LIARSVILLE is but a short run out of Skagway and is the site of an old mining camp, one of the first on the arduous road up and over the mountains to the goldfields of British Columbia. Hordes of foreigners and Americans passed through here and on up and over the infamous Chilkoot Pass this picture of whose infamous "Golden Stairs" used to grace the American history books of yore (my day, anyhow), along with those of Deadhorse Gulch and the like to, in effect, "invade" BC. (Being met in turn by the dauntless Royal Mounted Police who "trooped the colors" in a show of strength, but ultimately let the unstoppable goldseekers in – provided they would each, in turn, carry in a set tonnage of gear, food, tools and so on to use in their seeking.)

These were the days of Skookum Jim, Sam Mcgee (whom we met – pardon! – cremated earlier) and other such characters as Service immortalized in his tales (Now see – there! – I've gone and mentioned him again, and I had promised not to!). I guess this then is a fitting intro to...Liarsville!

'Tis said that it got it's name back during the "rush" when tenderfoot newspaper reporters, eager to post stories back home about the "doin's" would make it all the way to this first "base" camp where they would meet a strange melange of outgoing propsectors, returning prospectors and an assortment of bunko artists, madams and their "girls" and just about every kind of footloose wanderer there is. But when the ones who had been out to the Klondike fields told of the hardships, and hunger, and toil, and death on the trail and all – the "newsies" blanched somewhat and took to hanging around the saloons and filing greatly elaborated accounts of what they had heard and forwent the arduous climb up and over the mountains to the fields! LOL!

One such saloon being the Red Onion. While I was standing at the bar that time, I noticed a row of mason jars all along the back of the shelf behind the barkeep – and down from the ceiling and terminating in the opening of each jar, was a metal pipe. Further, each jar had a girl's name on it: Flo, Fanny, and other similar names beloved of the Flora-Dora era... I asked the barkeep what it all meant.

"Well," he said, "during the 'Rush', this saloon also had a brothel upstairs. Each gal had a room, and beside each bed coming up through the floor was the other end of the pipe. As they finished "tricks" upstairs, the customer would drop his coins into the pipe and they slid down and collected – noisily – in the respective jars. The jingle served to alert the bartender that whichever girl was at the other end of the pipe was "all clear" again, and he was free to dispatch the next hopeful up the stairs..."

Sigh.

I think it was here at Liarsville, also, that we panned a bit for gold. I remember it was a mine that was still operating but at a very low level – being mostly "panned out." (This may actually have been at another site – I am not sure now). But what I remember clearly is there was this big, fat Mama that was sitting out front selling tickets you see – and this entitled you to a pan, a minimum of instruction (I considered myself an old hand here because I had panned with my uncle often up Cripple Creek back in Colorado on "busted" trout fishing expeditions in youth, and he had shown me the ropes many years previous). So I saw what the setup here was: they were having you pan their already "washed" and processed "tailings" – not "fresh" alluvium. Your chances of finding anything other than "colors" were about nil, but the deal clearly stated, that anything you found – anything at all! – was yours to keep free and clear.... No one else was much concerned about it, but I got an idea how I could take Big Mama down a notch or two...

Around my neck I wear an actual gold nugget about an inch or so long. Mill and I had exchanged them long before at our wedding, in lieu of rings or anything like that – and each of us wore an identical nugget – on a gold chain - around our necks. (I still wear mine...). The further circumstances are that she had found these I think in a gift shop on the QE-2 just before we married. They are 18-Karat I think – prettty nice, but not as soft as native 14-K, to enhance their wearing properties. They are thus cast from a mold made from an original nugget. They are the real McCoy alright, and you have to look very, very closely at them to see that at one end of each nugget is a tiny "loop" – integrally cast – to permit stringing the nugget on a chain.

So a bunch of us were all busy panning away in this sluice they had set up to "rework" their "tailings" and when no one was looking, I slipped my nugget from off my neck and dropped it into my pan. I kept on washing back-and-forth and tipping the muddy water and grit over the lip of the pan and as it got lower and lower and more and more concentrated in the pan, the shine of the nugget became apparent. So I got the attention of some guy next to me – a tourist from Iowa or something – and said "Say, buddy – is this the kind of thing we are supposed to be looking for or what?" – and with that I tipped my pan so he could see the nugget lying in the dirty water and he said, "Damn! I don't really know, I never did this before, but that looks real important! I think you should tell them about it!"

So with him in tow, the two of us walked back out to the Fat Lady's booth and I said (in my best Joe Tourist naive tone of voice), "Pardon me, Maa'm – but this showed up in my pan – and I was wondering if it might be anything worthwhile...?" She sort of disdainfully looked down into my pan from her booth – and I swear I thought she was going to have a stroke! She gagged and wheezed and coughed a bit and then gasped out "WHERE did you find that??? " And immediately and authoritatively: "You are not permitted to 'wash' anything back there but the materials in the sluice...". Joe Iowa chirped right up, "Oh, I was there, Mizz, and he was washing right there. Right with all the rest of us..."

Well, I tell you we had some fun with that! Of course, Big Mama wanted to handle the "find" and "show it to her boss" and all (she just knew it was somehow "theirs" and should never be let go with any old tourist...LOL...) but I was not about to let it out of my hands...you can bet on that! So eventually, I pulled my chain out of my pocket and restrung the nugget and hung it around my neck once more. Her eyes popped anew. Then I showed her the loop up close and looked her right in the eye and said, "I never knew nuggets came with loops for stringing them already in place..." and sauntered back into the mill to find Millie... LOL!

She had meanwhile moved on with a crowd which was now out kneeling at a stream and she was just working away with her pan. And like one or two others, she actually did "make colors" that day: the miners' old term for just the most imperceptible and insignificant tiny flecks of native gold in your pan – but proof positive that there's more where those came from. We recovered these okay, dried them out, and put them in a glassine envelope or something I guess (don't quite recall) – the operators were all set up to accomodate you for "colors"... just not whole eye-popping nuggets! And somewhere further on down the line we purchased a very tiny "model" goldpan – only a couple inches across or so – and it had always been my thought to "mount" her "colors" in said pan when we got back home, and the whole to be got up as a little plaque or something she could hang over her desk...but I am sad to say I never got around to this before she died.. and truth to tell I don't know where pan or colors either are now. Probably packed in my plunder yet in storage I guess...

We sailed on further south down the "Passage," doubling back up at one point to stop at Juneau, the Capital. Highlight here was a helicopter flight up and onto the Mendenhall Glacier. The tour uses small French helicopters (I remember that!) with the glass bubble noses and the pilots zip them aorund and over and finally onto the top of the glacier in a flight that is truly awesome! You see all the crevasses and meltwater phenomena – I remember once rounding a corner of the glacier steep-to, and here was a sub-glacial tube about a foot and half in diameter opening right out into sheer space way up the sheer face of the glacier and out of it shot a solid stream of water like a giant firehouse – out and down, down, down to vanish in mist and spray far below...

The pilot then set us down nice and easy right on the ice and we got out. Very slippery, of course! Mill always had a great fear of falling and stumbling (she in fact, did have several very bad falls during her lifetime) and the minute she felt the ice under her feet she sort of froze up and couldn't walk! There was a small wooden shack – "headquarters" – nearby though, so a number of fellow passengers helped me, and we slid her along over the ice to the shack so she could climb up and in – and there she stayed! LOL! The rest of fell to walking and slipping aorund the glacier and examining the many interesting features. It was very dirty in places – dirt and dust from eons past frozen right down into the ice mass - and as it was summer, there was a lot of meltwater standing around in puddles and pools, and a great many tree leaves were weathering up out of the depths below. That some of these might date back to very ancient times indeed, really captures your imagination and soon we had a lively discussion going on moraines, and kames, and kettle ponds and erratics and all the oddball landforms associated with moving ice.... When it was time to go, we all trooped back to the helicopter by the shack. Many were thirsty, and the guide noted that there was freshwater to drink in the shack. We all went and knocked on the door and Millie answered it. True to form, she had not been idle, and while we were gone she had "organized" the airline group's rather disorganized affairs here – and no one was allowed in to just fill up and drink on his or her own: she made us all get in line outdoors, and then handed out full cups of water to each in turn! Vintage Millie: she was a born organizer and manager! We slid her back over to the helicopter once more and then we enplaned – taking right off over the glacier's edge with a heart-stopping thump above the valley floor far below. Actually there were two 'copters in the party and on the way back the pilots sort of played "tag" back and forth and I felt like I was in an "007" movie, zooming up and around and past all those glacial walls and outcrops...

The next day or so we put-in at Ketchikan, "Salmon Capital of the World," where the houses are on pilings and migrating salmon swim right up main street almost! It is said to be the fourth rainiest city on earth (!) with annual precipitation meansured in feet, not inches. Far and away the biggest attraction for me is that it is the heart of the old Tlingit Empire, and home to one of the grandest collections of totem poles and other examples of the celebrated carving skills of the area's Amerinds.

The poles, many old originals removed from former abandoned villages, cemeteries, and the like, have been assembled in two or three locales, but the best one is known as Saxman Park (see further below). Here you can see the finest examples of the totem pole carver's art, which btw – was indigenous ONLY to these Northwest Coast Amerinds and is incorrect when shown in conjunction with Indians from anywhere else – as say Hollywood style depictions of New England Micmacs or Plains Indian Sioux...! (as, in turn, would be Siouan feathered Coup Bonnets on the heads of the Tlingit!). One of the (many!) derelictions of public American education over many years, is near complete failure to instill in our people any detailed or rational understanding of North American "Indians" at all. The latter-day fantasy-land and romantic musings of liberals, potheads, and "do-gooders" have only compounded the original flaw!

Many years ago, back in Connecticut, and long before I got married, I decided I had to have a totem pole. Rather, I decided I had to make as true-to-life copy of a "real" Pacific Northwest one if I could. Toward this end, I got in touch with an anthropologist up that way, and she kindly furnished me with a nice color slide of the "Chief Tongass Totem Pole" in Saxman Park. The "Chief Tongass" pole can be seen, only in part, in the third photo from the top on the righthand side here.... However, getting a suitable model was only half the story: it was now necessary to secure a pole from which I could carve my masterpiece...

The closest thing to a Northwest Coast cedar I could come up with in latter-day coastal Connecticut was a... Connecticut Light and Power Company "telephone pole" – and that was not too close – but it would have to do! To this end, I took to haunting scenes of horrific car crashes in hopes that I might make off with any knocked-down utility poles – but the line companies soon disabused me of that: "They ain't up for grabs, buddy! They belong to the "company!" Fahgeddabouhtit..."

Somewhat dismayed, but by no means despondent, I next enlisted the help of my onetime buddy, Chuck Rhine, in this venture. Some of you will have met Chuck earlier as the 'Artful Dodger", perhaps, where we learned of how he solved his (temporary) wardrobe problems one long ago winter... As is said, "A handy guy at a picnic," was Chuck Rhine – and the chance to spirit something as large as a utility pole out from under the noses of its would-be keepers was just the kind of challenge that appealed to him. About that time, another fortuitous circumstance befell the community: the advent of the property seizures and largescale right-of-way clearing that attended the building of one of the first Superhighways in the land under then-president Eisenhower... the illustrious I-95, later to run all the way from Maine to Florida down our East Coast.

For the present however, the bulldozers were at it hard and heavy and the once-beautiful Connecticut countryside took on the look of battle-scarred Europe with abandoned and knocked-down buildings and huge earth piles graded up everywhere. One night, Chuck showed up on my doorstep.

"Found your pole."

That's all he said. He was the ultimate minimalist when it came to language. He had brought his father's big flatbed around, and it sat idling in the driveway. I climbed aboard. Over near where our offices were west of the Mianus River, work crews had been hard at it that day, and they had knocked down a utility pole upon the ground! Turning off the headlights, Chuck swerved off the road into the chaotic landscape and came to a stop alongside the pole. Now memory dims somewhat, but I was fit as a fiddle in those days, and Chuck was, too. He was about a foot shorter than I am – and we were often called "Mutt and Jeff" around the office... But he was a wiry, tough little guy. Still it is amazing to me how working alone and in the dark we did it – because the weight of utility poles plus all the impregnated creosote in them is considerable. (The ability to lift same entire, however, did not abandon me for many more years – as we shall see on another memorable winter night yet far in the future...).

Back at my Pop's place (I was still living at home) I got the pole up on horses in his garage (the car now being relegated to the driveway...). And then I laid out the "Chief Tongass Pole" image in chalk all down the pole and taking up my mallet and carving chisels began to whack away...

Many months.

But at last I had a pretty good facsimile, and now it waited but for some judicious daubs of earthy colors to match the original – and finally it stood upright – out in Pop's backyard garden! And with his indulgence, it stood there many years – weathering and taking on an ever more ancient mien. In time, it followed me in turn to the first and then the second of my own houses. The years rolled away. My first wife deceased. My second wife and I buying our new home up in Redding Ridge – and one day I trailered up my pole from where it had been in my last place – and, busy at the time, did not bother to erect it – but just lay it out in the hedgerow, where I soon forgot about it and the brush grew completely over it, and hid it.

Flash ahead now to this Alaska visit – many additional years into the future. It was the end of a tiring day: we had walked all around the Park, viewing the various poles, and finished up with a ceremonial dance by the Tlingits in their authentic cedar plank communal building, which they testily did not permit me to film – so we will give them no PR in return by showing their otherwise quite attractive structure here. (So there, too!).

And thus, we were sitting late afternoon on the bus stop bench in a very light haze and drizzle that had just set in. I might hasten to add that said bench was chock full of visiting Japanese tourists, all with obligatory cameras slung around their necks (we have met their somewhat "off-putting" kind elsewhere in the "Crater" in Honolulu, some of you may recall: see The Sandwich Isles sub-heading way down in this chapter... Nothing daunted, I just plunked myself down on the bench end and shoved till there was enough room for both of us to sit together. (Presumably compressing some Nipponese travellers in the process at the far end – I never knew).

And thus we sat waiting...

Millie was chatting on about the Tlingit carvers we had also seen that day – still carving out decorative poles and copies of earlier ones for sale to tourists and others (prices ranged up to several thousand dollars a foot...!). Somewhat ruefully she said it would sure be nice if we could get one as a memento of our trip – but they were way too expensive for us.

Idly, I looked up and across the street in the dusky gloom. And there – staring back at me with its several pairs of sightless eyes – was MY totem pole! I couldn't believe it: I had not noticed it before – and here it was – the very one I had copied so faithfully so many years ago and a continent away. It was the original "Chief Tongass" pole in the slide the lady anthropologist had sent me. In a rush it all came back. Millie was still going on aobut how nice it would be to have a pole to take back, etc. etc. – and I turned to her and said, "It's already there, Mill!" She said. "What do you mean?" I said, "I mean, that pole –there – across the street – that pole there is lying out in the woods at home waiting for you when we get back!"

She looked at me like I had three heads! "I'm not kidding", I said. "I once copied that very pole there across the street, and the copy is lying out in the woods at our place back in Connecticut right now." She said, "How can that be?" I said, "Simple! You never knew it when we were moving in, but I had carved this pole years and years before and the day I brought it up to our place, you were busy somewhere else or something, and I just unloaded it in the woods and never thought to mention it again. It's there right now!"

LOL!

And weeks later, when we finally got back – it was there just like I had said, and I got it out and erected it in the sideyard.. a "memento" of our Alaska trip!

True story! (We shall meet this pole yet once more time in a rather bizarre fashion...)

As just a footnote here: since I do not have at hand a full length picture of either the original or the copy, I cannot really meaningfully describe the entire "story" it related, other than to point out that it was a memorial marker put up to this old Tlingit Chief long ago, and it has "totems" of a shark, beaver, and I think a bear (?) on it – plus a depiction of a Tlingit "copper" – a large portable plaque of that very metal which served as a medium of exchange way back when, and other devices – most notably a tiny figure right above the bottom figure, and the tiny figure is being held upside down by the heels. You can just make this out in the online photo I noted above – and this is the clue whereby I knew that this was indeed a photo of the Tongass pole – hence also mine – and the significance of all this you see, is that, when old Chief Tongass died many years ago, one of his associates still owed him an unpaid debt. It was a great dishonor in their culture for someone you were indebted to, to die with your debt yet unpaid to him. In Tongass' case, his heirs (and totem carver) carved this reduced and upside down figure here as sort of an insult to the person still indebted to the Chief, and preserved thus for all to see...

So much for the Totem pole carvers of the Northwest Coast. We were later to see yet another superb collection of same down at Vancouver where our cruise terminated a few days later. An indoor collection at the famous Museum of Anthropology is a "must" for any tourist, and this is complemented in turn, by an outside group of Haida and Kwakiutl poles in Stanley Park.

To cap it all off, we took the hour or so ferry ride down to Victoria the day before we flew back to the East Coast, and we went to the famed Empress Hotel , and had its genuine "English Afternoon Tea" – as the Empress has long been famous for. (The only time in my life I think, that I have ever taken genuine crumpets and scones in the proper (veddy!) way! LOL! It was a beautiful experience, a great ferry trip, and a fittting climax to our entire cruise.