20th Century Woman

Yesterday, Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, we spent most of the afternoon at a celebration of the 50 th year since the establishment of the Manley school, now called the Gladys Dart Manley Hot Springs School.  Gladys herself organized the event, helped by her sons and some community minded residents here.  The original school, a one room cabin near the hot springs, had been lovingly and skillfully restored by Bunny, our neighbor down the street.  It is painted dazzling white with brilliant red trim.  The cabin is on the land owned by Gladys and her husband Chuck.  She started it in 1958. 

 

That year, coincidentally, is when Jerry first came to Manley to work for Harold Strandberg, who was prospecting for gold in Tofty (just down the road.)  Jerry went back to Fairbanks where he finished his education and homesteaded.  He returned to Manley from time to time until he bought the electric company here in 1975 and came here to live for the next 10 years.

 

The weather for the celebration was beautiful.  It was sunshine and 70 degrees.  There were about 50 chairs set up outside next to the school and a lavish pot luck lunch spread under a canopy.  My contribution was chili.  

 

Many Manley residents came, and Gladys had gathered a lot of former pupils, especially from the first two or three classes in the school.  Those people were in their 50’s and 60’s and many had children and grandchildren with them.  Jerry’s son, Patrick, went to the school, but after it had moved to another location in a double wide.  The ceremony began with a salute to the flag, an inaudible prayer said by a sweet-looking elderly native woman, and singing of the Alaska Flag Song.

 

Then, as everyone (even the children) stood silently, names of people who had died during the memory of those present were read.  I could see that many in the crowd had tears in their eyes.  I saw that Jerry was moved.  He had known almost all of those people, some of them well.  I recognized the names of many Jerry had told me stories about, some funny, some sad, some sensational.  Memories of the past bring emotion with them, and all these people were remembering together.  There is unity in that; people are drawn closer.

 

When the list concluded it was suggested that anyone call out a name to add to the list.  There was a little pause, and then many other names were spoken.  I whispered to Jerry, asking him whether he wanted to say the name of his late wife.  He said, in a clear voice, “Susy Hook.”

 

Then there were a lot of testimonials to Gladys, but after a while someone grabbed the microphone and said, “It’s getting late, we’re getting hungry, and the food’s getting cold.”  Gladys spoke, a few more funny stories were told, and everyone headed for the food.

 

I saw a lot of friends from the town, and met some new people.  An interesting woman who had taught Patrick in preschool invited Jerry and me to her place on a lake near Denali National Park.  I want to go, but it is reachable only by airplane.  I have her email address.

 

I learned for the first time the complete history of our house.  It is not a happy one.  The family who built the original one room house was murdered at the river landing by a crazy man (Jerry thinks his name was Michael Silka) who lurked around in a boat on the Tanana and shot everyone he saw.  They were a young couple with a 4 year old son.  She was pregnant.  Jerry knew them.  He said they were quiet and kept to themselves, but were nice people.  All killed.  It took the troopers some time to get out here, and when they finally came, in a helicopter, the crazy man shot at the helicopter and killed one of the troopers.  The murderer killed 7 people here and a trooper.

 

The next family here in our house was that of the school teacher.  He built a big addition which is now the living room and bedrooms.  Jerry and I have changed this part.  After the school teacher left an old man lived here who had difficulty with stairs. The steps to the deck were replaced with a plywood ramp covered with chicken wire to keep it from being slippery.  Jerry has built fine new steps to replace the ramp.

 

We bought the house from a man who fancied himself a trapper.  He was not particularly popular in the town because it was said that he interfered with other people’s traps.  He left odd chicken wire and coffee-can home-made traps all around the house (and a lot in the native woods behind the house.) Jerry is gradually getting rid of them.  I guess they must have been supposed to trap squirrels.  He left us a huge bleached white moose bone which I keep on the window sill.

 

At the celebration a friend said to me, “You asked me about cliques in town when you first came.  Here’s your clique.”  I asked him to explain.  “Well, the people here are one clique,” he said, “Then, you notice the people who are not here.  They’re the ones who think this isn’t important.  That’s the other clique.”

 

Manley is a good place, but Jerry says it’s a dying place, full of old and dying people.  There are empty houses.  Next year there may not be enough kids to open the school.  I think my friend is right.  The celebration was important.  Things like that keep communities together.  Towns fail when they lose their schools.  There is a lot of enthusiasm these days for people to go off into the bush and pretend to be survivalists, but the idea of nurturing a small town is a much less popular concept.  The appropriation of $12 million for a new airport may save the town.  For a while at least          

 

Manley is a place I never would have thought of living.  I am here to make Jerry happy, because I love him.  Its major charm for me it that there is nothing for me to do here but paint and write and read, so I don’t fritter time away gardening or on the net, or going to town because I forgot to get cumin for a recipe or chatting with friends.  I even talk less on the phone because the phone here is by satellite and makes an odd delay so you keep talking over the other person.  There is beauty here, but that beauty partly inheres in the vast sameness of birch and spruce forested hills as far as the eye can see.

 

I have met some interesting characters in Manley.  I have written about some of them.  The people I wrote about in the withdrawn post came here 5 years ago.  Some people have been here most of their lives.  Some of my commenters would have you believe that the inhabitants of interior Alaska have uniform characteristics of fiercely guarded privacy and pioneer independence. 

 

On the contrary, I find more diversity and eccentricity here than in most places.  Politics range from very liberal to wild man conservative.  There are dead beats and dreamers, people who manage to get along without ever working and people who think they will someday get rich finding gold.  There are retired academics. There’s a proselytizing evangelical Christian who spends half a year in India converting Hindus and worshiping the memory of Mother Theresa.  There are rich men.  There are local business men (my Jerry used to be one of those).  There are retired school teachers.  Some people are religious, some are atheists.  There are dog mushers and fishermen and trappers and hunters.  There are people who live on government grants and subsidies.  There are knitters and quilters and pilots.  People.  Mostly they live in peace, sometimes they quarrel.  In a pinch they help each other out.

 

As for privacy, my guess is that if anything of even minimal interest happens in this town, the news travels at warp speed.  There are feuding factions here, as in most small towns, and even those people who don’t take sides spend a fair bit of time discussing the maneuvers and thrusts of the combatants.  Gossip is the town recreation.

 

Native groups own most of the land around here, and they have a lot of effect on the community, not only because of the land they own, but also because in Alaska natives have access to government funds and programs that the non-organized people in the town don’t have.

 

Recently rifts developed between groups of natives who live here.  The faction which came out on top, because of superiority of numbers, has recently decreed that nobody, including the natives of the opposing group, may not set foot on Indian land.  This has resulted in grumbling and resentment in the community.  Basically it would mean that nobody could walk in the woods.  There’s no way to enforce this, so it is generally ignored.  Jerry and I walk every night in the woods behind our house.  But there are a lot of signs posted around the town warning everyone to stay off Indian land.  The signs are irritating, and especially distress those who are trying to encourage tourism here.

 

I hope the town prospers.  I hope the school stays open.  I hope the Roadhouse, which is a real treasure, keeps going.  The present owner wants to retire and since he also owns the store it is uncertain what will happen when he is gone.  My own future here is uncertain.   I am quite old and the trip from the lower 48 is strenuous.  I don’t think that at my age I could adjust to the winters, so year round living isn’t a possibility.  And, believe it or not, being a survivalist is expensive.  Jerry and I are thinking of moving on, trying something new.  We need to make the most of the years we have together.

 

One day Jerry pointed to a shelf in the Manley house kitchen and asked, “Where did all these dishes come from?”

 

The question surprised me, because for the most part, Jerry regards household items as objects to use but not to notice.  He notices cars, trucks and small airplanes.

 

I explained the dishes.

 

Some baking dishes with storage lids belonged to Susy, his late wife.  A set of white plates with stylized floral design in aqua had been my mother’s everyday china.  The wooden salad bowl set I bought last year, on an impulse, at Sam’s Club in Fairbanks.  The cream and sugar set was one I have had for years, from when my kids were small.  The wine glasses, the ones etched with Christmas trees, were left in the house by the former owners, and the others I bought in Fairbanks to add to them. 

 

“What about the cups?” he asked. 

 

“That’s a funny thing,” I said.  “Some of them were here, left with the wine glasses.  The rest I brought from the island, and discovered that they match.  All plain white cups, the same shape.”

 

The table here in the kitchen Jerry made last year.  Its top is a simple piece of oak plywood which he finished with shiny urethane.  On it, in my line of vision, is a napkin dispenser that came from Jerry’s house in Friday Harbor (where he lived when I met him.)  It is one of those metal stand-up ones you might find in a diner.  It dispenses little wisps of useless paper napkin.  Jerry loves it.  I think it reminds him of his youth. 

 

He has it because Susy collected stuff dating from about 1900 to about 1950.  Everything in the Friday Harbor house was collected and coordinated to be like a museum of the early 20 th century.  Susy’s collecting was systematic, but she changed categories during the course of her life with Jerry, so that interior pictures of their houses showed widely different styles.  She always loved green.  One of her collecting categories on eBay was “green stuff.” 

 

The napkin dispenser was the only collected thing Jerry wanted to keep.  The rest he sold at the consignment shop of a friend.  Susy was a savvy collector and it yielded a lot of money.

 

Besides the napkin dispenser Jerry brought to our island house his physics books (from his days as an academic), a huge collection of tools (from his days as a builder), and more nuts, bolts, screws, hinges, knobs, and other hardware than could be used in a couple of lifetimes.  A building had to be erected to house all that.

 

I have 2 houses, both with out-buildings, one building lot; total acreage 7.

 

I thought about how all this stuff in our lives contain bits of the past.  The things in my house on the island are a kaleidoscope of my life.  There is absolutely no system to my accumulation. 

 

I have a lot of art on my walls.  In art school (I went to art school when I was 50) I resolved to support working artists and no longer put reproductions or posters on my walls. I have a mixture of pieces purchased from fellow art students, some pieces by me, some etchings done by my darling aunt, who was a much better artist than I, a watercolor my mother bought in China, and, of course, a couple of left over reproductions.

 

The furniture style in my house is random.  Some 19 th century side tables are from my grandmother.  A bookcase and a chair, both decorated with gargoyle heads, are from my uncle’s house where I lived as a child.  The sofa and chairs are from my mother, things she acquired early and late in her life in the United States (she came here in 1930 from New Zealand via England and died here 2006 at the age of 100). 

 

A copper table my father got in Turkey in 1938.  A brass table my mother got in Morocco in 1960.  A drop leaf desk I bought at a junk shop in Andover in 1964, and some other junk pieces I bought at an Atlanta flea market in 1984.  A teakwood sideboard I had made when I lived in Burma (1960), copied from a picture of a Danish modern piece.  And so on.  No theme, I just get attached to things and become accustomed to the fact that they don’t relate.

 

My only recent purchase is my dining room table.  It was made for me from alder wood by a craftsman on the island, Tom Lutz.  It is beautiful and opens up large enough to seat big portions of my family (not all, though; I have 5 children and 13 grandchildren).  I have promised it to my grandson when I die.  There are 10 solid mahogany dining chairs (made around 1900, they don’t match the table) from my uncle’s house.  I have been sitting in those chairs since I was 3 years old, and my feet still don’t reach the floor.  The chairs are really uncomfortable but they look nice.

 

There are ornaments, dishes, flatware, rugs.

 

Everything has a history.

 

I think of people who have lost everything, by war, flood, wind, tsunami or earthquake.  Losing things obliterates a big part of life.

 

In The Merchant of Venice, when Portia declares Shylock’s wealth and possessions forfeit but pardon’s his life, he says:

 

“Nay, take my life and all.

Pardon not that.  You take my house when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house, you take my life

When you do take the means whereby I live”

 

An island acquaintance once told me that before she came to Lummi she had broken up with her partner, sold her house, and given away all her things except what she could pack in her car.  She said it was wonderfully liberating and she felt great.  I wondered.  She has settled now on the island, a couple of years later, and to me she looks happier.  She has bought a condo. 

 

I heard a radio interview with Jill Bolte Taylor, who wrote My Stroke of Insight.  Her stroke caused complete loss of memory of her past life.  In some ways she found this exhilarating, though of course terribly hard, because, with all her memories of the past, she lost all the baggage that goes with those memories.  She started over, and now has a satisfying new life.  On the other hand, she knows of other stroke victims who don’t find the experience of memory loss agreeable at all.  It depends on what part of the brain is affected.

 

I have been reading A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas.  Her husband had a brain injury which didn’t kill him but destroyed not only his memory of the past, but also his ability to build new memories.  She says she can’t imagine what kind of hell this must feel like for him.  She likens it, in a small way, to how she felt when she lost her pocketbook, with all the stuff in it, “. . . . the little bits and pieces of detritus, proof I’d been living my life.”

 

Possessions, encrusted with memories, can carry both pleasures and discomforts.  Things clutter life as they enrich it and compose it.  I have been a rolling stone, but I have gathered more than my share of moss.  I was born in Washington, D. C, grew up Andover, MA.  I lived in Fleetwood, NY, Evanston, IL, Tampa, FL, Wellington, NZ, Rangoon, Burma, Wilhelmshaven, Germany, Atlanta, GA, Bellingham and Lummi Island, WA, and Manley Hot Springs, AK.  I have spent time in my grandmother’s house in Italy, my aunt’s house in Peterborough, NH, my mother’s house in La Jolla, CA and my daughter’s house in an English village. I have driven many times across the United States and Canada; visited every state and most provinces.  I have traveled in Europe from Greece to Scandinavia, including through countries behind the Iron Curtain.  I have traveled in the Far East and Australia.

 

Everywhere I went I acquired stuff.  I came home from every trip with a suitcase heavier than the one I took.  And I have things bequeathed to my by loved ones and things “stored” at my house by my children.  There is too much.  I am 77 years old.  I must divest.

 

What to do?  I have started to give some valuable things to children and grandchildren.  Though that helps, I worry that they won’t take care of these precious things.  I warn them to guard against loss, theft and breakage.  I tell them to keep them in the family; promise not to sell or give away.  I haven’t relinquished control.  I keep telling myself, “That stuff isn’t yours anymore, Old Woman.”

 

But I can’t erase the memory.               

We’ve had some quiet, good days.  Jerry is building new steps for the deck.  I have painted 2 more miniatures for Mah Jongg prizes.  Mah Jongg will be at my house this week.  One painting is a caribou with mountains in the background; the other is a snowshoe hare, back-lit, surrounded by bushes.  They are good.

 

A few days ago I had some down time.  I got the blog blues.  These days when I post on my blog or read other’s blogs and comment I am always in a hurry because I am at the Washeteria (the only place here where I can get on the internet) and Jerry is waiting.  I don’t have time to read all the blogs I follow, and my comments are not well thought out. I saw that a couple of people I admire had dropped me from their blog rolls.

 

I had been struggling with a post I was working on about subsistence living, because I found the topic complex and difficult to analyze.  It’s a hot topic in Alaska.  After many rewrites I posted it, hoping to stir up controversy.    At first I had only a couple of comments.  I was certainly grateful for those, but I wished for some argument.

 

Besides having the blog blues, I painted 2 miniatures that turned out to be terrible.  I had done a lovely little portrait of Bea’s cat sitting in a patch of wild roses.  It is a fat white cat with faint orange stripes and blue eyes.  I gave Bea the painting and she was genuinely pleased.  The next paintings I did for myself, and I suppose I had become over confident and careless.  Because I had no definite audience, I allowed myself to gloss over defects I knew were there. These miniatures are not even good enough to mount.

 

The poodles were looking terrible.  Like dirty black mops.  Their hair had overgrown their eyes so they couldn’t see and had become too long around their butts so they were beginning to be stinky.  The weather was too warm, and there were mosquitoes.

 

My mood turned when I found an unexpected, favorable comment on the subsistence living post from a writer whom I particularly admire.  She said that it was a topic she had never thought about, and I realized that most people in the lower 48 are unaware of this issue which is so contentious here in Alaska. 

 

Then I set to work on new paintings for Mah Jongg prizes, and I found that when I paint for a deadline and a known audience I work to a different standard.  For a while I will only paint for give-aways until I figure out some other means of quality control.

 

I clipped the dogs, and they look really cute.  We went to a bon-fire at the river landing the night before the ice went out, and they rolled in the dust.  They were dust grey, but happy.  I drank a marguetita; there were lots of kids playing in the mud, and many happy, dusty dogs watching for dropped hot dogs.

 

Now that the snow is gone we walk every day up the hill in back of the house through the beautiful white paper-birch forest.  The dogs love this walk, and Fluffy roams freely, looking for squirrels.  Daisy has to be on a leash because she doesn’t come when called if she would rather not. 

 

Last night we took our walk after dinner.  We passed several trail markers, 2 fallen birches and a pile of moose poop. Suddenly Fluffy ran back to us, stopped and began to growl.  I was scared.  I couldn’t see anything, but dogs sense things people don’t.  A bear behind a bush?

 

I said to Jerry, “Let’s go back.”

 

He said, “Maybe it’s just a moose, let’s go a bit further.”

 

He had the gun strapped to his belt, and I trust him, so we advanced carefully, Fluffy close by and growling, Daisy excited and interested, me nervous, and Jerry calm and confident. 

 

Nothing happened, and we walked all the way to the track where mining equipment is occasionally moved through the woods.  We walked up the track for a short distance, noting a few old moose tracks, until we came to some large mud puddles where we turned back.  On the way home, in the same place where he had growled on the way up, Fluffy stopped again.  He seemed to see something that excited him in the woods on the right.  All I could see was a dead birch with some dark patches of loose bark, with a bush beside it.

 

As we walked back down the hill I remembered that Fluffy has some neurotic antipathies to various cleaning tools; a broom here, a mop there.  He jumps back and growls when he sees them.  Sometimes he attacks them. Perhaps he saw something in the woods with broom-like qualities.  I guess I can’t depend on him to warn of bears, or even moose.

 

So the days are calm.  We had a good dinner (caribou) at Pam and Joee’s.  The weather is cooler.  Tomorrow is Mah Jongg, and on Friday we will go back to Fairbanks since we are out of lettuce and tomatoes and getting dangerously low on wine.  There I can read all my blogs and catch up with my web friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At first, when we walked up Tofty Road with the poodles, flocks of little silvery birds swirled before us. There were so many of them that they reminded us of swarms of big bugs. They seemed to be foraging for food in the snow, especially where it had been turned over by the snow plows. Now the birds are gone, I guess flown north, and there are real bugs flitting around. Bugs and spiders just seem to appear the minute the weather warms.

Spruce grouse are calling in the woods. Bea has a pair of plump rosy-red grosbeaks at her feeder. The grass around the hot springs is vivid green. There are pussy willows. By this afternoon we should be able to walk in the birch forest behind our house without getting in snow.

Ice is still firm on the Tanana River. We check the landing now most days. Ice breakup is spectacular, and jams may cause flooding. There are already flood warnings. Our house is on high ground and would not be affected, but Bea and Al’s is on low land, and they are worried. Jerry says if there is a flood the electricity will be off since the power plant is on low ground. In that eventuality we can practice our subsistence skills.

I will remind Jerry to take the gun with us when we walk, just in case we should meet a hungry black bear.

April 30: Jerry replaced the chipped linoleum bathroom floor with imitation wood laminate. He had to remove the toilet and sink, and in doing so broke a pipe and caused big lot of water to get on the floor. There was a lot of swearing. I was upstairs in my tiny “studio” painting a tiny painting. I asked if I could help and was told no, there’s only one mop. So I stayed upstairs and the dogs did too, since they have to be with me at all times. Tonight I have a beautiful new dry bathroom floor that matches the rest of the cabin.

Daytime temperatures are now over 70. These are records for this date. We took our walk in the woods this evening, up the trail through the birch forest (Indian land we are not supposed to walk on, but who will know?) Mosquitoes swooped. The snow is gone but there was a lot of water running down the hill. The forest floor was covered with dry birch leaves and green growing things like moss and evergreen ground covers. We saw some piles of fresh looking moose poop, and some other kind, perhaps owl. The bare white birch trunks and branches against the dark blue sky amaze me.

There is much talk of flood. The ice on the river still looks pretty solid, but if it jams, as it has south of here the river may overflow