Talking at the Woodpile

by David Thompson

  Dot and Nat continued to live in Dawson. In 1973 they bought Cooper’s Grocery and Hardware Store, and together with Iggy and his wife Petulia, built it into a commercial success. The upstairs was a large sprawling apartment where they all lived happily with the half-dozen grandchildren who came along.

  Taffy never got over his distrust of Victor or Neil, and his anxiety probably led him to an early grave. He left a long detailed will that didn’t make sense, because he hardly had anything; his bank account sat at zero. He willed Neil his family Bible and Victor his well-worn hymn book.

  “What I want to sing this stuff for, Tobias?” Victor asked, turning the book over in his hand.

  “Taffy is sending a message from the beyond that he wants you to go to church and sing and listen to the sermon,” I said.

  “Yes, I know he think I need it, but why listen to crazy old man?”

  Nat and Iggy told me the story of Piedoe. After all those years, Nat still hung his head and choked up when talking about their dog.

  After his dust-up with Nat and Piedoe, Howard Bungle had gone to work for the British Yukon Navigation Company as a dockworker, unloading freight and delivering it to the miners on the creeks. He’d been laid off when the SS Klondike made the last commercial riverboat journey in 1955. He needn’t have worried, because he and many others went to work improving the last section of the Klondike Highway into Dawson City. The boats, no longer needed, were mothballed in Whitehorse until a fire destroyed all but one of them. Truckers became the new riverboat captains.

  Victor and Mimosa’s son Adam studied engineering and managed the Bear Creek machine shop where the dredges were repaired. He dismantled and moved a cabin from Hunker Creek to Bear Creek and lived there with his young family until the price of gold forced the closure of the entire gold dredging operation in 1966. With the money he’d saved, Adam bought the Flora Dora Café when Pat Henderson retired. With the help of his parents, he ran it for many years.

  In 1970 Parks Canada funded a multi-million dollar plan to restore Dawson City to its former glory. Offices were set up in Saint Mary’s, the old hospital, new staff moved in and workers raised and stabilized buildings. The post office and the beached SS Keno riverboat had construction funds poured into them.

  An era had passed, the present was fleeting and the future held hope for Dawson City. I felt like I was in the right place at the right time and all I had to do was pay attention and record it all. It was something I was happy to do. The old-timers would be around for decades to come, but life in the Klondike was never going to be the same. It was the start of a time of change.

  The Rock Creek Boys

  I was nineteen years old in 1968 when a migration of new people arrived in the Klondike. How they learned about Dawson City, I don’t know. Perhaps the spirit of the Yukon and the call of the wild beckoned them.

  My mother warned me, “Tobias Gandhi Godwit, I don’t want you associating with the likes of those hippies. They’re scruffy and without morals. If I see you with them, your father will hear about it.”

  My father could care less. After many years of working for the Whitehorse Star, he and the editor passed the reporting job on to me. I loved it and saw stories everywhere.

  A caravan of assorted vehicles and makeshift campers constructed precariously on top of ancient truck frames arrived in town. I wrote a feature story about these cabins on wheels and took pictures, and the Star ran everything on page two of a Friday paper. Part of the story was about an ancient, rusting, one-ton Dodge truck that drove through town with a stovepipe streaming smoke. The driver curtly answered my question about the stove’s safety. “How the heck else am I going to keep the family and dogs in the back warm?” Then the door of the camper opened, and a big mountain momma with a bandana flashed a gap-toothed smile and threw water from a wash basin onto the ground.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” he said.

  I politely agreed, “It’s a fine-looking camper.”

  “I meant my wife,” he said.

  “Her too,” I quickly replied.

  I learned their names were Marty and Judy, and they had six children, all under the age of ten and all named alphabetically starting with Attila and ending with Flipper. Yes, named after the dolphin.

  “Dolphins are almost human,” Judy informed me. “They evolved from the lost citizens of Atlantis, and Attila was a saint of sorts who only destroyed what was necessary. You know, when they wouldn’t surrender to him.”

  “We wanted kids to match the whole twenty-six letters,” Marty said, “but I don’t think the old girl can do it.”

  “That would be hard on any woman,” I said.

  “I’m talking about the room in the camper,” Marty said.

  They made their own goat’s cheese and kept the goat inside the camper for its comfort.

  “A happy goat produces more milk. We treat it like one of the children,” Marty said earnestly.

  Who was I to argue? They seemed to have plenty of dairy products.

  Marty looked like a young Jethro Tull with his wiry blond hair and blue eyes. Judy was dark with brown hair, and kept the shelves of the camper packed with books.

  “She’s seeking enlightenment,” Marty said, pointing to the books with a nod of his head. “Judy wants the truth, reality or whatever you call it.”

  I read a few of the spines: Lobsang Rampa, Kahlil Gibran and Adelle Davis. Judy was searching high and low.

  When the camper’s door opened, Galahad the goat would jump out wearing a red bandana and trailing clumps of hay.

  One afternoon I took Sunny Moon Delight herbal tea with them, and between the bleats and the noisy kids we had a pleasant conversation about reality. The cheese and multi-grain bread was tasty, but somehow it’s disconcerting when the supplier sits looking you in the face. Goats are ugly. Something about their eyes bothers me; they’re too far back on the side of their heads.

  Days later the smell of goat still clung to my clothes. Holding my jacket over the washing machine, my mother wrinkled her nose and asked, “Tobias, where have you been, in a barn?”

  “No, Mom, I was in a camper,” I said.

  “Are you hanging out with those hippies again?” she asked.

  “Just doing my job, Ma,” I said.

  “Wait until I tell your father,” she said, slamming the washer lid down.

  The new Klondike citizens reminded us of the gold-rush era; they brought a lifestyle that made the people of Dawson City uneasy. I, on the other hand, was pleased to meet them and made a point of introducing myself to as many as possible. Soon I became an unofficial Klondike historian and guide. These people were colourful, and in no time I was filling notebooks with the stories of their lives and their daily antics.

  The Dawson folk prodded me for information. One day, when I stepped into the Dawson City General Store, a crowd deep in discussion turned and surrounded me.

  “We hear there’s a commune of them camping up on Hunker Creek, and they have a herd of forty goats and are selling goat cheese for a living,” said Walter Rather, the owner of the store, as he wiped his hands on his striped apron.

  “Nothing of the sort is happening,” I assured them.

  “And we hear they are all going skinny-dipping together at the Bear Creek swimming hole,” Walter said.

  I knew that much was true, because I had been invited to dip with them but declined. My mother would have killed me.

  “I don’t know what to say, Walter. I guess it takes all kinds,” I said. “Why don’t you go out and take a look for yourself instead of listening to everyone else’s opinion? That would be the fair thing to do. And while you’re at it, you could go skinny-dipping with them.”

  The thought of seeing old, wrinkled Walter cannonballing into the tailing pond was a frightening thing.

  Walter didn’t like that last comment. He shot me a look and muttered under his breath, “I knew it. Damn hippies.”

  I figured that by the end of the day Walter’s rumour
mill would be spinning at full speed.

  That evening Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling and Dance Hall opened for the season. It didn’t help public opinion when a horseback rider in buckskins and a Kit Carson goatee rode through the hall, scattering dancing girls and roulette wheels.

  The RCMP arrived with sirens and lights blazing, and Kit galloped off, leading a merry chase into the never-setting midnight sun.

  The next day, picking up a quart of milk, I bumped into Walter. He gave me a look and shook his head as he slipped past in the aisle. “Tobias,” he said accusingly.

  “What do you mean, ‘Tobias’?” I asked angrily. “It’s not my fault!”

  “You hang out with them,” Walter said, shaking his finger angrily as he continued down the aisle, sweeping a broom in front of him.

  What an ass, I thought.

  “Look, Walter, like I said before, find out the facts for yourself before you start making judgments about people.”

  About the same time as this migration, Parks Canada transferred in all kinds of staff people and made their offices in the old hospital building on Front Street. Jobs and money were pumped into the town. Parks laid claim to a vast amount of property and was soon collecting countless artifacts and repairing and stabilizing buildings and the SS Keno.

  Summer deepened, and the universe continued to unfold with the arrival of the Halloo family. These people were to influence my life in many ways for years to come. Before I met them, I’d heard of a bunch of ill-mannered no-goods living at Rock Creek. People were calling them the Rock Creek boys.

  On a pleasant sunny afternoon, I walked into Cooper’s Grocery and Hardware Store and straight into a storm. Richard, the ancient owner, stood behind the counter holding off three of the biggest men I had ever seen. They were like a herd of elephants milling around a watering hole. Two of them looked identical, and these twins bookended the third man. They glared at me, then snapped their attention back to Richard.

  “What the hell do you mean, we can’t have any more credit?” the largest one was saying. He leaned over the counter pointing a finger in Richard’s face. The other two stood to one side with their meaty arms folded across their chests.

  Mrs. Byrd, the pastor’s wife, clutched her coat collar and took my arrival as her opportunity to scurry out the door. She rolled her eyes as she passed me.

  But no one was going to intimidate Richard. All five feet of him stood up on his toes, and glaring through his wire-rimmed glasses, he gave it right back to them.

  “You don’t get any more credit because you haven’t paid your damn bill. How can I be any more clear? Do you want it in writing?” Richard’s voice grew louder as he spoke.

  The big man, realizing Richard wasn’t going to back down, sighed and stepped back. He motioned with a jerk of his arm for the others to come over. They put their heads together and had a quick mumble. Meanwhile Richard ignored them. He grabbed the end of the wrapping twine from the dispenser above his head, pulled off a few feet and finished tying a parcel of cheese wrapped in brown paper. The big one turned back to Richard, reached into his overall pocket and pulled out a wad of bills.

  “We were just trying to stretch out our funds on your credit until we found work, but we’ll pay up and get going,” he said. “We always pay our bills, Mr. Cooper, maybe not on time but we do pay them.”

  He laid out the money on the counter, and Richard scooped it up and counted it into the cash register.

  “Okay, boys, your credit is good. Buy what you want,” Richard said, not looking up but flipping his hand at them. “I’ll trust ya. If that’s your word, then I’ll trust ya.”

  Richard did trust people. All you had to do was pay up, and it was business as usual.

  The three men gathered armfuls of groceries and supplies and signed for them. The odd one, the one who wasn’t a twin, winked at me as they shoved out through the door and piled into their old pickup truck.

  Mrs. Byrd was still on the boardwalk outside the store waiting for her ride, and as he walked by, one of the men leaned over and went “Boo!” in her face, making her jump. I’m sure Pastor Byrd would put something in his next Sunday sermon about the evils of frightening people.

  So finally I had met the Rock Creek boys, and despite what I had just seen, I liked them. They might have tried to twist Richard’s arm for more credit, but they seemed genuine to me. Also, I wasn’t one to take other people’s opinions seriously. I was born with an insatiable curiosity and desire to know the truth, so I didn’t let gossip distract me. The Halloos had my curiosity, and after meeting them, I wanted more information. The opportunity came when I got the assignment of interviewing newcomers to the Klondike for the Whitehorse Star. The editor was mostly interested in the new Historical Sites staff, but I broadened the story to include the Rock Creek boys. I phoned them up, and they invited me out.

  The one who wasn’t a twin met me in the driveway. “We saw you in the store that day, didn’t we?”

  “Yes,” I said, “you were asking Mr. Cooper for more credit.”

  “Asking, nothing,” he said. “Winch here was ready to stick the place up if the old geezer didn’t give in. The only thing that stopped us was you coming in the door.” He winked at the others.

  I half believed them.

  They introduced themselves. I had never heard of names like Winch, Clutch and OP.

  OP spat a wad of tobacco chew at my feet as I entered the house and invited me to sit at the kitchen table, which was covered with pots, dishes and newspapers. Once they got over their suspicion of who I was and what I was there for, they were polite and helpful. I was beginning to realize that they were not what they appeared to be and were more intelligent and better mannered than they let on.

  The interview went well, and this was the beginning of a symbiotic relationship. The boys accepted me because I was unthreatening, and their vanity allowed me to record the stories of their lives. Their strong sense of family made them interesting, and if you got past their toughness, they were genuinely good people.

  They started by telling me they had moved from a farm near Fort Saskatchewan north of Edmonton.

  “We’d had enough of those phony Klondike Days in Edmonton,” Winch said. “We wanted to come to the real North.”

  “Yeah, we homesteaded where land was cheap,” Clutch said.

  “Our prairie neighbours weren’t sorry to see us go, and I think some of our new Rock Creek neighbours are sorry to see us arrive,” OP said with a laugh.

  Clutch chuckled. “Our reputation must have preceded us.”

  It sounded a little sinister to me, but they all smiled with big toothy grins, so I decided they were pulling my leg.

  As I got to know them better, I could see they accepted themselves and didn’t try to hide their shortcomings. This honesty was disarming and endearing. No thought of changing their behaviour ever crossed their minds. They liked themselves just the way they were.

  The three brothers started life on the right foot, not with a silver spoon, but with good opportunities all the same. Their parents were well-educated professionals who taught them well and had given them solid names—names full of hope and expectation—names they changed to car parts.

  Clutch was the youngest and the smallest, weighing 310 pounds. I discovered he caused no end of trouble with his ambitions. His greatest aim was to become a Member of Parliament.

  Winch and OP were the older twins and together weighed seven hundred pounds, though the amount wasn’t equally divided. Winch was the leader. He was a bit of a bully and he ran things his way. Most of the family troubles resulted from his pride and anger. If the RCMP came to the house, it was Winch they were looking for.

  I was there once when the police called.

  “Honestly, officer, I was only defending my honour. That man had no business calling my malamute, Stalin, a mongrel,” he said.

  OP was a yes-man, forthright and a perfect gentleman but sometimes a fool. OP was short for Oil Pan, though
some Dawson folk thought it was short for “other people’s,” the brand of cigarettes he liked to smoke.

  The brothers had handsome features; their wavy brown hair grew as far down their backs as their beards grew down their chests, just to the top of their GWG bib overalls. Their wives thought they were the best-looking men they had ever seen and loved them dearly.

  When they were together, it was difficult to be in the same room with them, but if they were alone they were totally different. Sizing them up, I thought, Let’s see what the Yukon makes of the Halloos.

  The extended family—brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins—had purchased a sprawling, rundown house that sat above the flood mark on the banks of the Klondike River near its confluence with Rock Creek. They eventually added onto the hipped-roof log building from the gold-rush era as they needed space. The original skilfully scribed logs had aged to a silvery grey, but the new, framed additions were amateurishly built and poorly maintained. Rain and snow water ran off the metal roof, staining the walls and rotting the boards. Numerous rusty nails left dark comet-like tails on the unpainted siding. The wood on the porch was rotting, and the screen door hung listlessly from one hinge. Fat dogs lounged outside on sun-faded couches that had lost their stuffing. Scruffy, self-absorbed cats sashayed in and out of the open door along with insects.

  The buildings had a charm of their own. The mismatched levels made it impossible for people not to bump their heads when moving from room to room. It was a fine example of bush architecture that provided warmth and shelter for an ever-growing family.

  On my visits I discovered the Halloos were accomplished musicians and graceful dancers. They took out violins and guitars and played and danced in the spacious kitchen. For such big men they were amazingly light on their feet. At a town dance I watched them waltz with their wives to the “Blue Danube” under the moonlight and patio lanterns. It was inspiring.

  The wives complemented their husbands in size, appearance and character. Three sisters—Lulu, Olive and Stella—were married to the three brothers. The women wore simple homemade frocks of bright paisley cotton. They’d made the men’s shirts of the same material. On my birthday they presented me with a shirt the same size as their men’s; it was huge on me, but I wore it anyway, all tucked in. The women never stopped complimenting me on how good I looked in that shirt. Whatever the season, the women wore practical red-soled rubber boots with thick grey woollen socks pulled up to their knees. The boys dressed like their dads, the girls dressed like their moms, and their clothes were spotlessly clean.