OK, I gotta chime in with an ol’ sourdough story of my time up thar, when it warn’t no damn state, but still a Territory (1945-47).
Somebody noted that everybody in Fairbanks was insane, which is why I loved it and fit right in.
I was in the Army, so boarded an old Liberty ship transport in Seattle, took the outer passage to Seward. There we boarded the Alaska Railway and went up to Anchorage, dropping off a few troops, then on to Fairbanks. At that time there was no road north of anchorage.
Arrived at what was then Ladd Field, moved into a Quonset hut in December, when it was around 40 F. below. Coming from Vermont, that was not bad until they told me it would get much colder soon. It did.
And around the noon, the sun just peeked above the horizon, did not like what it saw, and disappeared. Dark, but oh, the brightness of the stars. And the Aurora was breathtaking.
I messed around in a couple of assignments, then was sent down to the dog kennels, for what I could not imagine. Turns out this was a unit of the 10th Search and Rescue, and had a big kennel with about 30 malamutes. As I love dogs, I was happy to see them, but wondred what in hell I was there for. There was a grizzled old sergeant who had been there for years, and two Eskimo lads, both in the army.
As the other dog musher had been discharged, I found I was the replacement. The mission was that should an Air Corps plane go down, we were supposed to go rescue the pilot. In the two years I was there, only one plane went down, and by the time we got there, the pilot had walked back to the base.
So, the rest of the time was training. Two of us would go out for two or more weeks while the others stayed there minding the dogs. Ol’ Sarge and I would team up with one of the local guys, both of whom were very patient teaching me how to handle the team. The army issue clothing was fit for, maybe New Jersyey, but toally useless for the Interior in winter.
So on the first trip out, Dave took me to a village he knew northwest of Fairbanks, and we traded whiskey for fur parka, hat and mukluks as well as a pair of wonderful wolverine mittens. I am embarrased about that now, but whiskey was what they wanted.
In summer we put the sled on wheels and continued to roam around the countryside. It was a permanent hunting and fishing assignment. Had I been convinced I could do that for 20 years, I would have stayed in, but I knew better.
Snowmobiles had not been invented yet, so the nomadic Eskimos (nobody then ever called them Inuit) continued to use dog teams. We always harnesed up seven or nine dogs, all pairs plus a lead dog.The Eskimo kept a pack of dogs more like a community pool with nobody actually owning them. They harnessed them up in a fan-like system, each dog had a lead to the sled.
We took some rations, but to a great extent lived off the land, shooting and eating snowshoe rabbits, ptarmagan, and carabou. Most of the load on the sleds was food for the dogs: dry kibble and dried fish which we boiled in a pot to feed them each night…
We did have good down mummy-type sleeping bags, so at night we crawled into them, and pulled the top tight with my nose slcking out.
Fairbanks was a crazy place back then, and come spring when the trapprs came in to whoop it up with the proceeds of their fur sales, it got evan crazier. Many of these old sourdoughs put some money in a bank for their stake in the fall, and proceded to spend the rest drinking and gambling.
Prositution was legal then, and Fourth Street was short, but all cathouses. Off Limits to GIs, but nobody inforced it that I ever heard of.
Onthe man drag, just about every other business was a bar: a haardware store, a bar, a drugstore, a bar, and so on. It was really a wild and wooley place, and I never had as much fun again as I did there on my off duty hours.
It was indeed beautiful country, unlike the Matanuska Valley or southern coastline, but I loved it. Other than the mosquitoes, which came in vast flocks and nearly ate one alive, I found nothing wrong with it.
One famous former whore from the old days was Dynamite Red, who must have been in her 80s then. She was always in one bar or another, wearing a blazing red wig. When she got drunk eough, she pulled it off and waved it above her bald head.
Oh, hell, the stories i could tell, but there is nothing like that up there anymore as far as I know. Cranky and cantankerous as most of the natives were, they were pleasant to the chechaukos (or however you spell it) as they were apt to buy drinks for these guys just to hear their stories.
I never encountered as many rugged individualists as i found up there, along with the lunatics.
This is not any help to the OP, but the stories written about the old days up there are not exagerated, for the most part.
More damn fun!
