20th Century Woman

What I have done since I last wrote a post:

Had dinner at friends’ houses twice
Had friends over for dinner once
Hung out the wash 5 times
Made breakfast, lunch and dinner almost every day
Saw Much Ado About Nothing in in a tent in Vancouver with daughter and 2 grandchildren
Browsed the Anthropology Museum at the University of British Columbia with daughter and grandchildren
Watered vegetables and flowers and harvested  squash, beans, beets, cucumbers and tomatoes
Drove 2 hour drive to Whidbey Island for family dinner with daughter, son-in-law 5 grandchildren, visiting daughter-in-law, grown grandson and wife and great-grandson and Jerry
Varnished 15 picture frames that Jerry made for my upcoming show, put the pictures in the frames with hanging hardware.
Signed all the pictures for the show and finished 2 of them.
Played Mah Jongg 3 times.  Didn’t win.
Cleaned the rental apartment 3 times after visitors and renters.
Walked the dogs with Jerry every day.
Hung the show with Ingrid and Sharon.
Watched 1 lecture of the Teaching Company course “The Early Middle Ages” every night.

What I have not done: written a post.  But I will soon, I promise.  As soon as the opening of this show is over.

My friend and Mah Jongg buddy Diane started planning the wedding a year ago.  That was when she booked my rental apartment for some of the guests.  Her husband’s daughter was to have a commitment ceremony here on the island with her long time partner.  There is a pretty old church here and a lady minister.  The church and the minister are progressive leaning and theologically liberal; they welcome gay and lesbian unions.  The island’s fundamentalists have gone their separate ways and started their own “chapel” at the Grange.

Lummi Island is a favorite setting for summer weddings.  The weather is almost always good in August, cool and sunny, and the scenery is stunning. Diane groomed her yard to perfection and reserved a number of tables and chairs from the mainland to set up the reception dinner in her the back yard with its view of Hales Passage and Mt Baker.  The front yard, with its view of Legoe Bay and Orcas Island, was where cocktails would be served.  Her cozy cottage would not be large enough for 70 guests.

The first sign of trouble was when the ferry broke down in early June.  But after about a week it was fixed temporarily.  Then, suddenly, the county decided to advance the date of drydock, the time when we have a passenger ferry only, from September to early August.  That meant there would be no way to get the tables and chairs across the water.  Quickly Diane booked the Grange for the dinner.  Cocktails would still be in the yard, front and back, and she borrowed some vehicles (our van was one) to transport people the mile ride to the grange.  She hired John Granger‘s elegant buggy and trotters to take the brides and their attendants to the Grange for the dinner reception.

A week before the wedding, at Thursday night Mah Jongg, Diane was beginning to be nervous about the Saturday weather.  The long range forecast had been predicting a 30% chance of rain for some weeks, but the odds still seemed good.

She was worried, too, about where all her house guests would sleep.  She could utilize some sofas and tents in the yard.  But the mother of the other bride had announced her intention to bring a Muslim exchange student she had befriended and he was prevented by his religion from sleeping on the floor or in a tent.  Diane didn’t know what to do about that.  I was surprised at the tent prohibition — I thought Muslims sometimes lived in tents — but I suggested the futon in my rental apartment which Diane had already booked.  In the end the Muslim exchange student didn’t come, so I didn’t get to write a post entitled “The Muslim Slept on the Futon.”

On Thursday morning before the wedding day Mike came by to borrow our van and get some additional flower pots for the decorations.  He showed us his to do list which Diane had printed out.  Diane’s pre-retirement job had been to plan routes for the Seattle buses.  She was a planner.  Mike’s list was timed to the hour and color coded for grandchildren to engaged in certain chores.  The list was pages long.  He said it actually saved him.  He didn’t need to think, just follow instructions.

The weather, which up to then had been perfect, was beginning to look iffy.  It was overcast.  They were predicting showers for the wedding Saturday.  Saturday came.  It was raining, hard.  Mah Jongg players called each other, saying, poor Diane, hope it clears.  I went out in the rain and cut bunches of hydrangeas and sweetpeas to take to Diane for use as Grange decorations.   As I delivered the flowers to her house Mike emerged looking harried.  He said, “Diane’s still at the Grange.  I forgot to take the meat for the dinner out of the freezer last night.  Now I have it in the bathtub in hot water, thawing.”

A few minutes later Diane came by my house for flowers.  I said, “ I took them to your house.  Sorry to hear about your problem with the meat.”  She looked horrified.  “Problem with the meat, what problem?”  I explained.  “Oh my God!” she said, and rushed off.  It was raining really hard.

Afternoon came, and the downpour intensified.  Jerry and I had been  invited for cocktails and dinner, so I called Cathy, who was helping with the cocktails, to ask whether I should skip that part, since Diane’s house was really too small for a lot of people.  Cathy said come.

The house was jammed but everyone was jolly.  It is astonishing how many people can fit in a small space.  John Granger was taking grandchildren and others on rides around the island in his carriage.

The brides

There was lots of wonderful salmon, smoked for the occasion by Steve Thatcher.  Everyone looked happy, and the brides were both radiant.  They each have 4 children who were there and having a ball.  Joy, the tall bride, had on a fitted strapless wedding gown that clung to her marvelous figure.  Donna, Mike’s daughter, the short bride, wore white leather motorcycle pants and a lacy shirt. She had a yellow daisy in her hair.  The brides and all the attendants wore dark glasses with white rims.

The happy couple

Dinner went off without a hitch.  The meat had thawed in time, and catering was done by some island neighbors.

Cathy and Russ in the dinner line

The Grange was overflowing with flowers and gladness and there was dancing in the rain on its new deck.

Dancing in the rain

Among the many toasts was a thank you for the new Washington “Everything but marriage” law which provides the same legal status as marriage to gay and lesbian couples.  That law is under attack in this fall’s election; there is a ballot initiative to repeal it.  I wonder why the people who are behind the initiative want to prohibit others from such happiness as I saw on that rainy August evening.

Diane and Mike

Our front door

The end of July and it’s a cool summer.  This morning the temperature is 54 F. Clouds will burn off in a couple of hours, then the afternoon will warm up to about 70.  Flowers like this kind of summer.  I love flowers.  Jerry says I over do the flowers.

Above is our front door.

And here’s where we sip wine in the late afternoon if it’s comfortable to sit in the sun.

Our patio

If we want shade we use the back deck.

Our back deck

Crocosmia

Lillies

Daisies

Geranium

Phlox

Rose

Sweetpeas

Lobelia and coreopsis

Poppies and lobelia

Fuchsia

Some vegetables grow well in cool weather.  I have more lettuce than I can use, but not much luck with arugula.  It bolts immediately.  Yellow zucchini are do doing nicely.  We should have some for dinner tonight.  I haven’t figured out a good way to cook the zucchini flowers, which I know are supposed to be a delicacy.  I have harvested one artichoke.

I’m growing my veggies in half whisky barrels.

vegetables

Jerry has built me the cutest little greenhouse.  Tomatoes hate cool weather, and the ones in the barrels grow bigger and bigger with no tomatoes.  So I splurged and spent $15 on a big plant to put in the new greenhouse.  It has lots of green tomatoes on it.

I can’t go off on trips and leave all these flowers and veggies.

My new greenhouse

Besides, I live in vacation land.  I paint on the beach.  Part ownership of a beach and some tidelands came with this house.  The other owners of the beach don’t live on the island — in fact I don’t know who or where they are.  I don’t use the beach much except for occasionally digging clams there.  This summer we have bad red tide, so the clams are not eatable.

Our beach is across the road from the property of an elderly couple, the Grangers, old time residents. The street I live on is named after them.  Most people assume that beach belongs to them, so if anyone wants to moor a boat there they ask the Grangers, who obligingly say sure.

That suited me fine until recently.  While painting on the beach I observed that there was constant traffic on it.  There are six or seven row boats, canoes or kayaks stored on it, lots of people walking there and a whole flotilla of boats moored off it.  A transient was sleeping there for a while, and kids drink beer and smoke pot there.  I asked my lawyer daughter if I had liability for any of this and she said if there was an accident I could.  She advised me to post it with no trespassing signs.

I am sad to do this.  I believe that all beaches should be public property.  But since this is not the case, I suppose I shall have to put up those unpleasant signs.

Here’s the beach, looking north.

Our beach

Here’s the painting I did on the beach.  It looks south and is a view of the adjoining lot.

Painting done on our beach

I spent 4 days in Juneau, Alaska over July 4th visiting my friend Gwen.  The 4th was her birthday.   About once a year I take a trip without Jerry, usually to see one of my children.  In a way this was the same kind of trip.  Gwen is sort of a surrogate child.  She was born in 1957, the same year as my second daughter.  She’s like one of my kids, except that I can talk about sex with her.

I had never been to Juneau, but I had lots of expectations.  I saw myself dining on luscious king crab that had never been frozen.  Or hiking on scenic mountain trails overlooking glaciers.  Maybe I’d see a bear.   Perhaps go fishing.  But I know that often things don‘t turn out the way one imagines, so I was not surprised when it was all quite different.  It rained steadily the whole time I was there.  I did not see a mountain, a glacier, or a bear.  King crab was not on offer.

View of Juneau from Douglas Island

Gwen’s friend, Barb, together with her entire family had gathered in Juneau to celebrate the marriage of one of the huge Plotnik clan. The young people in question had been married since January, so this was just the party part.

On July 2 there was a picnic (under a shelter) with a good fire.  Gwen and I were invited and Gwen’s husband, Shawn, provided a large king salmon that he had acquired while fishing.  That is, he didn’t actually catch it himself, but in some barter exchange he became its owner and he donated it to the picnic.  There were also hot dogs, hamburgers, a variety of salads and vodka spiked Jello cups in various colors and flavors.  The latter were covered with a big sign that read, “NOT TO BE EATEN BY CHILDREN.”  For the children there were s’mores.

Lots of children dashed about, playing in the chilly rain.  There were dogs of all sizes, patrolling for dropped hot dogs or other dog delicacies.  Shawn’s fishing pals, a group of jolly young men, joined the party.

I met Sandy, the matriarch.  She is a little older than me, a small, energetic lady who had 2 of her daughters and six grandchildren staying with her in her small house.  She has seven children in all, 4 daughters and 3 sons.  There were innumerable grandchildren, including the newly married couple who were the object of the festivities.  The logistics of moving groups of Sandy’s descendants around for excursions were formidable.  And it continued to rain.  While I was there we had 3 lunches out, visited the excellent little museum, shopped the multitude of tourist shops containing items like furs, gold, carved bone objects, and Russian toys.  We visited the Alaska State Capitol Building where Barb was keen for us to see the special marble in one of the ladies rooms.

Anne and Gwen at the Capitol Building

We didn’t get to see it, however, because it had been converted into a men’s room.  All of these excursions included at least one, and usually several, Plotniks.

Gwen and I wondered whether we should go to the formal party on the 3rd, the “reception” which was to be held in the Armory.  After all, our connection with the bride and groom was tenuous.  When we heard that fresh oysters were to be flown in from Kake, Alaska we said YES.  We thought it would be okay, since Shawn had provided the big fish for the picnic, and Barb is Gwen‘s best high school chum.  Gwen and Barb had stayed in my guest apartment a few months ago when Gwen was in Bellingham for medical appointments.

I was honored to be included in this warm and joyful group.  Of course there were some tensions.  Gwen said that with Plotniks there is always drama.  But the cousins had a grand time together, playing, dancing, eating and chattering.  Ex-husbands and ex-wives mingled amiably.  Barb’s reclusive sister, who declines to speak to some of the family, was persuaded to appear at the last minute for the family group pictures at the reception.  There is solidarity within this family, young, old, tall, short, some richer than others, some brimming with good health, some less well.  Rocky, Barb’s sister and mother of the groom is the picture of glowing health.  She teaches fitness classes and has a figure that should be the envy of a 20 year old.  David, Barb’s brother is married to Misha, a sweet round woman who has severe arthritis.  David and Misha smiled and held hands throughout both parties.

The master of ceremonies and the proposer of toasts was a big girl with bushy stand-up hair, dressed in men’s clothes.  She is one of Sandy’s grandchildren.  Her partner was a fine looking young woman dressed in a form fitting black dress and 3 inch silver heels.  Gwen says she looks just like Bristol Palin.

Ah, the oysters! They were piled high on a table with knives and towels.  Guests opened their own.  Kind young Plotniks opened some for me, but after a while I had eaten so many that I felt embarrassed and decided to learn how to open my own.  I did learn, and I think it’s a fine skill to have acquired.

Oysters opened by my

The other food was almost as good as the oysters.  The Plotniks are Jewish, but there was plenty of shellfish.  There were scallops with a lovely seaweed relish, shrimp in little cups of gazpacho, chopped smoked salmon on toasts and asparagus wrapped in filo pastry.

The band began to play.   First Sandy stood up with one of her sons.  Then the kids began to dance.

Kids on the dance floor

Rocky and Sandy dancing

Bristol look-a-like on the left

I am shy about dancing, as my children in their teen years used to hoot with laughter when I danced.  But the band was good, the beat was enticing, and I thought, I don’t know these people and who will care if I look foolish.  So I danced until I was out of breath.

Joey and me dancing

For me it was an all time great party!

The next day was Gwen’s birthday.  Of course it rained.  But Alaskans enjoy themselves rain or shine.  The Douglas parade took place as planned.  The marchers wore boots, raincoats and carried umbrellas and Shriners protected their fezes from the elements with shower caps.

Shriners in the rain

Douglas parade

Douglas parade

Douglas parade

Douglas parade

That night we had a birthday dinner with Gwen’s parents. The next day at the break of day I flew home to a heat wave.

There are fires all over Alaska. Though it didn’t rain much while we were there, the skies were overcast most of the time and it was cooler than usual.  No sooner had we left than the sun came out and it got blazing hot.  Temperatures reached 85 in Fairbanks.  Yesterday Jerry and I got an email from our friend across the road telling us that there are fires along the Manley road making travel difficult.  One of the fires is within a few miles of our house.

She wrote:  There are 87 fires burning in Alaska and 2 of them are on the Elliot Hwy.  The Eureka fire [that’s the close one]  you can look up on the BLM fire map. It is over 10,000 acres.  It came down the Kentucky Creek valley and roared across the highway at mile 130, blackening the highway and everything in its path.  It came toward Scott’s and burned some on both sides of the road.  The fire crews saved David Monson’s place at Alameda and Kentucky and saved the place at the Eureka airstrip.  The big gravel pit across from Scott’s became a fire line and they back fired this morning trying to stop the fire before it got into the big timber on the Hutilana and took off for Manley.  We had a thunder shower this afternoon and that helped.  We are having a low pressure until tomorrow and that is helping also.  The road was never officially closed but you traveled at your own risk and the flames and heat from Mile 84–87 were intense.  That is the other fire on the Elliot.  It crossed the road and is almost as big as the Eureka one.  The Eureka fire also crossed the road at the top of Silverbow Hill.  You will see a big difference when you return.  No houses have been lost, they even saved the shacks in Woellert ville in Eureka!!

Meanwhile, down here in Puget Sound it has done nothing but rain for the last two weeks.  Green is rampant.  The rain has pummeled my big pot of  delphiniums which had blossoms reaching up to the rain gutters by the front door.  They have flopped over in a wet mass on the sidewalk.  Poppies bloomed and their petals quickly turned into red goo.  The peonies outgrew their support and are lying wet on the grass.  And speaking of grass, we can see it growing.  Today is supposed to be only partly cloudy — rain returns tonight — so Jerry is trying to seize the moment and mow the lawns.

I am tired.  Two days after we arrived home from Alaska my sweet nephew, John, came from San Diego to go through the last of my mother’s possessions which have been stored for 4 years.  His grandfather’s slide collection, probably more than 10,000 of them taken during his travels after he retired, were left to John.  Then there was other miscellaneous stuff, the last few boxes that I just couldn’t face, to go through. We did it together, and John did all the physical work.  Even so I found it exhausting.

The first box we looked into contained Christmas ornaments.  They were all old and mostly ugly.  I didn’t want to keep any of them, but it made my eyes run tears to throw them away.  We tossed out boxes of papers.  There were old bank statements, grocery lists, notes on classes she took, pictures of people we didn’t know and pictures of us we didn’t like.  I felt as if I was throwing away her life.

There were many boxes of books.  Lots of books on economics, some of which my mother and my step-father had written.  We saved all of those, of course.  There were libretti of all the operas I know of, plus a lot I never heard of.  There were lots of plays and John kept those (he’s an actor) and there was some poetry and classics.  I kept those that I didn’t already have.  The rest we took to the book seller to see whether we could get a bit of cash.

We got a little.  The second bookseller we visited, who took almost 3 boxes of the 8 boxes we offered, said, “As you can see, there isn’t much demand these days for used books.”

We delivered a huge microwave, 4 humidifiers and a footbath to the Goodwill.

She never threw anything away and she wrote everything down.  I retrieved her recipe file, and here are a couple of bits from it.

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Beef tenderloin in Claret

1 3-pound piece of beef                            ½ cup claret
Tenderloin, trimmed                                  ½  cup beef consomme
Salt and pepper                                          ½  teaspoon cornstarch
4 young onions                                          ½  teaspoon lemon juice
4 tablespoons butter                                  Brandy

Roast the tenderloin rubbed with salt and pepper at 300 degrees.  Saute onions in butter, add claret and cook until reduced by half.  Add the consomme mixed with the cornstarch and simmer until thickened.  Add lemon juice and pour over fillet.  Run under broiler until bubbling.  Add 2 tablespoons of brandy at the table and light.

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The recipe above was printed on a card.  The next one was notes, written in Mother’s writing:

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Rabbit Casserole (or stewed)

2 or 3 onions: Fry them (in bottom of pot in which it will be cooked).  Cover with water; bring to boil.  Dice 3 or 4 carrots and add with meat.  Cook.  About 20 minutes before cooked add 4 rashers of bacon cut small and chopped parsley and a little thyme.  (Flour meat or thicken after.  If it dries up a bit add milk.  Milk is nice with it.)

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Finally, there was in the file a card headed: Thanksgiving dinner — 1948
4 guests.

1. A 14 lb hen turkey was perfect  — we had 4 meals off it afterwards
2. Breaded cauliflower
3. Whipped potatoes
4. Cranberry relish — Carroll preferred the cranberry sauce
5. A cup of cooked dressing = 2 cups of raw ingredients, so we made 28 cups of raw ingredients.
6. I used Crisco recipe for pie crust.  One 9 inch pie served 8 people.  I used Stokleys pumpkin custard which was excellent.  Nannies recipe modified for quantities by Joy of Cooking.
7. Served mixed green salad as a separate course.   Very nice.
8. Stuffed celery (cottage cheese and chives) creamed oysters on crackers as appetizers with tomato juice coctail.

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I kept the recipe file.  There is still a lot to be delivered to the church rummage sale.  John left yesterday.  We took him to Anthony’s for lunch before putting him on the airplane.  He and I remembered the many times we had taken Mother there.  It was a place she loved.

We are home on Lummi.  Alaska seems far away.  I felt a twinge of regret as we left the little house alone, water drained from all the pipes, refrigerator off, windows shut and everything put away or stowed in the truck.

This trip we used the camper.  I confess that it was not entirely wonderful.  I think it is really a one person camper.  The bed was comfortable enough, but it isn’t possible for me to get up in the night without making Jerry get out of bed — my side is against the wall.  While I cook Jerry has to sit in one spot by the table or I can’t move around.  The tiny sink has only cold water.

Nevertheless we enjoyed ourselves.  The first 4 days on the road we were going slowly and sightseeing.  (When I say going slowly I mean only about 300 miles a day).  The first night we stayed in a pleasant campground beside the Chena River in Fairbanks.  The water was turned off, so there were no showers, and at first the electricity didn’t work.

We made a flash visit to Denali.  I could only get Jerry to stay long enough to use the bathroom in the visitors center and watch a 20 minute movie about the park.  It had aerial shots of the tops of rugged mountains.  I whispered to Jerry, “Did you ever fly over stuff like that?”  He replied, “Oh, sure.  I used to make drops to those crazy climbers.”

Mountains in Alaska interior

More mountains

The next night we drove down to Talkeetna where we had water and showers and internet.  We were getting set up when I noticed that we were beside a train station; next a helicopter rose up from almost directly behind the train station, and when we were taking our evening walk with the poodles we heard an airplane taking off nearby.  I said, “Oh, that’s really loud, what could it be?”  Jerry said, without hesitation, “It’s a Cessna 185 with wheel-skis.  That’s the noise they make.”

At the airport in Talkeetna

Of course we had to walk to the airport to look at the planes.

Talkeetna Airport

In that campground there was a lady (of a certain age) traveling alone in a large camper with three Pomeranians and a Chihuahua.  The Poms were mostly bald.  She told me that they had a hereditary disease that made them lose their hair.  That gave them a sort of rat-like look.  She had a little fence thing that she set up next to her camper for them, and when she put them in it they all immediately pooped .  Then she scooped the poop, put the pooches back in the camper and set out on her large tricycle for morning exercise.  When she came back she said she hadn’t seen a single moose.

After that the camping places were minimal.  Just electricity, no water.  We had water in the camper though.  Just about every camp ground was still shut for the winter, or only just getting started.

A glacier near Palmer

Me with the poodles at Lake Kluane

Swan taking a nap

Sheep mountain near Lake Kluane

Coyote hunting in British Columbia

The last night we spent in the camper was the worst.  We stopped at a place with a full page ad in the Milepost, claiming all sorts of good things — showers, internet, and open year round — but when I enquired the man in charge said, “The campground is closed.  There’s one electric hookup left next to the restaurant.  No water.”  I asked about toilet and showers.  “I told you, lady, the campground is closed.”  I got the same response when I asked about internet, even though there was a signal he wouldn’t give me the password.  It seems a poor way to run a business.

Once again, the high point of the trip was the Cassiar Highway.  We counted 12 bears, and I got a lot of pictures.  Here are some bears.  They range from cute to “I’m glad I’m sitting in this nice enclosed truck.”

Along the Cassiar

Her cub

Dandelions for lunch

Large black bear

I called my house and cat watcher the last night of the trip to say that Jerry couldn’t find our house key, so leave the door open for us the next day.  Next morning when we were within phone range I found a message on my phone from her that said, “I hate to tell you this, but I just locked us all out of the house.  The key is on the dining room table.  There may be a window open, but I’m not agile enough to climb in.”

Jerry is an agile old man, though, so he was inside in a matter of minutes.

So much has happened since we left.  We drove into summer.  There is a wall of green around our house.  Some of our friends are getting divorced.  Some of them are getting back together again and moving.  A friend’s grandchild has leukemia; another friend has completely recovered from multiple myeloma.

Back in the blog world one friend’s father has died, one has painted a terrific portrait, one has redecorated her house, and another has had his prostate removed.  How things can change in just 6 weeks.

I am glad to be home in this green and pleasant land.  I hope nothing much happens to Jerry and me for a while.

We have been here for 3 weeks now.  I love it here.  I love the isolation, the quiet (except for the occasional singing of the dogs across the street).  It is beautiful in an austere way.  Peaceful.  I spend my days painting.  I am using this time to get ready for a show I have in Bellingham this fall.  I want new work for it.  Manley is a good place to do this, because life here is so simple.  There is little housework in this tiny house and no gardening since we won’t be here in the summer.  I don’t have the distraction of the internet.

Though I have a lot to do, Jerry is restless.  He has no project just now, so he rakes leaves and chops wood.  We both listen to the radio and read.  We are still studying geology, watching another Teaching Company course about plate tectonics.  We finished Annals of the Former World and have started on a book about extinction catastrophes.  So far the writing in this book is rather ponderous.  We look at rocks with a magnifying glass.

We still have friends here who gave us a wonderful dinner last Sunday night.  There was king salmon that they caught last summer and local berries that they pick and freeze.  The berries are served with the dinner, partially thawed.  They are so good.

This Friday we made a trip to Fairbanks for groceries and a few other necessities and decided to stay 2 nights.  We started out in a steady rain in the morning. It was a difficult drive, with fog and limited visibility most of the way.  There are still patches of dirty snow along the road.  The only wildlife we saw were a few rabbits, losing their winter white to summer tan and gray.

I think there are more ravens than usual this year.  We stopped at the dump with our garbage and the ravens flapped around, eyeing us indignantly and making all sorts of raucous calls.  There is a lot of stuff in the dump this year: old cars and trucks, washing machines, microwave ovens, broken bicycles and sofas.  All this stuff is peppered with bullet holes.  A painted sign, “No Shooting” is at the entrance to the dump, but there is nobody to enforce it.  Jerry and I wonder why anyone would enjoy shooting a washing machine.

The drive lasted about 4 hours and when we got to Fairbanks we shopped with grim determination until about 4 in the afternoon.  Then it was time for self indulgence and treats.

I had planned to go to something I heard advertised on the PBS radio station — there was music at the university and a play, The Time of your Life, put on by a local theater group.  We drank some wine and decided to go out to dinner.  We went to the Pump House.

The Pump House is by the Chena River.  It was a working pump house at one time.  Its purpose was to pump water uphill through a pipe to a ditch that provided water to gold dredges.  Jerry thinks it shut down in the mid 60’s.  You can’t take water out of the Chena River like that now because of environmental concerns.  There is still a commercial gold mine around here (called Fort Knox) which hires a few hundred people and is quite successful.  Fort Knox is an underground mine.  There is little commercial placer or dredge mining (open pit mining) now in Alaska except for small operations which are mostly based on pie in the sky optimism.

The Pump House aspires to a degree of sophistication.  People visiting the university are taken there. It has bits of old mining equipment scattered around the restaurant along with other “vintage” decorations, like old gas pumps, salvaged business signs and photos of Fairbanks in the mining days.  At the entrance there is a glass case containing an enormous snarling stuffed
grizzly bear.  The big muddy parking lot was full, mostly with pick-up trucks.

The food was actually not bad.  I had fresh halibut with a spinach sauce.  We drank more wine and talked — about the past, about Manley, about the rest of this trip.  We became mellow and affectionate.  We thought that if we went back to the motel, took the dogs for a walk and watched our geology DVD we would be ready for bed.  We postponed further amusement.

Our motel, The Golden North, is minimal, but clean and cheap. The couple who owns the motel has been there for years, and they know people in Manley.  Jerry chatted with the lady who checked us in about old acquaintance. It is in a dying part of town (actually, most of Fairbanks looks this way).  Our room looks out on a muddy alley and lot that stores rows of unsold snow machines.  A short way down the street is a strip joint that has a huge SHOW GIRLS sign over the Lonely Lady Bar.

The Lonely Lady

There are a few lonely pick-up trucks in the large parking lot.  Further on is the Castle, a restaurant and night club that has been closed since I have been coming to Fairbanks.  Its architecture is fanciful and its roofs are painted a painfully poisonous green, the lower windows are boarded up and there is a big for sale sign on it.  Jerry says it used to be THE place to go, and that he had, in his youth, taken dates there.

The Castle

Saturday we shopped till we dropped and were too tired for further entertainment.  On Sunday we started for home in much improved weather.  Just outside of Fairbanks we passed a large sign that read:  CANADA MY ASS, ITS ALASKA’S GAS.  That’s about a proposed gas pipeline to go through Canada.

The following explanation of the gas situation is courtesy of Jerry:  There’s a lot of natural gas now in the Prudhoe Bay area. The gas is separated from the extracted oil and re-injected into the ground and stored there until a market and a means of shipping is developed.  This has been going on for years.  There are 2 possible ways of shipping it: either by a pipeline through Alaska and Canada to the lower 48, or a pipeline to a port in Alaska (perhaps Seward or Valdez), where it would be liquefied and shipped by a tanker.  In the latter case the main market would be Asia, at least at first, because there is no port on the west coast capable of handling gas tankers.  If the pipe goes through Canada the market would be the US.  The opposition to the Canada pipeline apparently stems from the fact that a fee would have to be paid to Canada to transport the oil across its territory.

The trip home was beautiful, and near Manley we saw a black bear.  It was small and cute.  I like seeing bears from the inside of a car.  It ran across the road and in the woods it stood up and looked at us, a small black figure surrounded by tall white birches.  I fumbled with the camera and missed a good picture.

view from the highway

from the road to Manley

How glad we were to get back to our comfortable clean tidy house.  I felt a flood of affection for it.  Later we walked up the trail back of the house through the pristine, clean white birch woods.  No bears.

This morning while I was painting (a triptych of chickens) I looked out the window and there, right in my front yard, were a cow moose and a yearling calf, calmly munching new grass.  This time I got the camera in time.

Mother and calf moose

It is getting warmer, though last night the temperature went down to 28.  That suits me since I already have a few mosquito bites.  Frost will kill the ones that have hatched. The highs go up to 60.  We have 2 more weeks here, but we may leave a few days early and go on a jaunt in the camper to Denali and Talkeetna.   I need to see more of Alaska.

On Sunday Jerry and I had dinner with 3 of our Manley friends.  We have been away for a year, and so we had a lot to catch up on.

The new airport, which had been planned last year, was not funded, and so its construction has been put off.  Perhaps it will be started next summer. Our friends think that it will ultimately go. The road to Nome, which the Fairbanks Daily News Minor had shown a few months ago as probably going through Manley, turning on the Tofty Road and passing right by our house, is another matter.  Our friends said, basically, that’s not going to happen, at least not in our lifetimes.

In a way I’m sorry, because I would like to travel that road, but on the other hand, I dislike the little bit of mining traffic that passes along our road now.  It seems that most of the mining is moving from Tofty to Livengood.  Every night when we walk the dogs we see big trucks going up the road pulling  empty lowboys.  They come back the next morning hauling heavy mining equipment.  Jerry thinks there hasn’t been much gold at Tofty for a long time.

But the big event of the past year was the death of Bob Lee which happened just before Christmas.  Of course, we had heard about it, but last night we got all the details.

Bob Lee, a towering man, was a pillar of the Manley community.  He came here in the early 70’s and bought the lodge.  Before he came here he had been a state trooper.  He had a seemingly endless supply of stories about when he was a trooper.  I have heard him tell some of those stories, and they were always entertaining.

Before Bob bought the lodge it had gone through several owners who were unable to make a viable business from it.  In the first few years he owned the lodge it did well.  There was commercial fishing on the Yukon and a small processing plant here in Manley.  There were 2 or 3 Japanese fishermen here processing roe.  That was going on when Jerry came here and bought the store and the electric company.

Bob was the postmaster when Jerry got here.  The post office was in the bar and there were complaints about that: some people objected to having to enter the bar to pick up their mail.  Jerry ran the store for a couple of years, but shop keeping was not really to his liking.  Jerry started a telephone company since at the time there were no telephones in Manley.  Bob bought the store and moved the post office from the bar into the store.

Mining in Tofty brought business to Bob.   The store sold groceries, liquor and a few basic necessities.  Fire crews and construction crews used the lodge which include over night facilities and a restaurant.

Bob prospered with the years.  He had one child, David, who grew up in Manley.

David Lee had a job on the pipeline road near a small airport and he often flew his airplane to work.  One day about 3 years ago he left here in marginal weather and never arrived.  Jerry saw the initial FAA accident investigation report and it appears the plane came apart in the air.  This can happen in severe weather.  It was a dreadful accident and, as someone said, David must have had an “Oh Shit” moment.  He was the only one in the small single engine airplane, a Piper Cherokee 235.

It was a terrible blow to Bob to lose his only child. For a long time he could talk of nothing else, and his planned marriage to Lisa, his third wife, was postponed for a year.

Over the years that he owned the lodge Bob improved it.  He carefully kept it in the old style, collecting articles and decorations in keeping with its tradition and he furnished it with antiques of its period.  The bar was lovingly restored and improved. I am told that Bob’s son David did much of the carpentry work on the bar counter, which is really a work of art.

I have no pictures of the bar counter and the lodge is not open at this time of year.  It is closed during the winter from the end of the hunting season until May. But here are some pictures of the restaurant and bar from my archives.

The lodge

The bar in the lodge

The lodge dining room

Another view of the lodge dining room

The wonderful old lodge makes a trip to Manley worth while.

Last year Bob was medivaced out of Manley, and when he came back he was attached to an oxygen supply.  He told us that he would probably have to be on it for the rest of his life.  Just before he died he and Lisa made a trip to the Mayo Clinic.  He was told at the clinic that he was doing well but as almost as soon as they came back he collapsed and died.

Lisa is working hard to run the store and the lodge.  There is a temporary postmaster, and the job is now being advertised. Untangling Bob’s affairs is a huge job for Lisa.   First the settlement of David’s affairs must be completed, something Bob was working on before he died. David left a child, Bob’s grandchild.

Bob was generous with his employees.  He did great good for this community, and his loss will be felt for a long time.

Another development that our friends told us of is the plan by one of the owners of the land around the hot springs (where there is thermal activity) to establish some commercial greenhouses.  That should be a big boost to the economy of the community.

In the meantime, since we arrived a week ago, most of the snow has melted.  We took our first walk in the woods.  The poodles, who clearly remembered this place, were overjoyed.  I know that they remembered because almost as we walked in the door Fluffy found his favorite toy, a cong and Daisy took up her perch on the back of the sofa, scanning the yard for rabbits.

As we walked up the hill in back of the house, through the birch forest Fluffy streaked back and forth through the trees sniffing all the exciting scents.  Poor Daisy can’t be let off the leash.  She is naughty and doesn’t come when called unless she feels like it.  The forest floor is already beginning to green.

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The last time I was in residence in Manley I wrote a number of posts about this small community.  My husband spent his prime here, and those years I believe were his happiest.  I came here with him almost 4 years ago, we were married here.  Later we bought a small house here which we worked hard to fix up.

I write about things which interest me.  There are many things that interest me; too many, I often think, which may be why I never really excelled at any one thing.  Besides writing, I am interested in politics, rocks, painting, birds, dogs, opera, biology, gardening, microscopic things and more.

People interest me.  People of all sizes, shapes, colors and ages, of all religious or political persuasions.  I like most people.  I liked the people here in Manley and I wrote about them.  I thought many of them were smart, resourceful and funny.  They struggle with a harsh climate and make a good thing of it.  I tried to convey that when I wrote about them.  Somehow, without meaning to, I managed to offend a number of them, and for that I am truly sorry.

It starts with a confession.  We were wimps.  We didn’t sleep in the camper.  As soon as we were north of the Fraser River it got really cold.

As the road winds up the canyon created by the Fraser , the landscape gets progressively starker and drier.  By the time you get to Cache Creek it is desert like, treeless with grey sage covered hills leading to bare rock mountains.  The geology shows.  We kept wondering whether some formation was caused by the action of ice, volcanism, plate collisions or erosion.   We wished we had a geologist to travel with us the way John McPhee did when he was writing the books of Annals of the Former World.

The first night we stopped in Lac La Hache BC at a pleasant motel and RV place beside a lake.  The lake was not frozen, but the wind howled and it felt bitterly cold.  We were still debating sleeping in the camper as we entered the motel office and I left it up to Jerry.  He opted for the motel room which had a kitchen.  The room was really nice, with a separate bedroom and living room with a full kitchen and dining area.  The window looked over the bleak and stormy lake.  It snowed during the night.

The next night we stayed in Smithers, BC.  That is a biggish town on the Yellowhead Highway.  As you travel west on the Yellowhead the land becomes more ruggedly mountainous.  Early spring is not the loveliest time in the north.  Much of the snow has melted, and the leaves have not yet begun to appear.  The world looks dead.  Again it was cold, in the low 20’s, and again it snowed in the night.  The motel was a notch below the one in Lac La Hache, but it was acceptable.

The third day we drove the full length of the Cassiar.  I love driving the Cassiar: it has the grandest scenery I know.  The mountains rise directly from the road, their towering peaks still gleaming white with snow and ice.  Dark fir forests grow along the highway, edged by pale barked birch and willows whose tips are just turning pink and orange and yellow.

The Cassiar Highway

The Cassiar Highway

Most of the many lakes and creeks are still frozen, with melting only where there is swift running water.

Dease Lake

creek along the highway

The sun was shining as we stopped for lunch in the camper beside a small frozen lake.  I still hoped it might get warm enough to sleep in the camper.

the view from where we had lunch

We arrived at Dease Lake at about 3 in the afternoon, and I was in favor of stopping.  Jerry wanted to drive on for a while.  But there is no place to stop or stay for many miles.  We had discovered that all the camping places are still closed for the season, and anyway it was getting colder as we went north.  We would probably need a motel again.  But we carried on.  The Cassiar is an excellent road until you get north of Dease Lake.  Then it becomes rough and the shoulder drops off in a way that I find scary.

There were dark clouds ahead of us.  Soon it began to snow.  Every half hour or so we saw a car or truck driving south.  No one but us was going north. The visibility was poor, and we crept along at about 15 miles an hour.  The snow was coming down heavily by the time we reached the junction with the Alaska Highway.  Everything at the junction was closed.

Jerry decided to drive 30 miles south on the Alaska Highway to Watson Lake because we were sure of finding a motel there.  We found one that had a kitchen and would take pets, but it was, without doubt, the worst motel I have ever stayed in.  At first it was cold, cramped and dirty, and then it was hot, cramped and dirty.  The sink in the bathroom leaked.  It was the most expensive place we stayed.

The next day we started out on a snowy, unplowed Alaska Highway.

The Alaska Highway

We stopped for breakfast at a place we have stopped before.  A trucker came in who was driving from the north.  He told us that the road ahead was clear.  He and Jerry chatted about driving the Alaska Highway.  The trucker said he had been driving it from the 60’s.  But Jerry and I have achieved an age to usually get back farther than others.  Jerry said the first time he drove the road was in 1952 when he got out of the army.  There wasn’t any pavement then until you got to the Fraser River and Hope BC. That’s almost 2000 miles of dirt road.  The road in the Fraser River canyon was terrible and in 1952 had only been open for a year.

The trucker was right.  The road and the weather improved quickly.  We made good time, and the fourth night we stayed at a comfortable motel in Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory.

Destruction Bay is on Kluane Lake.  That is a beautiful lake, surrounded by majestic mountains.  The mountains are the home of wild sheep.  I did not see any sheep this time, because they come down the mountain in the mornings; in the afternoons they go up the mountain too high to see.  On a previous trip I got some fuzzy pictures of the sheep quite high up.

Sunrise over Kluane Lake

We chatted with the waitress in the restaurant.  She told us she had come from Manitoba and had found the job on the internet.  She agreed with us that Watson Lake is a miserable place.  She looked very young, but said she had grown children.  She thought she would stay at Kluane through the summer.  She loves her job.

The next day we drove to Fairbanks.  Just over the border to Alaska we finally saw the only wildlife of this trip.  There is a heard of caribou in that region.  I missed the biggest one of a few that dashed across the road, but snapped a few pictures of a smaller one.

Caribou crossing the road

The next day, after some shopping in Fairbanks, we drove on to Manley.  There is much less snow this year, and when we got to our house Jerry was able to drive the truck up to the door with a minimum of shoveling.  The yard was criss-crossed with moose tracks in the snow, but there were no rabbit tracks to be seen.  I think the rabbit population must be low this year.

The new key refused to work in the lock, so Jerry had to hike across the road to get the old key that we had left with Pam.  I waited on the front porch and looked through the window into our living room.  It is almost a year since we left, but it looked as if we had just walked out.  It was bright and clean and pretty.  Jerry and I had worked hard to change it from the dump it was when we bought it to the comfortable cabin it is now.

I watched Jerry, in the distance, climbing the steep driveway to Pam’s.  I thought, how did I, Old Woman that I am, find myself in this remote place near the Arctic Circle, watching an old man I met on the internet trudge through the snow, listening to Pam and Joee’s sled dogs sing their howling song?

A troublesome lock is not the sort of thing that stops Jerry.  I had a comfortable feeling that soon we would be inside with a fire crackling, celebrating with a bottle of wine and a steak.

And so we were.

Sunday night we spent our first night in the camper.  We had driven the 2 hour drive to Whidbey Island for Easter dinner with my daughter Deborah.  We stayed for a trial run (sleep) in her driveway.

The center of attention was baby Julian, my great-grandson.

Baby Julian

Baby Julian again

sitting up

a smile

Baby Julian and great grandmother

Baby Julian with great granny and poodle

Cousin Julian lights the candles.  Dinner is almost ready.

Julian lights the candles

When will dinner be ready?

Jerry waits for dinner

Outside in the yard the Easter Bunny puts in an appearance.

Easter Bunny?

Uncle Chris is carving the lamb.

Chris carves

Outside the economy keeps on keeping on.

View from the dining room window

Now dinner is over, and there’s nothing left for Lewis the cat.

Not even a crumb for a kitty

Time for the main attraction to go home to bed.

James, Maria and Julian

Jerry and I took the poodles for a walk in the rain, and then we retired to our new home, the camper.  The heater worked just fine and the camper was warm in no time.  But there was hardly room in it for two people to stand up at the same time, let alone to swing a cat.  We had to undress and get ready for bed one at a time with one person sitting at the table while the other changed.  We climbed into the bed and found it reasonably comfortable.

Outside there was a storm. The wind whistled and the truck rocked gently.  We slept well, though, and when I woke up later in the night the wind had stopped.  The birds sang us awake in the morning.  Their songs mixed with the cries of seagulls.  Because the pop-up sides of the camper are fabric it seems a little like sleeping in a tent.

We thought the trial went well, but tomorrow is the real thing.  We finally leave for Alaska.