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As I walked down the hallway at the Palmer Veterans and Pioneers Home Sept. 14, my heart grew heavy when I noticed two papers in the special glass memorial wall case which notifies the recent death of a resident. It grew even heavier when I saw Dave Brown's face looking back at me. Because my husband Gary has lived in the Pioneer Home for the last two and a half years, I know all the residents by face, if not name, and Dave was very special to us. Gary had been living in the Palmer Pioneer Home...
It could be said that I owe my existence to square dancing. My parents met at a square dance in the basement of the Seward Methodist Church in the early 1950s. Dad grew up on a ranch in Montana and came to Alaska for adventure and work. Mom grew up in a Pennsylvania town and came to Alaska as a missionary nurse. They married in 1954 and lived in Seward, Anchorage and Cooper Landing before moving their growing family of four children (I'm the oldest) to Glennallen in January 1963. Glennallen did...
The "pop" of the lids on the jars as I lifted them out of the pressure cooker was music to my ears. It's always a relief to know that the last of the many steps to "canning" my bone broth is successful. Although if one or two jars don't seal, it really is no big deal. I just use them first or freeze them until needed. Ten pint jars of caribou bone broth stood cooling on the counter in August 2020. Making and canning bone broth is a rather new endeavor for me. Bone broth came to my attention...
After an extra stressful week, I so looked forward to spending a whole day at the 43rd annual Scottish Highland Games on June 29. It had been on my calendar for over a month, but I hadn't been sure I'd be able to attend. This was not my first experience at the Games. That was back in the 1980s when our children were young and it was held on the grounds of the Eagle River Lions Club. My husband, Gary, had just learned that he came from a Scottish background, rather than Irish. That day in Eagle...
"Are you two doing okay back there?" my friend, Cindy, and I were being asked by one of our hiking group. "Yes, fine," we replied as we brought up the rear on a hike back in July 2004. We were on the Caribou Creek Trail off the Nabesna Road, near the Tok Cut-Off Highway. Cindy and I were in our 40s, while the ages of the other women hikers from Anchorage ranged from 55 to 74. Betty, the organizer of this outing, had been a friend of my mother's when they were young singles living in Seward in...
In the early 2000s when my husband, Gary, and I lived in Slana, we would take turns going to Anchorage in the summer to buy groceries and other supplies. One of us always stayed home to mind our bed and breakfast business and the generator. Gary returned one trip with a surprise gift for me-a shiny yellow metal garden cart. Although I was delighted with his thoughtfulness, I wasn't excited about the color. I must have made some comment, because the next thing I knew, he'd painted it green. What...
For three days in mid May 2022, I held my seventh and final garage sale. (The first was in 1975 in Fairbanks, before we moved to California.) My husband, Gary, and I conducted all the previous ones together, but this time, he had been living in the Palmer Pioneer Home for two and a half months. Our son Patrick and his girlfriend, Brandi, flew up from Denver a few days prior to help and Patrick's long time local friends, Gary and Kim, provided help beginning in early April. Gary and Kim were...
Back in the spring of 1992, my husband Gary and I decided we wanted to raise homegrown chickens to eat, something we'd done twice before. But this time he also wanted some egg layers, so in addition to the 25 Cornish Cross for eating, he purchased four Rhode Island Red and two Barred Plymouth Rock for egg laying. The Cornish Cross grew fast and two and a half months later were all in the freezer. The remaining chickens were happier with a less crowded coop, but of those intended for laying, four...
In the fall of 2002, my husband and I attended a Pioneers of Alaska Convention dinner for 400 people in the gym of Monroe High School in Fairbanks. A Glennallen Panther banner hung on the wall along with banners from the other schools Monroe competed against. Looking at that banner instantly brought to mind several basketball memories. When our family first moved to Glennallen in the early 1960s, the Panthers (under Coach Noonkesser) played basketball with the Monroe Rams. In those days, the...
In August 2023, I was listening to my kitchen radio one morning as usual, when the Wasilla Mayor's weekly information blurb came on. Near the end, she said people who had a library card could read the Frontiersman, as well as other newspapers, for free, to check out additional local activities. My ears perked up. Read the Frontiersman for free! Several years ago, when the yearly subscription came due (with notice of a rate increase) my husband Gary decided the Frontiersman would no longer be...
My daughter Erin called from her home in Colorado and left a voice message, "Call me when convenient. I want to talk about quilt batting." Erin had recently resumed work on the corduroy quilt she started over 20 years ago. The top was finished and she wanted to put the layers together, bind it and tie it. This was the same daughter who greatly disliked sewing in seventh grade Home-Ec class at Colony Middle School. It was too structured. She was more of the "creative" type. I'm glad she...
The small space between Mt. Sanford drive and Crossroads Clinic didn't seem big enough to hold the log church building from my childhood memories. How could the main room with the cathedral ceiling, the two-story Sunday school addition, the outhouses, the "extra room" mobile home, and all those parked cars possibly fit on that small piece of land? These were my thoughts back in December 1999, as I stared at the empty space where the Glennallen Community Chapel once stood. We had recently moved...
"Oh!" I said looking around at the ladies. "Did I tell you that I'm going to be a grandma?" A jumble of congratulatory words followed as well as comments and stories about grandmas and grandchildren. We were a group of ten women sitting around tables having a "card party" at our little local church in Slana back in November 2005. Conversation flowed freely at these once-a-month, all day affairs. We weren't playing pinochle or poker-we were making greeting cards. I had attended my first session...
Over 25 years ago, while at my sister's house in Glennallen, a gentleman dropped by to discuss some business. I found myself staring at his Carhartt vest and blue jean bib overalls, which featured multi colored patches upon patches. I had mended clothing for my family of four for over 20 years and had never seen anything like it. I couldn't help making a comment about the patches and learned he'd done all this repair work himself. I found this intriguing because many people viewed mending as...
After making the 140-mile drive from Palmer to Glennallen, I parked my car, gathered the coleslaw I'd made from cabbage from my garden, and I walked with anticipation to the picnic area of the Pinneo Ballpark. Fifty years ago in May, 22 other classmates and I had graduated from Glennallen High School, and I was curious as to who I might find to visit with at this class reunion. There had been no communication between me and any of my classmates about marking this milestone year, so I could only...
My son, Patrick, proposed to his girlfriend of three years, Brandi, on March 30, and of course she said yes. It was a shocking surprise to all involved because of his insistence that he would never marry again after the devastating end of his first marriage in 2011. But, Brandi made him happy and he realized that he would be foolish not to "put a ring on it." Brandi is a very loveable, family oriented woman. During the phone call telling of their engagement, she asked me if I had anything from...
One spring morning during breakfast, back in 2003 when we lived in Slana, my husband Gary said, "I turned the oil stove on out in the greenhouse. Let's move plants today." "Fine," I replied, glad to get the seedlings in the upstairs room and the front porch out of the house. This was our second season to have a garden and greenhouse in Slana. The greenhouse was his domain and the vegetable and flower gardens were mine. We didn't plan it that way; it just happened. When I was a kid growing up in...
"Dad, we would like to replace your stove. Is that okay with you?" I asked back in the spring of 2004. He said he supposed so. I was planning a two-month visit with him in Homer and the thought of trying to cook a regular meal on his kitchen stove was discouraging. The General Electric electric range matched the refrigerator. Both were probably top-of-the-line when purchased back in the 1950s when the house was new. Dad had replaced the element in the oven a few years back, but the metal...
"Here is something you might like to take a look at," Dad commented back in spring 2005 as he brought me a worn manila colored bundle tied with string. Dad had been puttering around looking for something on the shelves where he kept important items, while I sat on the nearby couch at his home in Homer tying a quilt. Before removing the quarter inch thick string, I read the address: "Miss Martine Burdick; Alaska Nurses Association; Seward San; Bartlett, Alaska," and noted the February 1954...
Spring weather makes me think of summer's influx of visitors to our wonderful state and I am reminded of our years living in Slana running a bed and breakfast in our home. My husband Gary and I provided a home away from home for many people from 2001 through 2006. Each year was busier than the one before, until we stopped serving the public due to health reasons – first my dad's and then my own. I was surprised how disappointed I was to close our business when we did. I had doubts back in 2...
For various reasons, I had not cleaned out my email inbox for almost a year. So, last October I spent a whole weekend purging and filing. Not surprisingly, the majority of emails were from my two friends, Linda and Janet. Hundreds of them. We three helped each other get through the Covid pandemic – what could have otherwise been a lonely time. We've known each other since the early 1980s when we all lived in Cooper Landing and were in our 20s and 30s. My husband, Gary, and I moved there in A...
The afternoon of Dec. 12, 2022, the phone rang and it was Michael, my snowplow driver. "Lady (he always calls me 'lady'), I've been thinking, and I just don't know what to do with you." He said he drove into my driveway a short way, dropped the blade and back bladed, but had no place to take the snow. We'd received 16 inches overnight, in this second of three snowstorms in about a week's time. Michael is a wonderful neighbor who has kept our driveway free from snow problems ever since my...
During my recent bout with COVID-19, books helped keep my sanity. I enjoyed reading during the long weeks of recovery, when I had little energy to do much else. I have loved books for as long as I can remember. My parents read to me from a very early age. They gave me an oversized, full-color picture dictionary for my seventh Christmas in 1962. Oh, how I treasured that book and spent hours poring over the details. As a young girl growing up in Glennallen, I remember looking at books in the...
Upon feeling a familiar "swirling" motion that Sunday afternoon of Nov. 3, 2002, I left the kitchen and walked to the living room of our Slana home. I'm always a little jumpy during earthquakes, remembering the 1964 quake at age nine. Gary, my husband, agreed he felt it, but continued to sit in his recliner in another room. A few seconds later after a hard jolt, he joined me in the center of the house where there were no windows and many doorframes. We held on to each other as the jerking and...
The third grade students looked at me like they did the other two docents – old ladies who were telling them what life was like back in the good old days of 1935. The way I talked made one student ask if grew up in the house. I couldn't blame him, but I wasn't even born for another 20 years. Why could I identify so easily with children living in Palmer in 1935? Barbara Thomas, head docent for Colony House Museum, had asked me to help with the Knik Elementary School tours that October 2016 m...
