Sweet Home Alaska

by Carole Estby Dagg

  Mother continued the argument. “The next telegram to Mrs. Roosevelt will tell her that hundreds of children are freezing to death because you won’t let us work on our own houses.” Cally and Polly shivered and put on their best winsome waif expressions.

  Mr. Irwin sighed. “This snow has me starting to think the same way. I’ll meet with the head of the CCC to tell them we can’t wait any longer. We’ll deliver building supplies to every family still in a tent. We’ll keep our crews felling timber and working the heavy equipment, and you can organize yourselves into teams to get houses built and your families under cover.”

  “Get us the wood and nails and we’ll do the rest,” Pop said, and everyone else agreed.

  • • •

  When word got out, it was like that wonderful night when their hospital got built in hours.

  Trucks rumbled back and forth with supplies. Mr. LeClerc had built his own log house back in Minnesota, so he supervised. Mr. Peterson was good at finish work, like putting in windows and doors.

  Pop had been kidding last summer about living in the chicken coop, but he wasn’t kidding about building the barn before the house.

  “What do you mean,” Mother said, “we’re getting the barn before the house? A cow and a one-ton horse need shelter more than your own children?”

  “There will be plenty of room in the barn for us while the house is being built,” Pop said, “but would you want the cow and the horse sheltering in your kitchen if we built the house first?”

  Mother threw up her hands at such convoluted logic.

  Ten days later, they had a barn. It was oblong, with two horse stalls, six cow stanchions, and a hayloft. So far they just had Clarabelle and Smoky, but more cows and another horse would come later.

  The girls explored. The barn still smelled of freshly cut wood, not manure and livestock. They were unanimous: “We want the hayloft!”

  “It’s going to be cold up there,” Pop warned. “The woodstove that was big enough to heat the tent can’t warm the whole barn.”

  Mother couldn’t climb the ladder to the loft with Matthew, so Pop wrestled bales of hay to the side of the main floor farthest from the animals and walled off a little bedroom for them. The CCC men and Pop moved the woodstove from the tent into the barn.

  The luxury of space after being cooped up together in the sixteen-by-twenty-foot tent for over five months was delicious—a whole loft to themselves! Pop marked off two bedrooms with more bales of hay, and for the first time since Wisconsin, Terpsichore had her own space. Hearing Cally and Polly on the other side of the two-bale-high partition, though, whispering and giggling, she felt left out. Cally and Polly always had each other as best friends. Sometimes she wished she had a twin too. Her teeth chattered and her toes were numb. Pop was right; it was cold. She dragged her bedding to the other side of the hay bale wall and snuggled into a communal pallet with Cally and Polly. They slept together like puppies in a basket.

  In another two weeks, when the roof, floors, and outer walls were done, they moved into a house complete with a closet for a chemical toilet. No more chamber pots and trips to the outhouse in the snow! There were also rumors that the new hospital would be getting electricity soon. Would they be getting electricity next year too? Simple comforts, like the plumbing and electricity that they had taken for granted in Little Bear Lake, seemed like luxuries when they’d been without them for so long.

  They spent days with putty knives, poking oiled ropes of oakum into every crack between the flat inside edges of the logs. If oakum could keep the water out of a ship at sea, it should keep out the wind that came howling down the valley.

  Once the oakum was in, Pop hammered sheets of plywood over the inside walls and painted everything white, the only color the general store stocked.

  The main floor, including Mom and Pop’s room, had seven-foot ceilings. Upstairs was cozier, with ceilings sloping down to within two feet of the floor. Now that the twins had their own room, Pop separated their bunk bed so that both cots rested on the floor. Terpsichore had a room all to herself, with no company but Tigger, and a window near the floor, which she could look out of from her cot.

  • • •

  After eating dinner and washing dishes, the family huddled around the woodstove. Cally and Polly played teacher with Matthew, quizzing him on his letters using blocks that Pop had sanded smooth and painted. They laughed and clapped whenever Matthew got a letter right, and Matthew laughed and clapped too.

  When Terpsichore started to pile up pillows on one end of the settee, Matthew raced to the lowest row on the bookshelf to pick out the three picture books he wanted her to read to him that night.

  He put them on Terpsichore’s lap one at a time. “Tip read,” he said. “This book, this book, and this book.” He snuggled onto Terpsichore’s lap with a contented sigh.

  The kerosene lamp over the dining room table barely gave enough light for Terpsichore to read by, but she had memorized all the words long ago when she was just a little older than Matthew was now. She felt the warm weight of his back against her chest and bent her head so her cheek brushed the side of his forehead.

  Pop shifted his chair so he could see his whole family: Mother, who was at the kitchen table now, writing her weekly letter to her mother; Cally, Polly, and Terpsichore, all reading their books; and Matthew, who had fallen asleep in Terpsichore’s lap.

  “Home sweet home,” Pop murmured.

  Mother looked up from her letter-writing. “At last,” she said.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Old-Timer Comes to Call

  THREE DAYS BEFORE THANKSGIVING, WHEN MOST FOLKS were snowbound, someone knocked on the door. From outside came the happy yips of half a dozen dogs. Mother opened the door to a middle-aged man with a beard. He held a bundle under one arm, and despite the icy snow, he snatched off his toque before bowing. “Mrs. Johnson, I presume?” he said.

  “Yes, but who—” Mother started.

  “It’s the popcorn man,” Terpsichore said, racing to the door.

  “Come in,” said Pop. “It’s too cold for introductions in an open doorway. Terpsichore, you seem to know him.”

  “It’s Mr. Crawford, my best customer at the popcorn stand,” Terpsichore said. “And he used to live in Wisconsin, just like us.”

  “Nathaniel Crawford, ma’am,” he said, extending his hand toward Mother, then to Pop. “You can call me Nate. I dropped by to see if you knew how to cook a moose,” he said.

  Mother was taken aback. “A moose?”

  “My gun overreached itself and I have more moose than the dogs and I can eat. It seems a shame to waste a good moose roast on the dogs when they’re just as happy with the scrappy pieces.” He presented Mother with the bundle, but when she sagged with the weight of it, Pop took it over.

  “This is very generous,” Pop said. “How’d you decide to share your bounty with us?”

  “I could tell from your daughter’s popcorn business that you folks have the real enterprising spirit,” he said, “and I want to encourage people like that to stay. With Thanksgiving coming up, I thought you might appreciate a change from the canned salmon I know most of you new folks are living on. I brought a moose roast, but of course the real Alaska delicacy is jellied moose nose.”

  Cally and Polly gagged. Mother was too polite to make gagging noises, but her face blanched.

  “Maybe roast moose heart with lowbush cranberry stuffing?” Mr. Crawford had the kind of eyes that twinkled when he made jokes, and they were twinkling now.

  Cally and Polly gagged again.

  “Hmm,” Mr. Crawford mused. “Maybe not . . . How about cranberry moose pot roast?” He tapped the roast Pop was holding. “You cook it like a regular pot roast in a Dutch oven for about three hours, but if you have a couple cups of lowbush cranberries, you could throw them in too, along with a cup or so of stock and a coupl
e chopped onions.”

  Terpsichore committed the recipe to memory.

  “Will you be able to join us for Thanksgiving?” Pop asked. “Since you’re providing the meat, the least we could do is invite you to share it with us.”

  Mr. Crawford’s eyes crinkled and he bowed again. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  • • •

  By Thanksgiving morning, Mother had thawed the roast and put some through the meat grinder for Matthew. Terpsichore cooked the roast, made two pumpkin pies, and helped Mother with all the side dishes. The twins covered the picnic table with Mother’s biggest white linen tablecloth, then set out the silver candlesticks and the Royal Copenhagen china.

  Mr. Crawford arrived wearing a clean but inexpertly ironed white shirt, a heavy tweed sports jacket, and a bolo tie with a carved ivory eagle holding the two ends of the tie together at his throat.

  If Mother had expected an Alaska old-timer to eat with his fingers, she was pleasantly surprised. While they waited for their stomachs to settle between their dinner and dessert, Mr. Crawford told them about how he had come to Alaska.

  “I first came north when they discovered gold in Nome. I suppose you’ve heard of Wyatt Earp and Jack London . . . Well, I can’t say I was best buddies with them, but I did meet them. Wyatt had the most luxurious saloon in Nome . . .” He cut off with a nod to Mother. “Not that I frequented it much, but that place was the first wooden two-story building in town and everybody had to see it when it opened.

  “Then when the Lucky Swedes found gold just north of here at Hatcher’s Pass, I came south to the Matanuska Valley. I wrote my sweetheart from Wisconsin to come north now that I had enough gold to provide for her properly, but by then she was already engaged to someone else. It was a hard life for a family in those early days, so I didn’t blame her for not wanting to come up.” He stopped to sigh. “She was partial to her big-city comforts and concerts.”

  Mother sniffed and said, “I can understand that!” She lifted her chin with a “so there” look toward Pop.

  “And you never married?” Terpsichore asked.

  “No, Miss Terpsichore, I did not,” he said. He fiddled with his napkin and wiped his mustache even though nothing was there. “You have an unusual name,” he said.

  Mother spoke. “It started with my mother. Her name was Thalia, for the Muse of Comedy.”

  The old-timer’s face froze for an instant, and then—Terpsichore could tell even with his beard—a slow smile traveled from his lips to his eyes.

  “My mother named me Clio, for the Muse of History, and I kept up the tradition by naming my girls for Muses too: Terpsichore, Calliope, and Polyhymnia. Cally is the twin with a dimple in the left cheek and Polly is the twin with a dimple in the right cheek.”

  The twins obligingly smiled to show their mirror-image dimples.

  Mr. Crawford studied his plate, and then looked up. “Is your mother planning to join you in Palmer now that you’re settled? Your father too, of course.”

  “My father died just after the stock market crash, and Mother is content—except for missing us, of course—living in Madison. In fact, I’m afraid you may have overestimated our fitness for Alaska. We may move back to Madison ourselves if it doesn’t work out here.”

  Pop snorted. “If I take an accounting job your mother says is mine if I want it.”

  “An accountant?” Mr. Crawford asked. “How could you be happy as a chair-twirler after you’ve seen Alaska?”

  Mother, to avoid what might become an argument on the relative merits of farming in Alaska and accounting in Wisconsin, interrupted. “How about some of your pumpkin pie, Terpsichore?”

  Terpsichore cut generous slices of pie for everyone and passed a bowl of whipped cream. “I made the pie myself, right down to growing the pumpkin from seeds I brought from Wisconsin.”

  “It looks good, Miss Terpsichore,” Mr. Crawford said.

  “I was going to make a pecan pie too, but the syrup at the store was too expensive and there aren’t any sugar maples here. There’s a chapter in Farmer Boy—”

  Mr. Crawford held up his hand. “You should taste my birch tree syrup. I don’t know if I make it like that farmer boy of Miss Terpsichore’s, but this spring I’ll show you how to tap the birch trees. I’ve discovered Alaska has everything you need for a good life.”

  Mother shook her head.

  “Alaska grows on you,” he said. “You see if it doesn’t.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Christmas 1935

  IN DECEMBER, THE SUN BARELY CLEARED THE MOUNTAINtops by ten in the morning, and set again before Terpsichore walked home from the bus stop. Sometimes, the wind blew snow into enormous drifts against the sides of barns and houses, and neighbors helped each other digging out. Every evening, Terpsichore made her way out to the chicken coop to rub glops of Vaseline into the combs and wattles of each chicken so they wouldn’t get frostbite. She had to protect her source of eggs.

  A week before Christmas, the whole family trooped out to cut the spruce tree the family had scouted out months before. Presents started appearing under the tree. Terpsichore was ready. She had bought Shirley Temple paper dolls for the twins—her only store-bought present—and made bookmarks with summer wildflowers she had dried and ironed between layers of waxed paper for her mother, a felted yarn ball for Matthew, and a knitted ear-warmer for her father.

  Pop tantalized everyone with the promise of a big surprise at Christmas, and although there were little presents wrapped in funny papers under the tree for the children, he had nothing there for Mother.

  While other families had been ordering whole dining room and living room sets of furniture from the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs, Terpsichore’s father had been firm: They would not run up debt to buy anything not necessary for survival. If her father had gone against his no-unnecessary-debt rule, what had he bought?

  • • •

  On Christmas morning, everyone opened gifts of knitted sweaters or mufflers from Mother.

  Pop had made a wooden train set for Matthew—an engine and three cars with wheels that turned and doors that opened. He bought books for Cally and Polly: Doctor Dolittle’s Return for Cally, and the latest Nancy Drew mystery, Message in the Hollow Oak, for Polly.

  Terpsichore’s present was also shaped like a book. She peeled off the cellophane tape holding the paper closed and as soon as she saw the cover, she jumped up, clutching the book to her heart. “Little House on the Prairie! I didn’t know Laura Ingalls Wilder had written another book!”

  “It just came out,” Mother said. “Your grandmother wrote to tell me she had read a newspaper article about it and we knew . . .”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish, because Terpsichore was smothering Mother and Pop in hugs. She wanted to go upstairs and read more about Laura right away, but she was still curious about Pop’s surprise.

  Now that all the other presents were open, Pop grinned and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  Terpsichore, Cally, and Polly huddled at the window and huffed on the glass to melt peepholes in the frost. Pop tromped the path to the barn that he shoveled every day. He left the barn door open, disappeared for a moment, and reappeared at the barn door with a large shipping crate balanced on the rims of a wheelbarrow.

  Still clutching her book, Terpsichore raced to be first to the door. “What is it, Pop?”

  “What is it, Pop?” echoed the twins.

  “What on earth?” said Mother.

  Pop laid the box carefully on the table. Matthew toddled over and banged on the sides of the crate with his palms.

  “This present’s for everyone, but mostly for you, Clio,” he said, and kissed the top of Mother’s head. “Close your eyes for a minute while I take apart the box.” He took out a crowbar, claw hammer, and large serrated knife he’d stowed in the broom closet. Terpsichore resisted pe
eking, even at the mysterious creaks and squeaks of nails being pulled out of the crate and the rasp of a knife on cardboard.

  “Ta-da!” he crowed. “You can all open your eyes now.”

  Mother turned and approached the object on the table. Her hands hovered over the black enamel finish on the playing arm. A smile widened as she looked up at Pop. “A Victrola,” she breathed.

  “Well, you had to leave your electric record player behind because we won’t have electricity up here for a while, but you still hauled up all those heavy records.”

  Mother broke off Pop’s next words with a kiss, then bustled to the closet by the front door to drag out a tattered cardboard box too heavy to lift. She undid the flaps and took out records to spread them on the floor around her. “What shall we play first?”

  “Something Christmasy,” chimed the twins as they knelt on the floor beside their mother to find the record album they wanted.

  Cally and Polly took turns paging through the sleeves in the storage album Mother had labeled CHRISTMAS. “‘Silent Night,’” Cally crowed, “the one with Bing Crosby and Paul Whiteman!”

  Mother continued sorting, intent on finding something else. She took out another album of records bound together like a book. “We can start with ‘Silent Night,’” she said, “but then we’re playing Handel’s Messiah.”

  With no rugs or curtains yet in the house, Bing Crosby’s mellow voice gently echoed on bare walls and floors. The music cocooned Terpsichore and warmed her like a quilt. The Johnson house was insulated with drifts that shut out the rest of the world. They would have a silent Christmas night.

  Mother replaced the Bing Crosby record in its sleeve and reverently placed the first record for Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus on the turntable. At the opening hallelujahs, her father joined in to sing the bass part, the twins sang first soprano, and Terpsichore sang alto with her mother so the strength of her mother’s voice would guide her own voice toward the right pitch. As they sang, voices blending in joy, she treasured the feeling that she was part of something bigger than herself. Together they created a sound that no single voice, no matter how perfect, could create on its own.