Last Friday I had the pleasure of a short visit with my favorite brother, Jim, and one of my favorite nephews, Jason. I had seen neither in five years.
I braved the wet, slushy, and slippery highway in Turnagain Pass that necessitated 4WD at 50 mph, five construction zones with lowered speed limits and two with flag stops, an accident and three first-responder vehicles pull-over-and-stops, to get to Anchorage where they in town for a family wedding.
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| L-R along the newly opened Seward highway, Dad, Lauralee, Jim, Mon and Karen, me. ca 1950s |
Living and growing up in Alaska back then meant knowing little of other relatives. We heard their names, but often couldn't figure out how we were related. Phone calls were non-existent, due to the difficulty involved. You had to schedule a long distance call. Air fare? Unaffordable.
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| L-R: Sister-in-law Karen, Jim, and Me. |
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| Mom with Jim at Campbell Creek. I'm the one at the end of the log, "rowing" with a stick. This was the only "car wash" in the city. You pulled down the the edge of the water and washed your vehicle by hand. |
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| Campbell creek today. One of the best burger joints in town is located there now. |
My brother married into a Seward family with five sisters and three still live in Alaska, so there are occasions for Alaska visits. Jim and his wife Karen, along with master vintner son Joel, my other favorite nephew, own and operate CAVU Cellars, a winery in Walla Walla, WA.
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Did Jim's Kool-Ade stand give him the training to operate a winery?
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| Surely this did. |
Jason and his wife Linnea live in Juneau, Ak. While Karen was attending a bridal shower, Linnea was attending a meeting with fellow employees.
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| This big spruce tree is gone now. I never did get too far when I climbed it because of the pitch that was so hard to remove from my skin. |
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| Sweet little Jim |
Jim and I spent lunch catching up and reminiscing about growing up during the 1950s in Woodland Park, a suburb of Anchorage. Mostly we talked about all the things we did that we never told our parents about—like playing in the treacherous clay of Cook Inlet and seeing how stuck we could get, then washing off every bit of clay before we went home.
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| We stayed with our aunt and uncle in the Hale apartments at 5th and Gambell in Anchorage until we found our own place. A fire in the apartment was caused by a window curtain blowing over the open flame on a cookstove. |
We rode our bikes far into the forest at Point Woronzof, visiting the ruins of an as yet unidentified log cabin that was sunken into the moss, its roof collapsed. I always guessed it might have been a camp for Inlet watchers during WWII. It also could have been a fox or mink farm. We never found out.
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| Jim 'skiing' at a hill off 3rd avenue in Anchorage. |
We never asked permission; we just went. Such freedom we had, compared to kids today.
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| The pond behind our house, the result of dredging, something that could never be done today. |
“All the things we did and all the places we’d go, it’s a wonder we never ran into bears,” I told Jim.
We picked up Karen from the bridal shower and ran into one of my favorite authors, Mike Travis*, also an in-law, and I told him again how much I loved the books he wrote.
Then we drove to our old family home on Brookside, and the log cabin our parents built. It’s still there, only it looks a lot smaller. As far as I know, it’s had only two owners since our parents sold it in the 1960s, and both have loved it as much as we did.
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Mom and Jim peeling logs. I participated, too.
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| The finished house. |
Much to our dismay, Fish Creek was subsumed into underground drains and pipes and no longer provides the water to fill the pond. Its bed is a mess of grasses and other vegetation. No place for frogs, or beavers, or muskrats, or fish.
On the other side of the street, and up a few houses, was the stump of a birch tree. I asked Jason to stop so I could get a photo of it.
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| What's left of our favorite tree--the stump at right. I thought it was a lot bigger. |
I was surprised how small the trunk was. This used to be a tree that my BFF Judi and I climbed a lot, pretending it was a pirate ship, or a mystery vehicle, an airplane, or anything we wanted it to be. I loved that birch tree and I have been thinking about Judi a lot because we recently re-connected after many decades. The birch was on her property.
Jason drove to the end of the block where a 45-degree corner went up the steep hill. “We used to ride our sleds down this hill,” I told Jason. He gave me a fisheye look and I assured him that we always posted a lookout on the corner.
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| Tjis is the only photo I can find that has a part of the steep road at left that we used to sled down, always posting a lookout at the sharp corner. |
On that corner now is a small park. In 1948, there was a Quonset hut there where our family lived while the log home was being built. After we moved into the first 20’x20’ part of the log home, my aunt and uncle moved into the Quonset.
The Quonset is more correctly called a Jamesway, as the roof does not reach the ground like a true Quonset.
I have dreams to this day of living in the Quonset and wishing I could again. However, with it being right on that corner, the location was treacherous in the winter and my aunt’s white picket fence was taken out a few times by vehicles sliding into it.
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| Jim with a bit of the Quonset hut. |
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| Perhaps our first Christmas in the Quonset. We had running water in the kitchen, but a honey bucket in what would become the bathroom. Dad dug a trench and hooked up lines to a cesspool. |
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| Christmas 1948 |
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| Quonset huts were a big thing in Anchorage back then. Here, my journalism class at Anchorage High School was in a real Quonset. When I was in the 4th grade, my class was in a Quonset. |
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| A special treat for me. We played in the dirt road a lot! The two-block long street known as Brookside is hard-surfaced now, but with no curbs, gutters, or storm drains. |
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| The Quonset after our aunt and uncle moved in and improved it. |
The Quonset hut is long gone, replaced by a neighborhood park with a sturdy guard rail that prevents cars sliding into the park.
We talked about the neighborhood kids we knew back then, where they lived and where they are now.
It was a good time to live in Alaska.
As I told my brother and nephew, “I am forever thankful that we grew up where we did and when we did, and that it was in Alaska.”
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*Michael D. Travis: Author of:
“Melosi”—a teenager’s search for a summer job and his coming of age.
Funny, heart-warming, and full of adventure in the Alaska bush
“El Gancho”—Mike weaves a tale from family stories (that he heard of his great-grandfather’s journey out of Mexico way back when, including a botched train robbery, Pancho Villa, and the death-defying rodeo experience of a colleda( one who flips bulls by their tails)
Who cares if it’s all true? Mike says it is. It’s a darned good story.
“The Landmen”—written with Armand Spielman, the incredible story of how the preliminary struggles and obstacles to secure the right of way for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline were overcome.
An astounding story with lots of names familiar to Alaskans. It evoked lots of memories for me.
All these books have multiple five-star reviews. I concur.
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El Gancho is hiding among the stacks and failed to appear for an impromptu photo session.
Why I have two copies of Melozi is obscured by time. I must have meant to send it to someone. |
By "stacks" I mean;
Now do you understand my difficulty in find El Gancho?
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