"Betty, Get Your Gun"



Betty VanDevere gathers firewood outside her family's homestead cabin on Parsons Lake in Nikiski in the late 1950s.



BETTY, GET YOUR GUN

JUNE 2010

Since the early 1960s, Elizabeth Florence “Betty” Idleman has been living comfortably in her Island Lake home nearly 20 miles north of Kenai—but her life on the Kenai Peninsula didn’t begin in such comfort. The early days involved privation, isolation, and more than the occasional gunfire.

There was, for instance, the time that she and her first husband, Lester Dyer “Les” VanDevere, Jr., desired to have a well with a pump in their first home on nearby Parsons Lake. They had a sand point ready to drive into the earth, but their home already had a solid wooden floor covering their intended well site. They had a keyhole saw with which to cut the proper aperture, but they lacked a hand drill to bore a small hole in which to start the action of the saw.

“My husband put an X on the floor where the well was supposed to be, at the edge of the sink, and he stood on a chair and shot a hole in the floor,” Idleman said. Her husband’s bolt-action Springfield 30.06 blasted through the floorboards and provided the opening they needed. They struck water at a depth of only seven feet.

Parsons Lake homestead cabin.

After they installed a pitcher-pump, Idleman said, she was the only one in the area with both running water and a sink that drained.

But life on Parsons Lake was far from being filled with such luxuries.

In 1956, the VanDeveres’ first year in Alaska, they filed on a homestead that had been defaulted on by the man for whom the lake was named. Idleman said she was told that Mr. Parson had gone into town to Eadie’s Frontier Club during the winter and got caught in a “hellacious snowstorm.” Thinking back to his half-completed cabin on the lake, he decided to forget the whole homesteading adventure and leave the state.

In Kenai, through “scuttlebutt from fishermen in town and the locals,” Les and Betty heard about Parson’s abandoned property (the structure and nearly 140 acres) and took actions through the land office to secure it for themselves.

When the VanDeveres arrived at the lake in late autumn of 1956, they discovered a roofless cabin made of unpeeled spruce logs. On the ground nearby, the logs to finish the rest of the cabin had lain since Parson’s exit, and, with no prior building experience, Les and Betty erected a tent as a temporary dwelling and set to work to complete the structure before the onset of winter.

Once completed, the cabin sat just back from the water on the tip of a small peninsula projecting into the lake from the southern shore. To reach their new home, the VanDeveres had to drive from Kenai on the graveled Kenai Spur Highway, then follow the narrow Island Lake Road until they reached a series of even narrower Cat trails that led eventually to the northwest shore of Parsons Lake. There, in summer, they had to row a small boat across to their property; in winter they used snowshoes.

The isolation and the inaccessibility at Parsons Lake began to work on Idleman, although she said she never felt homesick for the rural Pennsylvania environs in which she grew up. In fact, she said, “if his parents and my mother hadn’t sent us five dollars every so often, or stamps for envelopes, they wouldn’t have heard from us.”

A late 1950s photo of Betty bringing in firewood from one of the many snow-covered piles on the front porch illustrates the austere yet homey nature of their cabin on the lake. Hanging below the center ridgepole is a large set of moose antlers, below which hangs a homemade Christmas wreath. The wood-frame cabin windows are made entirely of plastic, smoke is issuing from the metal stack protruding from the rooftop, and a smiling Betty, with an armload of wood, is wearing a dress and an apron.

Born in 1937, she graduated in 1955 from Neshaminy High School in Bucks County—just north of Philadelphia, but far enough away that cornfields were growing out behind the community’s elementary school. Only a year removed from public school, she was married to Les and they were angling across country in their 1954 Ford pickup, with a homemade wooden canopy packed with belongings in the back, and with every intention to turn north toward Alaska.

Big Les and little Les (Dyer), with some company out by the woodpile.

Because they slept out under the stars for the first few nights, Idleman said, they reached Wyoming before they realized that they had neglected to pack the poles for their tent. They made do with sticks the rest of the way.

Subsisting on whatever they could make, find, hunt or gather became a pattern for the VanDeveres over the next several years. They cooked with a three-burner Coleman stove all the way up the Alaskan Highway and during all the years they lived on Parsons Lake. When they stopped along the Alcan, they dropped the tailgate and set up the stove there, extracting a card table and a pair of folding chairs for their open-air dining room.

At Parsons Lake, the Coleman was even more utilitarian. “There was an oven you could set on top of the Coleman—could put three or four loaves of bread in it,” she said. She also had a pressure cooker that she could place atop the burners when it came time to can meat, vegetables or berries.

Cranberries and blueberries grew plentifully around the lake, schools of rainbow trout and spawning sockeye from Bishop Creek plied the waters, and moose were frequent—and sometimes unlucky—visitors.

According to a Donnis Thompson article about the VanDeveres in the Philadelphia Enquirer’s magazine section in May 1959, Idleman canned 112 containers of moose and trout in 1958. They also grew potatoes, cabbage and carrots in the summer and canned them for winter use. A moose shot late enough in the season could be hung under the eaves, where it would stay frozen until a portion was needed for a meal.

Idleman baked her own bread because store-bought bread was too expensive (45 cents per loaf, according to Thompson’s article), and she used powdered milk for the same reason. Regular milk in a store at the time cost about 45 cents a quart. For a family surviving on commercial fishing and sporadic seasonal employment during the rest of the year, pinching every penny was crucial.

One year they managed a fish trap on the west side of Cook Inlet and netted only $400, which was most of their total income until the next fishing season. “It bought a chainsaw or a drum of Blazo for the Coleman, and maybe a drum of gas for the outboard or the chainsaw,” Idleman said.

When they fished the east side of Cook Inlet, they sold their catch to the cannery owned by Harold Daubenspeck, and in turn Daubenspeck, who traveled north to Alaska each spring from Washington state, aided them with their foodstuffs.

“You’d send your grocery order, what you figured out that you needed for the whole year. So when he would come up in the spring, he’d bring your grocery order and you’d pick it up,” Idleman said.

“The first time that happened, I had to buy groceries for a whole winter, and I was only about 18. I didn’t know what the heck I wanted. It took a long time. You try to decide how much flour, how much corn meal, you know, something like that. And a dozen eggs needed to last a couple of months because you couldn’t afford eggs.”

In the early days, she said, nine families lived in the general vicinity—Island Lake, Dogbone Lake, Parsons Lake and Bishop Lake, among others—but it was almost five years before anyone lived close enough to her to easily walk to visit.

In the wintertime, Tony Johansen ran a trapline in the area and stopped in to see the VanDeveres once or twice a week. Otherwise, especially when Les was away on a job, Betty would be alone in the cabin. Even after the birth of their first son, Lester Dyer VanDevere III, child care did little to alleviate the loneliness.

She spent much of each day tending to her infant, preparing food, cleaning, and feeding the woodstove from the numerous head-high piles of firewood covering the porch and the surrounding ground. In Thompson’s article, Les said, “We’ve had some tough times, but Betty never has become upset. In fact, when things are really tough, Betty is at her best.”

Once, in fact, Betty, who in her early 20s was already learning that sometimes extreme measures were necessary in order to make a point or defend what was hers, had to be tough with a neighbor.

Betty often had a gun close at hand during early homesteading life.

Every time her neighbor across the lake brought G.I. friends down from Anchorage to visit, she said, Idleman had to deal with the shooting—even on one occasion when she had to use her outhouse.

“They were always shooting. You get away and you gotta shoot, you know,” Idleman said. “Well, my outhouse was tin—and the guys over there were shooting, and the pellets—the buckshot, whatever it was—were raining down on the tin roof. I started screaming and hollering, but the shooting kept on going. I knew they heard me.”

From her cabin, it was only a few hundred yards across to the shooters on the other side. Angrily she exited the outhouse and marched down to the lakeshore. “I could hear them holler, so they could hear me holler. So I took a .22 rifle and I aimed right across the lake where I thought the shots were coming from. And I aimed high enough so that bullet got across the lake.”

After her single shot, the blasts from the opposite shore stopped immediately. “No more shots—ever,” she said. “One was enough.”

After fishing the east side for a couple of years, the VanDeveres switched to the west side, first in Tuxedni Bay and later in Chinitna Bay. On one particular summer when their first son was less than a year old, they found themselves encamped on Harriet Point (west of Kalgin Island) when the need for firepower arose again—twice.

For a few days while Les was out fishing and then motoring over to the cannery to pick up a paycheck, Betty practiced her shooting by taking potshots at seagulls. The problems began when another area fisherman who had given Les an outboard motor decided to come calling at the VanDevere wall tent and demand the motor back.

“Well, the only place to keep that outboard is under the bed in the tent, and he wanted it. And he was going to take it,” Idleman said. “So I held a .22 on him. I sat on the bed; Dyer’s sleeping behind me. And I sat there a good half-hour. I said, ‘You know I’ve been shooting. You can see that the safety’s off, and you can see that my finger’s on the trigger. It’s up to you whether you stay or go.’ I had to say that to him a couple of times, and he finally left.”

A day or two later, a sow brown bear with three large juvenile cubs paid a visit to the wall tent, which was situated on a large rock that fronted the tide at high water. The VanDevere dogs started “acting up something fierce,” prompting Idleman to peer outside to see what the problem was. She saw the sow lying contentedly a short distance away while her cubs played, slowly moving closer to the tent, where once again the baby lay sleeping.

“I took a frying pan and a spoon and I banged them together. It didn’t bother them one iota,” said Idleman. “It was just about dark, and ‘Tundra Tom-Tom’ was on the radio. Anyway, the bears kept coming, and I banged the thing and shot off the .22 a couple of times, and that didn’t bother them any.”

Idleman, who had never seen a brown bear before that day, looked at the rising tide, watched the cubs drawing nearer, noticed that the sow was growing edgy, and determined that there was no way those bears were coming through her home.

“I took the old 30.06 and sat down on the step of the penthouse and I got myself all aimed up,” she said. “And mama’s coming now. Mama’s coming. And she got pretty damn close, and she stood up, and I shot her.”

The single round into her left upper chest knocked the sow flat, and she lay dying only a few feet away. The agitated cubs approached and were crying over her as she made murmuring noises and tried to move.

“Well, here’s these three cubs. So now I gotta kill them. So I did. Four bears took 11 shots, and one of (those shots) was going out and making sure mama was really, truly dead.”

Betty became a successful gardener at the lake property.

In the tight-knit fishing community, word of the young woman who single-handedly gunned down four brown bears at once made the rounds rapidly. By the time Les returned a day or two later, he’d already heard, too, and the man who wanted his outboard back pointedly avoided the VanDevere tent for the remainder of the summer.

“After the bears were dead on the beach, he was the tiniest pimple out there going around our place,” Idleman said.

Back on the homestead in winter, the VanDeveres typically parked their truck at Dogbone Lake near the home of Guy Moore because Moore worked every weekday at the Wildwood army station and so he kept the road open. If the weather was particularly severe, they dug out the snow under the truck and placed a lighted Coleman stove there to heat the oil pan. They covered the engine with blankets and then visited with Moore until the truck was ready to start.

If too much snow (or mud in springtime) prevented driving to Kenai, they adopted an alternate strategy: They walked, knowing that if no one picked them up and gave them a ride within six miles, they’d turn around and walk all the way home, hoping in the meantime that someone would save them some legwork.

If they made it all the way into town, Idleman said, they could always count on a ride most of the way home from Morris and Bertha Porter, who lived nearby and operated the telephone company in Kenai.

By 1961, because they found the Parsons Lake property “too inaccessible,” the VanDeveres purchased three lots on Island Lake and created a new home where the roads and neighbors were more plentiful.

The use of firepower, however, remained a constant.

While they were having a new house constructed, the VanDeveres stayed in a small cabin owned by a friend over on Wik Road. One night while Les was away doing longshoreman work, their dog began “barking up a storm.” It was about 5 a.m., and Betty looked out of the cabin to see a black bear chasing the dog one way, then the dog chasing the bear back in the opposite direction. She grabbed for the 30.06 and rushed outside.

In a long nightgown, with mosquitoes buzzing and biting, she aimed at the bear and killed it with a single shot. Later, she found a couple of men who volunteered to butcher the bear, with the idea of barbecuing it at the Forelands Bar that evening.

Meanwhile, that afternoon, a surveyor arrived, wanting to survey some of the property around the cabin where she was staying. As she spoke with him, the dog started barking again, and they both looked up into a nearby aspen to see a frightened black bear cub clinging for all it was worth.

Idleman was matter-of-fact about what had to be done: “I asked the surveyor, ‘Well, you want to shoot, or shall I?’ ‘Oh, I will,’ he said. And he was shaking. It took him seven shots to shoot that bear—he was so shook up. So I went down to the bar that night for the barbecue, and he’s in there telling everybody what a big bear hunter he is. I walked in, and he left.”

These days, as president of the Kenai Historical Society and a member of the Garden Club, 73-year-old Betty Idleman still stays busy but finds little need to go for her gun.

 

 

 

"Not Exactly a Soap Opera"

Soapy Smith in his Skagway saloon, sometime after his brief escapades in Hope.

NOT EXACTLY A SOAP OPERA

DECEMBER 2010

For local historians, tt was a tantalizing prospect: Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith, the infamous 19th-century scourge of Denver and Skagway, may have visited the streets of tiny Hope, Alaska, and even attempted his famous soap scam there.

Hope & Sunrise Historical Society members had one solid piece of evidence to support the idea: an 1896 diary entry from a young gold-seeker who professed a first-hand sighting of the famous con artist in action in Hope. They lacked only an equally solid second piece of evidence to support and lend credence to the first.

This fall, they got their wish.

In August, Dr. Jane Haigh, assistant history professor at Kenai Peninsula College and author of King Con: The Story of Soapy Smith, came to speak about Smith at a historical society meeting in the Hope Social Hall. Before she arrived, Haigh knew that the historical society members believed Smith had come to Hope, but she was skeptical of the claim because she had yet to see the group’s documentation.

A few months earlier, Haigh had met with a few of the historical society members, heard their claim about Smith’s visit to Hope, and agreed to bring her information to them and combine it with their own.  After Haigh spoke in general about Smith, those in attendance got down to the real business at hand.

Historical society president Diane Olthuis produced a copy of the diary entry.

The diary had been written by Joel A. Harrington, who had been born in Montana in 1873 and who had, in 1896, traveled on board the Marion to Hope when the gold rush there was just getting under way. The diary that Harrington kept might never have come to the attention of the Hope & Sunrise Historical Society if it hadn’t first attracted the interest of The Anchorage Daily News in the summer of 1953.

Serialized by the newspaper under the title “Saga of Cook Inlet Gold,” excerpts of the diary ran over the course of several weeks. Sometime later, a newspaper friend of historical society member Billy Miller borrowed the paper’s copies of the diary and mimeographed them for Miller.

Miller and his wife, Ann, perused the diary entries and zeroed in on the mention of Soapy Smith in their town. And ever since, said Ann Miller, “I’ve always been trying to convince everybody of that.”

On May 19, 1896, while in Hope, Harrington wrote: “Later we took a stroll through the town, saw the stump where ‘Soapy Smith’ had his stand, wrapping $5.00 and $10.00 bills in the soap wrapper and selling them, but no one got a bill,

Soapy Smith.

except his ‘cappers’ who were working with him. His pickings were poor here, ’tis said.”

A “capper,” or “shill,” is a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy “marks” (victims, in other words) into participating.

These accomplices were helping Smith to run the very con that had earned him his famous nickname. It was a scam that Smith, arguably the most renowned confidence man of the Old West, had already run repeatedly and successfully in Texas and in Denver and Creede, Colorado, and would continue to run again when he moved his operations to Skagway the following year.

The “prize soap racket,” as it was dubbed by newspapers of the time, involved Smith offering a special monetary enticement as he sold soap on a street corner. As a crowd gathered, he would extract from his wallet several bills, often ranging from a dollar to $100, and wrap them around some of the bars of soap. Then he would wrap plain paper over the bills and appear to mix all the bars together, and then sell the soap for one dollar per bar.

At some point, one of his shills would buy a bar, tear off the wrapping and proclaim loudly that he had won some money—and the rush would be on. Soon, Smith would announce that no one had yet won the bar wrapped in the hundred-dollar bill and would auction off the remaining soap. Of course, he had palmed the big-money bar, and his shills got most of the rest.

However, if selling soap had been Smith’s only claim to infamy, he might have gone down in history as a very minor villain. But Smith was more than that. He bought the influence of politicians, officers of the law, and even judges. He organized crime rings, controlled businesses through strong-arm tactics, ran large gambling operations, and robbed unsuspecting miners of their hard-earned gold.

At the August historical society meeting, the appearance of the very specific diary excerpt excited Dr. Haigh, who then produced two corroborating pieces of evidence for the Hope faithful.

First came a very short report from a Juneau newspaper: A gambler named John Rudolph (a Smith pseudonym) had been arrested in the spring of 1896 for “flim-flaming the guys” with a scheme involving the sale of cakes of soap supposedly wrapped in $10 and $20 bills. No one else in the West is known to have practiced this particular con game,” said Haigh.

This information placed Smith in Alaska a year earlier than had been previously reported, but the next piece of evidence, especially in combination with the newspaper story and diary entry, seemed to solidify the Smith-in-Hope claim.

Soapy Smith’s great-grandson, Jeff Smith, author of a recent history of his famous ancestor, Alias Soapy Smith, also runs an extensive website of information, photographs, and artifacts related to his namesake. Among the numerous personal letters in the online collection there is one (scanned in its original form and also displayed in a typed transcription) from May 10, 1896—only nine days before Harrington wrote his diary entry in Hope.

The brief letter to Smith’s wife back in St. Louis, according to Jeff Smith, was written aboard the steamer General Canby near Coal Bay, on the northern shore of Kachemak Bay, inside the Homer Spit. It reads (with errors intact): “Dear Mollie. Am well, will be to my destination tomorrow if nothing goes wrong. Have had a hell of a trip. You can write to Resurection Creek, Cooks Inlett, Alaska. Have no time to write now as we hail a steamer bound for San Francisco to mail this. Have heard no word from you since I left Denver. Yours Jeff—Love to all.”

Resurrection Creek runs through Hope and empties into Cook Inlet just outside of town.

“These three items together,” said Haigh, “add up to the conclusion that Smith was indeed in Hope in the spring of 1896, a period that had been a gap in my own timeline of his travels.”

Hope & Sunrise Historical Society members share Haigh’s satisfaction—and a certain level of vindication—at the findings.

“We were thrilled to find out we were correct,” said Olthuis.

Soapy Smith, meanwhile, sojourned in Hope only a few days before realizing that the level of action there didn’t meet his expectations, and so he moved on. By 1897, he began establishing another criminal empire in Skagway, one of the entry points for the crush of fortune-seekers funneling into the backcountry to join the Klondike Gold Rush.

But also in Skagway his criminal exploits caught up with him, and by the summer of 1898 he was dead. After three members of his gang bilked a miner out of his sack of gold during a game of three-card monte, the miner sought help, and a vigilante group called the “Committee of 101” stepped in. On July 8, during what was later called “The Shootout on Juneau Wharf,” Smith began an argument with armed and angry city engineer Frank Reid; gunfire ensued and both men were mortally wounded.

As with many of the famous and infamous alike, however, Soapy Smith continues to make news long after his passing. As Smith once profited from the denizens of Skagway, they now arrange tours around Smith lore and continue to profit from his presence there so long ago.

 

"Short-Lived School"

Recess at the Slikok Valley School, late 1950s.

SHORT-LIVED SCHOOL

MAY 2011

Tommye Jo Corr was so accustomed to seeing moose tracks in the snow when she walked to and from work that she rarely worried about her safety. But the day she came across the tracks of a pack of dogs, she decided she needed protection.

Corr used to walk regularly between her home on what was then called Kalifonsky Beach Road and the Slikok Valley School where she was the lone teacher during the school’s two-year existence from 1958 to 1960. After she saw the dog tracks, she said, “I started packing a pistol. The Department of Education didn’t mind just as long as the gun was unloaded during school hours.”

Corr’s quote is part of Slikok Valley School history recorded in a scrapbook and kept available for viewing in the main building at the Soldotna Historical Museum.

What is now called Kalifornsky Beach Road was opened as little more than a Cat trail in 1956, but by 1958 several families were living along the roadway and were finding it difficult to get their children to the nearest available school—all the way over in Kenai.

Plans were being discussed to build a school in Soldotna, but Soldotna Elementary would not be completed and available for students until the fall of 1960. Going to Kenai via Soldotna was the only option in the winter since the Warren Ames bridge would not be completed until the mid-1970s, and the ice over the river was too treacherous to cross safely.

Consequently, depending upon where their homes were located, parents were forced to have their children walk—typically three to eight miles—to the Sterling Highway near the Kenai River bridge in Soldotna, where they could be picked up by a school bus and driven the remaining 14 miles to Kenai. They would, of course, have to reverse that journey once school was over.

In addition to the distance, the conditions for the children’s walks were often difficult at best and hazardous at worst. During the winter months, temperatures were usually below freezing and sometimes below zero. In the warmer periods of spring and autumn, thick mud, washed-out trails, or melting snow prevailed, and the route also included a calving ground for moose, which attracted bears, wolves and stray dogs.

So the residents of the Slikok Creek valley took matters into their own hands. They decided to build their own school and staff it with one of their own residents. Corr’s husband, Tommy, put it this way in Once upon the Kenai: “Few teachers help build their school house; but Tommye Jo did. She peeled logs, laid insulation between the logs, and cleaned second-hand windows. Almost every Slikok Valley homesteader helped in some way to build the schoolhouse. Five men laid the log walls: Charles Brumlow, Lonnie Brumlow, Red Miller, Don Zuroff, and myself.”

Construction begins on the new school.

According to a scrapbook narrative written by Tommy and Tommye Jo’s son, Tommy Reed Corr, the Slikok Valley homesteaders responded to the need, but it wasn’t easy: “Few Slikok homesteaders had their own houses ready for winter. No one could afford the time to help build a schoolhouse. Money was scarce, but the settlers began volunteering labor and money, providing (that) the Department of Education would approve the project. A community letter to the department brought an immediate investigation. A certified teacher lived in the community, and the (minimum) 10 students required for a new school were met. The Territorial Department of Education ruled that if the community could have a building ready for the fall opening, Slikok Valley would have its school.”

Slikok residents received this news on Aug. 11, three weeks before the scheduled beginning of the school year. A community meeting was held that night, and a plan was established. The schoolhouse would be constructed of unpeeled logs from local spruce trees. Volunteers would work eight hours a day, five days a week, until the school was complete.

Lonnie Brumlow, an area bachelor, donated one acre of his homestead as the building site. This location put every area student within two and a half miles of the proposed school.

Led by Brumlow’s brother, Charles, five adults and two grade-school boys cleared the school yard and then felled and limbed 60 spruce trees in only a day and a half—putting them ahead of schedule early in the process. They used the extra time to mark off the building site and lay in the concrete block foundation posts.

As the project continued, many Kenai and Soldotna businesses dispensed credit, discounts and good advice. In addition to Brumlow’s donation of land, the school builders received a $100 donation for windows and doors from area resident Ed Ciechanski. Other individuals furnished vehicles, fuel, chainsaws, and manual labor. Kids were put to work digging pits for the school outhouses, fetching tools for older workers, and supplying stove wood for the women who were cooking for the building crew.

The 16x24-foot school, the last log schoolhouse built in the territorial days of Alaska, was completed on time, opening on Sept. 5, 1958, with 11 students—more than half of whom came from Red Miller’s passel of children.

According to an Anchorage newspaper at the time, the school’s name (and thus the community’s) had come from “the days of the Russian trappers who traveled down the shallow valley along Slikok Creek on their trapping trips to the Kenai River.” This explanation was, however, only part of the story. The name “Slikok” is the Russian equivalent of a Dena’ina word, “Shlakaq’,” meaning “little mouth,” a reference to the narrow stream’s confluence with the Kenai.

Tommye Jo Corr remembered that during the especially snowy parts of the school year, the usual winter gear she wore as she walked through the darkness to school was a warm jacket, her pistol, and a pair of hip boots.

She also recalled the time that two of her students, a boy and a girl, failed initially to return from recess. Suddenly the boy hurried in from outside, took his seat, and began to study, but the girl did not return. Corr took the bell that had been sent to her by the Department of Education and went outdoors to ring it a second time. Just as she did so, the door to the girls’ outhouse burst open and the girl raced out.

“It was obvious she had been standing there waiting,” Corr said. “When I questioned her, she insisted that the boy told her I wanted her to stay in the privy until called. I could hardly believe my ears. Why would he say such a thing? As it turned out, the boy tricked the girl simply because he needed to use the boys’ privy and didn’t want to be the last one back to class. What children won’t do to each other!”

In the second year of the school’s existence, enrollment jumped to 14 students—six members of the Miller family, plus one Brumlow, two Corrs, two Henrys, one Jackson, one Jones, and one Vetters—ranging from first to seventh grade.



The old school as it appears today on the grounds of the Soldotna Historical Society's
Homestead Museum.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the life of the school ended. The main road had been improved and graveled, and a school bus could finally reach the once-isolated community. In September 1960, Soldotna Elementary opened its doors for the first time, and the Slikok students transferred there—to modern classrooms with electricity, running water, and indoor restrooms.

The log schoolhouse, which had also served as a centerpiece for Slikok community events, became the Slikok Community Club until the building was sold to the State of Alaska in 1964 to be used as a local museum. In 1967, a building commemorating the centennial of Alaska’s purchase adjoined the old school structure and was named Damon Hall in memory of Frances Damon—a board member of the community club, and her son, Larry, both of whom had been killed in Whittier by a tidal wave following the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake.

In March 1987, the City of Soldotna provided a $1-per-year lease agreement with the Soldotna Historical Society to operate a historical museum on a six-acre plot of ground adjacent to the city’s Centennial Park property. The old school and the Damon Building were moved onto the property, as were the Dick Gerhart and Ed Ciechanski homestead cabins, the log Tourism Center, and an old log food cache built by Johnny Parks.

In trade, the city received the land formerly occupied by the school and Damon Hall.

Tommye Jo Corr said she believed that the Slikok Valley School, in its brief history, truly helped to hold together the valley’s little community. “I know we had the best PTA in existence,” she said. “The children learned how to enjoy being good, working together and getting along.”

 

 

"They Liked It Poached"

Bull moose among fireweed on the central Kenai Peninsula.

THEY LIKED IT POACHED

JANUARY 2009

Fresh red meat could be difficult to come by in the late 1940s and early 1950s on the Kenai Peninsula, particularly in the winter. Heavily salted canned meats were available but were far from fresh and often far from tasty. On the other hand, fresh meat on the hoof was ambling all over through the mixed coniferous-deciduous woods, and many homesteaders were not reluctant to take advantage of this good fortune.

“Illegal moose meat was a main source of food for us,” said Maxine Lee, Soldotna’s first postmaster, in a personal history written in 2003. “We were all law-abiding citizens, but in 1948, to get a hunting license, you had to have been a resident of Alaska for a year or else buy a $50 non-resident license and hire a guide at $50 a day—even on your own land. We had little money. We needed meat. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife (Service) controlled hunting—the Feds. They knew that we were eating moose, but they also knew we needed food. We were circumspect, hiding the meat tied up in spruce trees.”

Maxine and Howard Lee and family at Soldotna home, 1950.

Lee also asserted that many folks then believed they would receive lighter punishment for killing another human being than for killing a moose. Still, she said, the authorities were occasionally known to look the other way, particularly if it was understood that a homesteader’s survival might depend upon the infraction.

Once, she added, she and her husband, Howard, were visited by the game warden shortly after Howard had brought a frozen haunch into the house to thaw and carve. Although they hastily covered the meat, its shape was difficult to disguise, even in the lantern-lit gloom. In the end, when the warden departed, Lee said, “He knew that we knew that he knew.”

Howard Lee also wrote about those days, in an undated paper entitled “Reminiscent Ramblings of Early Soldotna”: “The taking of moose legally, with license and in season, didn’t quite coincide with homesteaders’ needs or the most practical weather period to avoid waste. The risk of taking an animal was made most hazardous and detectable on the site of the butchering. Being spotted by our flying friendly game warden (Dave) Spencer kept us alert. Once the site was located either by bloody snow or the ravens having a feast on remains, it only took the effort of following one’s snowshoe trail to the culprit. Most moose were shot when it appeared a good storm was setting in to cover the tracks.”

Such was the case in February 1951 when Larry Lancashire thought the weather was about to change in his favor. He shot and killed a moose, gutted it quickly, and then dragged the carcass home on a sled to his family’s cozy cabin atop Pickle Hill. Unfortunately for Lancashire, the forecast for heavy snow was incorrect.

Al Hershberger, who was stationed at the time at the Alaska Road Commission shop in Kenai, remembers the rest of the story: “Larry left word for me to stop on the way home from work and fix a magneto on a tractor that was giving him problems. I knocked on the door, and I opened it up, and there was a big kitchen table there just covered with moose meat, blood all over the place.”



Al Hershberger at his Soldotna home, 1960.

Hershberger was invited inside, and later, when he had the magneto in hand and had promised to fix it and return after work the next day, Larry’s wife, Rusty said, “Why don’t you plan on stopping for dinner tomorrow night? We’ll have fresh moose steak and french-fried potatoes out of our patch.” Al readily accepted the invitation, salivating at the thought of fresh moose and of the potatoes, which the Lancashires were beginning to farm commercially.

The next day, Hershberger was in the parts room at the ARC when he happened to glance out the window and notice a small gathering of men: Allan Petersen, the local marshal; Dave Spencer, head of the Fish & Wildlife Service; and Jimmy Petersen, Spencer’s assistant and son of the marshal.

“They were all standing there talking. So I went out, and I said hi to ’em. Everybody knew everybody in those days, and I said to Allan, ‘What’s going on here? You plottin’ against somebody?’ He said, ‘Oh, that Larry Lancashire shot a moose, and we gotta go arrest him.’ I thought, ‘Oh, there goes my dinner.’”

Marshal Allan Petersen.

Hershberger said he was conflicted about what to do next: “I could run out and warn him, but it wouldn’t really work because they couldn’t get all that meat out of the way in time. So I didn’t.”

On the way home, he stopped again at the Lancashire home. Larry was still there, having been formally charged and instructed to appear later in court, but the moose and Larry’s rifle had been confiscated. And Rusty was there, too, at work at the stove. When Hershberger said it was too bad that they wouldn’t be having moose meat that night, Rusty said, “Oh, no, no. I told ‘em that I invited Al Hershberger to dinner tonight, and so they left us enough for dinner.”

Turns out that Sergei “Pete” Peteroff, a good friend of the marshal’s who lived down by Eagle Rock, was the one responsible for Lancashire’s arrest. Peteroff, according to Hershberger, “didn’t have any idea who shot the moose,” but he came across the kill site and reported it to Petersen, who likely followed the sled tracks right to Lancashire’s front door.

Hershberger said that Lancashire was fined and later had to go to Anchorage for several weeks to get a job and earn enough money to cover the cost. Hershberger added that when Sonny Miller was nabbed for poaching a moose a year or two later, he was so destitute that the local community held a dance to raise money to pay the fine.



Dolly Farnsworth, who also has lived in the area since the late ’40s, added a coda to the Lancashire moose-poaching tale: She said that her husband, Jack, along with Frank Mullen, shot an illegal moose near Jack and Margaret Irons’s cabin, where the Farnsworths were living at the time. “They shot it out behind the burn pile,” she said. “And so they skinned it out and took it down to (Mullens’) cabin and hung it up.”



Marge Mullen and her children were visiting in Anchorage at the time, Dolly recalled, so the family cabin was temporarily available. “And the thing is that the damn squirrels got in there,” she said. “It was hung right over the bed arch, and so you have all of these droppings from the squirrels right on (the Mullens’) bed. They were getting at that darned moose.”

The next day, Jack and Frank were back at the Ironses’ place trying to cover their tracks, cleaning up everything that could implicate them, and pouring motor oil over everything that might attract hungry dogs.



Rusty and Larry Lancashire at their Ridgeway home, circa 1950.

While they were tidying up, a car loaded with men went by out on the highway, headed for Kenai.

“It was the trial for Larry Lancashire, for his poached moose,” Dolly said.

 

 

"Rice, Rice, Baby!"

 Harvesting wild rice. From The American Aboriginal Portfolio, by Mrs. Mary H. Eastman. Illustrated by S. Eastman.
Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1853.

RICE, RICE, BABY!

AUGUST 2011

Over the last century or so, residents of the Kenai Peninsula have taken upon themselves the task of “readjusting” their natural environs beyond the usual methods of road-building, field-clearing and house-erecting.

They have added plants, such as aggressive grass strains, that have overwhelmed terrain and the indigenous species already thriving there. They have moved or introduced new fish populations—grayling and Northern pike, for instance—to bodies of water customarily suited to other species or none at all. They have attempted to add or reintroduce new game species—pheasants and chukar and caribou, to name a few.

And it was just such thinking in 1961that led officials of the Kenai National Moose Range to decide that the protected lands under their purview might be ideal for the planting of wild rice.

Will Troyer, who served as moose range manager from 1963 to 1968, said that the rice-planting project was well under way when he arrived on the job, and he remembers finding some of the wild rice growing in area lakes. He said that his predecessor, John Hakala, had approved the project in an attempt to enhance local waterfowl numbers.

“They thought they could increase waterfowl production if they could improve the food production,” Troyer said. The equation seemed simple enough, and to that end, a model from Minnesota was selected: Rice Lake National Wildlife Refuge in the north-central part of the state.

Rice Lake, the crown jewel of the eponymously named refuge, covers about 4,500 acres and sits approximately 100 miles north of Minneapolis and 60 miles west of the most western tip of Lake Superior. It is a shallow body of water that excels in the production of wild rice—a fact not lost on migratory waterfowl or on countless generations of resident Native Americans.

Wild rice is an annual grass that grows naturally in many northern lakes of Minnesota and Wisconsin. According to John B. Moyle’s “Wild Rice in Minnesota,” published in 1944 in the Journal of Wildlife Management, wild rice grows best in shallow lakes and along streams in water one to three feet deep. Seeds, buried in the bottom mud since the preceding autumn, germinate in late spring or early summer to produce ribbon-like submerged leaves. By mid-summer, the leaves grow to float on the water’s surface, and then blossoming stalks begin to emerge and climb skyward. Stalks can rise from two to eight feet above the water, and the rice ripens by late summer or early fall, at which point it must be harvested before the rice seeds drop back into the water and sink into the mud.

Wild rice seed heads.

The Chippewa (or Ojibwa) people historically have employed canoes to harvest wild rice—and some still engage in the practice. The Chippewa glided into a veritable sea of rice grass, bent the stalks over their open canoes, and then used wooden paddles to whack the grass ends and dislodge the rice onto the floors of their vessels. When their crafts were full, they paddled ashore, divested themselves of their cargo, and then cruised back onto the water for more.

Meanwhile, area waterfowl and a number of mammals and other birds, eager to fatten themselves on the hearty grain, swooped or strolled in to unoccupied rice beds. The most common wildlife species feeding on the wild rice were ducks, geese, American coots, blackbirds, deer, moose, beaver and muskrats.

This successful history of food and wildlife production led Hakala in the fall of 1961 to arrange for a delivery of Rice Lake seed to the Kenai National Moose Range.

On Sept. 27, according to the annual moose range narrative written for the U.S. Department of Interior, 50 pounds of iced wild rice (the augustifolia variety of Zizania aquatica) arrived via air freight in Kenai. Although the ice had melted by the time of the arrival, moose range officials noted that the rice was still in good condition, and they stored it in the cool waters of Longmere Lake until planting began.

By Oct. 3, all of the seed had been planted in 29 pre-selected locations in and around the moose range. The locations, such as Dolly Varden Lake along the Swanson River Road, had been chosen after a careful sampling of water, climate and soil.

After the planting, moose range officials could only wait and hope.

A brief note in the September-December portion of the 1962 annual narrative was not encouraging: Much of the wild rice planted the previous year had grown, but the seed had not matured. Officials planned to re-check the planting sites during the next growing season.

The annual narrative the following year, however, was equally unpromising: “The rice emerged in lush stands during the following year (1962)…. Seed heads reached the ‘milk’ stage but did not mature. Checks made this season (1963) revealed only a few stunted stalks of rice in Weed Lake…. The seed did not mature on these plants. These wild rice plantings are considered unsuccessful on the Kenai.”

And the annual narrative for 1964, while laying the rice-planting subject to rest, placed the overall effort in a fuller context and held out the slightest glimmer of hope for future such endeavors: “Although many nice stands of rice were evident in 1962, no viable seeds were produced. A few plants appeared in 1963 and 1964; however, these are probably from the original seeding. Minnesota and Kenai water and climatic conditions are similar; however, Kenai summers are cooler with temperatures seldom exceeding 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Although this variety of wild rice was unsuccessful on the Kenai, there may be other varieties that would work. Wild rice might succeed in Interior Alaska where summer temperatures reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Two tables attached to the summary revealed the 29 locations, which included Rainbow Lake, Beaver Creek, Sunken Island Lake, Swanson River, Jean Lake and Sports Lake. The tables also noted that 15 of the 29 planting sites had produced “negative” results, while five were rated “good,” six were deemed “fair,” and three were termed “poor.”

Rice stalks in the “good” locations grew initially to heights of two to four feet, but failed to grow back in the subsequent season. Two of those best-producing locations were in Swan Lake (part of the Swan Lake Canoe System), with two more in Afonasi Lake (near Watson Lake), and one in a spot vaguely labeled “Sedge Pond.”

The planting summary also made clear that, while this rice project had failed, a brief history of similar pre-1964 efforts in Southcentral Alaska had presented an ill omen for the outcome:

·         Near Palmer, plantings (at an unspecified date) by Bob Walker had rice emerge the first year but none in future years.

·         In the Kustatan River area (across Cook Inlet from Nikiski) prior to 1960, Robert Smith had tried planting wild rice without success.

·         Ray Gee, who homesteaded on Douglas Lake in North Kenai in 1959, had planted wild rice enclosed in a ball of mud in 1960. The rice failed to grow.

·         Prior to the establishment of the moose range, a Mr. Anderson had planted wild rice at Swan Lake in 1936. As would happen with the moose range’s official efforts 25 years later, plants emerged but produced no seed.

Some things, it appeared, were simply not meant to be.

 

 

"Four Tales of Christmas"

Vern Gehrke, who played Santa locally for more than 20 years, reviews a youngster’s Christmas list during a 1983 stop at D&A Grocery..

Santa Vern 

DECEMBER 2010

Santa Claus has an image to protect.

Vern Gehrke, who portrayed Santa Claus for decades, understood the need to protect that image, which is why he purchased a top-notch Santa suit, why he played the part for so many years, and why he simply had to say no during the incident with the dogs.

Arriving in Alaska in the late 1960s—with an off-and-on history as a seasonal Santa dating back nearly a decade in Washington state—Gehrke became the most widely requested local Saint Nick until he hung up the red cap in about 1990, when he was in his late 70s. He died in 1995 at the age of 83.

During the incident with the dogs, Gehrke, who also was once transported into Soldotna on a shiny red fire engine, was on this occasion being hauled into town via dog team. The team had been patched together with “borrowed dogs from who knows who,” according to Gehrke’s widow, Allouise, and they were trotting irritably along the Spur Highway toward the center of town.

“The driver was having a little bit of a problem with them,” said Allouise. “They had stopped and were having a little squabble, so he had a broom that he was carrying with him, and he handed the broom to Vern and said, ‘Go break up that dog fight.’ And Vern handed the broom back to him and said, ‘I don’t think it would look very good for Santa to be beating on the dogs.’”

Gehrke began his portrayal of Santa—Allouise referred to it as a “career”—in the late 1950s during the time he was playing his guitar on a radio program in Bellingham, Wash. “Something happened there, where some organization had wanted a Santa Claus, and he ended up doing it,” Allouise said. “And how consistently he did it, I don’t know. That was kind of before my time.” Vern and Allouise were married in 1959.

“It must have been about a year after we were married, maybe two years, he started doing Santa (regularly), and as far as I know, he never quit,” she said.

Most of Gehrke’s Santa gigs in Washington involved appearances at private parties or at private homes with families that wanted seasonal portraits with Santa. And most of the time, Gehrke worked gratis.

The Gehrkes moved to Alaska in 1967 when Westinghouse hired Vern, who was an industrial electrician, to perform electrical maintenance on their big engines. The job didn’t turn out as advertised, however, said Allouise, so the Gehrkes moved to Soldotna, and Vern took on an electrician job working on various oil platforms just as Cook Inlet oil production was expanding rapidly.

Back in Washington, Gehrke had left behind his big red Santa suit and had no real intention to become Santa again, but when he saw a local need for a Santa with experience, he purchased a new costume and began anew.

Choosing a quality suit is important if appearances matter to the individual behind the beard, and Vern soon realized that he was in for the long haul.

“The first (suit) we got was just sort of so-so, but then we invested in a really good suit and the hairpiece and the beard,” said Allouise. “We figured if he was going to do it, we might as well do it right. So we did.”

Rising costs since 1960s have sent the price for high-end Santa suits soaring. This month, one online seller offered its top-of-the-line, “burgundy pile plush” and satin-lined Majestic Santa Suit for $579, excluding the wig and beard, the glasses, and the boot-like sleeves that cover the faux Santa’s regular footwear. The most expensive wig-and-beard combo offered by the same company, Costumes for Santa, is made of yak hair and sells for $400.

There are, of course, much more economical versions available of the suits, wigs and beards, and all other Santa accessories. A complete cut-rate Santa set-up can be had for as little as $200.

Allouise said that she couldn’t remember exactly what they spent when Vern decided to invest in a better suit, but she figured that it was at least $100. A hundred bucks in about 1970 translates to approximately $550 today, so the investment was sizable, but they never questioned whether it was worthwhile.

Typically, Gehrke had a small mustache of his own, which helped hold in place the Santa beard that was held to his face with an elastic band that encircled his head. The generous fur on the Santa hat hid the elastic, and the glasses (specially crafted by a local ophthalmologist, Dr. Peter Cannava) helped make the disguise almost impenetrable. And although Gehrke had a fairly generous natural belly, he usually augmented his paunch with a small pillow tucked just above the beltline in order to enhance his jolly appearance.

Gehrke began his local Santa stint by working wherever he was called. Early on, he worked at North Road Automotive in North Kenai, and, since his appearance had not been widely advertised, he resorted to occasionally standing out in the parking lot and waving to passing cars in order to draw in customers.

Later, however, he became a regular at the Blazy Mall in Soldotna, and then eventually at the Central Peninsula Mall. Whenever possible, he worked his Santa appearances around his employment schedule and family responsibilities, beginning most years on the day after Thanksgiving and playing the part every day of the week until Christmas Eve.

Beyond his electrician duties, Gehrke was a busy man: He served from 1978 to 1982 on the Soldotna City Council and as vice mayor from 1982 to 1984, and he was also heavily involved in the city’s Little League Baseball program. Because of all his work in maintaining the baseball fields and because he secured the state funding for the construction of the newest field, that playing surface, Gehrke Field, was named in his honor.

During his stints at the mall, he employed Santa helpers—usually Allouise or one of their three daughters, often dressed in Santa hats and simple green or red vests—who snapped and sold Polaroid photos of children on Santa’s lap. They also sold cotton candy and manned a donation jar, the proceeds from which went to the Soldotna Little League.

His eldest daughter, Darlene (Gehrke) Conright, who said she enjoyed watching her father play Santa, occasionally had to assist him with transportation. “There were a few times that I went along to help him if he made any special calls (outside of the mall), mostly to drive him because the facial hair would get in his way, and he hated anyone to see him only half-dressed, so to say,” said Conright.

Allouise said that Vern was adept at dealing with children, a few of whom were deathly afraid of this imposing-looking man in the big red suit. “Mostly, I think, he would just talk to them,” she said, “and if it got to the point it was obvious they were going to have a really hard time, most of the time the moms just decided not to push them any further.”

Gehrke found his role as Santa gratifying, according to Allouise, but “at times he would kind of doubt himself. I can remember him saying one time, ‘Gehrke, what are you doing playing Santa?’ This is him talking to himself. ‘Here you are, so-many years old, and you’re still playing games.’ And then he got to thinking about the smiles on the kids’ faces and how pleased they were that they had seen Santa, and he decided that it was pretty much all well worth it.”

He also enjoyed keeping the Santa myth alive. “Oftentimes he would tell kids that the belief in Santa does not necessarily mean that you have to believe in a person,” said Allouise. “It’s a belief in a feeling, in a spirit of the season.”

(Yes, Vern, there is a Santa Claus.)

Joe Megargel memorial painting showing his homestead cabin.

 

Holiday Generosity

DECEMBER 2009

Joe and Ruby Megargel celebrated Christmas Eve 1959 with their friend, Carl Spetz, at the home of John and Inga Berg. When the Megargels returned home that night, they had no idea that their small Cohoe cabin would not survive until 1960.

On New Year’s Eve, the Megargels, who had homesteaded off Cohoe Loop only one year earlier, traveled north to ring in the new year at the home of “Whitey” Yurman at Boulder Point in Nikiski. In the meantime, back in Cohoe, one of the Megargels’ neighbors spotted trouble.

Jess Nicholas, who had homesteaded nearby in 1956 and had just been named state deputy magistrate at Kenai, discovered at about 7 p.m. that the Megargel home was on fire.

Details from that evening are sketchy, as most of the people living in the immediate area at the time have either moved or passed away, and the front-page Cheechako News story on January 15, 1960, was only a few lines long and not especially informative.

But the bad news was evident enough to the Megargels when they returned to their property: Their vertical-log cabin had burned to the ground, and they were about to begin the coldest month of the year.

Fortunately, good news came with the bad, as the Cohoe community rallied around their stricken neighbors: Wayne and Trudy Webb took the Megargels into their home until, a week or two later, when Vern and Verna St. Louis loaned the couple a house trailer. Wayne Webb also chipped in some leftover house logs, and a small local crew gathered to help build the Megargels a new home.

Stephen Webb, who was nine years old at the time, remembers when the Megargels came to stay. He was particularly impressed by their appearance: “He looked like a mountain man. He looked like Jedediah Smith. He almost always had this big bushy beard. And his wife was about as big as he was. I barely remember her, but she seemed like she was close to six feet tall.”

Stephen’s mother, Trudy Webb, verified her son’s impressions. She described Ruby as “tall and well built … all muscle, but a nice-looking lady.” And Joe did, in fact, have a full, dark beard, in addition to dark bushy eyebrows and a shaggy mane of dark hair. His personification as a mountain man also relates to his career choices—commercial fishing in the summers and trapping along upper Tustumena Lake in the winters.

Joe was born in Dickson City, Pennsylvania, in 1920, while Ruby was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, two years later. According to his sister, Jessie Winter of Cohoe, Joe served in the military in World War II, and then he and a buddy, John Springer, traveled to Alaska in 1948. He worked mainly at Elmendorf Air Force Base until moving onto his homestead in 1958, the same year he married Ruby in a ceremony in Homer.

Ruby Megargel.

Ruby, according to her obituary in July 2008, had also worked with the military prior to hooking up with Joe. She was a member of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, worked in occupied Germany after the war, and took great pride in the fact that she had once been allowed to ride the horse of Gen. George S. Patton.

Shortly after the fire, construction began on the new Megargel cabin, using the same design as the original and making it about the same size, roughly 20 by 30 feet.

“All the neighborhood came in, and they cut down trees and built him a cabin the middle of the winter,” said Winter. “They had a cabin built in no time.”

Among the Megargels’ friends and neighbors at that time were the Webbs, the Nicholases, Ann and Archie Ramsell, John Swanson, Ray and Florence Burton, Charlie and Freda Lewis, Eugene and Mary Smith, George and Lois Calvin, Chuck and Helen Raymond, and Pete Jensen.

On Jan. 16, as construction continued, a benefit for the Megargels was held at the Clam Gulch Community Hall. The St. Louises showed their Alaska movies, and afterward those gathered shared refreshments and did some dancing. A small society notice in the Cheechako did not mention the amount of money raised at the benefit.

By mid-February, work on the cabin was evidently complete, for on Feb. 12 in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the Cheechako ran a small note entitled “A Card of Thanks.” It said: “We wish to thank everyone for their generosity and kindness in the time of our need. Unfortunately we do not know every person who helped us, but we would like to thank them personally. Come see us. Good luck and good health to all.” It was signed “Ruby and Joe Megargel, Box C, Cohoe, Alaska.”

Joe’s sister, who still lives on a portion of the original homestead, said that while the cabin may have been constructed quickly, it was made stout. Although it has undergone some remodeling in more recent years, it is still standing and continues to be occupied.

Unfortunately for the Megargels, their marriage was not so enduring. Joe and Ruby divorced in 1963, and she moved to Anchorage, where she became an ardent supporter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and worked until 1994 as a room aide and a crossing guard for the Anchorage School District.

Joe stayed on in the small cabin, working various jobs in addition to his fishing and trapping, until he died in November 1995.

On a painting of Joe made for his memorial by Colorado artist Carole Bourdo (the mother-in-law of Joe’s sister’s son), his cabin, with its fading moose rack over the front door, is featured prominently just off his left shoulder.

Joe and his cabin remained together until the end, thanks in part to a group of neighbors who made sure that Joe had many happier holidays to come.

Billy and Barbara Jean Stock in Soldotna, 1950s.

 The Gift that Kept on Giving

DECEMBER 2011

A series of events that culminated with the playing of “Pomp and Circumstance” began simply enough with a roasted holiday turkey and some after-dinner music. It was a case of “paying it forward,” decades before that phrase was in vogue.

It all started in December 1954 when Barbara Jean and Billy, the children of Bill and Dee Stock, decided to invite three of their new Kenai School teachers to Christmas dinner in their Soldotna home. Putting in their RSVP notices that December were first-year teachers David and Beth Duddles and Rachel “Ricky” Weinberg (who married the following year and became Ricky Thomas).

The Duddleses, fresh from the University of Minnesota, had dreams of teaching overseas one day. “We came to Kenai to get some teaching experience before leaving the U.S.A.,” David said. Two years later, they would travel to Africa to teach in the Belgian Congo, where David would also direct a band at the Institut Chretienne Congolais near the equatorial city of Mbandaka (formerly Coquilhatville).

At the Kenai School, Beth taught sixth grade, while David taught high school math, science and physical education. Weinberg, on the other hand, taught high school home economics and some P.E.

All three had been hired by Kenai principal and superintendent, George J. Fabricius, for the 1954-55 school year. Enrollment at the school had boomed, leaping from 86 pupils in 1951-52 to 178 in 1952-53, 197 in 1953-54, and 285 in 1954-55.

The Stocks, meanwhile, had moved to the area from Richland, Washington, in the spring of 1951 so that Bill could take a job with the Alaska Road Commission, as his friend, Chell Bear, had done a short time before—and as their friends, Jake Dubendorf and Paul Tachick, would do a short time later.

From homesteader Howard Binkley they purchased a small piece of Soldotna property near the Ace of Clubs (now the Maverick Bar). When the Dubendorfs came to town, the Stocks sold them half of their property and became their neighbors.

For living space, the Stocks purchased a World War II-era military KD hut that had been sitting over by Crooked Creek. They had the small, uninsulated three-room structure hauled into town.

After Bill’s 10-hour shifts at the ARC, he and Dee labored to get their home ready for the rigors of winter. They insulated the building, installed a woodstove (which doubled as a cookstove), and hand-dug a water well. When the cold weather came, they covered their doors and windows with blankets for extra insulation and kept a fire burning.

In those days, Soldotna was in its infancy, and nearly everything was hard to come by. Lacking electricity, many residents were hauling water or digging wells, chopping firewood, and using heated flatirons to press their clothes, and kerosene lanterns to illuminate the dark interiors of their homes in wintertime. “Our living conditions were very primitive, to say the least,” Dee said.

So when it came time to celebrate the holidays, the Stocks knew two things: Plenty of new folks in the area could use a warm, friendly place to go, and they would need to put in an order early if they wanted any special foods for dinner.

Dee, now 94 and living just north of Salt Lake City, said that they received their Christmas meal by air. To place their order, they drove to Kenai and sent word to one of Bill’s ARC bosses (and friends) in Anchorage; he purchased the food for them and put it on a plane headed back to Kenai. Among the goodies that year was a turkey, some cranberries, and canned yams.

For the holidays, the Kenai Peninsula was in the midst of a 13-day stretch of sub-zero temperatures. According to records from the Kenai Airport, the temperature dipped to minus-24 degrees on Christmas day and fell all the way to minus-35 three days later.

So the blankets were on the windows and the doors that day when their bundled-up guests trundled in from the Stocks’ frigid porch. David Duddles may have had Beth on one arm, but in his other hand he gripped the handle of an instrument case, inside of which was his trumpet.

In the days before television and computers, David, who had been a member of his high school band and a brass quartet, was going to provide some of the entertainment for the evening.

By Christmas of 1954, Barbara Jean was 15 and Billy was nine. Billy was particularly enamored of David Duddles’ trumpet playing. Dee remembers him attempting to play the instrument, and acting silly, once placing something like a lampshade over his head.

As the fall of 1955 approached, the Duddleses were preparing to move into Allan and Jettie Petersen’s house on the bluff in Kenai, but they needed temporary digs before the space became available. Because the Stocks were out of state for a few weeks, David and Beth were able to stay at Bill and Dee’s place for a short time.

“When the Stocks returned,” David said, “I started giving Billy Stock trumpet lessons. Billy was a fast learner and made good progress.”

“Billy was really interested in it,” Dee added. “So we just kind of got together and thought, ‘Well, if he (David) would let me cook him a meal—for him and his wife—then we could get Billy lessons. And that’s how we did it.” Each week for the next year, Billy received trumpet lessons, and in return the Duddleses received a good home-cooked dinner.

Even after David and Beth moved to Africa, Billy continued to play. By the time the end of his senior year at Kenai High School, he was able to help play the processional march for his 1963 class during graduation ceremonies.

David and Beth Duddles retired from teaching in the early 1990s, and they now live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ricky Thomas taught at the Kenai School through the 1956-57 school year and now lives near Phoenix. Dee—who went on to work at the Ace of Clubs, the Sky Bowl, and the Riverside House, among many other businesses—continues to remain friends with all three of them.

Over the years, the Stocks added a kitchen, two bedrooms and a washroom to their home, and the structure is still in use commercially in Soldotna.

Billy no longer plays the trumpet regularly, said Dee, but he did teach his son, William, to play. William also went on to become a member of his high school band in Anchorage.

“All that from that one dinner,” said Dee. Music was the Christmas gift that kept on giving.

Joanna (Bahnub) Hollier during her
miserable 1945 Christmas.

A Very Unmerry Christmas

DECEMBER 2008

Since arriving in October 1945, 20-year-old Joanna Bahnub had been in Talkeetna for more than two months. Now Christmas was only a few days away, and she was feeling terribly homesick and forgotten.

Bahnub knew that her parents and her six siblings back in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, had her address, and yet she had received no Christmas cards and no presents. She wanted to call and find out why, but the nearest telephone was in Anchorage—seven hours away by train—and she was working eight hours a day, seven days a week.

Unhappy despite the kindness of her co-workers at the Civil Aeronautics Administration station, Bahnub tried to cheer herself up. She tromped into the nearby woods and cut a three-foot spruce, which she stood in her quarters as a Christmas tree. Then she made her way into town to Nagley’s “all-in-one store” where she bought for herself a nice box of stationery, which she wrapped and placed under her tree.

“I tried to tell people I got a present,” said Bahnub—now Joanna Hollier, 83, of Kenai. But telling people that didn’t really make her feel any better, and neither did the potluck and dance put on by station personnel.

Christmas then came and went. She received no cards and no gifts.

When New Year’s Day rolled around, she became determined to contact her family.

Hollier, who had grown up on a dairy farm, had desired a different kind of life than the one she had known in childhood. “I was the oldest of seven kids, and we really had to work. We had to go out and milk seven, eight, ten cows before we’d go to school in the morning, run in and wash the cow manure off and run to catch the bus, if we caught the bus, if there was any bus. And then home every night, immediately after school and back in the barn till nine or ten that night. We were literally hired men. This was during the (second world) war, and times were tough.”

So Hollier consciously sought a job that would get her as far away as possible from milking cows.

Her plans took her away from the farm right out of high school and upset her father, who “didn’t believe in educating girls.” Hollier wanted to attend a Minneapolis radio-television electronics institute, which would provide the training she needed for the training she really wanted: six months with the Royal Canadian Air Force at Boeing Field in Seattle.

The Seattle training would allow her to become something rare—a female aircraft communicator (today called an air-traffic controller).

But first she had to earn her way to Minneapolis. Tuition at the institute cost $200, and she had to work for all of it—two jobs, at a restaurant from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m., then at a dime store from 1:30 p.m. to at least 6 p.m., at about a dollar an hour. Earning the $200 took her a year and a half.

After she completed her training at the Minneapolis institute, she headed in the spring of 1945 to Seattle.  She passed her Civil Service tests, and learned to send and receive Morse code at a rate of 30 words per minute. She also learned the basics of air-to-ground radio communication and meteorology, and how to use a teletype.

By the fall she was a certified aircraft communicator. “This is the end of World War II,” Hollier said. “The men are all in the Service. I was in the right place at the right time, or I never would have got in. And there were very few women in that profession.”

After her training at Boeing Field, Hollier had a choice to make: To which of 17 CAA stations in Alaska—that was her only choice of state—would she like to be assigned? To help her decide, the CAA sent her a handbook describing the Alaska stations. Almost immediately, she preferred the Talkeetna station because it was small and had potlucks on Saturday nights, and dances in the station washroom.

“I figured I could handle that better than Anchorage or Juneau or Fairbanks,” she said. “And I knew a country girl like me better stay in the country. I could understand potlucks and little dances on Saturday nights.”

On Oct. 9, 1945, she arrived in Anchorage on a CAA DC-3 (“with bucket seats and a sack lunch”), and the very next day she climbed on an Alaska Railroad car at 9 a.m., bound for the station near the mining town of Talkeetna. She arrived there at 4 p.m., and saw the landing field and the cluster of white-painted station buildings that would become her home.

And, despite the homesickness that would strike her hard later on that year, she encountered many benefits to her new job. To begin with, she earned the same pay for her job as the other two male aircraft communicators. In addition, when her first paycheck arrived she was shocked at the amount. “I didn’t know there was that much money in the world,” she said.

With at least two full days of guaranteed overtime per week, each paycheck was several hundred dollars. Flush with cash, she began perusing catalogs to see what she liked. Her first purchase was a waffle iron (which she still owns), and later came a pair of skis.

But Hollier did miss her family and Wisconsin.

And that miserable Christmas of 1945 was the last straw. Even though she knew she would have to pay her colleagues to work longer shifts in her absence, she made plans to travel to Anchorage to place a phone call home.

“While I’m down there on a Sunday, I had set up with the phone company at the time in the Federal Building on Fourth Avenue, right across from Woolworths. You had to make an appointment to make a telephone call Outside. So I made this call—and it cost me a lot of money, too. Anyhow, I made this (15-minute) appointment for 10 o’clock Sunday morning, and when my mother picked up the phone and said hello, I started crying, and I never said nothing for my 15 minutes’ allotted time. My mother talked. I tried to sniff and answer her, but that’s how homesick I was.”

Hollier traveled back to Talkeetna without really knowing why she had received no cards or presents, but truth soon materialized.

In those days, sending a card or a letter by regular mail required a three-cent stamp, which was fine except where the Territory of Alaska was concerned, especially in 1945. Mail tagged for ground delivery got as far as Seattle, where it sat until it was loaded on a ship for the long waterway trek to Alaska. Once in the territory, it traveled by rail or other overland means to its destination.

Had the members of Hollier’s family back in Wisconsin used eight-cent stamps for their holiday cards, the airmail rate would have ensured that she received her Christmas booty on time. Airmail rates also applied to packages, but the Bahnubs hadn’t known that paying the extra money was necessary, so they’d sent everything the slow way.

Sometime in January, Hollier received a large pile of presents and cards. A merry Christmas at last, better late than never.