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One morning in August 2012 I answered the ringing phone and heard "Hi, this is Kim. Gary and I have been picking blueberries in Hatcher Pass and we have more than we need. Could we bring you some?" Several thoughts jumbled through my mind including, "no, we can't accept that generous of an offer two years in a row, and yes, that would be so wonderful." Because of my health issues and our move back to Palmer, I picked not one berry during the fall of 2011. Now feeling much better a year later, I...
During our first summer of trying to be self sufficient and live off the land, my husband, Gary, decided to keep honeybees. The year was 1974 and we lived 23½ miles out of Fairbanks on the Chena Hot Springs Road. Once he got the bee hive box situated near the edge of the woods, they needed little attention. One evening in late July, upon returning from a day in town, we noticed the hive box had been toppled over. Gary walked over to investigate and decided from the signs that a bear had...
I sat listening as Dad recited verse after verse of "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" by Robert Service. During my month long visit with him in October 2005, I had been surprised and amazed several times. I can't remember the poetry we were required to memorize back in high school, and yet Dad started quoting Robert Service out of the blue. Actually, not out of the blue. We were sitting in front of the open oven door of a wood cook stove drinking tea. It was his idea that we take some food to one of...
"Look! Look! Look!" I excitedly exclaimed to my almost 16-year old son as I pointed to the field on our left. We were driving past one of the many grain fields in the Matanuska Valley where we live. I would drop him off for his last day of school in a few minutes. He looked up from reading the all-important sports page of the newspaper. "What? Birds? I don't care about birds," he said with disgust. He went on with his reading, ignoring the four sandhill cranes foraging in the field. I wonder if...
I welcome the sight of springtime sunlight streaming through the south facing windows of my home, but along with that comes noticing dirt on the window glass and a thicker than usual layer of Matanuska Glacier silt on the window sills. Although I no longer live in a log home, this reminds me of the following story I wrote back in 2004. "What do you mean 'washing logs'?" asked the lady at the other end of the phone. I had just mentioned I needed to get back to my project of washing logs. Upon...
My mother's handwriting jumped out at me as I pulled out the contents of a 1960s-era postmarked envelope. What a wonderful surprise, I thought, as I read her letter and set it aside. I was half an hour into sorting through a large box full of my Aunt Clara's letters about a year ago. The box contained hundreds of letters, which covered the years 1954 through 2008. My mother was less than three years older than her sister, Clara, and they had a very close relationship. Perhaps partly because...
By Al Clayton, Sr., as told to Maraley McMichael. Recent clear sunny days in make me think of going ice fishing. I've made many winter fishing trips through the years, but one in particular stands out in my memory. While living in Anchorage in the early 1960s, I made a trip to Copper Lake in the Nabesna Road area. I chose March because it usually brings beautifully clear, cold weather to interior Alaska. Another fellow, Buck Moore, made the trip with me. Buck was a camp cook for Lee Hancock and...
By MARALEY McMICHAEL Senior Voice Correspondent "This is not working, I can't handle this all the way to Texas! As soon as we get to Kamloops, I'm going to find a veterinarian and see if we can get something to quiet her down," my husband Gary declared one January day in 2000. He had already grumbled so much, I had moved into the middle of the seat of our '97 pickup. That put Patches, our dog, by the passenger window. We didn't know about harnesses attachable to seatbelts, but we did know that...
As a child in Anchorage, Seward and then Glennallen, I remember many magical Christmases. Then, in third grade, I got into a big argument with another student about Santa. I was devastated after a conversation with my mother as I realized that the other child was right. Christmas was still special, but not magical. During the early years, our family would frequently spend Christmas at our cabin on Kenai Lake. Dad and Mom packed everything we needed into the 1956 two-tone green Chevy station...
"Would you be willing to drive to Slana and help me retrieve the little 1955 camp trailer?" I asked my son Patrick. "Sure," he replied. He had just told me he was coming to Alaska this past August, only this trip he planned to help with projects on my "honey do" list. Because of his busy schedule with his architectural firm, he's lucky to make a trip to Alaska every two or three years, and when he does, he usually plays "fishing guide" to a group of his buddies that come along, too. A couple of...
During my senior year at Glennallen High School, my husband-to-be, Gary, was hired by Woodruff Construction, who had the contract to build an addition to the high school end of the K-12 building. After our wedding the end of the school year in May, 1973, we moved to Anchorage where Gary continued to work for Woodruff. Through Woodruff, he was hired by Mercer Construction to be part of the crew which would do remodel work at the King Salmon Air Force Base. Gary was excited at the opportunity to t...
While looking through a box of artwork a while back, I came across an 11-inch by 14-inch pencil drawing of "The Beast." At the bottom right corner were the words: "To Pop... Christmas 1990...love, Patrick." Back then our son was 14 and called his dad "Pop". The drawing was framed in black construction paper and covered in plastic wrap secured with Scotch tape. Picture frame wire poked through the cardboard backing to form a crude hanger. This needs to be up on a wall, I thought, not buried in a...
Many diverse conversations took place at our kitchen table when my husband Gary and I lived in Slana, partly because we ran a bed and breakfast in an area of Alaska that is off the beaten trail, but also because we lived next to the largest National Park in the United States – Wrangell-St. Elias. One Sunday in June 2006 stands out in particular. We had fixed our specialty breakfast of blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs and reindeer sausage and sat down to eat with our father-son guests. We d...
To get to his construction job site those early summer mornings in 1974, my husband, Gary, could either drive 24 miles into Fairbanks and then another 25 miles to Eielson Air Force Base, or drive 4 miles down Chena Hot Springs road, park the car, take the canoe across the Chena River and get a ride with a co-worker who was camped there in the campground. The shortest route usually won out, and so a lot of river crossings took place - to work in the morning and from work in the evenings, six days...
"If you have room, would you like to take a petunia wave basket?" asked Evelyn Bush, a former employer of mine. "You can't just give away baskets for free," I replied. But when her granddaughter, Michelle, said Evelyn could very well do whatever she pleased, I accepted. Of course I could find room in our truck camper for a free flower basket, even if it was already full. Bushes Bunches Greenhouses and Garden, just outside Palmer on the Old Glenn Highway, was my husband Gary's and my last stop...
“Gary,” I said to by husband, “I think a couple moved in while we were gone, and not only had babies, but invited the whole extended family.” It was early April many years ago and we had just returned to our home in Slana after an absence of a few months while being “snowbirds”. Other winters we had done the same and not had a problem, but this time was different. We found mouse sign everywhere -- in the cellar, the kitchen, the living room, bedroom and even upstairs. Since I was so glad to be back in my own home and since I planned to...
While reading in my bedroom late in the afternoon of March 27, 1964, I suddenly felt the room swirl. I had enjoyed the day off from third-grade school work since it was Good Friday. Our family lived in company housing next to the Copper Valley Electric power plant in Glennallen. As the movement got stronger after a few seconds, I started to go look for my mother. By this time, the very loud firehouse-type bell alarm that signaled Dad when something was wrong at the power plant came to life,...
"Did all these cookbooks come from one collection?" I inquired of the lady behind the desk. Several rolling carts filled with books spilled out of the small room labeled "Friends of the Library Used Book Sale". I was visiting the community college library in Fort Collins, Colorado, where my daughter lives. "Yes," the clerk replied. She explained that a woman had died and her husband had donated her cookbook collection to the library...twenty-three boxes worth. I had already browsed enough to...
My daughter and I were visiting Dad and Mom in Homer one weekend in early January 20 years ago when I was startled awake by the phone. The clock showed it was almost midnight when I picked up the line. It was the Alaska State Troopers. "Is this the home of Al Clayton, and is he interested in a moose roadkill?" the voice on the other end asked. After Dad got on the phone, I listened to see how he would respond. With the accident site only a quarter-mile from his house, how could he say no. I was...
In October 1999 my husband Gary and I moved from Palmer to Slana, which was at that time one of the few places left on Alaska's road system still without commercial power. Residents ran their own generator, or did without electricity. This was not a completely new situation for us. Twenty-five years prior, while living on Chena Hot Springs Road out of Fairbanks, we learned it would take $10,000 to bring power to our property. After living there for a year and half, we moved to California. For...
My husband Gary burst in the door of our cabin, peeled off his outer gear, and said, "I volunteered us to cook the turkey in our wood cook stove. They'll do everything else on their Coleman stove. Thanksgiving dinner will go on as planned!" He had just returned by snow machine from checking on our neighbors, and said he would go back to their house with the sled in a while to fetch the bird. We all had awoken to no electricity that snowy November morning back in 1979. Gary and I had only lived...
As all people who have birthdays on holidays know, there are good points as well as drawbacks. Through out my life, my birthday has always had an air of anticipation, excitement, and no lack of parties and candy – October 31. I'm sure my mother had her hands full trying to squeeze in both a birthday party and trick-or-treating. When my children were little, it was a challenge getting them ready for trick-or-treating and answering phone calls from family. Five long distance greetings were not u...
One evening last winter while searching my TV recordings for a certain movie I wanted to watch, the words "Bus Life Ever" caught my eye. Curious, I clicked to learn more and soon was intrigued. It was a show out of Denver, Colorado, from the Home Improvement channel featuring three bus rebuilds. For the first one, the guy was going to raise the roof with a budget of $45,000 to $55,000. The second project was to remove the complete interior and start from scratch with a budget of $100,000 to $150...
My first experience at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer was back in the mid-1960s as part of a group of young 4-H girls from Glennallen. A couple mothers drove us in to Palmer to see our projects on display and pick them up the next day when the fair was over. I was too young to know how sleeping arrangements were made for the group, but I do remember we all spent the night at Janet Kincaid's home. Current owner of the Valley Hotel and Café and the Colony House Inn, Janet was in the hospitality...
While looking for something else, I recently came across a photo that instantly brought back many good memories. In the photo, my Dad, my three siblings and I are standing by the Resurrection Pass signpost during the last family hike I participated in. In July 1972 we hiked the Resurrection Trail along with family friends Charles and Jimmie King. The trail was 36 or 38 miles long, depending on which sign post you believed. We started in Hope on a Friday evening and ended near Cooper Landing on Sunday at noon. We couldn’t dawdle because one o...
