminine lingerie--Ruth's pale green and mine pink, both with tiny rose buds embroidered at the lower front edges.

That next year we both stayed home to work, taking turns running the school boat.  We were paid $17.00 per month which we shared and saved toward our high school the following year.
 
Interim Between 8th Grade and High School
 
In the interim period following graduation from Goddard School, Ruth and I had added chores.  Graduating in Mid-October, it would be almost a full year before we could go to hig_h school.  That winter we were completely responsible for catching the rock fish for the "mush," cooking the food, and delivering it to the feeding stations.

In addition, we took active parts when trapping time came.  We learned to judge which foxes to kill, which to release for breeding.   I wasn't much good at killing the beautiful, snarling, snapping beasts, but Ruth did more than her share. Glen, too was a big help.  Each fox had to be branded at this time.  To do this, one of us had to hold the squirming, fighting, terrified beast while Daddy punched our brand, KKI, into an ear.  One-year-olds into the right ear, two-year­ aids into the left.  This was a quick way to judge age when they were trapped and helped in the decision of which to release for breeding. Once, I remember, Ruth was severely bitten.
After we carried the dead animals home they had to be skinned, a tedious job.  This was usually done right away because it was much easier before rigor mortis stiffened the body.  It was also easier then to "Fletch" the skin because the fat was looser while warm and it all had to be removed.  To nick the skin reduced the value of the fur.

Once all this was done, the pelts were stretched skin side out on boards shaped rather like miniature ironing boards, and propped up to dry all over the living room.  It was an awkward time in our little house, leaving little space to move about.

All this occurred in January, usually, because that was the coldest dry weather time.   It was almost frantic work because dry winter only lasted about two weeks.  The longest guard hair and thickest pelts could be found then.  Wild animals protect themselves that way as we do by adding more clothing.
Next morning, Daddy would fill gunny sacks with the dead carcasses, add heavy rocks and carry them out a mile or so into the Pacific before lowering them overboard.

When spring edged in, Ruth and I would get up around 3:30 pr 4:00 AM, just as the first fingers of light crept in, then off with the Midget to troll for salmon before we had to get back to transport the younger ones to school.

Usually (but not always) Ruth did that while I did washing or whatever the day's chore might be.  Once home from the school run, it was fish for bass for that yawning kettle.  Two barrels would be hoisted into the Midget's cockpit and off we'd go until time to go back for the kids at school.

Then one of us would go, and the other would cook the "mush" so it would be ready to distribute as soon as the Midget was home.  Sometimes Glen would go along with Ruth to deliver the fox food.  Then I could start dinner or finish the ironing.  No polyester in those days!

There was another activity that summer--we were getting ready to go away to high school!  It was an exciting time--prices were up for fish, and the fur pelts had brought the best prices ever.  It was the summer of 1929!
Mother was ripping “missionary barrel” gifts (those garments cast off and sent from various relatives) dying them and making them into a wardrobe for each of us.  Most of them were totally unsuitable, but we didn't realize it then. Our excitement was at a fever pitch and Ruth and I were getting along better than we ever had before.  We cooperated without rancor.

Dad was away for 2 or 3 weeks at a time, fishing, but we kept the work going with little trouble and even went to Sitka in the Midget a couple of times for supplies.   It was a good summer--a good happy time.

Several incidents remain quite vivid in my memory.  The first and most important was almost a tragedy.  The boys were at school, Mom and Dad were off somewhere, possibly in Sitka.  Ruth took a magazine and went to cook the fox food taking Cora, then nearing three years old, with her.  Cora was happy, pushing her favorite little toy along, a green tin wheelbarrow with a red wheel.  It had been a gift from some well-meaning relative for Carl who was well past that age.  I was ironing while bread baked.  It was a beautiful day and life was very good.

Ironing was a tedious chore so I looked out the window often while the tub of wrinkled laundry never seemed to grow less.  Napkins, tablecloths, shirts, jeans, pillowcases, dresses, no polyester.  And then--as I looked up I screamed and ran to the door.  Cora blithely pushing her barrow was running along the planks of the dock.  No way could I get to her before she'd go off the end into deep water. I screamed again and Ruth realized what was happening.  She tore off down the trail toward the dock.  But before she could get anywhere hear the little red wheel caught in the cracks of the dock planking and threw Cora over onto the granite boulders just short of the water.  It was a fall of about five, maybe six feet and the wheelbarrow went with her.

Ruth scooped her up and came running to the house with a trickle of blood to mark the way.  Cora was limp in her arms and dazed--probably concussed.  Carefully, Ruth laid her on the kitchen table while we examined her. The cut on her scalp--a good two inches long on that little head, but no other sign of injury. I sponged the cut and washed it with peroxide.  Cora didn't even whimper.

That scared us.  I couldn't get the bleeding stopped except with pressure and that worried us too.  Finally I trimmed the hair away and while Ruth pinched the raw edges together, I used adhesive tape to hold the cut together.  It worked. After sponging away the worst of the blood and dirt, we put a folded blanket on the window seat where I could watch her and let Cora take her nap there.

Remembering an article I had read read on concussion, I woke the poor little tot often to be sure she was all right.

Ruth went back to the badly burned fox food and I to my ironing.  Never had we felt so great a relief as when Mom and Dad came home.

Cora seemed to have no problems by morning except the bald patch. The scar healed and her hair grew out again.  She was just as lively as ever jn a couple of days and looking for that dratted green wheelbarrow.

Next: Final post: Going to High School

Shopping, Hunting, Fishing and Gardening

Perhaps here is as good a place as any to explain the grocery shopping. After that first year on the island, Daddy ordered from a wholesale grocer in Seattle twice a year.  There would be 8 or 9 100# sacks of sugar, the same of white flour, the same of coarse whole wheat, 20 cases evaporated milk, 4 or 5 cases tomatoes, string beans, peas, and corn in gallon cans.  Usually there was a 5-gallon can of honey, 2 of peanut butter.  When it became available there were 25# tins of skimmed powdered milk and less evaporated.   Bulk tea, I don't know how much, and 9 or 10 cases of coffee in gallon cans.  There were sacks of potatoes and onions.  Usually some special treat was added:  a case of peaches or pears, sometimes pineapple, a tub of pickled pig's feet and Daddy's favorite chow-chow (Editor’s note: this is a kind of pickled relish).  If fishing had been profitable there might be other things like Graham crackers or a whole hand of bananas and/or case of fresh apples. Yeast for bread had to be bought in Sitka because it didn't keep well.  lt was not like the kind available today, but coarse squares that were hard to dissolve.

Each fall eight 50# sacks of dried prunes were ordered from the Springbrook (Editor’s note: the Oregon community her parents were from) dryer along with two of dried apples.  Again, if the fishing had been good, small sacks of dried corn and cherries would be added and maybe 50# of walnuts.  Grandpa Mills usually included hazelnuts and pecans as a gift.

These were our basic groceries for six months.  From our garden we augmented with leaf lettuce, green onions, potatoes, turnips, strawberries, and raspberries.  With careful gardening and not too severe an autumn we'd have lettuce until the end of October.  Meanwhile in summer red huckleberries grew under the trees, salmon berries were plentiful, nettles were our spinach and when we could find it, goose tongue.  Toward fall we always planned a trip to Pirate's Cove to pick wild "cranberries" (lingonberries) among marshy moss.

In spring there were the "runs" of herring when we'd fill a rowboat. Usually on July 4th, if the weather was good, we'd go crabbing and eat our fill.   It was then we dug our first new potatoes and picked the first peas.   If Daddy had been to town for ice for fishing, we made ice cream.  It was a special treat day I liked better than Thanksgiving.

There was a "Turkey Shoot" each fall in Sitka.  I'm not sure who sponsored it, but Daddy always went and later took Ruth.  She became as good a target shot as he so they each would win one or two turkeys.  One would be brought home for Thanksgiving and the other left in the Cold Storage freezer for Christmas.

When the geese were migrating we usually had one or two and Daddy often shot Mallard ducks in the fall.  At all times we had bass, cod, halibut, and in summer salmon.

When I was 10 years old, Daddy started me target practicing with a 22 rifle.  For my birthday he got me a surplus World War I Army Craig rifle.  It was so heavy I couldn't hold it steady. He cut off much of the wooden stock and I was a tolerable marksman.  The next year Ruth was taught with the old 22 and he gave her his 30-30 Winchester rifle, getting himself a new 30-06 rifle.

Guns were an important part of our life, always.  As tiny children we were taught never to touch.  They had a special place and were kept there, always empty and cleaned regularly.   At the cabin on the Island they were on a rack on the living room wall ready to use, but high enough so the babies couldn't reach them.   Each of us was taught to shoot by the age of ten, how to clean, oil, take apart, and put back together our guns and given regular target practice. Strongest lesson of all was a healthy respect for firearms.   Even the babies were taught never to point a toy at a person and go "bang, bang."   Being caught repeating the gesture merited real punishment.

Labor Day was the opening of hunting season and a very special weekend.   Daddy and Mother would pick us up from school on Friday night, then head toward Chicken Foot Bay.  There the water was so deep Dad could moor the boat to the bank.  Days already were getting shorter so we'd sleep on the boat that night, but first light would find us climbing the steep hillside.  Dad set a steady fast pace and we were expected to keep up with infrequent rests to catch our breaths.  When Cora was tiny he carried her in a pack on his back and we distributed the knapsacks of food among Ruth, Glen, and me.  Each had a hunting license and carried our own guns.  Mother was free to help Don and Carl.  We used no bedding or tents.

That night we'd reach the top of the chosen mountain.   Under the edge of trees at timberline there was a giant rock.  Here we gathered dry wood and Daddy built a fire against the rock to reflect the heat toward us.  We'd heat canned soup in a gallon can we'd brought, then make coffee and munch on the bread we carried.  All the time we were cautioned to be quiet, because sound carries so much further in the quiet of the mountains.  While we ate the night grew quiet and dark with the stars brilliant in the sky--and it would be getting cold with a breeze nipping at us.   Pulling our jackets around us, tightly buttoned, we'd choose a spot with feet toward the fire and sleep there under the shelter of the trees.  The fire radiating toward us from the boulder, only night birds making any sound.

First rays of sun had us stirring, a bit chilly and slightly stiff from our rapid climb the day before.  We'd get water from a tiny stream, make coffee and eat dried prunes and bread.  Always, I was awed by the first sight of the alpine meadows and the mountain peaks, the grazing deer, the carpet of flowers.
 The first alien sound and the lookout stag would give warning whistle herding his harem and the still spotted fawns ahead of him as they bounded away.   Daddy always had wonderful pictures of them all.  That day was for picture taking and pure enjoyment at the marvels we saw, felt, and smelled there among the peaks.  Next day was for hunting and returning downhill to the boat, then home long after dark.  Monday, Labor Day, we butchered the deer and canned all day long.

Solid meat was stuffed into cans with a bit of salt and a couple of whole black peppers.  Scrappy meat was ground and made into patties seasoned with chopped onions and canned after browning in a little tallow.   Bones were put on to stew for soup, the meat picked off and added to the broth seasoned with onions and carrots, then this, too, was canned.  We ate the heart, liver, and kidneys at once, often making scrapple for breakfast.  We all were in on the act and I became quite good at skinning and butchering.

Sometimes, if we'd been very lucky and there was more than we could can at one time, a heavy brine was made and chunks of venison would be immersed to "corn", a frontier method of keeping meat before the days of refrigeration.  I remember watching Mother and Daddy adding the salt, bay leaves, whole peppercorns, and mustard seed then stirring and mixing in the huge barrels until a medium sized potato would float atop the brine.   It was an old, well tried test of the strength that would preserve the meat for months.

Later on, during the winter there were other hunting trips just for Daddy or maybe including Ruth or me, but Labor Day was always a very special time.

One time we girls both went--it must have been in November because it was after school was over.  The weather was cold and snow had already touched the mountain tops.  We got back to the boat after dark with a storm threatening, chilled through.   Our anchorage  was not safe in a storm and Daddy immediately started home although the tide was on the ebb and we were anchored behind a little islet deep enough there but shallow in the narrow channel. Clouds scudded past overhead with a full moon showing between. Outside we could hear the rising boom of wind and surf.

Just halfway down the little channel we hit a huge rock on one side and the boat started listing.  To keep it from capsizing, we propped hatch covers under the railing.   Ruth and I took turns standing in the skiff holding them in place until the tide turned and lifted the boat upright.  We were so cold we were numb and couldn't feel either feet or fingers--but we didn't capsize.   I'll never forget the beauty of those clouds with the moon glowing between, and black shadow of the mountains on our side of the channel, the stillness back in our hideaway, and the rising sound of the wind and waves outside.   It was rough ride home and as usual I was seasick.

Food was always a big concern that required much work on the part of us all.  After every winter storm we carried great heaps of the seaweed and kelp that drifted ashore to the garden, digging deep trenches to bury it to decay for fertilizer.   Along the front next the house a trench was dug for sweet peas and a lattice was strung.  Then came daffodils, then pansies, and right by the sidewalk   came leaf lettuce and green onions that were easy to harvest in any weather. Against the east end of the house a honeysuckle grew to enormous size, covering the whole end of the building.   

Beyond it was the garden where all of us labored in spring, but especially Mother.  Each of us were assigned a tiny plot and each spring we could choose a packet of seed from the catalog.  One year I chose Kohlrabi.  I didn't know what it was, but the name fascinated me.  It was a very successful crop although none of us really liked it when cooked.  Another year I chose dahlia seed.   Daddy objected, said it wouldn't grow, but since he'd promised our choice and it was only 10 cents he grudgingly let me order it.  How they grew!  From seed, while the first tubers formed, I had buckets of blossoms. Each succeeding year they multiplied  and cross pollinated  to form hundreds of shades and mutations.  Each year I had to expand further out, digging virgin soil, cutting out roots and stones so I could plant all the tubers.  That was the last year I ordered seed.

The other children were more cautions, allowing Daddy to guide them to select the standard flowers and vegetables.   Somehow I was always the rebel. Mother's daffodils expanded from one little clump to a six-foot-wide bed the length of the house.

Fishing was very good that second summer we were on the Islands and the price stayed high.   First, two "Morris" reclining chairs were ordered.  What a marvel!   We kids fought for possession when Daddy wasn't there.  Next came lumber and an extension was built for a kitchen on the west end of the log building during that winter.  That winter Daddy shingled the whole outside wall facing the harbor in an effort to keep out the winds and rain.  Another extension was built behind the woodshed to create a bedroom for Mother and Daddy.  And a special, special piece of equipment, a gasoline powered washing machine arrived.  This was very important to me because I was the one who helped wash using old fashioned scrub boards heating the water atop the stove.  On ironing day, because we had to keep the wood fire going, we baked beans.   On wash day we baked bread.   Since I was the light-weight, awkward and more inept, household  chores more often fell my way.  Ruth and Glen were better outside although each of us, even the boys, had to learn the rudiments of cooking and sewing and to help outside if needed.

Improvements, Crafts, Cooking and Fun

It was that winter, too, that Dad started hauling the heavy timbers and sinking the piling for a dock.  All of us worked on the block and tackle pulling them into place while he used a peavey to align them.   Even with my feet braced I was too light for such work.  Ruth delighted in special little signals to the others to let go rope leaving me stranded up in the air by the weight of the timber.   Dad would be furious with me dangling.   It served one purpose--I was left more and more to cook, clean, and wash, and I was not unhappy with the decision.

Mother had acquired a little hand turned sewing machine while we were still on the house boat.  As we grew older and did heavier work, the mending and sewing piled up higher.  About this time they ordered a wonderful treadle machine and mending was added to my chores.  Of course Mother still did the bulk of it, but I had my share during the long winters.  Also, most of our clothes   were homemade from fabrics chosen from the Sears wish book, or from garments in the "missionary barrels” shipped by various relatives.  Very often the fabrics were totally unsuitable.  Those that could be used were ripped apart, frequently dyed new colors, then cut from patterns we made using magazine pictures or Sears designs as a guide.  None of us was really gifted as designer or seamstress so everything had the “homemade" rather than the desired "handmade" stamp, but they did cover us.

I don't remember just when, but Daddy ordered a knitting machine and yarn, delighting in making heavy woolen stockings for all of us during the stormy winter when were confined indoors.   Modern machines can make sweaters and other items, but this one was confined to tubular things.

Shoe repair was another of Daddy's accomplishments.  He had acquired a kit with different sized lasts and he half-soled our leather shoes.   He even made sandals from buckskin we tanned, but they weren't really very successful. We needed to learn more about tanning and preparing the skins, but Daddy didn't approve our contacts with the Indians who could have taught us.

All of us enjoyed different kinds of craft work during the long winter months.  Mother taught us (boys too) to crochet and embroider.  Mother didn't knit, but a visitor taught Ruth when she was at Goddard Hot Springs for a few days.  She became especially accomplished and still had work in progress when she died in 1988.
Dad was intrigued by an article he read on weaving and rattan work so he sent for supplies.  All of us had fun making baskets and other things.   Ruth did a floor lamp, I remember. Daddy was especially good with wood.  He built a huge desk of yellow cedar with all kinds of pigeonholes and a fold up writing shelf.  There was a huge inlaid red cedar star on the front--a piece of furniture I wouldn't mind having today.  This again was a skill Ruth excelled at.  I was awkward and often gouged my fingers but did complete a set of book ends with three dimensional squirrels.

When Donald was small Daddy found a pattern for a dragon pull toy in one of the Sunset Magazines. He promptly made it and I was envious because I was too big to pull it, wibble wobble, across the floor.

I don't know why it took so long for Grandpa Markell's will to be probated, but we were in our second or third year on the Island when I received what was to me a vast sum in a check for $10.00.   Immediately, I started drooling over the Sears catalogue.   Here Daddy intervened and I know Mother was upset when the order was sent.  We picked out a doll that took most of the amount.  This was for Ruth.  The balance went for Marshmallow men for the others.  When they arrived and were distributed there wasn't even one for me.  Even today I can feel the hurt of that.  Ruth promptly named her doll "Baby Ruth".  Since I could sew better than Ruth I was told I could make doll clothes from scraps in the rag bag, but the doll had come complete with wardrobe so it wasn't necessary.

 I don't want anyone to think it was all work.   Work we did and it was hard physical work, but we could see with our own eyes that for survival it was necessary.  There was joy in climbing mountains, seeing the rare alpine flowers or finding a miniature orchid fairy slipper in the moss under a tree on Tava. When there was a rare bout of frigid weather and the pond on Tava swamp froze, we went to skate.  We played hide and seek through the trees and across the beach at sunset.  We often would grab a hanging tree branch and swing out over a gully, Tarzan style.  On long winter evenings when the wind roared, we played cards (Flinch, Rook, and 500) or popped corn and read--how we read! There were 36 monthly magazine (Saturday Evening Post, American Colliers, Ladies Home Journal, Black Fox, etc,. and we devoured them all.

Dad always gave each of us a book for Christmas so we read our own and each other’s. There were dominoes and checkers and Chinese checkers.   Finally Dad got a chess set, but that was about the time I left home for high school so I never learned to play.

Neighbors from nearby islands came, especially for holidays, and stayed over because of the short days and stormy weather in winter--sometimes  for a week or more. In summer the children we'd known in Sitka came for a week or two at time.  In wintertime Ruth and I would go (sometimes) when Daddy went to town and stay overnight with our friends.

Every couple of summers the Sydnors, whom we'd known in Kake, would come, usually on their own boat and with four or five college students from Pasadena.  They'd stay for several weeks and it was a great disruption while Daddy neglected his fishing to give them the grand tour and Mother and I prepared meals--but it was fun too, to meet and exchange ideas.

As long as I can remember, when we were little and especially after we moved to the Island, Daddy fixed breakfast if he was home while Mother dressed the babies.

A sourdough hot cake starter was kept in a crock on the cabinet next the stove.  There were always prunes followed by hot cakes (buckwheat if Daddy was there) with peanut butter and homemade syrup or honey.   Fresh fried fish and milk gravy accompanied the hot cakes, and sometimes, venison liver or heart and gravy if we'd been hunting.  Venison sausage patties were often served, especially in winter.  Halibut cheeks were a favorite or clam fritters.  Butter was a very, very rare treat.  It was too expensive and needed refrigeration which was nonexistent.  Meat and fish could be caught nearly every day.

Both our parents were aware of the lack of dairy products and the need for fresh green vegetables.  We had evaporated canned milk (diluted) until skimmed powdered milk became available and it was used for drinking (although I never really liked it), but also added to things like gravy.  I can't remember gravy ever made without milk when I was home.   From an early age we all drank coffee diluted with evaporated milk. I must have been about eleven when I realized I was less likely to be seasick if the milk was omitted. I still drink it black.

Cheese was a very special treat and usually used for school sandwiches or macaroni and cheese.  Venison fat was rendered and became the tallow that was our only shortening.  It gets very hard so that cakes were heavy, doughnuts rattled like stones and pastry was solid.  We never had cake flour--or even knew it existed.
Each summer Hires Extract was ordered and Mother made root beer using the solid yeast cakes.  If they didn't dissolve enough and left too many granules, the jars would pop with a bang when it was put in the kitchen attic to age.  Great brown rivulets would seep through the ceiling to drip down on the unwary.

Once when Daddy was away fishing Mother tried to make wine from the red huckleberries, but they were too full of water and it was just sour mash.

Daddy was violently opposed to wine, beer, or any alcoholic beverage so it was just as well that experiment was a failure.

Measuring cups and spoons were totally out of our experience.  We used whatever coffee cup was available and the tablespoons and teaspoons from the silver drawer. Recipes were adjusted to the measure.

Bread was baked twice a week, eleven loaves of coarse whole wheat (Daddy claimed any other kind unhealthful).  Hot cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls were made then too.  From age 10 onward it was my responsibility to keep cookies baked for lunches.  Like most frontier areas, a coffee pot was on the stove most of the time and cookies went with it.  Our parents would have been disgraced if a neighbor or stray fisherman had come into our harbor and there had been nothing to offer.

Except for breakfast, Daddy did nothing about the house, ordinarily. There was too much outside work that none of us could do.  But--there are exceptions to every statement. At least once each winter he would come back from Sitka with a can of Crisco, a bunch of bananas plus a dozen lemons and a dozen eggs.  We'd be ordered out of the kitchen after breakfast and he'd go to work making a pastry to fit the largest fry pan, filling it with lemon pie filling alternating with bananas.  We thought it ambrosia.

In one of the trade magazines Daddy read that molasses and eggs should be added to fox food in the fall to improve the sheen of the fur, and tripe, liver, and heart added in the spring for nursing mothers.  After that he ordered regular shipments of candled eggs from Seattle. We'd go through the crate and could find enough good ones to use in cooking.  We used the tripe too, parboiling it, then dipping it in beaten egg and flour before quickly frying it.

Oleo margarine was a great treat when it came along.  It was a chore to mix the yellow powder into the hard white cubes but quite worth it.

Southeast Alaska has an overall average rainfall of 5 days per week year-round. This does not change the fact that sometimes we might have as much as three weeks without rain because other times it might rain, pour, or drizzle every day for a month.  When we had a period of drought (and it was usually in the summer when we were the busiest) the rain barrels would go dry so even the wigglers (mosquito larvae) died.  To forestall the problem Daddy tried digging wells, here, there, and everywhere in the vicinity of the house.  Always he hit bed rock within a couple of feet of the surface after digging through a barrel of tree roots.

Finally, over past the cook house and up the trail that crossed the island, at least 1/4 mile from the house, he was able to get down about eight feet. Water drained from several rivulets.   Of course we had to carry it, bucket by bucket, but it was usable, drinkable water.  The unwary could mistake it for dark cider vinegar and clothes boiled in it came out a dingy shade--slightly darker than tattle tale gray.

New Boat and Life on Maid Island

About our third year on the island, we'd had a good year with fishing and percentage on the furs sold on the London market.  Since Cynthia was really a very aged lady, her motor constantly needing repair, Daddy decided to have a boat built.  He studied many plans and finally chose one from a Tacoma boat shop.  Shortly after the trapping season was over, he left Mother in charge and went south to supervise the construction.

It was a ghastly period. Ruth and I did the fishing and cooked the mush. Glen and even Don could help carry it to the feeding stations on Maid, but Ruth and I or Mother had to do the rest.  To make matters worse, it was a particularly vicious winter with storm following storm relentlessly.  We knew we had to do the feeding because the fox pups were about to be born and our livelihood for the next year depended upon their survival.

By mid-March Mother developed a severe bronchial flu and gradually we each one had it.  Mother sent word (I think it was Ruth who went with me, both coughing until we could hardly stand, carrying Mother's note) to Chris Jackson asking him to go to Sitka and ask Roy Commons (Uncle Seth's wife Edna's brother) to come help.  He did arrive and things improved.  Roy had been lazing about Sitka, unable to find work so he welcomed the opportunity.

School was well underway--it must have been late May, in fact when Daddy sailed home in the Alaskan Maid. How proud he was!

She was a pristine white with a diesel engine that pushed her along at 10 miles an hour, sometimes a bit more.  We all marveled and it was only later we learned that she rolled excessively.   We were impressed with the oak stained built-in cupboards, the oil stove, and especially the "head" (Editor’s note: marine toilet), a great improvement on poor Cynthia's coffee can.

Sadly, the storms that next winter tore Cynthia loose from her mooring so she was driven ashore, high up the beach in front of the house.   It was the end of a good, faithful old lady.

In about July of 1925 Mother told us she was expecting another baby. None of us had realized it because she had become heavier over the years and the additional "pooch" hadn't impressed any of us.  Because she was afraid Daddy might be away when the time came, she sat me down to study Dr. Gunn's Medical Directory.   I didn't learn anything about conception, but there was detailed information on the delivery of a baby.  Fortunately, Daddy was home on August 20th, 1925 when Cora May made her appearance.  Mother was confined to bed for a good long two weeks and the baby was mine to bathe and diaper, to love and dream over.

Possibly Mother would have been glad of a few more days of quiet, but it was not to be.  Another great event occurred:  Grandma and Grandpa Mills arrived on their first and only visit.  They had to be feted, to be shown everything and carried off to visit Uncle Seth and Aunt Edna, to meet the Goddards at Goddard Hot Springs, and all our other neighbors.  Poor Grandma!  She was such a tiny thing--at eleven years she made me feel a cow!  And gnats and mosquitoes devoured her.  Her feet and legs became so swollen she couldn't get her shoes on.  Her hands, arms and shoulders, even her face became grotesque.  How glad she must have been to leave on the next Seattle-bound steam ship.

And poor Grandpa, too.  We deluged him with requests for tales of Daddy's early life.  He carefully avoided most of our questions.  The only tale I really remember included Daddy (at about 14 or 15 years old) and a gang of his neighbors and cousins.  Each year they had raided the barn where the cider press was kept just as the cider was getting "hard."  On that particular year Grandpa decided to teach them all a lesson.  He pressed a keg of pears for cider and rolled it to the front of the cider barrels and waited.  Sure enough, one night he saw the boys gather and head for the barn.  An hour later they were rushing out and jumping over the fence into the bushes.  Pear cider is very good, but it does have a quick and violent reaction.  Grandpa could still laugh, but I noticed Daddy had nothing to say.

I'm not at all sure when the decision was made to buy the fox farm.  We were never consulted and usually learned such things by accident.  At any rate, somewhere along the line, payments had to be made instead of Dad collecting wages. It meant tightening up expenditures even more.

The day before Thanksgiving that winter after Cora was born, Chris Jackson came rowing over the mile from Legma in a dreadful storm.  He needed help. His wife was in labor and the baby was breech.  Dad had gone to Sitka. Mother went off with Chris and helped save Mrs. Jackson's life, but the infant was stillborn.

I was at home to look after Cora and the others. Ruth was involved cooking fox food.  Mother was gone until very late Thanksgiving Day. Daddy came home as the storm lessened and the Harris family arrived to share Thanksgiving dinner (and stayed for a week because the storm grew worse).  It was then I cooked my first turkey dinner.  I was 12 years old.  Mrs. Harris had never learned how--and I remember thinking nastily that she'd perfected the art of never ever doing whatever she didn't want to do by not knowing how.  For some it works, but I knew better than to try that stunt.

Dad got home just before dinner and Mother just before we finished. They all ate the turkey, so I guess it was OK.

As children alone on our islands we learned to know and appreciate many simple things.  We knew where to find the shooting stars, the harebells (we called them bluebells), the fairy slippers, the fascinating lily-like skunk cabbage-­ where the huckleberries grew and the salmon berries.  We also had a healthy respect for the Devil's Club with its hooked little barbed thorns that seemed almost to jump at the unwary passerby.  Some splinters will fester and come out easily.  Devil's Club thorns just work deeper because of the barb so they have to be dug out.

We could sit quietly for hours watching the fox puppies at play like delightful animals of any species.  We knew where the eagles nested, where the migrating ducks rested.  Internal radar warning seemed to inform us when a strange boat was anchored in the harbor or on the other side of the island from the house (usually a fisherman for afternoon siesta).  When the "Around the World" flyers went over our island we stood, mouths open gawking until the last speck was gone from the sky, our necks so stiff we could scarcely move our heads to a normal position.

Some magazine had an article on building a radio--an infant invention then.  Daddy was enamored by the possibilities and immediately sent for miles of spaghetti tubing and all kinds of strange new things including a new storage battery.  All one winter he labored until he had a radio that hissed and growled and shrieked if anyone came near.  With a long stick especially carved to turn the knobs, he could control the static enough to hear the news on his headset. We were not privileged to listen.  When he had it on, I was forbidden to go anywhere near that end of the room--I caused more static than anyone else just walking by.

Eventually Daddy acquired an "Atwater Kent" which was an improvement, but still we weren't permitted to turn the radio on just to listen to music or other programs besides news.  Random use ran down the storage battery.

Daddy was talented in many ways.  Reading Black Fox magazine and other trades (I've forgotten their names) he grew angry at the editors’ attention concentrated solely on the penned foxes.  He started writing articles that were widely printed and quoted, bringing him a spate of mail.  Whether he ever had any remuneration I doubt, but one month in particular he had a different article in each of three magazines.  In proof of his theories, he could prove he'd had top price at the prestigious London fur auctions.  And we children learned to judge fox and mink pelts from him, to know the length and sheen of guard hair, to search for blemishes that reduced the value.  We took pride in the ear marking (branding) of the K.K.I. which was on every one of "our" animals and the quality of the C. Jay Mills name denoted.  We felt we had earned the right though I doubt any of us analyzed the thought.

Next: People, the Midget, School, and the Summer of 1929

Fox Farm
 
In the spring of the year I was in 3rd grade (1923), Dad exploded over something and quit his job at the Experimental Farm.  He'd been dissatisfied and really never liked the job so I suppose it wasn't much of an issue only the trigger.

He quickly outfitted poor Cynthia and went back to fishing as he'd wanted to do all along.

Before the summer was over he was approached by a group of three townsmen to take on a job much more to his liking.  The boomtime of the twenties had spurred many new industries, including fox farming.  These men - Len Peterson, Felix Beauchamp, and a Mr. Ulrich - had invested in one of the first in the Sitka area.  They leased 3 islands from the Navy (part of the outer­ defense perimeter) and bought a few blue foxes for breeding stock.  These ran free on the islands and would not swim away as long as they were well fed. Roaming freely in a natural environment, they developed superior fur that brought top prices at the London fur auctions.

Len's bachelor brother, Carl Peterson, was caretaker on Legma Island. Another was needed for Maid and Tava Islands which faced each other and formed a somewhat sheltered harbor.  The partners had a two-room log hut constructed on Maid Island, installed a 90 gallon kettle under a shed roof where the food could be prepared for feeding the foxes, and now asked Daddy to take the job.

Somehow, I doubt Mother had much voice in the decision.   At least I do know that by the time my classmates were starting to fourth grade, we were learning to row a boat, split wood and dig clams.

More and more I helped with cooking and other housework, accepting my share of outdoor chores as we all did.  At first it was exciting.  Winter storms kept us indoors when we didn't have to carry buckets of food to the fox feeding stations.  I was nine years old.

Mother procured discarded books from the Sitka Schools and tried to teach us, but just about every day she'd be called outside to help Daddy do something we weren't quite big enough to do.

Once again our lights were kerosene lamps or lanterns.   Finally we progressed to gasoline mantle lanterns and lamps.  A trough from the roof drained rainwater into barrels behind the house.  When a big storm brought sheets of spray across the harbor drenching the roof to run off into the rain barrels the water was most unpalatable.

A wood stove served for cooking.  To provide extra heat, Daddy contrived with a large metal drum, cutting a hole for the stove pipe and ventilation at the bottom and a door to feed in the wood at the top.  Cutting wood was one of the biggest chores. Many logs drifted in on big storms, but not nearly enough.

Daddy would take us off to Chickenfoot or one of the other inlets over on Baranof Island where he'd spotted suitable trees.  These he'd cut down, then with all of us pulling on the block and tackle, he'd haul them to the beach and into the water to tow home.

Once the logs were in the harbor at home we waited for the highest tides to float them ashore, then with block and tackle, hauled them into the best position for cutting.  At first this was done by hand with a "cross-cut saw'' Dad on one end, Mother on the other.  Later the partners furnished a second-hand gasoline powered saw--an awkward heavy thing.

It was V-shaped, about five or six feet long.  The motor was on the apex of the V with the saw suspended on the right side to move from one cut to the next.  Daddy would lift the lower, heavy motor end of the saw while someone else standing on the log would lift the upper end to the next cut.  To do this, he would grasp the handles or upper edge of the V, slip the rope connecting the arms of the V over his shoulders and carefully edge the frame along to the next designated spot.  Sometimes a cut would have to be a bit longer or shorter because a rock supporting the log would protrude and interfere with the saw.

Someone (first Mother, later Ruth or me) would stand on the log being cut to position the saw while Daddy lifted the motor end each time.  I think these were called "donkey" engines although I'm not sure.  At any rate, it was back­ breaking work for a ten-year-old (or any woman).  We all learned to split the rounds and carry them to the shelter of the woodshed to dry for winter fuel.  (My backaches started at a young age--the other children were even younger).  The electric saws now-a-days would have been so much easier to handle, lighter and faster.   I suppose someone has developed a battery powered one by now.

Even the youngest member of the family had to carry the smaller chunks of wood to the woodshed and there was no shirking.   We knew our warmth and cooking depended on that wood.  Since it was in the cold, stormy fall that we did the wood gathering, so as not to interfere with salmon fishing or school it was doubly brought home to us.  I usually was the one to help move the saw because Ruth could split the blocks better.  Between each cut I'd carry a load up the beach to the woodshed while Daddy tended the motor, ready to shut it off at the end of the cut.

The first year on the island, Ruth and I learned to fish off the rocks for bass and other rock fish for that yawning 90-gallon kettle.  We learned to row a boat and could go further from the harbor, finally mastering an outboard motor. That kettle took two standard barrels of fish every other day the year around.   It became our job to fill it until Glen was old enough to help.  Usually l did the actual cooking, keeping the wood fire going until the fish were cooked enough to fall off the bones, adding a 50 pound sack of rice and a 100 pound sack of rolled wheat the last hour, gradually reducing the heat so it wouldn't scorch.  We used a shovel to stir the mass, a constant job after the grain was added.  When it was done, we filled 5-gallon tinned milk pails and set them into a trough of cold water to cool.

Once the "mush" was cool enough we trudged off across our island in all directions carrying our buckets of food to previously arranged feeding stations. Daddy did a wonderful job of hacking out trails that led to the various fox dens. At first we dumped the food onto the ground.  Later we used large dish pans.  Slowly, Daddy built trap houses in each place but this took several years to complete.  They were very simple, but effective of 1" X 12" spruce boards with a slanted tar paper covered shed roof.  A simple door on strap hinges let us in and out.

The foxes ran up a cleated board to a high opening then down inside to the huge dish pans for the food.  At trapping time we simply removed the inside ramp and they couldn't get out.

Getting around Tava Island, and later Legma, was a different matter. First, they were much larger and the shoreline more rugged.  Maid Island was about a mile and a half in either direction.  At first we children could only manage 2 full five gallon buckets.  (Perhaps this is why my arms are so long.) Inspired by pictures, Daddy carved us wooden yokes so the real weight was on our shoulders.  The younger ones, Glen and then Donald were-e allotted the closer stations and gradually Ruth and I were promoted to the "boat."

Until we could manage the outboard motor, we rowed around Tava (and later Legma when Daddy took it over).  One would manage the outboard (usually Ruth) until we were abreast the feeding station, then cut the motor and row to the rocks where the other would balance on the bow of the boat, a bucket in each hand.  Ruth would watch and ride the waves in on the "big one" while I would jump onto the chosen boulder--often skinning my knees if I slipped on the seaweed and barnacles.  After a dash to empty the buckets in the trap house, I'd rush back and wait for Ruth to edge the boat back into shore where I'd leap in with the empty buckets as the wave lifted the bow.  Familiarity with the job never robbed me of the fear that I'd miss when I jumped so I'd land in the heaving surf, a sure death.  While I never did miss, it was a fuel for nightmares that persisted long after I'd left the island.   Ruth was more agile and better coordinated.   Her look of contempt when I'd land in a heap on the bottom of the boat soon taught me to keep my fears to myself.  She managed the boat better and was stronger so it was natural she should do this part and I understood.   Until Ruth and I  were 10 and 11 Daddy, with Mother's help, would do the boat work.

To house us all that first year was a problem.   Early winter storms were fierce with the surf booming against the rocks and the wind whipping the tops off the white caps blowing across the harbor to deposit great sheets of salt spray onto the roof (which leaked) and contaminating  the water supply.  At times the spray was so constant and thick that we couldn't see the shore of Tava.

That first Thanksgiving Day brought the highest tides of the year along with a fierce storm so water beat its way up the sandy beach and all over the floor by at least an inch.  The chinking of moss between the log walls blew out and we were cold and wet despite the efforts of Daddy and Mother to keep a fire going in the very elderly stove.  The breeze through the cracks even made the lantern hanging  on a rafter swing so much that Daddy had to take in down and set it on the table otherwise it could have smashed and set fire to the house.
The storm lasted several days and Daddy worried constantly that Cynthia would drag anchor and land on the beach.

This was meant to be a very special day.  The partners had sent a rare treat, pork chops.  Mother cooked them, splashing about in at least an inch of icy tidewater.  They smelled wonderful and tasted even better.

Following that storm was great activity.  First Daddy and Mother consulted on a breakwater to keep other high tides from the cabin.  With pry and peaveys  they rolled great boulders into a wall about 10 feet from the cabin.  All we children were set to carrying smaller stones to fill the space behind the wall, stones as big as we could carry until we had a ledge seven or eight feet higher than the beach.  At first it was fun.

Great heaps of seaweed had been blown in on the storm and littered the beach.  Daddy constructed a wheelbarrow from scraps of lumber and saplings. Using this and buckets, we trundled the seaweed and kelp to a spot designated for a garden.   Left there, the constant rain could leach it of sea salt.

Meantime Daddy mended the roof as best he could.  It was too stormy to go to Sitka with the Cynthia and until the weather was better we "made do". Gathering sphagnum moss was an all family occupation and Daddy "chinked" the cracks between the logs that formed the walls of the house so we were warmer.  He also started cutting driftwood for the fires and stacking it under the lean-to he constructed of bits and pieces.

The big brass bed Mother and Daddy had brought from town fitted into one end of the bedroom, just barely.  For us, Daddy constructed bunks on either side of the other end of the room using pieces of board and saplings for uprights. Chicken wire for the bottom over which Mother folded a quilt as mattress.

Donald and Carl had the smaller bunks on one side, Glen, Ruth, and I had the other side, three high with me on the top and Ruth in the middle.   Empty wooden cartons that had held evaporated milk were the only chests for "foldables".

The other room had a decrepit wood cook stove, a "cabinet" with sugar and flour bins and two shelves above the counter top where the Seth Thomas wedding gift clock reposed flanked by cornstarch and other foodstuffs as well as the medical supplies (bandages, paregoric,  iodine, tincture of mercury and Epsom salts).  There was a rickety table and two or three straight chairs.

After a trip to town for supplies, Daddy built window seats with lockers beneath for clothing and other necessities.  Those windows--two side by side with three six-inch panes, two high in each were the only daylight in the room.   Mother soon had her precious geranium slips there on the log window sill.  She made curtains from an old remnant that cheered the room considerably.

Between storms Daddy continued to go to town that winter.  Because of the short days and violence of the weather he usually had to stay over so none of the rest of us went. Cynthia was too old and the motor too unpredictable.  At best she could manage no more than five miles per hour.  Storms brought heavy seas with giant rollers eight to ten feet or more high.  There were no radios to give weather warnings then, either, so sometimes he'd have to be gone for several days.

Sears catalogues were indeed dream books and we'd spend hours drooling over them, not really expecting anything.   Necessities were ordered, clothing, bedding, etc., only when there was money from selling fish.

At first the partners paid Daddy a salary (probably not much).  Major food supplies were purchased at McGrath's or the Cold Storage store.  This meant things like flour, sugar, yeast, potatoes, and rice.  Meat was the venison Daddy shot, the fish we caught, the clams we dug.  Shortening was the rendered  venison fat (tallow) and Mother made our soap from it with lye from wood ashes. We lived a primitive frontier life.

When summer came and brought the fishing season, Daddy was off and we continued the fishing and feeding of foxes.  Salmon brought in necessary cash.

Sometime that first winter Daddy had a brainstorm and Mother concurred so two programs were started.  First, it was obvious that we children were not yet big enough to do a full man's work and second, that we did need to be educated. Daddy proceeded with a letter writing campaign.  First, the Territorial School System informed him they would start a school and provide a teacher for no less than ten pupils.  At that time Ruth, Glen, and I were of school age.  Next, it would have to be situated where a teacher could get room and board.

The fox farm owners replaced bachelor Carl Peterson with Chris Jackson on Legma.  Chris had fished and saved enough money to go back to Norway for his family.  George was Glen's age and Johannah a year younger, both of school age.  Of course they had not yet learned English, but that didn't matter.  With their father's help and school primers even their mother soon knew the rudiments, and from the beginning we could communicate.  We delighted to have other children only a mile away. For a school, that now meant five of us.

Daddy's letter writing brought other results.  Since he really needed help from an adult, he persuaded his cousin, Foster Mills and his wife to come.  They had two children, Jane and Russell.  That meant two more for the school.  After they arrived late that spring, Daddy and Foster built a house for them on the far side of Tava where there was a harbor.  Jane and Russell could take the trail across the island and go with us, and we picked up George and Hannah on the way.  Now we were seven for school.

Another result of Daddy's letter writing was the arrival of his Uncle Seth with this second wife, Edna. They, with the Houghs had decided to try their luck at fox farming.  The Houghs had an adopted son, Donald, about 7 or 8 so we had another boy for school.

Ed Harris and his wife settled next on a nearby island with their two little girls, but only Eleanor was ready for first grade.

Another wave of letter writing and by the time we'd been on the island a year and a half a school was established at Goddard Hot Springs three long miles across open ocean.  There was a resort hotel at Goddard where a teacher could live and a one room cottage they were willing to rent for a school. Because of the stormy weather in winter, the session was established April 15 to October 15.

During the winter following those first two years, the fathers volunteered their labor and a one room school house was built a mile down a trail from the hotel.  The teacher trudged, storm or sun, each day.  A Miss McCann was the first teacher there and she stayed several years.  She was followed by a Mrs. Garretson, I think, although a Miss Whitmore possibly came between.

At first Mother or Daddy took us to school in the rowboat or with the outboard motor. In very rough weather, if he was home, Daddy took us on the  Cynthia.  If we ''sheared a pin" on the outboard or had other engine problems like spray getting in the carburetor, we'd end up rowing.  It was heavy, scary going, at least for me.  The boat itself was a 17-foot flat bottomed affair with two sets of oars.  Because of the numerous rocks and heavy kelp beds, boats with keels were useless for getting near the shore, either for feeding foxes or as a school boat picking up children.  Moreover, the wider, flatter boats were safer and less likely to tip over, even though cumbersome.

I've never known why exactly Foster and Louise decided to leave, but they moved to Sitka where Louise worked at the Pioneer Home and Foster became custodian at the Post Office.

The Houghs and Seth Mills family next departed for the "Outside" (Alaska was still a territory).  Harrises moved to Sitka because they couldn't  stand the isolation and he ran a hardware store in the (Indian) Village near the cannery.

But I'm ahead of myself. One summer there was great excitement. Barrette Willoughby wrote a novel with a fox farm island near Kodiak as background.  I can't remember the story at all, but instead of filming it in the stormy Kodiak area, Goddard Hot Spring was selected.   All the actors and work crew were boarded there at the hotel.  The scenery around the islands and ocean were easier to photograph because there was more good weather.   I do know that Ed Harris and his boat, Spark Plug, were used in the filming, much to my father's disgust.  Instead of a fox, a dog was disguised and used.  In order to fit the plot, the background film was run backwards.  These were liberties my father would not tolerate.   He would not permit us to see the film when it was shown in Sitka, citing those faults, yet I think he must have seen it on one of his trips to know so much about it.  For us, movies always were "no, no," and NO!" even when we were in town.

All my life I've heard: "Time and tide wait for no man."  Our lives were governed by this creed along with the weather and the changing seasons, the long summer days when it never was really dark at night to the short winter days when daylight came at about 9:00 AM and was gone by 4:00 in the afternoon.   A tide table was more important than a calendar.   On "minus" tides we could go for abalone if the weather was calm enough, reaching deep down to pry them from the rocks where they hid unaffected by the surf that boomed during bad storms. The bigger clams could be dug then right on our own beach.   Feeding the foxes by boat we tried to go near time for nigh tide because we could get closer to the stations with the boat and there was less chance of hitting submerged rocks. Logs for firewood were towed ashore on the highest tides so they were floated as far up the beach as possible.

All activities were planned according to the tide table, especially meals and even the youngest could quote the high and low times.

It was a cardinal rule that we all eat together.  If work delayed some of us (say we were out feeding foxes) the meal was delayed for all.

Mother and Daddy agreed that we be taught manners fitting us for any society when we were grown.  The table was properly set for each meal including cloth napkins.  Breakfast and lunch the oilskin cloth sufficed, but for dinner a proper tablecloth was used.  Dad carved if he was home and there was roast or fowl.  Food was passed and we had to have some of everything served. If we fussed about anything Dad would reach over and give us a double helping. We couldn't leave the table until it was finished.   Many times since I've been grown I've been grateful for that edict because it taught me to accept strange foods anywhere in the world even though the very sight was disgusting.

We learned to use the correct silver even though it required polishing, not to talk with our mouths full, how to cut food, never, but never to lean elbows on the table and shovel food in.   If we persisted in sticking our elbows out too much Dad shoved a book under and we had to keep it there.   Disagreeable topics were eliminated at the table and we had to converse around the table on acceptable subjects.  Mother usually read a short selection from the Bible at breakfast and we took turns saying grace at all meals.

Next: Life on the fox farm: groceries, hunting, fishing, gardening and entertainment.

Sitka

Late summer 1920 found us fishing off Biorka, St. Lazaria and the other Islands on the outer fringes of Baranof Island near Sitka.  Sometimes we even went to town to sell the fish and buy supplies.  Of course we children didn't go ashore, but were fascinated watching all the activity around the wharves, the cannery, the cold storage and Standard Oil dock.

Sometime in the late summer of the year l was six, almost seven, the decision was made for a drastic change. When we were in Sitka the folks bought some property up on Lake Street very near Swan Lake for the enormous sum of $300.00 cash.  Only one house was further out than the three little shacks they bought on about an acre of ground. Dad built a one-holer on the creek side of the road and moved us into the most usable building.  There was one combined living room-kitchen, a bedroom, and a lean-to we used for sleeping in summer. Dad returned to fishing and Mother started the process of cleaning the shack and making it into a home.

Cooking and heating was by a coal stove and for the first time we had electric light.  (On the boat we used kerosene lanterns. )  In each room one cord hung down from the center of the ceiling with a bare light bulb.  All the wiring was exposed.  There was another novelty--piped in water--no sink, however, and it was cold.  A hot water tank was an unheard-of luxury.

Mother ordered wallpaper from Sears catalogue along with some paint. When Daddy came home from fishing the two of them trimmed the paper and pasted it up after tearing down the old newspaper a former tenant had used to keep out the cold.  It wasn't long before the little house was cozy and clean. Daddy built bunks in one end of the bedroom for us kids and bought a big brass bed that had to be pushed up against the wall in the other end.  When I left home last, they still had that bed.

It must have been August when we moved ashore although I really can’t remember. In any event, we children gloried in the freedom and lost no time making friends with the children in the neighborhood. Charlotte Burkhardt lived in the last house out past us and was my age.  She had several brothers, but  they were all much younger.   Johnny Charlton and his mother lived about a block away at the top of a little hill toward town.  He was younger--nearer Glen's age.  Further down Lake Street was another boy, but sadly I can't remember his name. He was a bit older than I. We all ran wild that last bit of summer, climbing trees and falling into the creek, so shallow we only got wet. It was a wonderful glorious time.  We picked elderberries so Mother could make jelly, we climbed the stunted apple trees in the vacant lot next to ours, we yelled and screamed for joy.  Aboard the boat we'd been shushed--now we were free.

In late summer, possibly a week or two before school, Ruth and I were invited to a party.  We were ecstatic and could talk and think of nothing else for days before hand.  The all-important subject of party clothes became important for the first time in our lives.  Mother contrived as best she could, even allowing us to wear bobby socks for the very first time.  Grandma Markell had sent them, pretty little short pink, white, and blue socks, but Daddy had decreed we continue to wear long black stockings.

Scrubbed until we were almost polished, we set off for the party at Anna May McNeil's.  They lived across the street from the school in a pretty little yellow trimmed white bungalow set on the back of a smooth green lawn bordered by a white picket fence.  Sitka didn't have many lawns and this one looked like luxury to us.  Ruth and I were definitely nervous--scared.  We didn't know any of these more "posh" families--but we wanted to, and feared rejection.  And we were rejected!   Not only were we ill-dressed strangers, none of the children would hold our hands for "Ring Around the Rosy" or other games.   Ruth's weren't so bad, but my hands were rough and almost bleeding with eczema, great scabs along the backs.  It was all I could do not to cry and run home.  Even then I didn't blame the others for not wanting to touch me, but it did hurt.

When we trudged home at last, Daddy was there and we were in more trouble, even Mother, for wearing those pretty little socks.   I think they were burned.

With the rains of early September Daddy returned from fishing.   I was almost seven years old the first and only time he took me shopping.   He bought two little gingham dresses just for me (by this time I was wearing Ruth's outgrown ones).  Marvel of marvels was a pair of oxblood red Buster Brown lace shoes.  I was so proud of my new finery I almost walked on air.  These were my new school clothes and never worn elsewhere.  Each night Daddy would carefully brush and dry my shoes then apply a coat of spar varnish so the soles of my precious shoes would last--never mind it made them slippery.  

Vaguely, I remember Mother taking me to register for first grade. It seemed a long, frightening distance and certainly was a lot further than we children ever ventured before except for that party.  When the first day of school arrived, Mother had arranged for the boy down the road (now in third grade) to take me with him--and was he ever disgusted!   But he did take me.  After a few days the fear was gone and I romped along by myself.  Sometimes Charlotte would go with me, but usually she was late.  To be late was a sin according to our parents so I went alone.

 That year I made so many friends!   It was my first real time to have playmates of my own age and choice.  All these years later I still see Esther Jennings although infrequently.  Her father taught printing and similar subjects out at Sheldon Jackson Mission School. Doris Stewart's father also taught there.  Myrtle Morton's father was superintendent  of the Pioneer's Home. Virginia Ulrich's father was the "weather man" and she had a sister, Doris, Ruth's age along with several younger brothers.

Olga McNulty was a year ahead of me in school (and six months older), but her twin sisters Maggie and Bubbles were a year behind.   Right here let me say that Olga was the oldest of seventeen children.  Agnes Dennard was in my class as were several others I have forgotten. They all seemed so smart and sophisticated to me after our life on the houseboat.

There were three rooms in the school.  First and second grades shared a room, our teacher was Miss Hood.  Third and fourth grades had a room, then fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth were all together for the first two years that I was there.   I was scared, but proud and thrilled to be a part.  From embarrassment I'd stutter and stammer when asked to recite, even when I knew perfectly well the answer.  It was awful. On the playground it was different I was usually chosen the witch in an on-going game (a kind of tag) and was well involved in whatever was going.

It was an adventure--an exciting discovery.  No one was allowed inside the school room door until the first bell rang, then we lined (in rather straggly fashion until we were sharply called to order) the teacher called roll, first graders then second graders and we marched into the room and were seated in our respective grades by alphabet.  It was puzzling, but probably easier in one way for me because Mother had taught me the alphabet.
Next we learned the Pledge of Allegiance and after that first day the whole school gathered around the big flag pole outside as the flag was raised before being marched into our rooms.

I'll never forget the teacher at the blackboard with our next lesson.  In huge letters she wrote and printed "Yes" and taught us to spell words in unison.

Teachers were superior beings.   Every detail of their dress, what they said and did was faithfully reported as soon as I was home--not only once but many times.  Poor, patient Mother!  When Daddy came home he was also regaled with the days' events.

The world over, I think all children new in a school are asked by the teacher to talk about their families and background.   I stuttered and stammered about living on a boat until I remembered Daddy was going to climb Mt. Verstovia to hunt on Saturday.   It was his first day off his new job.  How I bragged about him!  And how unbelieving my new friends were.  It ended in me saying Daddy wanted to take my teacher with him.  At home Mother was aghast and Dad furious.  Forced to put a good face on it, Mother wrote the proper note of invitation which I promptly delivered to my teacher next day.   She accepted for herself and another teacher with a note I conveyed back home.  Everything was very proper.

 Early on the Saturday, glowering at me, Daddy set off in his long, loping stride while the teachers crashed and gasped behind.  Dad was furious because of course they not once saw a deer.  Never again did I brag about his prowess as a hunter or invite a teacher to go with him.  I was always in hot water with my impulses and desire to find favor among my peers.

Daddy soon had a job! and how he hated it!!!  I think even more than the one in Petersburg.   He worked at the government agricultural experimental farm not too far away on the edge of town.  It was there different kinds of vegetables and fruits were tested to see if they'd grow in that climate with all the rain.   Many acres were devoted to different types of celery, carrots, potatoes, peas, beans, etc.  Several greenhouses were devoted to tomatoes and other things that would not tolerate the constant damp.  Since there were no bees to pollinate, it had to be done by hand.  Some things thrive in the short, intense growing season with the long daylight hours.   I have a picture of a stalk of rhubarb as tall as a man and remember it made nine pies.

Being poor--I didn't realize we were poor until that first year in school when I found the other children had more and nicer clothes.  What impressed me most, however, as I gradually was invited to their homes, was "iInside plumbing"--toilets were an engineering marvel and bathtubs instead of a two-holer outside and galvanized tub in the kitchen were true luxury.

We children went to bed at what would be called too early by today's children steeped in TV.  Then there was no TV nor even radio and to bed we went after a suitable story was read aloud.  We loved Buster Brown books. Sometimes I went to sleep as the rest did, but I was getting older and didn't require so much sleep.  Even if I did nap at first during those long winter nights I usually woke to the laughter as Dad read aloud to Mother while she mended or ironed. Just now I can't recall the authors or book names nor do I know where they came from since there was no library yet in Sitka, but the stories I liked best were a humorous collection about Cape Cod.   Later Dad even bought "Brewster's Millions" and the O'Henry books for us, but that winter he read borrowed ones to Mother.  Perhaps this was the beginning  of my love of books.

It was a whole new world to explore and I longed for the day I, too could read those funny exciting stories.
Dad was born out of his time.  He worked hard--none harder--but he was not willing to work for others and he did not take direction or criticism well. Those periods when he had a "job" were few and he became irascible after a very short time.

As far as we children were concerned it was a good year and so was the next when Ruth started school.  The third year the third and fourth grades were moved to a neighboring building that had once housed the old Russian orphanage.   We had the upstairs while a library, Sitka's first, occupied the ground floor.
Mother thoroughly enjoyed that library.  She'd made friends with May McNulty (who had seventeen living children by the time I was in high school) and the DeArmonds.  Mr. DeArmond was postmaster (she was the assistant) and  also he was the acting commissioner (or judge) for all local court cases except murder.  Those had to be sent to Juneau.

DeArmonds had three children.   Robert was several years older than I, his sister Ruth about two years older and Harriet tagged along at Glen's age. They were wonderful friends as long as they lived in Sitka.
Mother was invited to join the Friendly Society, a women's club that met in the afternoon.  I suspect it was much like all women's clubs.  Dad joined the Arctic Club and soon was treasurer.  He often spent an evening in their rooms.

One night, it was probably around midnight, there was a disturbance over by the big bed and I woke up to see the doctor, Mr. Axelson (a neighbor from across the creek), and Daddy hovering and talking in low tones.  Sitting up in my top bunk I wanted to know what was going on.  Dad sharply ordered me to go to sleep and keep quiet before I woke the others.  Wondering, worrying, I huddled down in my blanket watching until I finally did go back to sleep.  In the morning we had a new baby brother, Carl.  It was October 24, 1920.

Sometimes Mother would sing solos for the church service at the Sheldon Jackson Mission.   Once, I remember Daddy going with her.  We children didn't go but later a Sunday School was organized in a vacant building that later became a laundry.  Mother always took us and taught a class.  Whatever the denomination, we were herded off with the hope we'd learn something even though it wasn't a Friends' Church.  Mom had been raised a Presbyterian, but at various times attended other denominations.   No minister stayed long.

The town of Sitka was strictly divided along racial lines.  The Indian Village was strung out along the rocky beach front west from the Cold Storage to past the two canneries, with the summertime stench.  They had their own school and a public health nurse provided by the Territorial government and Bureau of Indian Affairs.  White people were excluded from all these sources.

Our only contact was through the Indian women who made beautiful beaded buckskin moccasins and baskets from grass or the inner bark of trees. These they peddled door to door for such low prices mother outfitted each of us with moccasins.   When a steamer was due, the women would gather at dock­ side setting out their wares displayed on old blankets for the tourists’ selection.

A walk down through the Indian Village as it was then would be a delight now.  Then we were afraid of the dogs that ran more-or-less wild.  Racks of seaweed would be drying and also split salmon.   Here and there would be a totem pole, standing or in process of carving.   An anthropologist would have had a field day.  Daddy knew many of the men and learned many of the old legends and stories but we were not permitted to fraternize.

The white part of town was separated from the Indian by the Pioneers' Home that faced the wharves for small boats between the Cold Storage and the Standard Oil Dock.  Drawn up on the rocky beach was a beautifully painted Tlingit war canoe.   On the lawn of the Pioneer Home was mounted several old "pushkas" or Russian cannon left from their occupation.  High on the hill above the post office, up one hundred plus wooden steps was the "Castle", a large private residence that replaced the Russian Castle, both residence and administrative building that had burned some years before.  The view from that vantage point covered the whole town, the channel into town, and all the way to Mount Edgecumbe.  On really good days, even Biorka Island, 12 miles away, was visible.

From the post office at the shore end of the Standard Oil dock a board walk edged the unpaved road that circled through the business district, ending by the old sawmill where the creek from Swan Lake emptied into the bay. Between the sawmill and post office were all the accepted "white" businesses.

First a tiny fast-food type restaurant, Walners', patronized only by the fishermen. McGrath's Grocery (a true everything store) came next and some kind of other business I've forgotten.  Then there was the Drug Store--a marvelous place, mysterious and smelling wonderful from cosmetics.  There was a hardware store, an apartment building, a dime store, a bowling alley and pool hall, a movie theater open only on Friday and Saturday (but not even Sunday).  The Mercantile--owned by W.P. Mills and sister May--no relation to us--was the most posh general store with a separate meat department and butcher.  Tom Tilson was the clerk and assistant later owning it and AI Tilson was butcher.   Frank and Lloyd Tilson, Tom's sons, went to school with us.  Barron's was the yardage store.  Across the street from McGrath's was a bakery and next door the Petersons had ladies apparel.  They also ran the dime store and a bakery. There was no bank.

In the midst of the business district, dangerously narrowing the street and causing it to divide into a triangle, stood the old log Russian-built Saint Michael's Cathedral where the bells pealed out over all the town.  ln those early years the priest came from Russia and fascinated us children with his flapping black cassock trailing in the muddy wet streets.  I remember he always had a long straggly beard, Behind the business district was only one other street lined with clapboard residences.  Past the sawmill, following the curve of a beautiful sandy beach were build the majority of the residences of the more affluent of the five hundred whites.  There, too, was the grammar school.  A high school wasn't built for several years after that, after we no longer lived there.   Facing the waterfront was the Bay View Hotel.  Mr. Bur and his wife owned and ran the hotel.  He also had his barber shop in the hotel.  Nancy and Birdie (Alberta) went to school with us.

About halfway around the curve of the bay was the beautiful little stone Episcopal Church, Saint Peter's, and behind it a residence built for the Bishop.  He had long since gone to a larger parish and it was left to a caretaker. And at the far end of the bay was Sheldon Jackson Mission run by the Presbyterians.   A huge granite boulder at the seaward side of the road marked the Mission.   We called it the Blarney Stone.  Here too, whites were excluded and only natives could attend the classes.   Even the missionaries’  own children came to school with us although the Mission offerings and teachers were superior to ours.

The gravel road followed around the point past the Mission and through a much smaller Indian Village.  These were the mission-educated Indians and  quite an economic and social cut above those in the main village.   Their houses were neat and painted, no weeds in the yard or wild dogs around.

Shortly past this little village came the Totem Park set in well-preserved forest lands.  Only the central grassy circle where the most valuable totems were kept was changed.   Set at intervals all along the paths through the park towered the brightly painted totems that told so many stories.  While we were there a replica block house was built on the point near the Russian River to commemorate the last bloody battle between the Indians and the Russians. Pete Thrieschield was the custodian of the park and grandfather of the McNulty children.

Two bridges spanned the usually peaceful Russian River.  One, a suspension bridge, was for foot travel only and swayed in frightening fashion. Further up the river was a wider bridge built to accommodate the horses and wagons on their way to Jamestown Bay and then on to Silver Bay and the Power Plant where all electricity for the town was generated.

One of the joys of our life as children was to see Dapple Dan, the horse that brought our wagon of coal.  He was a favorite with everyone and often the older boys would run along and jump aboard the wagon for a free ride.   I've forgotten the name of the carter, but he was a kindly man.  Sometimes, when there was a Sunday School, Mom and the other parents would arrange a summer picnic in the park.  The wagon would be cleaned of coal dust and the youngest would have the thrill of a ride to and from the selected site.  Other times we just walked.
The first full summer in Sitka when I was between first and second grades was a joy.  Somehow I knew the folks had a financial struggle, but it didn't really affect me.

With permission, when the days were warm, we were to be found playing on the beach and running in the edge of the water.   Sandcastles were our chief occupation.

On our first Fourth of July in town, Mother bought a string of those little Chinese style firecrackers.   This was a very special treat and we were "jumping­ up-and-down" ecstatic when we gathered in the front yard along with several neighbor children.   Mother helped us light them until the last one was exploded. When she went back indoor to fix dinner we were still excited.   Ruth, as ever, was a leader in what we all knew was forbidden.   She gathered all the bits and pieces.  Several neighbor children huddled with us as Ruth put first one, then another of the bits on a flat stone and pounded it.  Little sparks flew!  As usual, I was the wet blanket,  Standing a bit behind,  saying, "Mamma won't like it," and, as usual when a piece with more powder in it was exploded, I was the one it flew up and hit in the eye.  My scream brought Mother who sent for the doctor while herding everyone else away.  (Ruth was not punished.)   For weeks I wore an eye patch.  The sight of the eye was saved although there is a scar that diminishes the vision.

Ruth finished her first year of school with another escapade. She went all around inviting everyone of the children she knew to her birthday party, then  went home and told Mother. I don’t know how she managed it, but somehow Mother baked a cake and was ready when all the town's first graders arrived. None of the rest of us would have dared do such a thing because we knew how scarce money was just then--and none of the rest of us ever had a party either.

That was the summer President Harding visited Sitka.  All the little girls (first and second graders) were requested by the town council to appear on the parade ground in front of the Pioneer's Home wearing white dresses.  We assembled and waved flags of welcome as the Presidential party walked up from the battleship moored at the Standard Oil dock.  After speeches to the townspeople we little girls were herded to the steps in front of the larger of the three Pioneer Home buildings. Agnes Dennard was seated beside me, I know.

After the speeches crewman from the Navy challenged the city men to a baseball game, the first I ever saw.  I don't know who or how the local team was selected because it was a spur-or-the moment recruitment.   What I do remember is that a foul ball hit Agnes dead center of her forehead.  A year later she was blind.  By the time l reached high school she had been sent to Seattle where doctors removed a piece of her scull at that spot, allowing a huge developing tumor to expand outward like a balloon.   It did reduce some of the pressure that caused headaches and she lived until I was in high school, but it was a gruesome sight.

Grandma Markell and Uncle Wilfred came to visit that third summer.  One of the little shanties was cleaned out and furnished enough so they could camp in it.

Uncle Wilfred still annoyed Daddy and we children were very aware of the scarcely veiled hostility. Grandpa Markell had died the previous year.   

Next post: Fox Farm

Kake
 
My own memories, though scant, date back to this period.  By this time Daddy was very inactive as a missionary, the church being administered by the Presbyterians, with Dr. & Mrs. Beck in residence.   We lived in a little one room shanty about halfway between the Indian village and the cannery fronting on a footpath that connected the two.  The shanty had a small lean-to that was used as a kitchen.   Behind was a chicken house where Mother raised Plymouth Rock hens for eggs and food.

There was a pebbly, shell strewn beach across the path.  On a hill directly above lived the Stedmans and at the corner of the beach nearest town, the Millers.  Mrs. Stedman was French and called me Marie Helene to Daddy's disgust.  She even made me a hand crocheted collar with a rose in the design. Her own son was away at school (Kenneth, I think his name was). George, her husband was away daytimes and I don't remember him at all, but I think he had something to do with the cannery.

Millers had several children, all older than I was.  They did permit me to play with them sometimes.  Once, I did remember, we found a half barrel of tar that had drifted into the waist high beach grass on a winter storm.  I vaguely recollect Henry (the older boy whom I now suspect was about eight) climbing up to a cupboard in their kitchen to get matches while his mother napped.   Back at the tar barrel they started a fire to melt the tar and, in the process, ignited the summer dry grass.  If Mother had not come looking for me, we'd all have been incinerated.  I still remember her fright and my spanking.  With the help of an Indian from the village who was passing, she put out the fire, beating it with an old gunny sack soaked in the tide water.

At this time, I think Daddy was hand trolling for a living.   Sometimes he held Quaker church meetings in Stewart's hardware store in the village, as far as I know, his only missionary work.  Even then we were not permitted to mingle with the Indians.   Dad was a true racist.

The village itself had a board walk that joined the footpath curving to the point where Kerberger had his grocery and general store.  This sunny point is where the church, the Presbyterian minister and family, and the school were situated. This, with Mr. Stewart of the hardware store who did not mingle with the whites because he had an Indian wife, the Stedmans, and Millers constituted the white population.  Miss Taylor was the teacher I first remember.   She and Mother were probably near in age.  Once Miss Taylor was lucky enough to get some fresh tomatoes which Mr. Kerberger had imported..  Without refrigeration in those days this was a special treat and she brought them down to share with Mother.  I remember the two standing outside the door eating them like apples with every sign of ecstasy.  The taste I was offered only curled my tongue--ugh!

Another time, and most details are missing, but I suspect it was inspired by Mother, there was a beach party on the sand just around the point from Kerberger's store.  All the white people were there.  They dug clams and cooked fish over a huge bonfire.  That part is hazy.  I do remember they slept out on the beach, with a great to-do about keeping Miss Taylor a distance from Mr. Kerberger, the only two single people, and it puzzled me.

Ruth was born at Beck's.  Mother had trudged up to Kerberger’s store with me trotting along.  The long walk (about a mile) was too much and Kerberger helped Mother the tiny distance to the manse.  I remember George, Beck's ten­ year-old son, was instructed to take me away and look after me, not bringing me back until his father came for him.  The only memory I have of this day (June 16, 1915) is the sunshine and George's consternation when I wet my pants--I was 20 months old at the time.

That next year we were in Kake, Miss Taylor was replaced at the school by Charles Sydnor who was (I now think) on sabbatical. He quickly captured Daddy and Mother was friendly with his wife, Cora.  They had a baby daughter, Virginia, just older than I, and an infant son, Thurston.   I've never understood why, but Daddy was enamored from the first and in later years would drop whatever he was doing if Sydnor appeared.   None of the rest of us felt this way.

Once, and it was a wet, cold winter day, Daddy took me to the cannery with him while he visited with the winter watchman.   Probably this was when he arranged for the purchase of a discarded scow the cannery was glad to part with.  Meant for use with seines, it was quite broad (7 feet, I think), a 20-foot open flat-bottomed boat with a narrow keel.

I don't know how long it took, but Dad decked it in, built a cabin over the bow half, and installed a second-hand gas engine that went 5 miles per hour. There was a water tank next to the gas tank in the bow and a tiny wood-burning stove, bunks--in fact a veritable palace, but of course no toilet.  There are very vague recollections of this period with quarrels between Mother and Dad. It was a late November or early December when Dad again took me with him.   Possibly I remember these two instances because they were so rare.  He always preferred to take Ruth who was already larger than I and red-haired.  We were in Stewarts' hardware store, already leaving when Mr. Stewart called me back and gave me a small doll about four inches high with a blue cambric romper.   He seemed to feel sorry for me, but I didn't know why.  Anyway, it was the only doll I ever had.  It was only a few days before Glen bashed its head in.

Dad's itch to go "wild" seems to always have occurred in the early fall or winter.  Almost immediately we were all bundled aboard the "Cynthia" as Daddy called his boat.  Mother was not permitted to see anyone, Daddy telling us smallpox was rampant in the village.  What wouldn't fit into the small space aboard was again left behind.  There were Mom and Dad, Ruth and baby Glen besides me.  I must have been almost four years old.  While these memories are sketchy they are never-the-less vivid.

The next time I saw Kake, Mother was taking Ruth and me to Oregon for our first year of high school. Aboard the S.S. Queen when it docked at the cannery, I was surprised it was just as I remembered it.

Cynthia The Houseboat

The purchase that last day in Kake at Stewarts’ Hardware was a set of traps.  We chugged along until Dad found a likely spot, then anchored and set his traps for mink Sometimes he caught a squirrel instead of mink, so Mother skinned and tanned the hide to make Ruth and me lovely mittens.

This was the period when we learned about skinning, fletching, and stretching the mink pelts for market.  Skinning is self explanatory.  Fletching is the scraping of the fat from the underside  of the skin.   It has to be done carefully because to leave too much fat means the skin will not cure or dry and there will be a rancid odor.  To nick the skin reduces the value.

After the skin is prepared it is stretched over shaped board frames, fur side down and propped up to dry.  In that confined space it was a definite problem. Dad had another problem.   He discovered that I had a positive propensity for falling overboard.   It ended in his installing a 1" X 12" railing all around the deck area.  Two minutes in that icy cold water and I was blue.   It took hours to restore me to a semblance of life and warmth.  None of the others shared this problem, happily.   I suspect it was about then they discovered my coordination was poor.   I stumbled and skinned my knees more than Ruth or Glen ever did.  It was rare my knees or arms weren't either bleeding  or covered by scabs.  Once I leaned over the side of the Cynthia to retrieve something and fell into the row boat along side, breaking my nose.

It was a long, cold winter with much snow.  The deer would come down to the beach, kicking in the sand to find seaweed to eat.  They made wonderful venison, but I cried when Daddy shot one.  When he shot ducks or geese in didn't bother me half so much.  We needed every bit of food he could get.  For months we stayed out trapping and never once went to town for supplies.

On frosty winter nights Dad would call us on deck to watch, open­ mouthed the shivery flash of ''Northern Lights" (Aurora Borealis).  The eerie display of uncontrolled  blue and white electrical lights sent cold chills up and down my spine, frightened yet too fascinated to hide in the cabin.

This was the winter we came to know Bob St. Claire. He, too was trapping.   At first when he came into the harbor, he anchored a little distance away.  Later he moved over and tied up next to us so he and Daddy could step from deck to deck.  More often than not, he shared our dinner, often contributing from his own stores.  My memory tells me he was an older man--about 50?

Once he arranged with Daddy to tend his traps and went off to town for a week, coming back not feeling well (giant hangover), but loaded with little straw baskets of candy for each of us.  Mine was stained green and equipped with tiny spools of thread so it would be a sewing basket.  I might have been only a little girl, but he was wonderful.   He also brought back groceries Mother had ordered. One time when Daddy was out tending his traps, Bob brought across to our boat a jelly glass of wine he'd made from raisins.  (Only I suspect it was more like brandy.)  The tiny sip I sneaked was powerful; I didn't like it at all.  Mom tasted, thanked him, and used the rest to tenderize a very tough venison roast.  That night, I remember Dad exclaiming on and on about the wonderful flavor, but Mom and Bob kept quiet.  After all, even at that age I knew Quaker Missionaries would not tolerate alcoholic beverages  in any way.  Some things we learned at a very young age--by osmosis I now believe.

Perhaps I should say something about our general appearance so you can better visualize this whole story.  Mother was a hazel eyed natural ash blond with hair that almost reached her waist.  For convenience she twisted it into a knot at her nape, but for "dress" occasions used "rats" of her own hair to give it fullness and did it high on her head.   (Now we "back brush" with the same result.)  Mother was gentle and sensitive with seemingly infinite patience yet she could fire up when prodded sufficiently.   She was slender and graceful in those days, loved "company", sang and laughed.   Cooped up with only three infants most of the day, she did her best to keep us washed and entertained,  especially during wet, cold weather when we couldn't poke our noses out on deck.   Now I marvel at her persistent good humor when she must have been lonely.

I'll never know how she managed the laundry for a toddler (Ruth), an infant (Glen), and me plus her own and Dad's.  There was scarcely foot space between the motor and the lockers built along the side.  Two adults couldn't pass in the space.  Our toilet was a coffee can; the tub an enamel wash basin.

Before my birth, Dad bet Mother a five pound box of chocolate covered cherries that I'd be a red haired boy.  (His mother and both sisters were red­ heads.)  Neither came true, but he never did pay up.  By all accounts, he was infuriated to find me a scrawny girl who was almost immediately a blue-eyed tow­ head.  Then Ruth came along and captivated him with her sturdy figure and red hair.  Many a time I was ordered to "get out of the way" so I'd climb up on the locker and watch while Dad held Ruth and played with her while Glen slept and Mother fixed dinner or washed the dishes.  I still remember the hurt.

Glen, too, was a towhead.  My hair darkened so I was an ash .blond by the time I was six or seven, but Glen's hair was always very light--and let me say right now, all of us had blue eyes, but never as deep a color as Daddy's.  Like me, Glen was inclined to be awkward in his movements and was more husky of frame.   Even though he was Dad's cherished desire, a boy, for some unknown reason he was never a favorite.  We felt it, even then.  Some children are  deliberately  naughty for attention.   I can't remember either of us trying to gain approval that way.

I cannot remember a time Daddy did not wear a black felt hat and a necktie along with his wool shirt and trousers held up by suspenders.   He had oodles of beautiful wavy dark brown hair and vivid blue eyes.  After we went aboard the Cynthia he let his beard grow.  As spring peeped through and we were ready for our first adventure into town, he took the razor strop from its customary place hanging at the end of his bunk to sharpen his razor, a long wicked blade that folded into its own handle.

Wide-eyed  we clustered around, no doubt with our mouths open, as he carefully shaved off almost six months of dark curly beard.  Even though we saw it happen it was hard to recognize him when he finished.  He did leave a mustache and always wore one afterwards, dark and bushy.  All his life he remained very slender, skinny I say now.

As the snow began to melt, Dad grew restless.  When the sun shown, we children were allowed on deck and reveled in the freedom.  Dad no longer trapped, but often took long tramps on shore with his camera, coming back with pictures of wildlife.  Finally he came with long sturdy saplings to install for trolling poles.  At first they were laid lengthwise, almost as long as the Cynthia, while they seasoned.   Some days he melted lead on the wood stove and made "sinkers" for fishing, molding them in empty tin cans.  Ruth and I hovered, fascinated, when he started making and polishing the "spoons" and attaching the swivels and hooks.  Bob St. Claire had departed as the trapping season ended so this new activity was welcome entertainment.

Poor Mother!  She still had the cooking, washing, mending and babies to look after.  For someone who had never cooked before, it was a real frontier challenge she met cheerfully. When late spring came and brought the fishing season, Dad decided a family was a real impeding nuisance.   He had explored around for several days, the poor old Cynthia slowly chugging while he fished.  Ruth was by then larger than I and Glen was crawling,  even trying to walk while the boat rolled in the stormy spring weather.  Mostly, as I remember it, I was seasick, but it didn't bother Ruth a bit.

Somewhere at the south end of Baranof Island (the island on which Sitka is situated) Dad found an old camp someone had deserted.  It had a wooden platform for a tent and an abandoned little wood stove, ideal for us.  In no time Daddy stretched a much patched tent on the platform and moved us ashore. Before going off to the bliss of solitude and fishing he cut a stack of firewood. There was still slushy snow on the ground under the trees.   I remember Ruth and I wore our prize possessions, old fashioned black, clamp style galoshes much too large for us.

I was about four and a half at this time.  Daddy decided it was time for me to learn to help.   He gave me a hatchet, stood me in front of a chopping block with several smaller sticks to cut for kindling.   Dad had his back to me, chopping wood.   Now began an ordeal with that torment, my sister Ruth.   Long since she'd learned she'd always get the best of me, but this time it was more serious.  Each time I raised the hatchet, she stuck her foot on the chopping block right next the stick I was to cut, snatching it pack when I halted the swing.   Dad, with his back to me and not hearing any sound of chopping, yelled at me to get started.   Ruth, with that impish look, again stuck her foot on the block, but that time I didn't halt the swing.  Down the hatchet came and cut through the overshoe.  I was sick. Ruth screamed even though her shoe and foot weren't even touched only the galosh had a gaping hole.  Once again I got a spanking.   To this day I'm thankful for those oversize galoshes, but resent that spanking.

After the winter's confinement aboard the Cynthia, that camp was a delight.  We played along the beach and under the trees.  Mother was freer too. Laundry was hung on lines she tied to trees, bedding was aired, and finally we had neighbors when other fisherman deposited their families in the camp site.  It lasted a very short time--maybe two or three weeks, until Dad came in from his first trip fishing.   He took one look at our companions and herded us back onto the Cynthia. I don't know what he didn't like about the other families.

That summer of fishing and houseboat living was more interesting as far as we children were concerned.   For one thing, we were older and noticed things about us more.  Also we saw the other boats and speculated about them, once­in-a-while even seeing another wife or family.  This was very rare and usually one of the Indians.  Days started at 3:30 or 4:00 AM in the long daylight hours. Mother served lunch as Daddy headed toward harbor and afternoon siesta unless the salmon were really biting.  In nice weather we'd sit on the hatch covers and watch the tips of the poles for the first sign of a bite.  It was a glorious, free, exciting summer.  At anchor Mother kept us quiet by letting us cut out the pictures on the tin can labels--the tomatoes, peaches, and whatever she had.  We learned to weave strips of paper and make paper baskets and boats. Dad was fond of origami-type paper work and taught us a number of things I've now forgotten.  Mostly, he'd nap in the mid-day, then go out for the late afternoon and evening fishing.  Summer days were long, with no real dark.  We children would be asleep long before the faithful Cynthia was anchored.

We traveled wherever the fish were reported, around Biorka, up in Icy Straits, out near Warm Springs, down around--well,  all over Southeast Alaskan waters.   I think it was probably a good year for fishing because I can remember the fish flopping on the deck faster than Daddy could clear the lines and lower them.  Mom had to learn to help.  Those were days before "gurdies" and the lines were all hauled and lowered by hand.  Mother's hands were cut and bleeding from the lines.  When the fish hold was full, Dad would stop at the "Buyer Boat", a large, ice-carrying boat with gigantic tanks who bought the fish and conveyed them to the Cold Storage plants or canneries.  They didn't pay quite so well as taking them in ourselves, but often saved as much as two or three days away from the fishing grounds.  There were no closed days then and fishing went on all day, every day.

 Petersburg

At the end of the season when it was too stormy for further fishing and Mother was very pregnant, Dad took us to Petersburg.   Here he found us a little shanty on the boardwalk at the edge of town.  Compared to the Cynthia, it was a mansion with a living room, one bedroom and lean-to kitchen.  We kids went literally wild, clambering  over the rocky beach, climbing our little hill and romping up and down the board walk.

Now, for the first time in my memory, Dad had a "real" wages job.   He worked the night shift at the sawmill.  It was war time, 1918.  For us children it was wonderful, but Dad hated every minute.  He'd have been happy with Daniel Boone or Lewis and Clark.  To be confined to a job in town with dictated hours was torture.

Sometime in mid-November Dad came home with the flu. He was very, very sick and Mother sent for the doctor when he stumbled home, then crawled into the house, no longer able to stand.  He had gone back to work by December 15 when Mother sent me down the boardwalk one night to our nearest neighbor about a quarter mile away, to once again call the doctor.  This time it was for the advent of our brother, Donald, who arrived that day in 1918.  Mother had caught the flu from Daddy so she was very seriously  ill.  Mrs. Martin helped with the new baby for a couple of days before she, too, was forced to seek her bed.  The doctor trekked all the way out to see Mother a couple more times, shaking his head and grumbling, she was so sick.  For the first time she was bed-fast.  The doctor dosed each of us in turn with a tiny, bitter green pill I suspect was mostly quinine.   Even now I associate that shade of green with those pills.

When Daddy was home in the daytime he cooked breakfast and fed us and cared for the new infant. While he slept we played outside under orders to be quiet.  Daddy left for work about 4:00PM.  From her bed, Mother instructed me on peeling vegetables so we had vegetable soup for our dinner.   It was the first of many lessons in cooking--but  one well learned.   I even learned to change diapers when Mother was unable to do it--and of course she worried for fear Donald would catch flu from her--or that we would.  The green devil pills must have worked, because we children escaped that war time flu epidemic.

Gradually Mother recovered sufficiently to leave her bed and resume the household  work, but Daddy was restless, he didn't like the night shift, he didn't like working for someone else, and he was still dragging from the flu.  There was no penicillin or other antibiotic in those days so recovery was slow.  We were lucky because we daily heard of someone dying from it.

I don't know what triggered Dad's fury, but he came home mid-shift one night   Next day he had us all on the Cynthia and off for the remainder of the trapping season.   It must have been the last of January or early February.   We had a repeat of the previous year, fishing season following trapping, only now we had another tiny baby with us.   Don was a fretful baby.  He had had to be weaned and fed on diluted evaporated milk because Mother still suffered aftereffects of the flu.  No special formulas then, not even powdered milk.

 My recollection  is that it was a critical time with no income, illness and anger.  When fishing season started the fish could be sold for cash, but the mink skins in winter had to be shipped "outside" to market by auction and it sometimes was months before a check arrived.

It was that second winter trapping that Sam Butts entered our lives.  Like Bob St. Claire the previous year, he anchored near us and sometimes came  over for a meal or to chat.  As long as I was at home, we could expect to see one or the other of the two men appear occasionally.  Hadley, with his boat, Lituya, would stop by too.
By osmosis we learned to ask no questions about the personal lives of these men or other like them who appeared from time to time.  Sometimes they were like Daddy, only happy in a frontier; sometimes they were hiding from a past they couldn't face.  Some even had families "outside".  Always they were friendly and kind to us children.   I'm sure they would have been the first to help if there had been real need.

Next: Sitka

Editor’s Note:
In July 2020 Larry Calvin shared the following narrative, titled “The Saga of the C. Jay Mills Family,” written by C. Jay Mills’s oldest child Helen. It had been shared with him by Helen’s niece Gretta Bellamy. It seems to have been written in 1989.

It was never published, Larry said, because Helen felt she was too hard in it on her sister Ruth. Both are gone now, and the manuscript has so much to offer today’s reader that we are publishing it now.

Unfortunately Larry lost touch with Gretta Bellamy, and we don’t know Helen Mills’s married name. If you have this information or any other stories or names, the Sitka Maritime Heritage Society would love to hear from you, either by leaving a comment or by emailing [email protected] .

This is a lively, concise account of a “very unusual childhood.” Born in 1913, Helen’s earliest memories are from Kake. She and her parents and siblings later lived on a tiny houseboat, moved to Sitka in 1920, and then from 1923 until she left to go to high school lived (and worked!) on a fox farm on Maid Island, and attended the Goddard school.

Fur farming was the third largest industry in Alaska in the 1920s, behind fishing and mining. The popularity of fur farming on southeastern Alaska islands, which farmers leased from the U.S Forest Service, forced many Alaska Native families off property they had owned for countless generations. This injustice must be remembered as part of the story, as well as the ancient, rich Tlingit traditions, place names and stories associated with this place near Shee At’iká T’aay X’é, or the Shee At’iká (the islands around Sitka) hot springs mouth.

- Rebecca Poulson

Saga of the C. (Charles) Jay Mills Family
By Helen Mills
 
This is being written because of the prodding of my friend, Donald E. Kent and my nieces, Gretta Bellamy and Audrey Silsbee.  Gretta in particular has insisted on putting my recollections on paper, even typing the scribbles.  She has even furnished tapes.

Life runs along at a fast pace even though some days seem to drag. Really, I feel it has been in part almost like a storybook concocted by some very imaginative novelist. Of course it didn't seem that way as the days and months went by . . .  it is only now that I have the perspective of time to judge what happened and the experience of the years to base it on.  Rereading through the genealogy compiled by my uncle Paul Mills, based on the Henry Mills family, I realize how compact and exhaustive a book it is.  Only, because of the type of record, it misses so much.  I'd like to write this with the same verve and compassion as Dana Ross Fuller has done in her series "Wagons West". Since I am not so gifted, I'll try to tell the story of my family as I remember it.  If there are inaccuracies, it is my fault . . . the fault of a memory defective in part because the thing I'm writing about go back so far I was too young to grasp subtle differences.

My younger brother Carl Alpheus Mills has been gone for a couple of years now and my older sister (but younger than I) died a year ago in February, 1988 after a year-long fight with cancer.  More and more I realize the importance of leaving a written record of a very unusual childhood.  Many of my memories began before either my brother Donald or sister Cora were born.

Many times when I was quite small I heard the tales of my mother and father in their early years.   Since we lived so far from other people, Mother used to talk about those days to us, and then too, sometimes when we'd been put to bed, she and Daddy would reminisce, but more often it was when there were visitors who had known them and talked about things that were like a storybook to us.  Even now some of those things seem like a fairy tale and it may be interesting to the next generation who can never have that experience.

Mother was born in Rolla, North Dakota and christened Gretta Davina Markell, the second daughter of Gordon and Elizabeth Markell. Grandfather had previously been married so Mother had two grown stepbrothers as well as an older sister, Alice, who died at the age of twelve from diabetes.

I'm not at all sure of the details, but Grandfather was the chief of police in Rolla.  Trying to stop a brawl among some drunks at a local tavern, he was shot in the hip and leg.  Lacking our modern surgery and medications, he nearly lost his life.  Recovery was slow and left him with a very decided limp, just lucky to be alive.  Unable to continue his police work, he moved his family to Williston, North Dakota, where he set up shop as a local photographer.   He was very successful but found it highly unprofitable.   I do not know what the motivation may have  been, but after a short period (my mother was still a young girl) the family migrated west and settled at Springbrook, Oregon.

Mother's Aunt Sarah (Sate) Boyd then lived in Eugene, but it was more probably the influence of Grandfather's brother, Will Markell, who was a prosperous shopkeeper in Portland, that decided the move.

In Springbrook they bought a little Mom and Pop grocery store at the railroad crossing and settled into quarters behind the shop.  Like most country stores they carried a variety of merchandise, but the main stock was groceries. Before long there was a baby sister, Eva, and the much younger brother, Wilfred Boyd Markell. Grandmother helped in the store when she could, but mostly she did the cooking, housework, and cared for the babies.  Mother began working in the shop when just a schoolgirl.  Possibly there wasn't room, but the half-brothers never lived with them after the move to Oregon.  One boy, whose name I cannot remember except that it was very odd and began with E, never married and it seems he died fairly young.  The other, Etsol, married a young woman named Mary Elizabeth Boyd (Libby) whom Mother admired very much.  I don't know what Uncle Etsol did for a living.  They eventually moved to Long Beach, California and were very active in Mason and Shrine activities.

Springbrook, Oregon was a small community of farms and fruit orchard, mainly prunes and walnuts although everyone had cherries, apples, pears, and an assortment of other fruits and nuts for their own use.  Most families also had com and other garden produce for their own families. Some raised hops or grapes for sale.  Springbrook in particular had been settled primarily by Quakers, especially the prolific Mills family with brothers, cousins, and in-laws . . . everyone seems to have been related in some way.  Alpheus and Mathilda Newlin Mills lived just across the unpaved road from the Markell store with their orchard and farm spread behind them.  Another corner was occupied by the Wallins whose daughter, Ina, became Uncle Paul's wife.
Then there were the Newbys and ever so many others on nearby farms, all inter­ related so there were cousins everywhere when Ruth and I visited . . . I became totally confused.

The Alpheus Mills family was large, with four sons and two daughters.  Like all large families, the Mills had one son who did not choose to conform to the family dictates.  This was the second son, C.    (Charles) Jay. He was born in Illinois and came west with the family when he was just days old.  It must have been that pioneer spirit that influenced his life forever.  As a child he attended the little country school at Springbrook and went to the "Academy," equivalent to a high school in Newburg and run by the Friends' Church where his father was a director.  Later he attended Pacific College, also a Friends institution in Newburg. Starting when he was about sixteen he began rebelling against the farm work and insular community. First he hopped a freight train and was finally stranded in Fresno, California, badly sunburned from the scorching summer sun by day and with pneumonia from the frigid nights atop the lumber car he had chosen. That early experience gave him a lasting dislike of California.  The police of Fresno notified Grandfather who sent Uncle Roy to escort him home.  

The last time Jay ran away he was around 20 years old. He went north and landed in Alaska where he found work in a cannery at Ketchikan, tried hand trolling for salmon, and gloried in the weather and the great frontier, undeveloped and almost unsettled.  He had finally found the land he was always to love and felt was his.  He returned to visit his family when he was a man accustomed to the wild and rugged land and ocean with very, very few white women and only a sprinkling of men.  The South-eastern Alaska he had explored still retained much of the Russian influence with fishing, trapping, hunting, and lumbering the main occupations.

By the time he returned to Oregon he was tall, fit, handsome, and a true introvert.  He was a pioneer at heart who would have been happy with Daniel Boone or Lewis and Clark, only now he had done his own explorations in his own time.

At home in Oregon he found many things had changed.  His baby sister Florence was 20 and Paul was 17.  His father was a prosperous farmer, trustee for a bank and the Pacific College, an officer of the Friends' Church and had spearheaded the building of the fruit dryer cooperative and fruit cannery.  His brother, Lewis, had married Mabel Sykes and they had a baby daughter, Vera. His older sister, Ella, had been married for almost seven years and brother Roy (younger than he) for two. Marriage and babies sprouted amongst all the young people he had known in his youth.  It was still a farming community, but his personal friends and family had changed.  It was different with only Florence and Paul still at home, both dating.  Moreover, Jay was now and always after called C. Jay. He found that he was an outsider, a visitor, separated from the others by his natural reticence and the experiences he'd suffered and enjoyed pitting himself against the natural elements in Alaska.

Going across the road and railroad tracks to the store for his mother one late afternoon, he was rocked off his feet by seeing for the first time the attractive young woman behind the counter.  She, too, was bowled over and in a month, on August 14, 1912, they were married in Springbrook Friends Church.  C. Jay decorated the church with a sea of sweet peas and asters.  Uncle Will Markell provided Gretta with soft white China silk for her gown and the gifts poured in. Tea sets of fine porcelain, cut glass bowls and pitchers, platters, hand painted china in every shape and size (Aunt Sate Boyd, sister to Elizabeth Markell did a cream and sugar as well as a chocolate set that must be worth hundreds now). Every kind of thing they needed to set up house including hand-made quilts, embroidered sheets and pillowcases were showered on the young people and all packed away in crates to wait for the day they'd have a home. After the morning wedding, the newlyweds left by borrowed horse and buggy for a honeymoon week at Newport, Oregon where it rained continuously. All this Mother told me years later.

C. Jay and Gretta now lived with the Mills family.  In the spring, his brother Roy and his wife were having marital differences.  While Gretta and Mathilda were fond of one another, there was no doubt it was difficult for two women in one small house.  It was about this time Roy decided to escort his parents to Chicago for a lengthy visit with Allen Mills, Alpheus' brother, who had become a prosperous attorney.  Off they went and C. Jay was left in charge of the farm and Gretta the house, Florence, and Paul.

While he worked out in the corn and tomatoes or weeding among the walnuts and prunes, C. Jay more and more often thought of the cool summers in Alaska.  Daily he found it harder to work and he especially resented his wife's popularity amount all the young people, most of whom were his own cousins. Although he knew he had no reason, he was jealous of her popularity.  He was accepted, but always felt outside the group even when a part of it. Gretta was pregnant when C. Jay finally found a way of removing her from amongst the group.

It was her habit to fix a picnic lunch and go out into the fields to share it with him at noon. On a very hot day when it was nearing time for her to come, he stripped off his hat and discarded it behind a tree, grabbed up his hoe to do double time working among the shoulder high corn. Seeing her approach at a distance, he did the best acting of his life. Whether it was a real faint or a theatrical swoon I'm not sure, but it scared Gretta.  After reviving him with a cold lemonade she carried for their lunch, she helped him back to the house to bed with a damp towel over his head.   She then tore across the road to the store and frantically demanded her father telegraph Alpheus and Mathilda to return at once. When they arrived, they found my father, C. Jay, had already perfected plans to leave for Alaska. And may I say right here Mother might not agree with Dad, but she backed him 100% all her life.  None of us better criticize or complain in her hearing.

Suspicious of C. Jay and worried about his pregnant daughter, Gordon Markell insisted that his twelve-year-old son, my uncle Wilfred, must accompany them.  C. Jay finally accepted the ultimatum, I'm not sure why. Possibly the Markells not only paid Wilfred's passage, but loaned money for theirs.  At any rate Wilfred accompanied the young couple to Ketchikan. Here, the only lodging they could find were two tiny rooms near the cannery where C. Jay found a job.  

While Wilfred roamed about town, Gretta tried to learn to cook.  After wasting a precious 50# sack of flour they could ill afford, C. Jay persuaded a Chinese cook at the cannery bunkhouse  to teach her the rudiments of breadmaking in the smoking wood stove oven.  In Oregon the bread had been delivered on the early train direct to the Markell store each morning.  Her mother did the cooking, laundry, and cared for the children while Gretta went to and later taught school, helping in the store when she returned home.  No bakery existed in Ketchikan and the "steamer" only came at two-week intervals.  It was a harrowing time.  Besides, she was pregnant and a little scared.  The rough neighborhood, the crude shanty, and the lack of friends depressed her.  Wilfred and C. Jay kept up a running battle further creating problems which the lack of privacy exacerbated.

Mid-October found Gretta in labor.  C. Jay walked her to the Ketchikan Hospital where a slightly premature baby girl finally was born on October 16, 1913.   I was that baby and named Mary Helen. The “Mary" to appease both families, but never used by my parents.  Mother seems to have accepted, even enjoyed, her two weeks in the hospital.  She learned to change diapers, nurse her baby, and especially found pleasure in chatting with the nurses and other patients.  She had so missed companions down in the cannery area.

Meanwhile, C. Jay had been busy.  The cannery had closed for the season and no other work could be found. The constant companionship of a twelve-year-old was annoying in the extreme.  A southbound steamer was providential while Gretta was in the hospital.  Wilfred was escorted aboard and sent on his way home.  About this time C. Jay heard of an opening as a missionary at Kake, an Indian Village sixty miles away.  Without consulting his young wife, he accepted the job, bought an old dory, a cannery discard, for a few dollars, and gathered all their belongings together.  It was the end of October, blustery and wet, but it didn't deter him at all.

When the day came to collect his wife and child from the hospital, he was ready.  Proudly he led her down the street to the wharf where he'd readied the dory with all the belongings he could squeeze in--everything else was left behind.  Never had Gretta been in so small a boat.  Clutching her baby, almost fainting from fright, they started the sixty-mile row across choppy waters to Kake, the wind blowing wisps from the white caps and rain seeping down their necks. It would be hazardous at any time, but at that time of year it was foolish (preposterous).

Hearing the tale many years later, though still a child, I shuddered and sympathized with Gretta's fear.   I still do.

Late afternoons Dad would find shelter along some beach and unload the bare necessities for a meal to be cooked on a smoking campfire while Mother changed diapers and nursed her baby, me.  Each time they camped something would be discarded to lighten the loaded boat because it was so stormy that it was almost impossible to row.

When I was about nine years old, Hadley Thompson, a miner, on his boat the Lituya happened to come into our harbor.  I'll never forget sitting with my mouth open as he described how he came across the almost foundering dory, Dad rowing with all his strength and Mother frantically bailing the water that slopped over the side constantly. He was amazed, first that anyone would try to row across the channel in such weather, and secondly that there was a pretty young woman, scared silly, on board. He pulled over so the dory was on the lee side and Dad started pitching things on board the Lituya while the waves kept in rolling and plunging up and down. Dad kept yelling at Mother to hold the dory off as it banged and plunged up and down, now swinging out, then scraping against the larger vessel that almost crushed it.  Scared stiff, Mother made the attempt and almost fell between the two boats.

When Dad tossed a bundle of bedding up to Hadley who in turn tossed it into the fish hold on deck, Mother screamed, "My baby, My baby!"  Clambering over the railing to rescue me she banged her head on the hatch cover, knocking herself out.

Hadley was too astonished to move for a moment, then pulled Mother along the deck out of the way, reached into the hold and fished out the bundle of bedding, turned it over, and there I was on a pillow and wrapped securely in blankets and Dad's slicker.

Dad continued to unload the dory, then together the two men pulled it up on deck and lashed in solid before turning to Mother who was just coming around.  Out of compassion Hadley changed course and took us to the mining camp, and, when the weather improved, to Kake.  The tongue lashing he gave Dad for endangering the lives of two helpless people (Mother and me) was probably the last one Dad ever tolerated.

Next: Kake

These are my Knubedal great-grandparents, married on August 21st, 1879, when he was 25 and she was 21 years old. Their daughter Oline Gunrine was born in May 1880, but died when she was only 13 months old, on June 8th, 1881.
 
The following February, 1882, their first son Jakob was born, named after his paternal grandfather (his dad’s dad). We still aren’t sure when or why he followed his younger brothers to America.  We do know he was living in Juneau in 1918 because we found his WWI draft registration card.  He spelled his name Jackob and stated he was born on the 21st of February, his address was General Delivery, he made his living as a fisherman and worked for himself; his nearest relative was Gerhard Knubedal (his dad, pictured above) in Hauge I Dalane, Norway. He described himself as 5’6”, medium build, blue eyes and brown hair and didn’t have any tattoos, bite scars, or other “distinguishing marks.” 
 
Back in Norway, his brother Kristoffer (my grampa) had married Anna Torkelson in 1917. Jakob was not “in country” for the wedding, but obviously thought she was a pretty cool lady because when he got back to Norway, he was introduced to, fell in love with, and married her sister Bertine, in June of 1921. So these two brothers and these two sisters ended up becoming sisters and brothers-in-law, too!
 
Two years later, Jakob was 41 and tried to convince his wife to move to America with 2 year old daughter Hjordes and 3 month old son Almar. Due to the fact that she did have these two little ones,  her mother Johanne, 59 years old, and two single brothers who lived in the same house to take care of, there’s no way she could leave. Thank goodness the Torkelson family usually had enough resources  to keep their photo album up to date. Here are a few pictures of Jakob and Bertine’s children growing up.

Jakob left Stavanger on the SS Bergensford and arrived at Ellis Island on May 9th, 1923. The ship’s manifest identifies him as a fisherman and his last permanent address was Sogndal I Dalene, Norway, with a wife named Bertine Knubedal. For some unknown reason, instead of saying he was going to Alaska, his entry said he was headed to Brooklyn, New York.
 
This time he didn’t just go through the line of immigration. Instead he was taken aside and held for “special inquiry.” He was held for detention due to “C.L. PH.D”  (we haven’t found out what that meant yet).  Whatever it meant, they kept him long enough that they had to feed him one meal - probably dinner - but doubtful it was a steak and salad. He was finally released and allowed to enter the United States at 10:40 am.
 
Jakob’s son Almar never forgave his father for deserting them. He grew up resenting, in fact hating his dad. He truly believed his father hated them and that they had been abandoned. He absolutely refused to put any of the blame on his mom.  She just thought it was best not to leave her family and his dad did not agree to stay.
 
In one note Uncle Happy sent to Bertine from the states (when he was apparently still really mad because she didn’t come with him) he said “over here there are only women, wine and song!” (in Norway that meant he was living a really wild life.)
 
Obviously that didn’t make Bertine very happy—but (typically for a Torkelson woman) she never “shared with others how she felt” and Almar did find the note! That did add to the bitterness and resentment he already had towards his dad.
 
Bertine’s granddaughter Brit says her Gramma never talked about not going with Jakob (it was simply accepted) and they never divorced, but even so, she had no choice - she just couldn’t leave the country with the responsibilities she had.
 
It is very obvious that Jakob did have feelings and was actually a nice guy, too. The Torkelson family had enough money to feed them and they did have a house in Norway. Jakob leaving the country had to keep enough money to pay for his ticket on the boat, then the train to get across Canada and then re enter the United States to get into the Alaska territory.  Although he didn’t leave her any money when he left, for years he did send packets with warm clothes and shoes from America.  Even after he died Bertine still received money from America.
 
We have never seen a wedding photo of Bertine and Jakob: we heard his son Almar made sure to cut his dad out of any family photos.
 
The draft registration card we found with his birth date and race (they didn’t use the word ethnicity in those days) also indicated he had a relative living in Sogendal Norway. He registered for service in Juneau but his residence was Gull Cove on Chichagof Island.
 
Folks who lived in the same area as Happy remember him being a hand troller and operating a fish trap at Gull Cove, and working for the cannery in Excursion Inlet most of the time.  He had the special reputation as an expert in putting up smoked salmon and making the best pickled herring.  Today there’s a lodge at Gull Cove and the cabin he lived in is still standing.

One of his Jackson nieces, Gertie, says “he always seemed very short to me- but he was always happy!” 
 
His nephew Sig, who grew up in Juneau, remembers “Uncle Jakob and Uncle Sig were around our house as far back as I can remember--they always stayed with us whenever they were in town.”
 
Others must have thought so too (the happy part). He and Uncle Sig were cannery caretakers. Seems like the Knubedal boys (except Emil) preferred to live more like hermits; not necessarily isolated, but they did like their space when they wanted it.
 
His nephew also remembers that Happy stayed with them in the winter and that he and Uncle Sig were both sailors in their younger years and would tell stories about all their experiences. He said that when he got the same story from both of them, he knew he was getting the truth.  But when it was just Uncle Happy (Jakob) telling the stories, they were usually taken with “a grain of salt.”
 
When he died, Uncle Happy’s address of record was Gull Cove, on Chichagoff Island,  65 miles west of Juneau. That is directly across Icy Strait from Glacier Bay National Park, where lodge guests arrive via floatplane from Juneau.
 
Special thanks to my special cousin in Norway, one of Jakob (aka Happy) Knubedal’s granddaughters —Brit Jorunn Kjode.  For years she and her husband Stein have been so intent on sending me as much information as they could gather to provide all the extras I would have never been able to find. 

My Great Uncle Ole Gabriel Knubedal – later Jacobsen, then Jackson - married Anne Cecilie Allette in Norway on July 9th, 1905, when he was just 19 years old. This is just speculation of course, but perhaps with the reality of having a wife - and most likely a family in the near future - he decided he better head for America. Perhaps his plan was to find a way to make enough money to bring them over to this country and start a new life here. Whatever his thinking, this newly married 20-year-old guy had only $25 in his pocket when he left Norway in the spring of 1906.

Ole G. Jacobsen is the first name recorded on the SS Oscar’s passenger list. The ship’s manifest included some additional information that was not included on manifests in later years. They asked things such as: Have you ever been in prison, almshouse or institution for care and treatment of the insane or have you ever been supported by charity?  If so, which one?  Were you a polygamist or an anarchist and what is your mental and physical conditions? Ole of course answered no to each question and said that he was in fine condition. How could one of the Knubedal brothers be anything else?  

He arrived in New York May 2nd, 1906 and went right to Route 4, Valley City, North Dakota to stay with his friend Tobias Olsen. Then we find his name on a 1909 Great Northern Railway Train passenger list, telling that he was traveling from Vancouver, British Columbia to Edison, Washington, and that he says that is where he lived before. Like all his brothers, he was able to read and write English, and stated he made his money working as a laborer (most likely a farm laborer), just like his brothers.

It does not seem likely that Ole spent nine years away from Norway, but there are lots of Ole Jacobsens on passenger lists born in the same time frame, and none of them are our Ole.

He still had his Norwegian name, Knubedal, in 1909. So did his wife Anne, daughter Grethe and his brother Emil when they came here in 1917. Grethe was almost 11 years old when she and her mom came to America on the SS Frederick VIII on January 20th 1917. The passenger list clearly shows this was Ole’s family because it indicates Anne’s nearest relative in Norway was her father-in-law Gerhard, who was also her daughter Grethe’s grandfather. What could be more convincing than that?  Additionally, Ole’s younger brother, 17-year-old Emil Almer Knubedal, was traveling with them.

According to our cousin Brit, who lives in Norway today, the family relationships were not quite as they were listed on that passenger list.

When our Great Uncle Ole Gabriel married Anne Cecelie Allette and headed over to the U.S.A. the following summer, he begged his father Gerhard to look after his wife while he was gone and sure enough, his dad, our Great-Great Grampa, definitely did take care of watching and caring for his daughter-in-law really close. She ended up getting pregnant with him, and even though Ole always knew about it, he also heard that the child had died. So, he must have been shocked when he heard about this dodder, that was actually his father’s child, and he got pretty ticked off!

Obviously Ole’s wife Annie was sure Ole would be OK about having a little girl and that they were parents. A daughter Grethe (Gertie) was born the next year in May. It was assumed Ole had come back to Norway and took his child and wife to the USA. 

Our cousin Brit thinks Bertine or Aunt Hjordes wrote to Grethe about the issue because they told her that she was not Gerhard’s daughter.

Annie’s occupation? Just like almost all other women-- housewife of course. Ole’s wife and dodder traveled to Bellingham, Washington and joined him on the 17th of February 1917. And then, a son, Albert, was born in 1918.

At some point, the family is not sure of the date, Ole, Anne, Gertie and Albert moved to Juneau. Ole worked for a cannery in Taku Harbor as a “web man”- a skill he learned while living in the “old country”- and he owned a fishing boat, the FV Mabel. 

Juneau’s 1920 Census includes Albert as a two-year-old living in the house of “Elle” (Ole) and Anne Jacobsen, ages 34 and 35, respectively, along with a daughter Grethe who was 13 at the time. Sadly, their little son Albert died the same year the census was taken: we found his name on the August 1920 burial record at the cemetery.

Census records include two citations. One is a condensed version, a sort of card with the names and ages of those living in the household- taken from the original census record. Sometimes the person translating the handwritten record does not read the writing as intended. For example, in this particular case, Ole was recorded as Elle and they misread Albert’s birth place as Alabama instead of Alaska.

When my Grampa Kristoffer and Gramma Anna, my Uncle George, mom JoAnn and Aunt Gertie arrived in Juneau in 1926, my Great Uncle Ole had already been an Alaskan resident for 20 years.  Our Aunt Gertie remembers her Uncle Ole being short and heavy, a very serious and stern man (much like her father). And, he also had a great sense of humor and loved to tease the little ones and could be very “manipulative’ when needed.  She also says that in general he was also very warm, friendly, and always welcoming.

Ole and Anne’s daughter Grethe (also known as Gertie), my mother’s cousin, married Sigurd L. Olsen. Juneau’s 1930 Census records show him as head of the household, born in Norway.  He had come over to this country in 1910 when he was 18 years old, he spoke English, he was fishing on a halibut boat and also served time in the military.

In 1930 Sigurd Olsen's wife Grethe was 23 and had come over in 1917. She spoke English and worked in her own home. They had two children, a daughter Anne L. (Lenora), who was four years old, and a son, Sigurd Jr. (also known as Leonard) who was two.  My aunt Gertie remembers her cousin as being very creative, independent and always doing lots of sewing.  She believed everyone should “do their own things”—set their own priorities - and said we should make sure not to confine others, not to do stuff they didn’t like and didn’t really want to do- cause that always wasted time. 

Others in the same household were Linda Stickney, 22 years old, a “lodger” born in Alaska with a parent in Finland. She worked as a waitress and we’re guessing it was her children, Donald and Venetia, listed as “boarders.” The lodger mom, with two boarders? 

Our Great Uncle Jakob always stayed with his brother Ole when he was in town. Ole and his daughter Grethe’s husband Sig did not get along.  Since “Grampa Ole” lived only four blocks down the street, Grethe’s son Leonard always loved spending a lot of time at his grandpa’s house listening to stories. Today he says he would always love smelling the cakes and cookies that Gramma Anne was always baking.

One of his favorite stories was when his Great Uncle Jakob (aka “Happy”) and Grampa Ole talked about sailing and getting shipwrecked in Australia, describing quite an adventure when they had to walk across a desert to get back to civilization.

Anne died December 27th, 1949 and the news article announcing her funeral service is titled “Services tomorrow for Mrs. Ole Jackson. Mrs. Jackson died Monday at St. Ann’s Hospital. A long-time Juneau resident, she was a member of the Women of the Moose, Sons of Norway and Pioneers of Alaska.”

Ole died two months later, February 15th, 1950.  His obituary in the Juneau newspaper reads “Funeral Services for Capt. Ole Jackson, 63, who died at his home in Juneau Wednesday will be held Tuesday at 2 pm.”  His remains were placed in the Moose Plot at Evergreen Cemetery next to his wife.  He was buried February 21st. He was survived by his daughter, Mrs. Gertie Berggren, who returned to Juneau from Portland, and four brothers: Emil, of Blaine, Washington; Chris, of Sitka (my grampa); Jack (Happy), of Gull Cove; and Sigurd Jackson, of Douglas.

At the time they passed, they also had two grandchildren - Lenora (Nora) and Leonard Olsen (referred to as Uncle Leo), and a great granddaughter (Nora’s daughter), Janice Hollender of Juneau.

Notes from a Conversation with Ole’s grandson Sig ("Uncle Leo" to my Aunt Gertie), February 12, 2018:
Sig Jr. (aka Uncle Leo) is our Great Uncle Ole’s grandson, the son of Ole’s daughter Gertie. He has never been married and has no children. He met several women looking for someone to take care of them but he wanted to remain on his own.  He lives in an apartment in downtown Juneau that he owns and plans on staying there.  He also has houses, some 5 or 6 miles out of town, including a “shack” located off Douglas Highway.
 
He had worked as a “general marine vessel” maintenance mechanic in the big harbor in the downtown area and also worked for the city for 12 years dealing with gravel needs.
He owned a 26’ steel pleasure boat that he also used for trolling for many years.
 
His niece Janice Hollender in Juneau was “taking care of him; making payments, keeping track of all things he needs to keep locked, etc.”
 
He was currently resident in the Veteran’s Hospital in Blaine Washington. He was suffering a continuing foot infection that only got worse. The VA foot doctor in Juneau was very concerned it never got better so he had a VA charter flight take him from Juneau for treatment in the Washington veteran’s hospital. A very “good” charter flight.   He has been there for going up to three months now, with doctors concerned about constant infection requiring continuing treatment. “Chopped on it twice to get rid of infection and that hasn’t worked.”
 
He is required to use a wheelchair—he found a “good electric wheelchair” for good deal. Only had to pay $500 instead of $3-$4,000. 

After signing a lease with manager Jack Clausen on March 6th 1932, our Jackson family moved to the south side of Torsa Island and started raising foxes again. (Editor’s note: this island is named Torsar on the charts, but the family, and perhaps other residents of the area, called it Torsa.)

This fox farm lease included two nice-sized islands and a few others that were pretty rough. There were about three dozen fox left. At that point in time, fox fur pelts were selling for the lowest price in history- $11!  Unreal.  The harbor here is not very good because there isn’t good protection from the southeast wind, so ocean swells always roll in.

None of the harbors in this area were good, especially in the winter. That’s one reason George and JoAnn had to row Gertie and Polly out to the entrance on days they were going to school. It was way too shallow and rocky for the school boat to come in the cove to pick them up.

Food supply for the fox was perfect. There were plenty of rivers and streams around the island to get lots of salmon. There was also a good source for fish at all the canneries in Sitka.  George always loved to fish (like his dad), and in fact one time when he was fishing right off this island, he got 30 (yep 30!) kings in one place at one time. Wow!  At the end of August there weren’t any fish buyers, but the mission took advantage of the opportunity to serve some fresh salmon for dinner and paid him $9.04 for 10 king and 10 coho salmon. A real deal at 45 cents per fish--that was great!  The water supply was perfect too: there was definitely no shortage of water no matter what the season.

Here’s how this new place to live on Torsa happened for the Jackson Family:

In October 1921 the Forest Service transferred a permit from the Magoun Islands  (about 12 miles northwest of Sitka) to Torsa and adjacent islands, about 2 miles northwest of Sitka Hot Springs (and about 18 miles south of Sitka) because the Magouns were considered to be unsatisfactory. The next two months Chris Houger stocked the new lease and paid a $25 lease fee.  He died the next year, in August of 1922, and in October his wife sold the property to Dr. L. P. Dawes for $5,300.   

Included in the sale of this 612-acre fox farm was a big house; a nice little house; a tall smokehouse by the dock; a few additional buildings and 15 pair of foxes. There was also a skiff, four fox houses, one fish house, a gas boat (the LUE), and all the equipment in the house’s scow such as dishes, stoves, salt and barrels. 
Dr. Dawe’s special use permit was sent in at the end of January 1923. He was told that his next two $25 payments were going to be due the first of the year. At the end of May he sent a note asking the Forest Service guys if they had any printed notices on cloth to post on his fox islands. 

Jack Clausen was running the fox farm and his 1923 Fur Farm Report included information about the business. This included that they had brought in two male and seven female fox the past year, an addition to the 30-40 male and female fox they already had on the islands.  For some reason they hadn’t sold any.  Obviously, they were pretty busy, because they had built another house worth $400, added three more feed houses at a total of $100 and brought over one more gas boat, worth $500, for a total of $1,000 in additional assets.

The following year, 1924, they added five more pair foxes, and didn’t sell any this year either. They had built a dock valued at $400, a fish house at $200, and also had a scow this year, worth $400.  Wow! Impressive.
When the Forest Service did the appraisal in 1925, the examiner followed the original permit, which registered the size of the fox farm as 612 acres.  He included an interesting item in the report about the acreage: because he was told the farm was not over 350 acres, he noted that the islands in this area had been resurveyed by the Coast Guard, and the Forest Service folks were hoping to get a copy of that blueprint in the spring.

Of course the most important variable, with the heaviest impact on the appraisal, was how good the denning grounds were. They weren’t very good on Torsa because the soil wasn’t deep along the beach line. The ground was steep and covered with large rocks, so the foxes created dens on top of the ridges.  Also, on the smallest island under this permit, there was about one quarter mile of beach with reefs that went under at high tide. After evaluating that item and all the fox farm variables, the annual rate increased by $54 for a total lease amount of $79!

(Editor’s note: The late Al Brookman, Sr., in his book Sitka Man (Alaska Northwest Books, 1984), tells about working on the Torsar Island fur farm the winter of 1926-1927. Al was 21 years old, and was paid $5 for a 14-hour day skinning fox. He reports that Jack’s boat was named the Torsar. “John Davis and his young wife Julia were steady employees at the fox farm, with John doing most of the feeding of the stock, and Julia doing the housework for Mrs. Clausen, who was an invalid with two small children.”

He describes the process of catching the fox using a trap door in the feed houses. They would then go at night and catch individual fox in the trap area using special wooden tongs. They branded each fox’s ear with ink, and cut the tip of the tail square to show it was marked. Each fox to be killed was put in a gunny sack and taken to the skinning shed. The “smart” fox would avoid the feed houses after the trap was set, and he says they had to move the “dumb” ones to another island then set snares and traps for the rest.

The work included skinning and fleshing the skins. He says “I never got used to the offensive odor that these foxes emit from scent glands when they are excited or scared. I was glad when it was time to go to town and get away from the foxes, for while working with them I developed an intense dislike for these savage little beasts.”

He says they pelted 80 fox, for which he was paid $95 by Dr. Dawes. By the time the 21-year-old Brookman got his pay, though, he owed it all, for new clothes and a haircut, and a quart of bootleg whiskey for a party, and was looking forward to king salmon fishing season. Sitka Man is out of print but easy to find. It is highly recommended for tales and yarns about Sitka, now part of local lore.

The 80 pelts he says they sold doesn’t match with the 30 pelts in the farm report, which could be due to memory or to the scarcity of oversight in this era. Sarah Isto, in her book The Fur Farms of Alaska: Two Centuries of History and a Forgotten Stampede (University of Alaska Press, 2012) tells how in 1929, many fur farms mentioned in newspapers or labeled on maps were not listed anywhere in official records. She found some official record of 622 fur farms but estimates there were easily over 700 in the Territory of Alaska.)

The 1927 report was sent to the Ketchikan Forest Service office in July, and like the majority of fox farms, there were several changes from the numbers previously submitted.  This year they had about 50 pair of fox, worth $7,500 ($150 each), but they sold 30 pelts for $931.78, so this year they got about $30 for each of them. Obviously they were taking a big hit because their annual operating expense was $4,551.09!

Five years later, in 1932, Dr. Dawes decided he wasn’t going to keep raising foxes and stopped making payments. Even though rent had been cut in half, and he only owed $39.50, he did not think the fox farm business was worth the investment any longer.

 In 1932, Regional Forester Wellman Holbrook put a note in the Torsa fox farm file about Jack Clausen coming in to his office on March 5th and introducing himself as a partner with Dr. Dawes. He was the one who had been managing and working the fox farm for the previous ten years, and was headed for Seattle until April. In order to take over the special use permit they had him file a copy of his contract and told him to let them know his plans. Grampa had worked for Dr. Dawes in the past, and had good references, so he would be the one running the fox farm.

On May 5th, 1933, Christ Jackson (Grampa) became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Since he had come to America with his family he had been working on the fox farms, operating them just like they were his own. Now, as a citizen, he really could be a property owner.  Another thing that was really awesome was that it was “derivative”.  When he became a citizen, all his children did too. In 1933 the kids were George, 13; JoAnn, 12; Gertie, 7; Polly, 6; and Chris, 3 years of age.  The certificate of citizenship was a corrected and updated certificate which officially changed his name to Christ Jackson from Kristoffer Knubedal, his name on the original family passport.

Fox Farm neighbors on Elovoi Island, Don Huff’s mom and dad, went into town one night in September 1933 and so their son Don came over to spend the night at the Jacksons. Cool. He remembered that he sure had fun - “we drank up to three quarts of root beer.” We were shocked when we read that. Can you believe they actually had that much to drink? One of their favorite things to do was to create sails for their skiffs, using all kinds of different materials, and have races. Good thing no adults were watching because they were boating while “under the influence” – being root beer intoxicated.

In December that year, when Uncle Sig was staying with them, it got REALLY cold-only four degrees above zero! He and Grampa went over to Elovoi Island to get a drum stove from the Narrows, and paid Claude Huff with a skate of gear.  Almost a month after Christmas (that’s how long it took packages to come from Norway), in January of 1934, the Jackson kids finally got the really nice pair of mittens they had asked their grandmother to knit for their best friend Don.

At the end of February, 1934, a letter their cousin Thurman wrote from Kansas asked them, if he came up, could he get a job.  Nanny wrote back and told him “If you want to come up and stay for a vacation you are welcome to stay here.  Since we live 14 miles from Sitka it would be hard for us to find you any work because everyone else is looking for work.

“Chris’s boat is so small, there’s only room for one man.  In the fishing season there is a cannery near here and you might get a job there, I can’t be sure.  You had asked how it was at trapping season and since there are so many Indians trapping around here, they only open the season for one month.”  It’s a good thing Thurman didn’t jump on the boat and come on up for a fishing trip because the salmon trollers had a strike that summer, all the way to the 10th of August. Grampa told him they lost all the best trolling.  In May, when they got salmon trolling outside Biorka, they sold them for $1.23. Claude Huff bought 10 black bass from George for 25 cents!

June 1st 1934 Don Huff wrote in his diary that his dad dressed one big bear on Jackson’s island- wow- so there was bear! (See Part 6 for a photo of Don Huff standing next to a bear hide.)

Another excitement that summer was July 25th when JoAnn and George went to town with Claude and Don Huff. It was the first time they ever went without someone in their family! 

October 29th Grampa and our Uncle Sig met with Claude to ask if Sig could live at the Narrows for the 1934 winter. Mrs. Huff said the answer was NO! What is absolutely amazing is that she didn’t like him at all. Unless of course she thought he was too “wild” and would bring in lady friends and start a distillery so he could have parties at the cabin. One thing for sure is he did have a totally different personality from his brother, our Grampa.  He was very positive, always happy, loved playing his ukulele and was totally carefree and upbeat.

When cousin Thurman sent them a note in 1934 to find out how they liked Alaska now that they had been here that long, Nanny wrote “my husband says it’s the only country he would like to live in because it is free.” She also said, “I sure would like to see your Grampa up here because it is so much like Norway.”   When he asked her about traveling to see them, she explained that first he’d have to take a steamer from Seattle to Juneau.  Then he’d take the MS Northland to Sitka which would cost him $50 for the round trip in first class. She recommended he travel in steerage because it was so much cheaper and she said, even though they give you a bed, they didn’t provide blankets, and you better bring some because it was pretty damn cold in steerage. (Well, she didn’t actually say damn.)

(Editor's note: the Jackson family moved to Sitka in April 1935.)

At the end of March, 1936, L.T. Peterson asked to remove improvements from Torsa but was told Dr. Dawes still held the Special Use Fur Farm permit, so he had to be in charge. Dr. Dawes got another late payment note. He said he was going to have to give it up, but suggested they get in touch with his partner, Jack Clausen, because he might want to keep it but he didn’t think so.  

They did send Jack a letter to tell him if he wanted to take over the lease, the reduced rate and the late fee would cost $156. If he decided he didn’t want to, they were thinking they might have to sell the improvements in order to get the rent due to the government.

Jack Clausen told them even though Dr. Dawes had turned it over to him to run by himself four years ago (1932), he had abandoned it two years ago (1934), and actually was the last one on the island the previous March (1935) when he went out to check on it.

There was still a house in good shape and a large work shed. He left some personal things like a hoist, a large boiling pot, and other items, which he offered to a man living on an island close by for only $200. However, he never heard from the guy. One of the rangers who went to check it out in September 1936 verified everything Jack said. Since the island was abandoned, his recommendation was to cancel the permit. It was L.T. Peterson and a Mr. Baggen on Legma who were interested in buying the improvements.

In March of the next year, 1937, Mr. Peterson, who held the permit for Legma Island, decided to pass this island over to Mr. Mills, who was running Maid and Tava Islands, because he decided there wasn’t anything he was interested in buying on Torsa.

Next post: The stories of Uncle Ole and Uncle Happy

This is Chart 17326 from NOAA. Click on the image or click here for a pdf of the chart. You can also get any chart from the NOAA website (www.charts.noaa.gov/ChartCatalog/Alaska). Sitka is at the top, and Goddard and the Necker Islands are a bit lower than the center.

Here is a close up of the Goddard area from the same chart.

Above is a satellite image from Google Earth, with a label for Goddard added. A higher quality image, but without labels, can be accessed from the Bing search engine.

Chris Jackson Family at Fox Farm #3—Elovoi Island  (April 1931-March 1932)
 
On April 17th, 1931, the Jackson family packed all their “stuff” into their Norwegian trunks and moved from Tava over to a house on Elovoi (Russian word for spruce) Island at Dorothy Narrows.   If and when fox farmer Claude Huff needed help with maintenance and operations, or anything from branding his fox “MP1”  or preparing pelts to send to the market, Grampa was on call, available 24/7 all 365 days a year.   

The Huffs had moved out to Elovoi a year and a half before our family (the Jacksons) came from Norway and moved to the fox farm on Legma.

A really good way to hear what was going on at the time that the Jacksons moved over to Elovoi Fox Farm is Claude Huff’s diary. Here are highlights, April 1931 to March 1932. This diary is in the collection of the Sitka Historical Society Museum.
 
Note: I’m not sure this is right- Don said their boat was named Ironsides cause it was a steel hulled life boat, and that it was 204 (really?) foot with a cabin and powered with a mighty 6 horse engine! His dad would tow the row boat right behind him as he went fishing and he’d drop you off, and you would troll out of the row boat.
 
April 17th: Claude helped Jacksons move from Tava to house at Narrows!
Saw deer on the way over
 
April 19th frosty and fair with a breeze for Mabelle’s (Mrs. Huff’s) birthday.
Went to lagoon to cut 6 yellow cedars for trulking poles.
 
April 23rd rough water but fair skies. Molded, leaded and spaded garden;
then planted peas, beets and carrots— (Wow--in April!)
 
April 24th NW wind, very rough water and fair skies. It was so rough Mabelle and I carried feed to the North end.  There was a big movement of geese going north, and it was hard for them to go against the wind.  We planted more carrots.
 
April 25th: Very warm at noon today-- 73 degrees! and fair skies.  Begin rigging up poles and lines on I.S.  Brought box trap home from Narrows and a few hand trollers working Big Bay and Windy Passage
 
April 26th: 67 as Mabelle cooked and planted dahlias. I worked on Ironsides and took her off the beach.  We also polished spoons.
 
April 27th: Cloudy with East wind. Trolled Big Bay,Windy Passage, BNH- About 30 hand trollers working; a few getting salmon.
 
April 29th  Breezy and saw 2 deer on No. 2 beach while feeding. Mabelle saw two across on the beach at the Indian shack.
 
First plane of season went over towards Sitka!
 
April 30th  1931:  SE wind and rain, kept Donald home; sick with flu.  I went out of range on east half island trying to locate grouse and lost sense of direction. It was so bushy I was lost for an hour before I got to beach. I came out South Narrows and went for mail. Mrs. Goddard sent eggs and lemons with oranges for Don’s cold.
 
May 1st   SE wind with rain. Mabelle down with flu too in P.M. Don still out of school

May 2nd   mist and quiet. I’m getting it too

May 3rd   mist and quiet- Mrs. got up and did housework; really too sick. Don is better with a bad cough!  Deer at No. 3
 
May 8th: SW breeze swells and showers. Saw 2 deer at No. 3 and 6 geese landed on the beach near head of bight B- A gun went off and then there were five!
 
May 9th :  42 SE wind and Bear—Jackson stopped and gave us nice king salmon to eat.
Mabelle sighted a bear on the beach at Indian Cove. We saw it walking along and took Ironsides and ran over to the Narrows but it had gone!
 
May 10th was more SE wind and hard rain. The peas and spuds were beginning to show. We think there must be pups now. Sunday rains will be hard on them.

May 11th Another SE breeze shower; then sun. We got up about 6 am and around 6:30 saw bear in beach at Indian Cove again. In a few minutes it went out of sight in brush!

May 14th   Don and I fished for bass at Halibut rock and caught 17 in 1-2 hrs!

May 15th We took Ironsides to town for gas. and were home at 6 p.m. We got mail for CJ Mills and sack lettuce for the Goddards!

May 18th Started trolling at Biorka and got a few fish.

May 19th North breeze and fair.  We came home at noon to cook fox feed.
Prices for fish:  10 cents large, 5 or 6 small and 3 white,

May 22nd Got windy at noon and we heard the first fox puppies on the point.

May 23rd: rain.  Saw 2 puppies at No 6D and I started for Sitka at 1:20 pm, sold fish and got a few heads, gas and groceries then got home at 9 pm.

May 26th—saw 4 pups at 6 and were off again at 3 pm

May 27th:  Mrs. and Don saw bear again at Narrows, at same place. I trolled in the morning, then to Lazaria to sell fish. It was too rough so I followed fish buyer back

 May 29th:  I came home at noon to help feed and took fish to Narrows for Jacksons.

June 1st Fair and rough seas. Trolled till 8 AM only 1 bass then went to Lazaria. Overweight. Saw 79 trolling boats at one time from the deck of I.S.

June 6th: South wind, showers, mist and fog. We fished at Biorka till 3 PM then went to town and got heads.  We anchored cross channel from town overnight. Heard talking of having a strike over cut in price of salmon.
 
June 7th: We got home at 6:30 A.M.  Canned SIX Pts. Rhubarb (wow) and we all went to Jack Knife I.  for some tar paper(?)

June 8th: Off to troll early at Biorka – A big boat came and told us of the strike and to quit. We came home at 11 AM to help feed then went back to troll in the evening. We did see 5 pups at No.6. and believe a litter has been moved to No. 5.

June 10th The fishing was Very Poor and we were home at noon; cooked and canned 20 cans salmon.

June 12th A bit of breeze but quiet so I got up at 2:30 AM and went to troll first at Biorka then to Lazaria, got 6 fish, over weight.

June 23rd—Jackson children at Springs for supper and saw 3 or 4 pups at No. 2

June 24th: Went out on island and CJ Mills got one bear on Tava.

July 6th Went to Biorka to troll; got 3 salmon and 30 bass and were home at 8:30 pm.

July 7th Picked blueberries. Yum!

July 19th: Good News: The fish strike was over!

July 25th Plane landed at Springs

Aug 3rd: Fish were found near Biorka - 110 coho were sold for $45

Aug 9th Mrs. Jackson was here with children this afternoon to pick 4.2 gallons of huckleberries.

Sept. 4th Miss Dickson accepted the offer to teach school next year!

Sept. 5th—Claude and son Don went to Sitka to do trading and got some groceries for our Jackson family. Our Grampa had been out of town for trolling and was due to return home that evening from Icy Straits.

Sept.7th Jacksons stopped by in the evening and Claude gave them a ham.

Sept. 30th Claude took 2 Jacksons and his son to and from school. The Mills couldn’t come in this particular storm because the water was too rough and it was raining too hard.  

October 31st was another day of very windy and stormy rain in 38 degrees. George and Hannah (also known as our JoAnn) stayed with them overnight!  It was Halloween. Not a whole bunch of houses to do trick or treating- Darn!

November 4th—Chris and George Jackson took the MV Star out to West Crawfish for wood logs with Don and Claude Huff on the Ironsides anchored at the head of the bay.

November 26th—Thanksgiving Day—Claude wrote in his diary “spent day at Jacksons. Home by moonlight”

December 19th Chris and Mrs. Jackson had visited the Huffs in evening.

December 21st George and Hannah Jackson (our mom, aka JoAnn) were helped to get a pine for Christmas tree.

January 1st, 1932—Even though it was cloudy and 32 degrees the Jackson family was at the Huff’s place for dinner! 
 
January 3rd Our Grampa Chris Jackson and Claude set 3 skates gear in Windy Passage. They got 4 nice halibut and 2 rock cod. 

Jan. 16th Claude Huff gave the Jacksons meat.

Jan. 27th, George and Hannah (aka JoAnn) were at the Huffs to visit and on February 3rd, George was visiting again with Don to sail boats.

February 15th—George and Hannah visited for ice and to sail boats--

February 19th Don spent the day at Jacksons for George’s birthday and his mom and dad went over for lunch.

February 21st Mrs. Jackson (Anna, my gramma) went over to Huffs for lunch even though snow was about 12 or 14 inches deep again and my Grampa Chris brought mail.

Feb. 22nd Jackson let his MV Star loose too quick and it dropped on its side, which caused a hole in the hull and filled with water—Don and Dad helped put her back on even keel and bail out. They put a patch over the hole in the evening and he took her off the cradle in the evening. 

George was visiting for supper the 24th

Feb. 28th Mrs. Anna Jackson and all the children went to the Huffs’ for lunch and Grampa was still in town.

March 6th 1932: Major event: Jacksons moved to Torsar!
 
Life on Elovoi Fox Farm
My Aunt Gertie says that wasn’t really a lazy way of life because most of the time in the winter our family didn’t get up till it got light. Most folks used kerosene lamps and needed to be “fuel conservative” since it wasn’t really cheap, so that made sense.

One of the jobs on Don Huff’s other list of “things to do” whenever there was free time was to gather clam shells to cover ground in the pig pen. Sometimes it would rain so much and got so muddy you couldn’t move around in it to feed.  Usually in September or October, when they butchered their pork, they would share a ham with our family. That was very generous and appreciated. Gertie remembers Nanny would make it last as long as possible with things like split pea soup, casseroles and maybe just one slice of ham for a sandwich.

There’s an entry in Huff’s diary about shooting a dolphin one day (he was always looking for ways to make some extra money!). It started to sink in the deep water before he could get it out. Fortunately, at the same time, there was a sea lion checking out this dead dolphin and Claude was able to shoot in the right place. So they made some good money with this “water treasure!”  Just imagine if he had killed only one of those sea mammals today, he could have been fined $20,000!

When our Jackson family moved over to Elovoi in 1931, George and JoAnn were really happy too because now they could drive their own “school bus” instead of having to wait for a “ride”. They and Don only had to row a little ways to get to the school at Goddard. Don Huff said the school was right across from the cove he lived in and, actually his dad had the contract to run the school bus route out to the different islands where the other students lived.

George and JoAnn also loved living on this island because Don was their best friend and now he lived in the next cove--a lot closer than when they were living on Legma and Tava so they got to spend a lot more time hanging out with him.

Plus they were probably the best rowers in the world because when they took anybody anywhere, it was a really fast boat ride even if it was rough water. (Well, geeze, they had enough practice and would row whenever and wherever they wanted to.) If they could have found the money to pay for a trip to Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympic Games they would have won the gold medal for the double sculls. JoAnn would have had to tuck all her hair into a hat and wear guy clothes because only men were allowed to enter the rowing competitions. But no doubt, with her daily rowing in that environment, she would have been better than any of the guys in that competition.

Grampa had left his boat (FV Star) over at Huff’s in December. On Elovoi, most of the streams and small ponds were ice-free all year and there were a lot of them. That was very nice because Grampa found a small bay on the south shore which happened to be a great spawning place for herring in the spring. Definitely, a good way to “start the season”. When the Forest Service did their appraisal they also rated it high because it was located in the center of the good fishing grounds and only 16½ miles south of Sitka where you could get to a cold storage, cannery and curing plants which were a great resource for free fox food.

In the spring, fox farmers on any of these Goddard Hot Springs Islands could see bear coming out of hibernation and messing around on the beach.  In June one was digging in the fox caves in Indian Cove and found a den of pups. Claude had already found a total mess where they were wrecking his fox trap houses on the north end of the island. Obviously these bear definitely liked to break in the trap house and devour the fox food.

In October when he was hunting near the lakes at North Lagoon, a bear came running out of the woods and he shot it from about 45 yards. That bullet broke its neck; then the cub ran 20 feet up a pine tree and he shot and killed it too from about 80 yards. When he skinned and took both of them home, his wife and son were impressed because these bear were so fat and had really nice fur coats. Uncle George was really glad he could help when he went over a couple of days later to help flesh the bear hides.

Everybody was glad to hear CJ Mills had killed one on Tava, and Grampa saw two, and killed one, at Crawfish as well.

Note: In the Huff photo album they donated to the Museum in Sitka, there is a really cool picture with Don and the bear hide hanging on the island shop. In a 1993 interview he said, “indeed occasionally bear came to the island and died of lead poisoning.”  

A lot of fox farmers were fishing but not to just feed their fox. They also made some good money selling fish from around these islands as well. An extra challenge to deal with happened the first week of June in 1931, when there were 79 trolling boats at one time at Lazaria.  Because of the cut in the price of salmon, there was serious need for a strike.  Grampa and all the others were told to stop selling fish.  The following six weeks were not an easy time. The fish strike was finally over on July 19th.  Our family didn’t have a freezer and had borrowed Huff’s.  It was sent back stocked full. It was the only way they could pay back and was definitely appreciated.

October 7th was another major calendar event that year-- Nanny had asked Mrs. Huff to cut her hair because she was going to Juneau to visit the family and wanted to “look nice”!  Indeed. Very important because sometimes she never got off the islands for an entire year. For sure, this time off was very exciting because her daily list of things to do was never-ending.

Fox Farm wife (and mother) sample job description:  At least three times a week she helped prepare the fox food, cooking oats and barley and extra “fish specials.”  She always had to get water from a creek or river for drinking, cooking, baths and laundry. They had “outside” plumbing and probably some toilet seats which she kept really sanitized (but she didn’t have to worry about keeping a toilet bowl clean.)  She also had babies who were not potty trained so she had a whole bunch of diapers to wash along with every-day play clothes. Daughter Gertie remembers she was always keeping everything mended and spotless. (They didn’t have money to order new clothes whenever needed.)

Probably most important was cooking three meals a day, plus making lunches for her students to take to school- good grief!- dealing with growing children who needed snacks, too. Unbelievable! I bet they had some awesome dinners over at the Goddard Resort - which they couldn’t afford - and she couldn’t even order a pizza delivery. Wow! Every once in a while, she’d even help the kids pack wood. Amazing!

When the Huff family was invited over for Thanksgiving dinner, Don said that his mom was not really “social” but they did accept the invitation, had fun, and were served an awesome dinner.  As part of a thank-you, four days before Christmas Don helped them cut and drag a Christmas tree home to decorate. It wasn’t too hard to find a nice one because Elovoi (like all the islands in Southeast) had a whole bunch of beautiful spruce growing all over.

Knubedal-Jacksons at Tava (“Tent" in Aleut) Island, March 1929-April 1931
 
Grampa Chris Jackson helped fox farmer C. Jay (CJ) Mills kill and skin his foxes.  It was definitely a different way of life here on Tava because on this island Grampa wasn’t operating the fox farm.  He focused on fishing and logging to make a living. Obviously, the two oldest Jackson children (my mom JoAnn and Uncle George) thought it was totally laid back over here compared to what they had been doing since coming from Norway and living on the Legma Island fox farm for the last two years.

The Jacksons loaded all their trunks into the boat and moved over to Tava Island in March of 1929. Anna (our Nanny) was five months pregnant and decided this time she was going to have her baby in town instead of staying on an island like she did when dodder Polly was born. When they saw a plane with pontoon landing gear fly over Nanny figured that would have made it really easy to get to the hospital when labor started.
However, they didn’t have docks on islands these new float planes could use to pick up any fox farmers, especially ones that needed to get to town quickly. Most likely the cost of these charter flights was way more than they could afford. So Grampa took her into Sitka and their son, my Uncle Chris Jackson, was born in “the big city” on July 6th 1929!

Len T. Peterson was President, his brother C.A. Peterson was Vice-President, F. Beauchamp was Secretary-Treasure and CJ Mills was the Manager of Sitka Fur Farms Inc., the company that leased Maid and Tava Islands. The note on their letterhead stationery made the important point that Maid and Tava Islands were “stocked with an improved strain of Alaska Blue Foxes.”  (Very impressive!)

Sitka Fur Farms Manager CJ Mills and his family lived on Maid Island. His cousin Foster had come to Alaska to run Tava Island, next door, in November 1924. Foster and his wife Louise, daughter Jane and son Russell lived there a couple of years. When our family arrived on Legma Island, in March 1927, the Foster family had already decided they didn’t like fox farming and had moved to Sitka, so they never met Grampa & Nanny.

When Gramma & Grampa went into the “big city” of Sitka for the birth of the next Jackson, the rest of the children went over to stay with the CJ Mills family on Maid Island. One thing that was pretty special about spending the night over there was that the brothers had their own cabin, and so did the sisters. One of the Jackson girls, Polly, remembered she and her sisters had to sleep with the Mills girls in the same bed.  She said not only did her feet get really really cold, she especially remembered feeling very “out of place” over there.
Carl Mills must have had a crush on Gertie because he always teased her and put crabs down her neck. He probably thought it was cool because she really didn’t like it but he definitely got her attention.  George thought Mrs. Mills was pretty mean because every time something went wrong, she blamed him. Very likely she didn’t appreciate him teaching her sons and daughters nasty words in Norwegian because no one else was supposed to know what they were really saying.

This was basically a new life, in a new location. Obviously, Grampa thought the amount of money being made by fox farmers was not enough these days, and that it would be much better to focus on fishing and logging. He spent time fishing on his boat, the FV Star, and always looked for the best cedar and spruce trees as well.  Hand logging was the common practice in Alaska, instead of using animal or steam power. Fishing industry folks would buy the biggest trees for fish traps, and local sawmills sawed lumber for canneries and salteries. They also made cases and crates for Alaska canneries to use for shipping salmon, and used pole-sized timber for pilings.

We’re not sure (but it is doubtful) if he had a special permit to cut and sell timber, but they did make lots of trips to the beach to find prime timber. If the water was calm enough, rather than hit a “deadhead” (partially submerged floating log) when they were running in high seas, they could hook on and tow some nice sized logs to the logging camp. In fact around December 8, instead of checking out foxes at the feeding stations, he had a different focus. He tied two prime cedars up in the narrows and hauled them into the camp to sell the next morning.
  
Another change of life for fox farm kids JoAnn and George here is that they were totally laid back compared to what they had to do when living on Legma. They had time to “watch the stars,” and actually saw some awesome northern lights in January and a moon eclipse in April. One of the not so great things was when school started, they had to get to the harbor (on the other side of Tava) to catch the school boat. Even though school started in April, spring weather wasn’t great and it was pretty darn scary to walk because the woods they had to go through were pretty thick and dark, and they didn’t have trail lights.

The 1926 Forest Service appraisal of the Tava Island lease included lots of good info about this fox farm. For instance, it is 501 acres (just a little smaller than Legma Island), the beaches were mostly large boulders and there were some reefs with rocks that were hidden at high tide.  They didn’t think the harbor was the best in the world, but it was ok because it was protected really well from the storms. Actually that was, and still is, a huge benefit!

The best place for foxes to have their dens was along the shore line because the drainage kept the beach very wet. Even during the dry season, these islands had a very good supply of water. Spruce and hemlock covering the south beach was a good thing. The Forest Service guys thought the food supply for the fox houses was good because folks could get fish heads from the cannery and mild curing plants and buy cereals from the local merchants. Because of all these positive variables for the fox farm, the annual lease fee was being raised from $25 to $61.96!

One really “cool” thing about living on Tava was sometimes it would get cold enough to freeze the lake. It was in the middle of the island and the Jackson and Mills kids would always skate there together.  Our family didn’t have any ice skates but the Mills family did and were kind enough to share. Like Cora Mills explained, “we had clamp-on skates that were easy to take off, so we always shared our skating time.”  Very nice.

Compared to what their mom cooked, our kids thought Mrs. Mills made some really weird peanut butter cookies and hotcakes. Well, of course they didn’t even taste close to what they were used to because Nanny always used butter and eggs cause they had chickens and always had fresh ones. Most folks didn’t know or even care about high cholesterol back then, and taste was way more important. When asked today what snacks Cora Mills loved most, she said her favorite was our Nanny’s sponge cake!
 
Mr. Mills was generous enough to give our family a radio. Grampa hooked it up to the same six-volt battery that Grampa used to run off his boat. They always listened to the main station in Des Moines, Iowa which was chosen so they could listen to the news. When he did have it on, all the kids were supposed to be totally quiet. If they did make any noise they would be in big trouble! Cora also remembers that everyone had to be quiet when their dad was listening to his radio, too.

The first week of November 1929 stenographer Dorothy, the daughter of Dr. Fred Goddard and Home Supervisor Mary of the Goddard Sanitarium, “enumerated” all the residents in the Outlying District of Goddard. Needless to say, everybody here knew all their neighbors.  The most senior fox farmer was 61-year-old Seth Mills, who had been born in Illinois. He and his 39-year-old wife lived on Elovoi Island with 41-year-old Claude, 42-year-old Mabelle, and their son Donald, who was 11.

The other “All-American” family was on Maid Island, “headed” by CJ Mills who was 43, born in Illinois; his 38-year-old wife Gretta was born there, too. Their three girls (Helen, Ruth and little Cora May) and three boys (Glenn, Donald and Carl) living on Maid Island were all born in Alaska.

Adolph Thompson was 36 years old and had come from Germany, and his 32-year-old wife Sophie came from Poland. They had a daughter, Anna, who had been born in Alaska five years before.  Carl, his 51-year-old brother, also from Germany, was living with them on their Biorka Island fox farm. Adolph was a naturalized citizen, but his wife and brother were aliens. Our Jackson family, living on Tava Island, is also included on this list, and there’s one other person from Norway - John Clausen, a widowed 51-year-old, who was also a naturalized citizen.
 
Besides the Goddard family living in the Goddard Village, there was a sister-in-law from Scotland, Marjory Clumsa, doing housework at the sanitarium, and Carl G. Hill a 49-year-old guy from New York who was their manager. Titus Demidoff (27 years old), an Alaskan, and Charles Fulton (who was 38), a Tlingit, were their laborers. The day Dorothy did this report there were also two fishermen doing some salmon trolling: Augustus Woodrow, a 41-year-old guy from Pennsylvania, and 85-year-old George Sykes, from England.
   
Moving to town or another island would not and did not change anything that would make Nanny’s life easier. She was still working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to take care of the family. No doubt she was totally blown away when the Huffs came over to visit on January 26th, 1930, which just happened to be her birthday.  Imagine that!  They brought a nice birthday bouquet and bottle of wine, right?  Maybe a nice bouquet yes; but there is no question that her children had a very beautiful cake that would feed them and all the guests.

The first week in May, Grampa got some dahlia bulbs from Mrs. DeArmond at Goddard so he could give them to Nanny for Mother’s Day.  All her life, growing flowers was one of Nanny’s favorite things to do and the family always believed she had the most beautiful flower gardens on any island, or in any neighborhood. She always planted daffodils in December, her tulips always started coming up in March for Easter, and she always had lots and lots of nasturtiums blooming in August.

Whenever Grampa and son George were out hunting, fishing, or traveling around the islands, like all the other folks, they would shoot eagles. Sometimes they would even take hunting trips just for that purpose. One reason was because these damn birds would go after newborn fox pups that were coming out of their dens, which was obviously a loss of income. Also, because an eagle bounty law had been passed in 1917, as our family friend and historian Bob DeArmond described in his article “Shoot the Damned Things! - Alaska’s War against the American Bald Eagle” they would send the claws in and make 50 cents for each pair.  

In 1923, when the bounty was raised to $1 for a set of claws, a lot of people who did it for a hobby went into business. Gertie remembers seeing claws hanging (not the full bird) so they would get good and dry. The Jackson girls always thought eagles were really big and looked very mean and they were always scared of them. (Not cool.) Lots of folks also believed eagles were damaging and worried about them picking up little kids.
 
The last day of school was usually the second week of October because seas were pretty rough that time of year. Their summer breaks, October to April, were definitely a lengthy school vacation.  Seas were not calm enough on regular schedule till April for the School Boat to start up the daily run between fox farm islands and Goddard. The kids definitely had lots of time to spend on their beach playground every day.  It was the same back then as it is today - activities were not cancelled, and the kids definitely did not stay inside, when it rained.

One day (probably cool and rainy) in January 1930 George was beachcombing and found what he thought was a seal skull and took it home to show Nanny. She almost had a heart attack and told him to take it outside and bury it.  When other adults heard about it, they dug it up and took it to town. During the next few days they found vertebrae and another bone, parts of some pants, and a life belt on the beach. Dental images identified him as one of the four missing fishermen who had been on a halibut boat named the FV Washington at Sandy Bay.

Ten years later, when he was 22, in 1940, George met a young man in Sitka selling life insurance who told him how dangerous and hazardous it was to spend your life working on the sea, and said he knew from experience, because his dad had drowned while he was fishing years ago.  When George asked him what boat his dad was on, and he told him the FV Washington, George said he was probably the one who had picked up his dad’s skull and bones on the beach. Then he decided indeed it would be a good idea to buy insurance from him.

Our mom JoAnn didn’t have a lot of good memories about being raised on the fox farm islands either. Her example was on July 3rd, 1930, when she celebrated her 9th birthday on Tava Island, which was nothing exciting, but always remembered that George swamped the skiff when they were hauling wood.

That year, when hunting season opened August 20th, Grampa didn’t think the deer were as fat as they would have been twelve days later (when it had opened the year before.) The season closed 15 days earlier on November 15th. No change in the number of deer you could get though; only three male deer, with at least 3-inch horns.

One of the worst things that ever happened to our family was on March 2nd in 1931. Nobody could have done anything about it. George had run over to Maid Island to pick up Mrs. Mills and bring her back to Tava to help Nanny as her midwife, when his baby brother, named Ole, was born dead.  Needless to say, it was very sad.  He was buried on the island.  Claude Huff posted the notice on the dock “Mrs. Jackson’s Baby Dead.”  This was definitely very hard for JoAnn to accept this happening. Several members of the family have been out to the island quite a few times but so far nobody has been able to find the gravesite. 
 
Grampa anchored his boat between Maid and Tava. Unfortunately, during a good storm, the boat drifted ashore and broke up.

Uncle George did say one time that he figured the only way a guy could make money back in those days was, rather than fox farming, to make and sell the moonshine!  
 
Really? Hmmm--maybe so!

Next post: The Jackson family on Elovoi Island, April 1931-March 1932

Obviously, some very important government officials thought school age kids that lived on fox farm islands should be able to go to school like ones who lived in big towns like Sitka, and get educated. Juneau legislators decided to consider it an “emergency” and something that needed to be done immediately. They said  when folks  established a school district, the Board of Education could set aside as much as $2,500 to pay for the construction of and equipment for a school house.
A petition to establish a school district had to be signed by at least eight adults who lived in the area. Each had to be a U.S. citizen (or a resident who declared the intention to become one) and of course, live within the boundaries of their school district. We haven’t seen a copy of the petition but most likely Dr. Goddard, his wife, daughter Winn, along with  CJ, Gretta, Seth & Edna Mills, Adolph Thompson and contractor Ed Harris were some of the ones who signed a required document. Obviously the Clerk of the Court thought it was an awesome request.

The May 1925 Alaska School Bulletin said this new school district near Sitka had been established at Goddard, it was supposed to open on April 15th and about ten students would probably be taught by Miss Winn Goddard.

The next year school started a week early, on April 8th 1926,  and they had classes in one of the conference rooms at the Goddard Hot Springs Hotel.  Mrs. CJ Mills was the teacher on October 15th and the rain and winds were really bad, the waves were pretty high and the water was pretty rough. Since there was even snow on the mountains, they decided it would probably be best to make it the last day of school.
 
So special schools could be built in places where there were fewer “white” children than required by law for the establishment of a rural school.  This was outside an incorporated town, places like where our family lived in the Goddard area. There did have to be at least six white children between 6 and 17 years old and they could teach kids from kindergarten up to  10th grade in order to keep getting help from government to pay the cost.
On January 12th, 1927, the Territorial Department of Education  opened a bid to build this 16 x 24 foot school building on the shore of Hot Springs Bay.  Ed Harris won the award for $1,149 and had to complete construction by April 2nd that same year. 

He hired Claude Huff February 5.th On the 19th, Grampa (Chris Jackson) was working with our Uncles Ole and Happy to get a house built on Legma Island for the family. He also helped  clear land and set the school foundation.There was work every day in March except for the 8th, when they got a foot of snow! Several other fox farmers were also helping the Huffs, including the CJ Mills family, Seth Mills and his wife, along with Will Harris and his girls, at this new school site.

Additionally, on March 19th, Forest Service Ranger George Peterson noted in his diary that he left Sitka with a trail crew at 10:30 in the morning and got out to Goddard at 12:25. He showed the men what he needed for this trail to go from the school house to Goddard’s springs. They left Goddard at 4:28 P.M. and arrived back to Sitka at 6:36 p.m. and noted: 11-8 hrs. Wow! So eleven guys and travel time—to and from the job….  Impressive!

A “property card” for the Territorial School was applied for that day and issued six months later, September 29th. That was for 1.12 acres ¾ miles south of Goddard on the shore of Hot Springs Bay. Best of all there was no annual lease charge. In the middle of March, about the same time Nanny and the children moved out to Legma, Uncle Happy helped build the woodhouse for the school. (It’s the smaller building on the left in CJ Mill’s  photo. School doors (actually the one door) opened only two days late, on April 4th. But realistically, that was a lot of work they did get done in less than three months!

George’s report cards on display at Sitka Museum included his first day of school, which was  April 4th 1927.  Records also say it was Don Huff’s (from Elovoi) 1st day at school  and Ms. Alta Smith was the teacher who signed out the last day on October 13th.  

Going to school every day in this brand new school house on Goddard was very exciting.  We aren’t sure if George got picked up by the School Boat or if Grampa took him.  Nanny couldn’t have taken him because she had preschoolers at home; there weren’t any day care centers  available in the area, and most dads didn’t share child care.  Plus, she didn’t  run the boat or row the skiffs, cause she never had to. JoAnn could have rowed them over but then they would have had to tie in Gertie and Polly so they wouldn’t fall out, because Don Huff made a note in his diary that the seas were really rough that particular day.

The new one-room school was big enough for ten desks, and there was a store room, but they didn’t have any running water or an inside potty. All the view windows were on the ocean side of the building with five green shades and a beautiful view. They had a nice heating stove that needed wood, which cost $10 a cord (800 pieces). WOW! Today a cord of wood usually sells for about $125!

Gas lamps were used for lights. Most likely it would have never happened but just in case there was a fire or too much smoke in the building they were required to have fire drills at least twice a month. The rules said fire drills (weather permitting) but it’s hard to believe there was ever a day with weather so bad they couldn’t do a drill.  Right?

School opened at the end of March or first of April, and went to the first of October, so it ended up being a seven month job with a good “benefit package” in a sweet environment. Teachers were provided housing and meals at the really nice Goddard Hot Springs Hotel, only a ¾ mile walk to and from work, on a trail built and maintained by the Forest Service guys. The teacher’s annual Salary was $1,120 which meant pay of about $160 each month. Most likely she was working on a “regular” school schedule back then of about 10 hours for at least five days a week & a lot of times it included Saturday.

On April 10th, the Forest Service trail crew, including Fireman Hansen, was back to do the final required work. Obviously there needed to be more details about the size of the school site since Officer Peterson also needed to submit a measurement of the trail and to survey the school lot, which he did on a Sunday, going out to the island at 9:30 and getting back to Sitka at 5:15.

All students attending had to bring their lunch to school because it was way too small for a cafeteria and they sure couldn’t afford to go over and buy something at the Goddard Hotel.  The Jackson kids always had snack veggies like carrots, sandwiches on homemade bread (of course) with rolla polsa (venison), salmon, or peanut butter and jelly. It was also the best time of the year to fill up on fresh ripe berries, and usually there were plenty of those bushes right outside in their “playground” between school and the beach.

My Aunt Gertie was five years old when she started school. She does say the first day when she had to go to the bathroom (of course it was an outhouse) and wasn’t tall enough to reach the latch, she had to get someone to help her.  It has always been remembered as one of the most embarrassing and traumatic days of going to school when the family was living on fox farms. She also remembers how many of the other kids ate seagull eggs. Her mom couldn’t believe how “different they tasted” and didn’t think they made cookie dough work very good either.  Polly, 15 months younger than her sister Gertie, remembered she always had to sit at the front desk in the classroom because she was in kindegarten and she always had to work on cards and count as far as the calendar went. She thought that was definitely some of the hardest work.

Cora Mills always wondered what the heck the teacher had been dropping down “the bathroom hole”  that was always all wrapped up. They thought it (napkin) was indeed secret and didn’t know why.  She also never forgot the one drum stove set in the middle of the room.

The same year George had to re-do first grade, JoAnn started school four months early. Kids weren’t supposed to go until they were six years old and her birthday wasn’t until July 3rd.  The first day that year was April 6th  and the  last day was October 12th, 1928. We don’t have all of JoAnn’s report cards but she probably did just as well (if not better) than George cause girls are always better than guys, right?  And she looked so cute! Actually having such a “diverse” age group, that had to be Very Inspiring, Correct?

After Uncle George spent a year in school, he and JoAnn were both in first grade and their teacher was Miss Julia McCaus who had a revised or “updated” cirriculum.  For whatever reason, she didn’t grade geography, history or physiology and they even added hygiene as an option but that doesn’t mean those subjects weren’t part of her daily discussions with the kids. She did continue the drawing class and was the only teacher who taught music - very cool!

No evidence (pictures or tapes) was found but most likely the students had some kind of concert for their parents and maybe even invited guests at Goddard Hot Springs. She was the only teacher that included a grade for their Effort and took the time and explained what G, (good)  E (excellent) and F (fair) letters meant. School started on April 15th, and the last day was October 25th 1929. This year, new additions to our school law said it needed to be open a total of 20 days each month and also that “School Age” meant a student had to be 6 years old that year or would be that age on or before February 1st of the next year. Plus, now they required TWO fire drills every month of a school year and a U.S. flag had to be on or near the building during school hours. Even leaving one on display all the time would be fine too!

1930: We don’t have a student or teacher photo for this school year.
There is an Annual Report that the teacher has to turn into the Commissioner of Education at the end of the school year.  The general statistics submitted by Ms. Garrison, the teacher in 1930, did report there were 5 boys and 1 girl (Gramma Jo) attending Goddard this year! Both George (10 years old) and Hannah (JoAnn) (9 years old) were going to be “passed up” to the next grade.

The school was only three quarters of a mile southeast of the Goddard Hot Springs Hotel. There were always awesome and famous guests who came from all over the world and lots of times a teacher, like Ms. Garrison, in 1930, would ask them to visit the classroom and talk about their travels. The last day of school that year was in the last week of October which seems kind of late, because usually weather can get pretty bad and water really rough, for the School Boat rides that time of year.

1931 school records show six “white” students in 136 days & only one girl again this year! Obviously Eddie & George Baggen were absent the day this school photo was taken!
 
In 1932,  eight kids started on March 28th for 139 days of school. Gertie Jackson, at age 6, was there every day with her brother and sister and she was promoted to first grade. When she talks about it today, she does remember her mom would not have been against any native youth attending their school but there weren’t any in their class for some reason.
 
It’s a good thing it wasn’t required that six students had to attend every single day  because sometimes none or only a few students could make it to school. One sample was August 4th, 1933. George, JoAnn, and Polly Jackson and Don Huff were the only students at school because on this particular day, all six of the Mills kids (and Gertie Jackson) stayed home sick with the flu! 

Don Huff said he was never going to forget the last day of school that year, 1933, which was October 6th, because not only did everybody pass up to the next grade, they all got a treat of candy as their  “honor”-  WOW! Pretty Special!

The school’s Annual Report says they had seven elementary and two high school for a total of nine  students. I only have eight of the names cause I think there is one hidden behind Don Huff in the back row!  The Promotion stats that year include that Polly Jackson, age 6, Gertie Jackson, age 8, Hannah (JoAnn) Jackson, age 12, and George Jackson, age 14, were all promoted!  The four Jackson Students moved into the “big city” in April, so the school closed in September. Cora Mills moved into Sitka and lived with our family so she could attend one more year!

The most “unforgettable, admired and loved by all the students teacher” was Miss Lorna Dickson from Sedro Woolley, Washington, who taught from 1931-1935. (Obviously the school board thought she was great too!)  Gertie remembers Ms. Dickson  was very young, nice, and lived by herself in the house next to the hotel. According to one of her reports she wasn’t provided a place to live and didn’t need one.  George said she didn’t have any husband and decided for some reason she didn’t want any contact with her family or anybody else in the “lower 48.”

She also said in her 1931 report that even though the school building was really small, it was secure and warm and fine for the number of children attending, and unless they had a big population increase, it would be good for many years and the location was satisfactory.

When she was asked about the community providing aid to the school - things like playgrounds, play sheds or a gym, other buildings, etc. - she said there weren’t any needs-- obviously the kids were just fine playing on the beach and in the trees.  

Obviously she liked the area. She said it was “very good fishing grounds near here” and, she was ok posing for a picture while holding a gun. (Very cool!)  Our Aunt Gertie also remembers her as being a very “excellent” teacher dealing with most of the students who did not have an easy time speaking English “properly” all of the time.

Basically, from our family records, all the teachers they knew were “so knowledgeable;” they had a very “holistic  approach” to education; always really good responding to the students; were liked and excited too with positive thinking and could hardly wait to get to their job at the school.

The government put out a contract to transport the kids (aka students) from all the islands in the area over to the school at Goddard from mid-April to mid-October. Nanny wrote to her cousin “George has to go to school in the summer, since out here, they have to go to school by boat all that time cause the course would be impossible to go to school in the winter because the seas are way too rough.”

We’re not sure how much Grampa and Nanny had to pay for the kids to be picked up by the school boat. They didn’t keep a record about that expense like Mr. Huff did.  Apparently CJ Mills had the contract to provide school transportation from 1926-1931 for $15 a month. Their teen-age daughter Ruth operated their boat named Midget. Sometimes her mom ran it.  Fuel cost in September 1927 was $1.24 a gallon.  I don’t know if the amount charged each of the families depended on how far they were from the school but if it was, the Thomsens would have had to pay the most.

In 1929, an Article 15 was added the Education chapter in the state Constitution that dealt with the transportation of pupils. It said the Board of Education would let a school board enter a contract for transportation to and from school for the kids who lived more than two miles from the school they were required to attend.  Going to school by boat was one added expense to the budget the Jacksons hadn’t planned for and there were a lot of days Grampa gave the Huffs fish when they were providing school transportation. Most impressive of all and obviously one of the best examples of the on-time transportation anyone could ever believe, boating students to the school was so effective for the Jackson students,  not one was ever tardy one day of the entire 1934 school year which lasted all the way to October 12th.

The Thomsen family lived on Biorka Island (the farthest away - about six miles to the west from the school) and Anna would have to row and anchor her skiff out a ways from the beach in front of where they lived to be picked up.  She told us there were a lot of days the water was pretty rough. One time it was so rough when she was waiting in the skiff, it capsized.  Her dad rescued her and she definitely didn’t go to school that day. Well, no kidding!  
 
Adolf Thomsen was the only one who bid for the school bus in 1932  and picked up all the other kids on March 28th on his way into Goddard. In 1934 Grampa and his brother Sig went over to Claude Huff and asked if he would take the kids to school. (Not sure why they didn’t think Mills should—maybe he was charging more ?) Claude said yes but it was going to be $5 a day more than last year.  (Really? $5 a DAY—no that can’t be right!) A week after school started on April 2nd, 1934, Sig hauled the children until Claude took over, after he had an exam for the contract on May 16th.

Don Huff wrote in his diary “took kids to school”, and it seems like there were quite a few days he had to because his dad had problems with the boat he ran. It was a 15 or 16 foot, steel, gas-powered boat which he bought from a Russian priest. Eleven times Anna stayed with the Huffs because the water was so rough they couldn’t take her home to Biorka.
 
School Bus Transportation Costs and Bus Drivers:
(From the Claude Huff Diary)
Contract with CJ Mills  1926-1931-- $15 per month  Fuel= $1.14/gallon
Operated by daughter Ruth
 
1927:
May 31st   Started taking Don Mills to school
July 12th   Paid $2.25 for hauling Don to school
August 16th paid $3 for hauling Don
 
1928:
July 21st  Paid CJ Mills $4.80 for hauling Don to school
Aug 21st  Paid Ruth Mills  $3.75
Sept 17th  Paid $2.65 for hauling Don 7 times
 
1929:  Huff-- $100 paid off in June
Claude November 13, 1929—got paid for last 2 months hauling to school
 
1930:  Put school route bid notices and take letters
 
March 18 1932:
Adolf Thomsen was the only one who bid for school bus in 1932 & picked up all the other kids on March 28th on his way into Goddard
 
April 13, 1933:  30 degree; hard storm; Thompsen school boat @ 9:30
 
1934:  Mills was going to take all the kids to school again
Claude said yes but will be $5 more a day than last year
(really, $5? A day?)
A week after school started on April 2nd Sig hauled the kids until Claude took over
 
May 16th 1934— Huff had a physical exam for school contract
May 28th—Fair Rough school run; picked up Anna Thompson at South Biorka Harbor
June 4th—Claude paid Mills $25 for first week of school run
June 22nd—surf bad—Claude had to get Anna off beach at Biorka
July 16th  Jackson hauled kids to school on Sea Star
July 24th—Huff driver into town for field trip in evening

MONTHLY REPORT CARDS
We have a few of Uncle George and my mom JoAnn’s Report cards:
First card was a 2nd grade in 1929 for Uncle George that shows he did really good and was promoted to Grade 3 when they finished in October; teacher Miss Julia McCaus signed. His first Report Card for Grade 1 in 1927, at the fancy school building described in the first section of this part of the story.  His first day of school was April 4th with a teacher named Ms. Smith. Even though he did get lots of excellent and very good evaluations in all industry and deportment, he didn’t get passed up to second grade. Obviously she thought his grammar should be better. So he just moved up to grade 1A.

Amazing that in Grade 1A, he didn’t have to take drawing; got three excellent and three  good and was still excellent in industry and deportment.  Industry probably included activities like woodworking, construction projects and trapping for guys and things like sewing, cooking and preserving food for girls.

Our Gramma, Nanny’s, # 1 priority, was the perfect attendance. They only counted ½ day of being absent and he only missed two the first year and three the second, most likely because of the weather.  Just to make sure he was evaluated correctly, Ms. Whitmore included a note on his grade 1A report card that “promotion was certain!”  Wow—maybe he took her cookies or a nice thank you card.

We don’t have all of Mom’s (JoAnn’s)  We also found out that “Deportment” probably meant things like behavior and hygiene because they said there was a big emphasis in Territorial Schools on promoting cleanliness.

Children were expected to be well groomed, wear clean clothes, and sometimes teachers would even inspect their homes. “We never did hear about that happening out here at Goddard.”  Wow! And Check this out—our Mom, JoAnn, was identified as Hannah. That was her name in the 1929 Census, and three years later when she was in the 5th grade at the Goddard School in 1932 that was her name,  and I think it was listed that way because that’s how folks said the Norwegian name- Yohawna.  

Next post: The Jackson Family Moves to Tava Island

Food
Berry picking back then and even today usually takes one person an average of an hour to pick one full container of the smaller berries.  Blue huckleberries tasted sweeter than the red ones and made the best pie you could ever imagine. In fact, that was the first choice all ages believed was the best birthday pie of all!
Sometimes in April, (usually in May) they would also find clusters of tight fiddlehead ferns they could pick early in the season.  It was one of their very favorite “natural veggies” that tasted really good when fried with butter and it was a great source of nutrients and high in iron.

After the first frost (usually early September), they picked high and low bush cranberries, crabapples, as well as currants. George always got away with just eating berries instead of picking them because his job was carrying the gun to protect everybody in case a bear came. Usually the berries were canned and if they had sugar, they made jelly or jam. JoAnn always said jars filled their shelves with all these beautiful glasses in different berry colors.  Awesome!

Today, organic veggies cost more because they are grown “naturally.” The veggies most of the fox farmers raised (potatoes, carrots, turnips, lettuce, radishes and peas) were planted in the spring. Nanny mixed potash with crushed shells, fish guts, dish water and coffee grounds to use as fertilizer. The kids liked to pick up a bunch of shells and smash them and they looked really pretty. She also used seaweed but it didn’t look as nice as the shells. Scrunching a bunch of it together and squeezing the little pockets of smelly water was an “old fashioned” squirt gun. We still use those today.  
   
Agricultural Professor Darren Snyder, at the University of Alaska in Juneau, said Nanny would have used shells or seaweed or both because “both shells and seaweed have important contributions to successful garden soils in Southeast Alaska.” Shells are calcium carbonate (same as bone) so they provide calcium but more importantly they are a great "liming" agent. Liming agents bring up the pH or "sweeten" the "sour" soils to the range that garden plants can uptake nutrients properly. Seaweed contributes Potassium and micronutrients as well as general good structure to the soil by way of it breaking down and being composted. It can also work well as a mulch on top of the soil to insulate perennials in the winter. Sounds scientific and impressive and Nanny (our Gramma Anna) wouldn’t have understood that language, but she did know it worked and that was what was important. 
 
A lot of food the family ate was canned but veggies like potatoes or onions were kept in a root cellar. They didn’t have a freezer for meat so they dried that and pickled it in a barrel. Fish was either dried and salted or canned and sometimes they burned alder to smoke some of it.  Seafood that was part of their everyday diet is outrageously expensive today, delicacies like halibut and salmon or crab. They would also catch a lot of red snapper and ling cod, which are other favorite fish to order as a “special” in a restaurant today, but back then, they used those for fox food.  When the tide went out really far they did get abalone and loved eating those fried.  For the first few years, every time they had a minus tide during the day, George and JoAnn would go out and dig clams.  When Gertie, Polly and Chris got old enough they would also help dig because Nanny’s great clam chowder was a huge part of their diet. She always made sure they had plenty of fiber.
 
The other main dish was venison (only 31 calories for one ounce) which was usually fixed into rullepolse. A round steak cut was beat to a pulp. Seasonings like salt, pepper, sage, and whatever else available were sprinkled over the meat.  Then a piece of pork was placed on top, rolled up as tight as possible, and held together with strings. After roasting for a couple of hours and cooling down it was sliced about ¼ inch thick.  It was a great way to make a smaller cut of venison feed a family of seven.
  
Nanny’s cousin in Kansas really wanted to come up and visit so he could hunt or fish and help feed the family. He wrote and asked if he did come to Alaska, would it be ok to bring his gun?  George explained “you have to pack it down and you are supposed to have a license for hunting which cost $50 for outsiders. Actually lots of people don’t have one.” The license for nonresidents covered them for hunting big game, small game, fur-bearing animal hunting and a trapping license.  The other thing he could do was get a non-resident small game hunting license for $10.

Officially deer season was open September 1st (from 1927-1929) while they lived on Legma and stayed open until the 30th of November.  They could kill three bucks with horns at least three inches in length above the top of the skull.  Today the islands are in Game Management Unit Four and it opens August 1st.  Until September 14th hunters can kill three bucks and if they don’t get three, starting September 15th they can kill either another buck or a doe up to a total of three deer, and closes on December 31st.

There are notes from records by other fox farmer who were here before our family came to live on Legma about hunting for and killing deer when it wasn’t open season. One guy who was hired to work on a fox farm was told to kill at least 20 deer for the fox farmer so he could put the meat up.  He also cut up the deer hides and fed them to his fox to help them with their digestion system. When a Game Warden visited the fox farm and searched their boat he found a hind quarter of a deer but he did not make an arrest.  That’s because when folks ran out of meat it was ok (not against the law) to kill a deer.

Realistically it is very hard to believe that our family with five kids, and the Mills family with six, could have lived on the limit of deer allowed back then.  Even if Grampa had hunted and taken a total of twelve (three each for himself, Nanny, George and JoAnn) during the three-month hunting season it wouldn’t have fed the family the entire year.  

Another dinner item they hunted was certain game birds. In one day, they could kill 25 duck (except elder duck) or 8 goose, and 20 snipe (yeah right J) September 1st to December 15th; they could keep these till Christmas day.  Better tasting birds they could kill included 15 grouse, 25 ptarmigan, or 8 goose from September 1 to February 28th, and they could keep these until March 10th. They could keep a total of both kinds as long as they didn’t have more than 75.  For certain folks goose was a real “special” holiday dinner.

One of the most important game animals they had to deal with were the bear. There was a limit of killing three large brown and grizzly during the season from September 1st to June 20th. If at any time the bear was about to attack or molest a person or property, or if one was found within a mile of their cabin, they could kill it at any time or place when it looked like it was going after (considered a menace) a person, livestock or property.  It was not a menu item for the family for sure but was included in the feed for the foxes. George always felt that CJ Mills was the most experienced and wise hunter he ever knew. Today, folks are only allowed one bear every four years, by permit, from March 15th to May 20th, or September 15th to December 31st.

Two times a year they ordered canned food from Seattle. Items like fruits that don’t grow in Alaska, like peaches or pears, were a real treat. There was also peanut butter and butter in brine along with lots of sacks of flour, sugar, beans, and coffee, which was one of the most important. The supply ship would come into Sitka, tie up at the Standard Oil Dock, and Grampa would go in town and pick up the order. This six-month supply of cases of cans would be stacked to create their walls. When the “walls” were gone, it was definitely time for another trip to town (Sitka) to pick up an order.

The 1929 Alaska Game Regs said a Native-born resident, Eskimo or half-breed who had not severed his tribal relations by adopting a civilized mode of living or exercising the right of franchise, and was a hunter or trapper, could sell the skins of fur bearing animals which he had lawfully taken without a license.  If somebody wanted to buy the fur for his own use he didn’t need a license either, but couldn’t sell it.  Anybody who did have a license could buy and sell the skins but they had to have it posted in an established place on premises where a game warden could check it out or everybody could see it. 

Fox farmers traded services and labor.  Grampa made deals quite a few times with the Huffs, the Millses, Thompsens, and the folks at the Goddard Resort. Money made when he sold fish, trees, or raising fox would help buy staples like flour, sugar or coffee.  They also needed money for fishing, to pay for fuel and parts to keep the boats running.  One of the largest expenses of course was fox and mink feed.  Several times they would run out of supplies before they got money for selling fresh fish or fox fur, and would have to use their “charge card” to purchase supplies from a supplier in Sitka.

Sometimes in the spring Grampa was fishing for salmon in Icy Straits. If he did really good and got lots of red king salmon (which sold for more than white kings), he would go into Juneau and buy a “special treat” at the Piggly Wiggly Store to bring home as a surprise. Polly remembers one time he brought some yellow marshmallow ducks for Easter- the first time they had ever seen anything like that. Gertie also remembers that when Grampa was back to making money and could pay off his “charge card” in town, he would celebrate by buying a Hershey bar which was so expensive that it was truly a very rare and “luxury” item. And oh yes, tasted so good!

Usually, every week or so, George and JoAnn rowed over to Goddard (a few miles from Legma Island, about 16 miles south of Sitka) to send letters, packages or pick up their mail & they always got special treats like a handful of fig bar cookies or other goodies.  If they happened to get stuck over there because of a storm, the folks at the hotel would “put us up and feed us breakfast!” George said, “and there was no doubt they treated us kids real good.”   

The Goddard hotel

Indeed the Goddards were very good hearted people who always helped fox farmers. If somebody had to get to town to pick up boat parts or go to the doctor, and couldn’t run their own boat or get a ride with someone else, Business Manager Carl Hills would give them a free ride on the old Edie M. He would also give the fox farmer a ride back from town on their mail boat for No Charge! (WOW!) 

When an order of groceries came in for the restaurant, the boat would go into the cove and pull up to the float that was right next to the bridge that went across to the island. Carl would drive the Hotel Model T down the hill and over to the float, load the groceries and drive back up the hill with all the “goodies” loaded into the hotel’s Ford truck.

In 1961, the Jacksons’ first grandson (actually Nanny’s favorite) Dickie was beachcombing out at Goddard and found the Model T covered under the remains of the Hotel.  He thought it was very cool and wanted to find out who owned it to see if he could buy it.  It was owned by the State of Alaska.  His boss, Mrs. Doucett, at the Pioneer Home, was in charge.  She offered to sell it to him and of course he got an awesome deal, just $6 (with the title)! His best buddy Fred Karl had a 14-foot skiff, and agreed to follow my brother Dick in his 17-foot skiff and haul it home in to Sitka.

So they picked a really nice day to run over to Goddard, and scheduled it so they got to the beach at a really low tide. Fred took the frame in his skiff, and loaded it upside down. The wheels were half in the water but it was balanced pretty good.  Dick loaded all the body parts, three engines, transmission and radiators in his boat.  When the tide came in, the water was almost flat calm (so nice) that it only took them three hours to get to the beach in front of Aunt Polly’s house on Halibut Point Road.

Note—Polly - the Jackson girl who was born out there on Legma Island - was very impressed.  In fact, all the folks who found out about them bringing it to Sitka were amazed. He worked two years repairing and renovating the vehicle and gave it to Polly’s son David (our cousin) as a wedding gift in 1972.

From all memories shared and diaries kept, the Jacksons didn’t go to town as often as other fox farmers. Other than going into town to have baby Chris and going to Glenn Mills’ funeral, we didn’t hear about Nanny taking any other town trips like going to parties or shopping at the mall.  Thank goodness there weren’t any serious injuries so they didn’t have to go into an emergency room to see a doctor or need a dentist to pull teeth.

Most likely some fox farmers and fisherman knew which island(s) was the best to buy moonshine from for special occasions.  Sometimes yacht passengers would spend a lot of time at the hotel and run out of their “liquid” supplies. Some of the fox farmers who were also running a distillery ordered grain they needed for feed and brown sugar because they thought that also made fur shinier.   One source of information said 550 pounds of food per year was how much each fox would eat. (Wow—that is a lot!)

 Liquor sales competitors included Scotty Jennings on Gornoi Island (George found some remains of a still there) and Charlie Pinkston, on Long Island, who was supposed to make the best moonshine in the country.   Claude Huff mentioned in his diary that on January 12th 1929 they chased an “odd acting boat” in the morning. Grampa told them it was Shorty Abrahamson who had been Boozing Heavily!  December 2nd the next year, they saw the Sunbeam of Seattle going by “so often”, they knew it was in bootleg business!

Carl Peterson, who operated the Legma Island fox farm before the Jacksons did, had already stored first aid remedies for fox so they had an awesome supply in the medicine cabinet which folks could use for themselves, too. The US Department of Agriculture put a bulletin together about Blue Fox Farming in Alaska in 1922. A veterinarian was sent for a Biological Survey to check out blue fox farms (particularly the ones on islands) with special attention to the matter of sanitation and disease.
 
Here is what and how much D.E. Buckingham (the vet) said you should have on hand for the fox you were raising:
One pound each of:

1. Boric acid to use as powder for open wounds, or dissolved in hot water for inflamed parts. 
2. Epsom salt: 1 teaspoon in half a glass of warm water to use as a laxative (really?) 
3. Peroxide of hydrogen (we know it as hydrogen peroxide)
4. Sulfur (powdered) which you can use with one part sulfur and 4 parts lard or other pure fatty base for skin disease and bald spots
5. Flaxseed: for warm antiseptic poultices for boils, abscesses and swollen feet- boil in water until it assumes consistency of a thick mush and apply while warm and moist.

  Four ounces of:

1.   Alum (dried) - used for light bleeding, added to boric acid 1 part to 4- makes a non-poisonous dusting or wound powder.
2.   Iodine- used in full strength just as for human cuts and wounds.

And eight ounces Lysol (1 to 2 %) disinfectant and antiseptic (follow directions on the bottle).

One of the most important items on Grampa’s list of “things to do” was file a Declaration of Intention with the US Department of Labor Naturalization Service saying he wanted to become a citizen.   Kristoffer Benjamin Knubedal, 32 years old with an occupation as a fox farmer, declared his personal description:
He was white with a medium complexion, 5 feet 9 ½ inches tall and weighed 174 pounds.  His hair was brown; eyes were grey and there was a scar at the bottom of his left thumb. 

He was born in Sokndal Norway on the 18th of November 1894, and emigrated from Vancouver B.C. on the Great Northern Railroad.  They had lived in New Westminster, B.C. and his wife Anna was also born at Sokndal, Norway and Sitka was their residency. 

It was his bona fide intention to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty and particularly to Haakon VII, Kind of Norway, “of whom I am now a subject.” He arrived at the port of Blaine in the state of Washington on or about the 17th day of September in 1926.  He swore that he was not an anarchist, polygamist or believer in the practice of polygamy and it was his intention in good faith to become a citizen of the United States of America and permanently reside therein: SO HELP ME GOD.   (Wow-impressive!) Sworn to James ? in the Office of the Clerk of the US District Court June 27th, 1927. This was required to keep while living in the US for at least five years in order to become a naturalized citizen. 

Two months later, in August of his first year as a fox farmer here, one of Grampa’s new friends C. Jay Mills who was in the same business over on Maid Island was generous enough to share a radio. When C.M. Cook opened this Sitka radio station he provided some “outstanding” service to his listeners as a “fellow fox farmer” and was also a radio builder. This was one of the best ways to hear about and focus on how to dedicate and prove his lifestyle and beliefs in his new country.  

We aren’t sure why Grampa decided to move the family over to Tava Island on March 29th in 1929. One very good reason could have been the opportunity to move into a much larger house. This was definitely an advantage since now, along with two older kids, they had two baby girls and were expecting another baby in a few months.  George and JoAnn would be starting school in a couple of weeks and would be very glad about not having to spend their “free time” feeding fox. The island was about ¼ mile farther away from the school but they were still on the bus route so there was no problem with that.

There could also have been some issues related to running the fox farm for Len Peterson that didn’t work out.  Maybe he was not satisfied with the way Grampa ran the fox farm or how he took care of the fur selection and sales. In the records we have found there are no reports or papers that show who ran the Legma farm from 1929 up to 1936 when Mills’ son-in-law Baggen became the operator.  In 1937 Grampa worked skinning fox, for $75, which Peterson had to pay before he could close his papers on the island.

Next: The Goddard School

Chris Jackson Family First Fox Farm on Legma Island (1927-1929)
 
In May, 1926, my grandfather left Norway as Kristoffer Knubedal, with wife Anna and children George and JoAnn. The next year, in March 1927, he left Juneau as Christ Jackson, with the addition of new daughter Gertie, and boarded the M.S. Northland for a ride to Sitka.  George was six and JoAnn was five, definitely going through a change of life just like their mom.

After spending a few days in town at Len Peterson’s house, it was time to be getting on the move. There was no messing around. Uncle Jacob’s (who was known as Happy) boat was loaded with all the trunks brought over from Norway. Some groceries and beer were also packed. Actually, it’s very doubtful there was any beer since the Bone Dry Law had been in effect for nine years, and even if they had known one of the “moonshiners,” it would have cost way too much. They definitely did not have extra money.  
 
So, everyone and everything was on board and they headed out to the Legma fox farm (16 miles south of Sitka) in weather folks figured was pretty normal in Southeast. The first part of the ride was in open seas. Usually, this time of the year there were always swells and it didn’t take much wind to create some rough choppy waves, plus, it was definitely cold. However, no matter what the weather was like, they needed to get out there because six-year-old George had to check in on the first day of school, April 4th.

George, JoAnn & Gertie, First Summer on Legma Island 1927
This was the first time Grampa had brought the family to move into this cabin and he knew he was going to need more room. His brother Ole was a good carpenter and had worked for Len Peterson, the guy who owned this fox farm lease. They got permission to add a master bedroom downstairs for Nanny and Grampa, and one for George and one for JoAnn and Gertie upstairs. That was a good thing because even though the cabin was still small, it had awesome views and was protected from storms.  Grampa was also provided a 35-foot gas boat, the FV Alpha, which they used to hunt, fish, travel around the islands to visit, work at other fox farms or go into Sitka for supplies or party. (I don’t think they could afford to go to parties.)
 
The cabin was on the northeast end of the island, which was the most protected place to anchor. As a boat turned into the cove, there was a deep channel so you could get to the beach without hitting the rocks.  The Natives who had lived on the island (before the Forest Service started leasing it for a fox farm) named it Legma. (Editor’s note – according to the Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, the Russians reported Legma as an Aleut word for calm. Hundreds of Unangan, Alutiik and other Alaska Native people from southwestern Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, all called Aleut by the Russians, lived at Sitka in the Russian days.) That was their word for calm and after they did all the work to dig the channel, it always was calm near the beach.  However, you didn’t have to row very far to be in swells where it could be damn rough and no fun at all. 

Legma Island Fox Farm Forest Service Fox Farm History Bin 95-30
 
Obviously, Kristoffer and Anna had been pretty excited about finally moving to their new home, and had some “private time” to celebrate in Sitka before they left for the island. Exactly nine months later, on Christmas day, Anna (Polly) was born!   

Mrs. Greta Mills and her daughter Ruth, who lived about a quarter mile away on Maid Island, came over to help with Polly’s arrival. We can’t figure out why but for some reason even though the Mills ladies were the ones helping Nanny, it was Grampa who signed the certificate as the attendant (I guess guys are the only ones who could be “in charge”).  However, it doesn’t seem like he would have been the one assisting with the birth.  We’re sure he was happy about having a healthy baby but just a little disappointed that it wasn’t another boy who would be a fisherman or fox farmer or both.

The pipe that went from the cabin to the top of the hill had a good flow of water, and part of it is still there.  It was a very nice way to use a natural resource and here they had a faucet inside. The cabins they lived in on the other islands (Tava, Elevoi and Torsar) were built close enough to a stream so they wouldn’t have to fill and carry buckets too far. Like everybody else, they put a barrel at one corner right under the roof to catch rain water.  Nanny always covered them with cheesecloth to keep mosquitoes and ashes from flying into it. Then she could use the clean water to cook, or somebody would use it for a bath or they could just drink it.  Today folks have to pay a good price to wash their hair in pure rainwater or for a bottle of “pure” drinking water like the family got every day for free.

Nanny was a “rest equals energy” advocate.  During winter when days were short and it got dark about 6 pm the family would go to bed earlier to make sure they got a good night’s sleep.  They had electricity in the old country and no doubt there were some times in this new country that it was really missed. Instead of flipping a light switch, they burned an Aladdin kerosene oil lamp. This was the best light for the least cost. In the winter usually a gallon would last up to 2 ½ weeks.  Plus it was safe, didn’t smell, and was quiet.

JoAnn, Nanny holding Gertie, George & Polly (in the high chair)  Summer 1928
 
Apparently there was a store-bought wood stove in the cabin on Legma because when we visited the site in the fall of 2011, we found rusted parts. We couldn’t read the brand name but it was probably Sears.  Some of the fox farmers who built their own cabin saved some money by making a heater from a 50-gallon drum. They’d lay it on its side, fill it with gravel or sand, and put it into a metal frame.  Then they cut holes in the top for a stove pipe, another one on the end for a door and a little one below for the draft.  Scraps of the leftover metal would be used to make a knob.

One week in the fall, all the neighbors would work together to get their winter supply of wood. Jack Clausen on Torsar Island had rigged a winch so he could pull logs from the beach up to the wood shed, and Adolf Thomsen on Biorka had a wood cutting machine. 

Fox Farm cabins heated by wood stoves: Biorka Island August 1929
Adolf & daughter Ann Thomsen (Anna Baggen) on the wood cutting equipment designed by Adolf
 
Neither Gertie nor Cora Mills remembers their family having a power saw. After the trees were down, there had to be one of the guys on each end pushing and pulling the saw to cut a log the right length to fit in the stove.  Then they would have to take them up to the chopping block and cut them into quarters that would be the right width. Those pieces would be hauled, stacked and covered.  By the first week in September, they were set for keeping the cabin warm, almost always with a pot of coffee on the stove, and the oven was usually baking something (like bread in the empty coffee cans) which helped keep it nice and toasty.

Breakfast pastry along with coffee was one of the things young George missed a lot. Back in Norway he was able to have a cup every morning with his favorite Gramma. In this “new life” they usually ate rolled oats (called mush) with hotcakes, and prunes mixed in for regularity.  They ordered “economy scale” large sacks of oats and their dried prunes came from CJ Mills’ dad, who lived in Oregon. The order was usually for 200 pounds (about 9,000 prunes) for $12—a real deal!  And- even though it tasted real poopy, everybody took cod liver oil too because they needed vitamin D.

One of the best breakfast specials were the berries. As early as the 4th of March one year they saw the first huckleberry blossoms.  In July they would spend entire days picking red and blue huckleberries, blueberries, as well as salmon berries.

Next post: Legma continued: food, drink, citizenship and Goddard

Kristoffer, Anna, Gerhard & Johanne Knubedal - Our Grampa, Nanny, Uncle George and Mom (JoAnn) Jackson - Left Norway & Traveled for Alaska in 1926.

Any folks who traveled from one country to another with their spouse and/or children in those days were issued a “family passport.” Grampa was identified as a fox farmer; Anna as a housewife and there must have been an “under five” discount fare (free?) because even though Gerhard (Uncle George) was six and Johanne (my mom JoAnn) was four, their passbook and the passenger list say he was four and she was three years old. 
 
Obviously, they did need to save every dollar they could because Grampa had a huge stack of bills to pay and needed a lot more money to travel and settle into their new, targeted, unique island home. In an interview he had with Forest Service ladies Rachel Myron and Megan Pasternak, here’s some of what Uncle George said about his family moving to Alaska in 1926:
 
On May 12th, Kristoffer (Grampa), Anna (Nanny), Gerhard (our Uncle George) and Johanne (our mom JoAnn) left their home in Myssa which was a subdivision of Sokndal, the “big city” (with its administration center in Hauge i Dalane), on the southern end of Norway. They needed to get transported to Stavanger for their connection to Newcastle, England--a train that took about four hours and 40 minutes. From there they had to go about 124 more miles (about 2 hours and 53 minutes) to get to Liverpool, England. That’s where they boarded their “final connection” to reach Halifax in Nova Scotia.
 
The Canadian Immigration Service’s Passenger List on the SS Baltic II manifest lists Grampa as a farmer in Sokndal, Norway, who intended to be a fisherman when he got to Canada.

RMS BALTIC II  (White Star Line)
 
This ship they came over on could carry up to 2,875 passengers. There was room for 425 in First Class, 450 in Second Class and the rest were in Third Class, which is the one our family rode in. Six-year-old George was feeling very homesick and angry because he had to leave his best friend and favorite Gramma. Aunt Gertie remembers George describing the ocean trip and “accommodation” on the boat as not being very good—he said it was more like “steerage-crowded, noisy, and miserable—those were his descriptive words.” My mom JoAnn was also wishing she could have stayed home with her cousin Hjordes. She got lice in her hair and almost had to have a total shave. Anna (Nanny) was also homesick and pretty much constantly seasick because she was five months pregnant and her stomach was kind of “gentle.”
 
They also had to deal with one of the most important issues when traveling with two little ones- the availability of a potty. The description of the Baltic II said if a room didn’t have a private bath, there was a generous provision of conveniently located public bathrooms that were kept immaculate. Plus, if passengers wanted a bath, a steward or stewardess would make arrangements. Even though it was the lowest ticket price, Third Class looks pretty nice; it had a playroom for the kids and check out the dining room—where most of the passengers did end up taking their meals. The average table had seats for four to six people. The ship did have electric heat and lighting and if you wanted shoes cleaned and polished you could just leave them outside your door for pickup & they would be returned the next morning.
WOW! Impressive.

The Knubedals were on the May 15th, 1926 RMS Baltic Passenger list when they “moved” cross the world on this boat from England to Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada. They had to pay either $637 or $63 (can’t tell if it’s a check mark or a 7).  Seems reasonable to assume it was $637 because my Uncle George remembered his dad was always carrying a roll of bills that just happened to keep getting smaller.
 
Uncle George said, “We arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the eastern coast of Canada then we were going clear across Canada on a train and stay over on the Western Coast till we could uh, emigrate. It had something to do with the quota system on May 24th.  A lot of the other passengers on this ship were Englanders leaving their country because of the miners’ strike; most of them probably thinking they could get coal miner jobs in Canada or America.”
 
Grampa had gotten an ok for the family to stay with Mr. R.J. Verne, a friend who lived in Vancouver, British Columbia.  And one thing for sure is our Grampa had no intention of living there or anywhere else in Canada.
 
Even though it was May, they were going across the Rockies, which meant traveling in snow. He also had to pay for four trans-country tickets to the West Coast--- And incredible as it seems, this was 2,752 miles by train (more miles than they sailed to get across the ocean) to get over to Vancouver. They said this trip usually took about a week.
 
Today, certain of these westbound train trips from the colorful, lively Halifax on the east coast of this enormous country experience the best of cross-country Canadian travel. From this fishing village in Nova Scotia, through the history of French-speaking Quebec, across prairies and through the breath-taking beauty of the Canadian Rockies takes 16 days, and costs $7,719 per person, according to Canada Rails Vacation.
 
For the next few months, Kristoffer worked at a lumber mill. Every day they all learned more English (which actually turned out to be really helpful when they did get to America).  However, the more time they had to wait, the more they worried about spending all their money. Obviously they were going to need some when they got to the USA and up to Alaska.
 
One of the experiences (stories) they told about these trying times was when Anna was going to the market to buy some fresh salmon. She got in the “three items or less” line and didn’t think she had to look inside the wrapping before the fish was bagged. When she got home and discovered it was lingcod and she had paid twice the price for it, Grampa was pretty ticked off. 
 
He had been doing everything he could to make sure they weren’t spending more money than they had to so they would have enough to get up to Alaska.  He definitely didn’t appreciate anyone taking advantage of their situation. So, he went to the “return” manager at the market and asked for his money back or twice the amount of fish he had paid for!
 
It was about four months after living in Vancouver British Columbia, Canada when the family was allowed to cross the border into America, at Blaine, Washington, on the 14th of September 1926. Three days later, after settling into a hotel room, Nanny went into labor. George and JoAnn remembered being very scared because they were left in such a “strange” place all by themselves.
 
Well, Grampa did have to get Nanny to this hospital and sure enough Grethe (Aunt Gertie), arrived on the 18th - so she was their first child born in America!  Nice!

St. Luke’s in Bellingham Washington
 
AND, these “other two” were very happy when their mom and dad came back the next morning with their new baby sister.
 
The Alaska-Juneau (AJ) Mine was a big camp about 1½ miles east of Juneau with a bunk house and mess hall. There were cabins, a post office and even a school.  There were about 600 workers and right then it was the main economic engine for Juneau. It wasn’t until 1944 that it was declared a “nonessential wartime activity” and closed.
 
Grampa was able to find and rent an apartment located above the funeral parlor and JoAnn (mom) remembered it was very very cold. Over a funeral parlor? Not surprisingly, staying in Juneau throughout the winter, and working in the Alaska-Juneau (AJ) Mine, most likely it was.  He probably stayed out there at the mine while he was on shift which was definitely ok because most likely the apartment they were renting was pretty crowded.

To be continued: Part 2: The Chris Jackson Family on Legma Island