We will start in Seattle when I was in kindergarten. My father had gone to Alaska in June of 1944 to work in the sheet metal shop at the Marks Air Force Base. Mother and I followed six months later. On December 1, 1944 mother and I sailed on a ship from Seattle to Seward Alaska. It took three days going up the “Inside Passage.” I can remember singing to the service men on the ship. Mother said I sang, “Don’t sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me.” The ship stopped at Ketchikan and Juneau. When we crossed the open water of the Gulf of Alaska it was very stormy and I do remember that I got very seasick. I can remember lying on the bunk and throwing “straight up” in the air like a fountain. Mother said it was so rough that waves were washing across the deck. Mother told us she was the only woman down for breakfast one morning because so many were sick.
It was very dark on the ship because it was war time and they didn’t want enemy submarines or planes to see us. It was very cold when we finally docked at Seward. I remember that one of the soldiers gave me a cake in a big box as we left the ship. We took a small, old looking steam powered train from Seward to Anchorage. There was a pot-bellied stove but it was still cold. The seats were straight backed and hard.
Mother said we stayed at the Westward Hotel for three days because we were waiting for the weather to break so we could fly to Nome. We were on our way to Nome on December 7, 1944. We left early in the morning and it was dark outside. Mother and I were the only passengers on the small plane. We landed at Nome and took a taxi to my Aunt Florence’s house. I remember seeing the tall snow banks on the sides of the road.
Nome is located on the south coast of the Seward Peninsula facing Norton Sound, part of the Bering Sea. Cape Nome was about 12 miles east from Nome and I remember driving there to pick cranberries. They started building a bulkhead of rocks in 1948 along the beach to protect the business section and it was completed in the early 1950’s. The rock came from Cape Nome and is now a regular Rock Quarry and is owned by a Native Corporation in Nome.
Rube Kramer who we rented from had a cabin between Nome and Cape Nome about 8 miles on the Cape Nome Road. We had a lot of fun visiting Rube’s cabin. We would picnic there and even go swimming in a pool of warmer water by the ocean front. Rube made his own root beer and we thought it was delicious. His cabin was covered on the inside with newspaper print on the walls.
The Marks Air Force Base was about a mile west of Nome and I think that the commercial planes would land at that airfield. There was a little hill about a mile north of Nome called Chicken Hill and not sure how it got the name Chicken Hill. We liked to pick wild flowers there in the summer and I remember sledding down the hill in the winter.
Wild flowers were beautiful on the tundra and we loved to pick them and make bouquets. I have listed a few of them: Iris [or Flags], For-get-me-nots [the Alaska state flower], Bluebells, Buttercups, Shooting Stars, Monkshood, Poppies, Wild Yellow Roses, Cow Parsnips, Wild Flax, Pasqual, Anemone, Daisy, Lady Fingers, Richardson’s Saxifrage [bears like them and they smell like pepper], Mount White Avens, Wild Marigold, Wild Rhododendron [very pretty and low to the ground], Fireweed, Primrose and many more; plus cranberries and blueberries.
We used to go swimming in a small creek north of Nome called Dry Creek under a little bridge called Red Bridge which was across the road from Chicken Hill and behind the mining company. Some discharge water from the mining company power plant used to run into it, which made the water warm under the bridge, and we would play in it. We didn’t think there were any contaminates in that run-off from the power plant.
The name of the river on the east side of Nome was the Nome River and the bridge the Nome River Bridge by the mouth of the river. I can remember fishing there and watching the salmon spawning. Trout and Grayling were also found in the Nome River.
We lived on “B” Street which I considered the center of town. Our home had a bay window and we could look down the street and see the Bering Sea. We were a block from the main street which ran parallel to the coastline.
The school was on “B” Street too and if I remember right about two blocks north of our house. Here is a picture of our home.
My dad opened his own sheet metal shop across the street from our home on “B” Street; it was called Arctic Sheet Metal Shop. He was a general contractor for furnaces, stoves, plumbing and sheet metal. Everyone called my dad “Ben” and he was very tall [6 foot 4], dark, and handsome.
My Aunt Florence and Uncle Frank (Bingham’s) and cousins Ralph and Gary lived on 1st Avenue which was directly behind the federal building. We always had our holiday dinners at their home. Also, my Aunt Florence let me practice the piano there before we got a little piano. Helen Dunbar was my piano teacher. There was a small wrecked plane on the property behind their house. My cousin Gary remembered playing in the fuselage too.
I asked my grade school friend Robert Dunbar who lived a couple doors down from the Bingham’s and he sent me the following by email in 2009:
“Now you're talking about something with which I am VERY familiar! I used to imagine myself as a WWII pilot in that fuselage! There were some old military cooking utensils in it, too, that I took home and actually used--like a couple of aluminum canteens and a couple of aluminum plates. It WAS the fuselage of a WWII fighter plane, although I don't know which one/type. It was more behind the Silverman house (which my sis, Bonnie, owned and rented out until recently). And as you remember, the Dunbar home was two houses East of the Silverman house, 2nd from the corner. I remember I used to wear an old Air Force pilot's hat, with a short brim and sheep's wool inside with leather outside during those years. “
No comments:
Post a Comment