ROBERT SERVICE had nothing on us! We saw more places and did more things on our trip here than almost anywhere else! No American should ever pass-up a chance to see Alaska. It is really all it is said to be and then some...
After all these years, however, I find that (many?) details have somehow slipped my mind. But not all (!)....
I think we took a direct flight from Kennedy to Vancouver. At first, I thought we might have flown to Seattle but now I think it was direct to Vancouver. I cannot remember visiting Seattle with Millie – and I do remember flying over the snowy mountain peaks of British Columbia. We then continued on to Fairbanks. Like all Alaskan cities, this is really out in the boondocks. The hotel was quite disappointing and the city was pretty drab. But that was just being initiated into Alaska in the first place: this is a no-nonsense type of place... "Life is real, and Life is earnest!"
The room was comfortable enough and it had oldtime linoleum on the floors... The next morning I looked out and there was a building across the street about three stories high. It was summer, but on the roof scattered here and there were a few snowmobiles and a sled or two. I inquired as to why such items had been left out to weather in such a spot – and was informed that "Oh..that is just wherever they happened to be last Spring when the snow happened to drop too low around the building to drive them off again!"
So there they sat – till next season's falls should release them once again. I could see that close attention best be paid to surroundings up here. .....And thought of "Sam McGee from Tennessee" - and the frozen Lake Le Barge...
One of the best things I remember here is a visit to the University of Alaska Museum which has excellent collections of early artifacts and animal remains pertaining to the Alaskan Glacial Age on view. One of the most memorable is the mummified carcase of an Ice Age bison Blue Babe so-called, in deference to adhering blue clay particles found on it, which reminded the discoverers of Paul Bunyan's legendary ox...
One day, we took a cruise in a paddlewheeler on the nearby Chena River. This was lots of fun. The Chena itself is clear, but flows after a few miles downriver into the Tanana, a larger stream, then somewhat choked with milky silt and rock flour from glaciers somewhere in its headwater regions I suppose, and the clear Chena pushes visibly out into the Tanana like the intact Gulf Stream does into the Atlantic. Upstream a few miles we saw a "fish wheel" out in midstream – a sort of rotating mill-wheel affair of logs and slats made by the Indians which operates methodically day after day, ensnaring migratory salmon in the annual runs... On the way back, we passed by a small, bumpy field, over-run with bushes, and cars all parked haphazardly around, along with a number of similarly parked single-engine planes... Even as we watched, a car drove up, parked, and a guy in bib overalls (!) got out and walked over to one plane. The captain of our vessel said over the loudspeaker to us, "Now watch this!" We all did. Mr. Overalls just walked right over to one of the planes, no pre-flight check or anything, jumped right in, started the engine, taxied out of the way of the parked cars – socked the gas to her - and in almost no distance at all, climbed steeply and erratically into the sky! Wow! A bush pilot - and our captain went on to explain how so many Alaskans belong to that fraternity – it is as natural to fly in a state with almost no roads as it is to try and drive. They are, of course, legendary in their skills at same, and in their "shade-tree mechanics" which keeps their planes flying...!
One other stop on this delightful cruise was at a landing where no less than famed, but now deceased Susan Butcher was exercising some of her dogs, which she kept near near here I think. We all lined the landward rail of the small vessel, and Susan down on shore, gave us quite an impromptu demo, and candid account of "mushing" and dog racing generally, during which she had her team pull its sled up and down the sandy strip. You see this a lot in Summer up there: the dog teams are out exercising and training in the sand and on the beaches just as though they were the snows of winter.....
A day or so later we were on a tour bus out of Fairbanks, headed south down towards Denali National Park, site of famed Mt. McKinley – North America's tallest peak. Only no one in Alaska knows it by that name at all: they just call it "Denali" after some Indian name for the "magnificient one" or somesuch... This is very wild and remote up here... we saw several Grizzlies with their cubs crossing the road at various times. (Not my first: as a long ago kid on Summer trips to Yellowstone, I had, with my parents, seen "Griz" before – but they are always an awesome sight!) The "humped" bear of the oldtimers' reports and the (dreaded) "white bear" of Lewis and Clark's journals and those of other Mountainmen.... And this is the one and only time I have ever seen Mountain Sheep (Dall's) in the wild: we passed a low denuded hill once and there they stood just a span or so away from the bus – their miniscule, circling trails going up the knob in a gentle spiral it seemed...
I don't really remember Anchorage too much – it was a larger place. We did see the obligatory spot where the Iditarod Dog Race begins every winter. And I think it was here we were all given an option for special sidetrips by plane to other distant Alaska sites: One was Pt. Barrow, the furthest north point in Alaska way up in the Barrens. Many opt for this trip, but we decided on a different junket: to fly first to Nome, and then on to Kotzebue Sound and an Inuit Village. Soon we were winging our way in a small bush-piloted plane toward Nome.
Now we need some oldtime Alaska music and tall tales here to set the stage properly for what follows, so I suggest you click here to get you in the right mood...
North To Alaska Nome is truly right out of the movies if you will! No real roads lead either in or out – or go anywhere if they do (One reason the State Prison there looks like a hotel: it has no fence you see, because if you were to escape there are only thousands of miles of permafrost, grizzlies and other impediments yet between you and freedom! LOL!) The streets were unpaved and many of the buildings sat askew where heaving and permafrost had tossed them off their foundations. The bus pulled up at the Golden Nugget Inn – which has to be seen to be believed! In fact, you can see it here Click for Pix along with other Alaska shots. I am sorry to have to use others' websites to illustrate my own story, but my own picture files are not currently available – and if I ever want to get these "Chronicles" up and posted, I got to do it while I'm still alive, and I am beginning to abandon hope I will ever get to my own plunder in storage again this side of the Jordan...! Someday, if I do, I shall post my own pictures here instead of these. Now I see that the one illustration of the Golden Nugget states that some of it was "...flown in pre-fabricated" by an airline or somesuch. Now that's as may be, but other sites note it is still the original hotel that was here in the beginning, or parts of it, and on the site of the earliest activities in Nome... Perhaps you can understand this a bit better when I describe our arrival.... I had to "go" something fierce, so while Mill was organizing our luggage with the driver in the crowd outside, I stepped on into the lobby and up to the desk. I was somewhat taken aback by the fact the desk clerk was a young woman, and she was working in only a negligee' or very loose shift of some kind... (but this was Alaska and I was beginning to understand...). "Pardon me, Maa'm," I said, "and could you tell me where the restrooms are?" She glanced up sort of disdainfully at me and said, "Mister, real men here go on the side of the building out in back," and turned again to her work. I damn near fell over – but time was of the essence and so I stepped through a side door and sort of ran down the side of the building. Sure enough at the corner of the building, was a big damp spot in the dirt with lots of rank weeds, and the yellowish gold paint of the Golden Nugget had a rather more golden hue part way up the buildings' side.... Back in the lobby, I met Mill coming in with the luggage and sort of paused to look around. It sure enough looked like a saloon and trappers' lodge of the 1890's sort of all combined, but the one thing that really caught my eye was a huge log or maybe whole trunk of a tree – maybe a couple feet thick – which had been split down the middle and one-half – maybe fifteen feet long or so - had been roughly smoothed off on the split face, and hung overhead on chains from beams in the ceiling. On the flattened face someone had lettered in, and then chiseled out, the following inscription. (I must again paraphrase, Dear Reader, as I do not have the exact translation at hand, but it went substantially like this): "In 1923, a hurricane roared in off Norton Sound and the Ocean and devastated Nome. The water was several feet deep in the downtown streets and damage everywhere. Many coffins had floated out of their shallow graves in the permafrost, and had come to rest all over town. One such having been deposited almost at the cabin doorstep of one old Sourdough Miner – who had actually been part of the great 1898 Gold Rush of the time. It is said that when the skies had cleared next day, he opened his door and stepped forth. Seeing the coffin on his doorstep, he reached down and threw back the lid. It contained the body of one "Rosie" – a dancehall gal of the '98 Rush – who had died back during same many years before. The old Sourdough is said to have gazed fondly on her remains, then uttered out loud, " Rosie! By Dang! Rosie, old gal, you are STILL THE BEST-LOOKING GAL IN ALL OF NOME!" " This anecdote is held by all the locals to be based on fact - but doubtless some in the Interior still believe the story about Sam McGee's cremation, too, I suppose... I think, Gentle Reader, since one could salt-and-pepper his copy forever here in this particular subject matter with Robert Service poems and quotes, that you should 'take a break' right now and read his classic about what happened that night on the shores of Lake LeBarge... then we will have that out of our system, and I will promise to invoke the Boreal Bard no more – and we may be on about our business.... The Golden Nugget was a sketch! LOL! You ate with guests, hardhats, employees, Inuits, and just about anyone who happened to be around elbow-to-elbow in a common dining room. The meals were stupendous and very well-cooked. Waitresses plopped down huge platters before you and everyone just tucked in. There were giant (fresh!) halibut steaks, salmon steaks, potatoes, cabbage, coffee in gallons, buttermilk, sourdough bread – and everyone ate like there was no tomorrow. Every meal was like this and the servings were absolutely huge. I tell you, even the Texans of my upbringing, could learn about extravagance and upstaging from the Alaskans...! Being summer, the sun never set and it was light all night long (shades of Norway and Russia!). To sleep, we took to hanging oilskin slickers over the windows to dim out the light. These slickers, by the way, hung in rows on pegs beside every door to the outside. This is common up there. The local habit is just to slip into any slicker handy if the weather is inclement before you go out - and doff same on entering – hanging it back up for the next guy... There were many drunken Inuit in the nightime streets and they continually implored you to buy carved walrus and other ivory objects from them. By day, I walked down the Main Street, and as I passed an otherwise innocuous looking bar, I noticed a brass historic marker mounted on the wall. I bent over and looked at it and it recorded the fact that "On this spot, Wyatt Earp started the first Saloon in Nome." This was the famous Dexter Saloon, which he ran for some years in concert with a partner - they billing it as "Alaska's Only Second-Class Saloon." Now this is a desideratum about America's most famous gunslinger and lawman that many of you likely never knew – but I knew it – because you see (another even lesser known desideratum) – I am actually a grand nephew (by marriage) of the famous Mr. Earp! 'S God's Truth, 'tis! My Aunt Gertie McDermott being as near as I can determine, the probable daughter, perhaps out-of wedlock (?), of Virgil Earp's Marriage Merry Go Rounds - one of Wyatt's brothers. This is all family lore which you may have picked up earlier at Chapter 6: Rocky Mountain Interlude (see para. #27), to which I have devoted an ungodly amount of jackleg genealogical time to "research" in times past, etc. But anyhow, when I saw the marker, it all came back in a flash, so I stepped into the bar. As best I recall now, it was very long and deep, and frankly still looked like it was keeping its crown as leading second-class saloon for our most northern state...! (A little music here, Professor, please - for my drinking buddies fresh in from the digggin's, dog-tired and thirsty... You usually must give two clicks on the "Start" button to initiate play...) Harlem Rag - 1899 For the whole building seemed not more than 15 feet wide, and down one side ran an immensely long stand-up bar which disappeared into a gloomy recess in the rear. The barkeep came up and asked what it would be. I kinda grinned and said , "You never gonna believe this but...", and related my disclosure. Didn't phase the guy at all! He reached over, shook my hand, and said "It's on the house!," and set me up with a shot and a beer! A couple barflys nearby sort of grinned and waved – but didn't get up or come over. I tossed it off, thanked the barkeep, and left. Not every day you are treated like visiting royalty, you know! The next day we wandered over to the beach down behind the hotel. The famous beach which was the site of the great gold strike of '98. They still find gold here and in this summer season there were quite a few hopefuls who had set up rocker-washers and tents right out on the sand and were busy "washing" away. I spoke with one – a geology professor from somewhere back in the "Lower 48", and he said he came here every summer and that he could make several hundred dollars a week just working and reworking all the sand that had been worked before... "Silver Comes in Veins and Dikes, But Gold Is Where You Find It!" ....Old Miner's Maxim Just offshore – almost wading distance – were large "gold barges" or dredges working the offshore sands... The "mystifying" deposit of gold in these marine sands has long puzzled geologists – and certainly underscores the old Miners' Maxim above...! That the gold derives from somewhere else and has been alluvially-transported seems established – but nothing else much fits the picture. Active, exposed sea beaches are just all "wrong" to have caught and held such deposits as this – and indeed, the "strike" was entirely fortuitous when it was made. It set off one of the biggest gold stampedes in modern times: gold seekers poured into Nome – from as far away as Australia, among other places. Gold seekers from the States shipped aboard clippers, coastal schooners – indeed anything that could float from San Francisco to Seattle. It is said that often when the ships reached Nome, they just sailed right up onto the beach and the crews abandoned them on the spot and fell to digging in the sand (!) and staking claims at once! The beachfront became choked with abandoned vessels and was a "forest of masts" as far as you could see... Another remarkable fact seems to be that the "diggings" never really "play out" – there is always "more" gold being found and reported. Another nutty fact about the place is that during WWII, the U.S. Government, jittery over the notion that the Japs might try to "land" here, assigned the Corps of Engineers to put up some kind of suitable deterrent. This turned out to be thousands of tons of giant boulders and rocks of all sizes which they dumped on the beach in a great windrow, covering much of the "prime diggings!" Your goldseeker being what he is, was little deterred. With the return of peace, they have continued to "mine" around, under, and over and through the boulder impediment and all in all – it is a testimonial to the "lure of gold" and what it does to men's minds! And speaking of WWII, let us just note in passing Nome is birthplace of no less than Col. Jimmy Doolittle – he of "30 seconds over Tokyo fame" and general aircraft visionary for years before the conflict! 'Ray! And once we drove a short ways out of town with a guide who gave us a little lecture on "permafrost" out on the tundra, being unable to dig down more than a few inches even though it was summer. On the way back, we passed a funeral home and he pointed out back where the the coffins were stacked five or six high, and when I asked, he explained, "Those are people who died during last winter and since you can't bury in winter around here for the permafrost, they are waiting till the ground thaws a bit more so they can get them all underground at last!" The next day we flew up to Kotzebue and a real Inuit Village. Our small plane landed there and taxied into the only hanger-terminal. We were driven out to the Village and the first thing I saw was about a half-dozen small Eskimo children wading and splashing bare-legged in the water! They showed no concern at all for its temperature that was likely not too far above freezing... Later we walked down to the beach , and I took off my shoe and dipped my bare toe into the actual waters of Beringia – so named for the Bering Straits only a short distance southwest of here – and the famous "land bridge" over which the first human populations are thought to have entered the New World. You can understand (as ouir guide did not!) how my "toe-dipping" was for an archaeologist kinda like those devout folks who have to wade in the Jordan or swim in the Red Sea when they pop up on their travel itineraries... Sigh... They had a regular tour set up for us to meet some of the Inuit and one highlight was a large tent with long benches around the sides, and on the benches were examples of the innumerable tools and artifacts – ancient and modern – used by the Inuit and their ancestors. A young Inuit boy who spoke halting English was making heavy weather of explaining it all – and suddenly it began coming back to me from my mistaken Introductory Course in college long ago (check the opening paragraph) – and I began filling-in the gaps for the crowd – identifying leisters, grails, ice scratchers for submerged seals, and ulus (the woman's knife), umiaks (the woman's boat) and other stuff. My fellow tourists looked at me like I had two heads! LOL... (Listen about those ulus: I have a beautiful fragment of a ground siltstone one from a deep-sounding at my Sasqua Hill Site (see Item 10) in far-off coastal Connecticut! How so, you say? Simple: the ancestral boreal cultures from which the modern Inuit derive, during Late Glacial times were much more widely spread across the North American Continent and southwards even into New England and similar domains. Hence, the finds of "Eskimoid" artifacts from time to time in those unlikely places...). As we were emplaning once again, I happened to remember that I had been carrying around with me on this trip, a sealed envelope containing our mortgage payment for an installment due back home. And this was the day it had to be mailed and as we went through the door I was saying same to Millie – and a nice young Eskimo standing there said, "Pardon me, if you would like I will mail this for you!" I said, "What? There is a post office here?" He said, "Yes – but it is a ways down from here. I will take it." I either had postage on it – or gave him change – whatever - and off it went. As it turned out, it was ultimately received back in the "Lower 48", and on time, and no problem. I just hope that some curious Mail Room clerk may have idly noted the postmark and even more idly wondered where "Kotzebue" was and looked it up – to find the firm's customer was apparently residing now with the Eskimos 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle! LOL! I can't remember just where, but somewhere we then boarded a train with those "scenic dome" tops in the cars, where you sit and look out kind of like a turret gunner in a WWII Flying Fortress! LOL! This way you can view the spectacular mountains and waterfalls and forests and rivers as the train speeds along. Lonely little shacks and cabins, and not a few rather nice ones as well, dotted the landscape here and there: I remember one in particular that has a name – a named town – but there is only the one house there with a nice big lawn that came right down to the track. The train slows at that point and mail sacks are exchanged from a mailbag semaphore there without ever stopping. The conductor told us that only a man and his wife live there – and he is the duly registered "mayor" of the town! Finally we reached Anchorage, and there we boarded our cruise ship. Glacier Bay, Oosiks, and Points South From Anchorage, we sailed south down to Glacier Bay and the famous Inside Passage. You never forget your first real, true-to-life Glaciers! Great walls of ice surrounded us – all blue-green and black and vari-hued – not just glistening bone-white like many pictures seem to show. Seals and walruses floated at leisure on broken chunks below us as we steamed by. Now and then the Glaciers would "calve": great masses of ice high as a ten story building would suddenly let go and crash with a thunderous sound and outspreading "tidal wave" into the ocean at their base – and you could see the wave front as it passed by and the ship purposefully kept its distance... It was the first night of the cruise, and we had formed a little "group" of folks all around the same age and traveling more or less the same trip, so after dinner it was to be an impromptu performance night, and everyone was supposed to come prepared to sing Karoke or recite a poem or tell a little tale or two or whatever in sort of a "Ships' Amateur Hour." I had the perfect thing! For back at Nome, I had picked up a a free copy of "Ode to an Oosik" on some gift shop counter or wherever, and so I decided to read it to the assembled multitude! First, I must explain a rather delicate matter! (Please!) The walrus, you see, is one of very few mammals in this world to have a....(Sigh!)... penis bone, or "oosik" as the Inuit know it. (One other familiar animal also so endowed.. Procyon lotor – our common racoon. I elsewhere have a necklace, no less, of racoon penis bones – erstwhile "big medicine" among the Mountain Man fraternity of my bygone days, and reclaimed by me from the many racoons I once skinned (all road kills, btw, in case any PETA types have strayed into these ever deepening waters here...). But walrus "oosiks" are sometimes in excess of 18 inches or more in length, and very, very popular with tourists. (No, I did not buy one. But I'll tell you an even funnier anecdote, if I may further interrupt myself here: years later Mill needed some psychological counseling as her health was rapidly deteriorating. So we went to a psychiatrist in Miami, where we now lived. This guy had traveled all over and his offices were like museums full of stuff from all his trips. Doubtless, they also stimulated his patients to "talk" freely perhaps – What I know anyhow? The first day we walked in, I spotted a big Oosik lying on his desk. I said, "Where'd ya get the Oosik?" Guy's eyes bulged! "How did you know what that was?" "I been around, I been around." LOL! From that day till the end, he always treated me like I was the patient there instead of Mill...LOL!) Well, anyhow, I can't say I was the hit of the evening back in Glacier Bay – there were a few stifled gasps – the Fire Chief from Cincinnati's wife really considered it "most inapporpriate" – but the Chief just winked at me (and a guffaw or two from the rear) but "Ode to an Oosik" definitely registered: Ode To An Oosik Strange things have been done in the Midnight Sun, and the story books are full--- But the strangest tale concerns the male, magnificent walrus bull! I know it's rude, quite common and crude, Perhaps it is grossly unkind; But with first glance at least, this bewhiskered beast, is as ugly in front as behind. Look once again, take a second look -- then you'll see he's not ugly or vile -- There's a hint of a grin, in that blubbery chin -- and the eyes have a shy secret smile. How can this be, this clandestine glee that exudes from the walrus like music? He knows, there inside, beneath blubber and hide lies a splendid contrivance -- the Oosik! "Oosik" you say -- and quite well you may, I'll explain if you keep it between us; In the simplest truth, though rather uncouth "Oosik" is, in fact, his penis! Now the size alone of this walrus bone, would indeed arouse envious thinking -- It is also a fact, documented and backed, There is never a softening or shrinking! This, then, is why the smile is so sly, the walrus is rightfully proud. Though the climate is frigid, the walrus is rigid, Pray, why, is not man so endowed? Added to this, is a smile you might miss --- Though the bull is entitled to bow -- The one to out-smile our bull by a mile is the satisfied walrus cow! (Anonymous) Next morning we docked at Skagway. Scene of yet other Gold Rush Days Melodramas and Derring Do. The harbor is very long and narrow and the ship goes right up to the end where Skagway – also long and narrow along its main Street - lies between mountainous ridges. This was the town held in thrall by "Soapy" Smith, the ex-Colorado outlaw and scammer who ruled the roost around here for a bit. (Like me, a Denver denizen, but hopefully no readers here will see any further likenesses between the two of us...! LOL!) There is a museum to his memory here. Lots of tourist shops and so on, but by far and hands down the best treat is a trip out to Liarsville,a onetime goldrush town.... More coming here as I can find time to post it! Back To Contents Page (Click Here) Contact Bernie
Nome is truly right out of the movies if you will! No real roads lead either in or out – or go anywhere if they do (One reason the State Prison there looks like a hotel: it has no fence you see, because if you were to escape there are only thousands of miles of permafrost, grizzlies and other impediments yet between you and freedom! LOL!)
The streets were unpaved and many of the buildings sat askew where heaving and permafrost had tossed them off their foundations. The bus pulled up at the Golden Nugget Inn – which has to be seen to be believed! In fact, you can see it here Click for Pix along with other Alaska shots. I am sorry to have to use others' websites to illustrate my own story, but my own picture files are not currently available – and if I ever want to get these "Chronicles" up and posted, I got to do it while I'm still alive, and I am beginning to abandon hope I will ever get to my own plunder in storage again this side of the Jordan...! Someday, if I do, I shall post my own pictures here instead of these. Now I see that the one illustration of the Golden Nugget states that some of it was "...flown in pre-fabricated" by an airline or somesuch. Now that's as may be, but other sites note it is still the original hotel that was here in the beginning, or parts of it, and on the site of the earliest activities in Nome...
Perhaps you can understand this a bit better when I describe our arrival....
I had to "go" something fierce, so while Mill was organizing our luggage with the driver in the crowd outside, I stepped on into the lobby and up to the desk. I was somewhat taken aback by the fact the desk clerk was a young woman, and she was working in only a negligee' or very loose shift of some kind... (but this was Alaska and I was beginning to understand...).
"Pardon me, Maa'm," I said, "and could you tell me where the restrooms are?"
She glanced up sort of disdainfully at me and said, "Mister, real men here go on the side of the building out in back," and turned again to her work.
I damn near fell over – but time was of the essence and so I stepped through a side door and sort of ran down the side of the building. Sure enough at the corner of the building, was a big damp spot in the dirt with lots of rank weeds, and the yellowish gold paint of the Golden Nugget had a rather more golden hue part way up the buildings' side....
Back in the lobby, I met Mill coming in with the luggage and sort of paused to look around. It sure enough looked like a saloon and trappers' lodge of the 1890's sort of all combined, but the one thing that really caught my eye was a huge log or maybe whole trunk of a tree – maybe a couple feet thick – which had been split down the middle and one-half – maybe fifteen feet long or so - had been roughly smoothed off on the split face, and hung overhead on chains from beams in the ceiling. On the flattened face someone had lettered in, and then chiseled out, the following inscription. (I must again paraphrase, Dear Reader, as I do not have the exact translation at hand, but it went substantially like this):
This anecdote is held by all the locals to be based on fact - but doubtless some in the Interior still believe the story about Sam McGee's cremation, too, I suppose... I think, Gentle Reader, since one could salt-and-pepper his copy forever here in this particular subject matter with Robert Service poems and quotes, that you should 'take a break' right now and read his classic about what happened that night on the shores of Lake LeBarge... then we will have that out of our system, and I will promise to invoke the Boreal Bard no more – and we may be on about our business....
The Golden Nugget was a sketch! LOL! You ate with guests, hardhats, employees, Inuits, and just about anyone who happened to be around elbow-to-elbow in a common dining room. The meals were stupendous and very well-cooked. Waitresses plopped down huge platters before you and everyone just tucked in. There were giant (fresh!) halibut steaks, salmon steaks, potatoes, cabbage, coffee in gallons, buttermilk, sourdough bread – and everyone ate like there was no tomorrow. Every meal was like this and the servings were absolutely huge. I tell you, even the Texans of my upbringing, could learn about extravagance and upstaging from the Alaskans...!
Being summer, the sun never set and it was light all night long (shades of Norway and Russia!). To sleep, we took to hanging oilskin slickers over the windows to dim out the light. These slickers, by the way, hung in rows on pegs beside every door to the outside. This is common up there. The local habit is just to slip into any slicker handy if the weather is inclement before you go out - and doff same on entering – hanging it back up for the next guy...
There were many drunken Inuit in the nightime streets and they continually implored you to buy carved walrus and other ivory objects from them. By day, I walked down the Main Street, and as I passed an otherwise innocuous looking bar, I noticed a brass historic marker mounted on the wall. I bent over and looked at it and it recorded the fact that "On this spot, Wyatt Earp started the first Saloon in Nome." This was the famous Dexter Saloon, which he ran for some years in concert with a partner - they billing it as "Alaska's Only Second-Class Saloon." Now this is a desideratum about America's most famous gunslinger and lawman that many of you likely never knew – but I knew it – because you see (another even lesser known desideratum) – I am actually a grand nephew (by marriage) of the famous Mr. Earp! 'S God's Truth, 'tis! My Aunt Gertie McDermott being as near as I can determine, the probable daughter, perhaps out-of wedlock (?), of Virgil Earp's Marriage Merry Go Rounds - one of Wyatt's brothers. This is all family lore which you may have picked up earlier at Chapter 6: Rocky Mountain Interlude (see para. #27), to which I have devoted an ungodly amount of jackleg genealogical time to "research" in times past, etc. But anyhow, when I saw the marker, it all came back in a flash, so I stepped into the bar. As best I recall now, it was very long and deep, and frankly still looked like it was keeping its crown as leading second-class saloon for our most northern state...!
(A little music here, Professor, please - for my drinking buddies fresh in from the digggin's, dog-tired and thirsty... You usually must give two clicks on the "Start" button to initiate play...)
For the whole building seemed not more than 15 feet wide, and down one side ran an immensely long stand-up bar which disappeared into a gloomy recess in the rear. The barkeep came up and asked what it would be. I kinda grinned and said , "You never gonna believe this but...", and related my disclosure.
Didn't phase the guy at all! He reached over, shook my hand, and said "It's on the house!," and set me up with a shot and a beer! A couple barflys nearby sort of grinned and waved – but didn't get up or come over. I tossed it off, thanked the barkeep, and left. Not every day you are treated like visiting royalty, you know!
The next day we wandered over to the beach down behind the hotel. The famous beach which was the site of the great gold strike of '98. They still find gold here and in this summer season there were quite a few hopefuls who had set up rocker-washers and tents right out on the sand and were busy "washing" away. I spoke with one – a geology professor from somewhere back in the "Lower 48", and he said he came here every summer and that he could make several hundred dollars a week just working and reworking all the sand that had been worked before...
Just offshore – almost wading distance – were large "gold barges" or dredges working the offshore sands... The "mystifying" deposit of gold in these marine sands has long puzzled geologists – and certainly underscores the old Miners' Maxim above...! That the gold derives from somewhere else and has been alluvially-transported seems established – but nothing else much fits the picture. Active, exposed sea beaches are just all "wrong" to have caught and held such deposits as this – and indeed, the "strike" was entirely fortuitous when it was made. It set off one of the biggest gold stampedes in modern times: gold seekers poured into Nome – from as far away as Australia, among other places. Gold seekers from the States shipped aboard clippers, coastal schooners – indeed anything that could float from San Francisco to Seattle. It is said that often when the ships reached Nome, they just sailed right up onto the beach and the crews abandoned them on the spot and fell to digging in the sand (!) and staking claims at once! The beachfront became choked with abandoned vessels and was a "forest of masts" as far as you could see...
Another remarkable fact seems to be that the "diggings" never really "play out" – there is always "more" gold being found and reported. Another nutty fact about the place is that during WWII, the U.S. Government, jittery over the notion that the Japs might try to "land" here, assigned the Corps of Engineers to put up some kind of suitable deterrent. This turned out to be thousands of tons of giant boulders and rocks of all sizes which they dumped on the beach in a great windrow, covering much of the "prime diggings!" Your goldseeker being what he is, was little deterred. With the return of peace, they have continued to "mine" around, under, and over and through the boulder impediment and all in all – it is a testimonial to the "lure of gold" and what it does to men's minds! And speaking of WWII, let us just note in passing Nome is birthplace of no less than Col. Jimmy Doolittle – he of "30 seconds over Tokyo fame" and general aircraft visionary for years before the conflict! 'Ray!
And once we drove a short ways out of town with a guide who gave us a little lecture on "permafrost" out on the tundra, being unable to dig down more than a few inches even though it was summer. On the way back, we passed a funeral home and he pointed out back where the the coffins were stacked five or six high, and when I asked, he explained, "Those are people who died during last winter and since you can't bury in winter around here for the permafrost, they are waiting till the ground thaws a bit more so they can get them all underground at last!"
The next day we flew up to Kotzebue and a real Inuit Village. Our small plane landed there and taxied into the only hanger-terminal. We were driven out to the Village and the first thing I saw was about a half-dozen small Eskimo children wading and splashing bare-legged in the water! They showed no concern at all for its temperature that was likely not too far above freezing... Later we walked down to the beach , and I took off my shoe and dipped my bare toe into the actual waters of Beringia – so named for the Bering Straits only a short distance southwest of here – and the famous "land bridge" over which the first human populations are thought to have entered the New World. You can understand (as ouir guide did not!) how my "toe-dipping" was for an archaeologist kinda like those devout folks who have to wade in the Jordan or swim in the Red Sea when they pop up on their travel itineraries...
Sigh...
They had a regular tour set up for us to meet some of the Inuit and one highlight was a large tent with long benches around the sides, and on the benches were examples of the innumerable tools and artifacts – ancient and modern – used by the Inuit and their ancestors. A young Inuit boy who spoke halting English was making heavy weather of explaining it all – and suddenly it began coming back to me from my mistaken Introductory Course in college long ago (check the opening paragraph) – and I began filling-in the gaps for the crowd – identifying leisters, grails, ice scratchers for submerged seals, and ulus (the woman's knife), umiaks (the woman's boat) and other stuff. My fellow tourists looked at me like I had two heads! LOL...
(Listen about those ulus: I have a beautiful fragment of a ground siltstone one from a deep-sounding at my Sasqua Hill Site (see Item 10) in far-off coastal Connecticut! How so, you say? Simple: the ancestral boreal cultures from which the modern Inuit derive, during Late Glacial times were much more widely spread across the North American Continent and southwards even into New England and similar domains. Hence, the finds of "Eskimoid" artifacts from time to time in those unlikely places...).
As we were emplaning once again, I happened to remember that I had been carrying around with me on this trip, a sealed envelope containing our mortgage payment for an installment due back home. And this was the day it had to be mailed and as we went through the door I was saying same to Millie – and a nice young Eskimo standing there said, "Pardon me, if you would like I will mail this for you!" I said, "What? There is a post office here?" He said, "Yes – but it is a ways down from here. I will take it." I either had postage on it – or gave him change – whatever - and off it went. As it turned out, it was ultimately received back in the "Lower 48", and on time, and no problem. I just hope that some curious Mail Room clerk may have idly noted the postmark and even more idly wondered where "Kotzebue" was and looked it up – to find the firm's customer was apparently residing now with the Eskimos 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle! LOL!
I can't remember just where, but somewhere we then boarded a train with those "scenic dome" tops in the cars, where you sit and look out kind of like a turret gunner in a WWII Flying Fortress! LOL! This way you can view the spectacular mountains and waterfalls and forests and rivers as the train speeds along. Lonely little shacks and cabins, and not a few rather nice ones as well, dotted the landscape here and there: I remember one in particular that has a name – a named town – but there is only the one house there with a nice big lawn that came right down to the track. The train slows at that point and mail sacks are exchanged from a mailbag semaphore there without ever stopping. The conductor told us that only a man and his wife live there – and he is the duly registered "mayor" of the town!
Finally we reached Anchorage, and there we boarded our cruise ship.
From Anchorage, we sailed south down to Glacier Bay and the famous Inside Passage. You never forget your first real, true-to-life Glaciers! Great walls of ice surrounded us – all blue-green and black and vari-hued – not just glistening bone-white like many pictures seem to show. Seals and walruses floated at leisure on broken chunks below us as we steamed by. Now and then the Glaciers would "calve": great masses of ice high as a ten story building would suddenly let go and crash with a thunderous sound and outspreading "tidal wave" into the ocean at their base – and you could see the wave front as it passed by and the ship purposefully kept its distance...
It was the first night of the cruise, and we had formed a little "group" of folks all around the same age and traveling more or less the same trip, so after dinner it was to be an impromptu performance night, and everyone was supposed to come prepared to sing Karoke or recite a poem or tell a little tale or two or whatever in sort of a "Ships' Amateur Hour."
I had the perfect thing! For back at Nome, I had picked up a a free copy of "Ode to an Oosik" on some gift shop counter or wherever, and so I decided to read it to the assembled multitude! First, I must explain a rather delicate matter! (Please!) The walrus, you see, is one of very few mammals in this world to have a....(Sigh!)... penis bone, or "oosik" as the Inuit know it. (One other familiar animal also so endowed.. Procyon lotor – our common racoon. I elsewhere have a necklace, no less, of racoon penis bones – erstwhile "big medicine" among the Mountain Man fraternity of my bygone days, and reclaimed by me from the many racoons I once skinned (all road kills, btw, in case any PETA types have strayed into these ever deepening waters here...). But walrus "oosiks" are sometimes in excess of 18 inches or more in length, and very, very popular with tourists. (No, I did not buy one. But I'll tell you an even funnier anecdote, if I may further interrupt myself here: years later Mill needed some psychological counseling as her health was rapidly deteriorating. So we went to a psychiatrist in Miami, where we now lived. This guy had traveled all over and his offices were like museums full of stuff from all his trips. Doubtless, they also stimulated his patients to "talk" freely perhaps – What I know anyhow?
The first day we walked in, I spotted a big Oosik lying on his desk.
I said, "Where'd ya get the Oosik?"
Guy's eyes bulged!
"How did you know what that was?"
"I been around, I been around."
LOL!
From that day till the end, he always treated me like I was the patient there instead of Mill...LOL!)
Well, anyhow, I can't say I was the hit of the evening back in Glacier Bay – there were a few stifled gasps – the Fire Chief from Cincinnati's wife really considered it "most inapporpriate" – but the Chief just winked at me (and a guffaw or two from the rear) but "Ode to an Oosik" definitely registered:
Next morning we docked at Skagway. Scene of yet other Gold Rush Days Melodramas and Derring Do. The harbor is very long and narrow and the ship goes right up to the end where Skagway – also long and narrow along its main Street - lies between mountainous ridges. This was the town held in thrall by "Soapy" Smith, the ex-Colorado outlaw and scammer who ruled the roost around here for a bit. (Like me, a Denver denizen, but hopefully no readers here will see any further likenesses between the two of us...! LOL!) There is a museum to his memory here. Lots of tourist shops and so on, but by far and hands down the best treat is a trip out to Liarsville,a onetime goldrush town.... More coming here as I can find time to post it!
