My Father would have starved in the midst of plenty, if that plenty had failed to include slabs of stuff that fit into a toaster. I learned this when my parents essayed a trial separation when I was 11; my Mother moved into a small apartment in Bremerton and I stayed at home with Dad. I did the cooking. It was mostly out of the can and the egg carton, but it was food and edible. That experience made me resolve never to be so dependent for necessities as he was, and by the time I went off to college, I could do a credible job with a steak, handle pork ribs, and bake pies and biscuits for myself and a guest or two.

Though the Tok BEQ was the place I learned to cook regularly for larger groups of people, I did have one isolated experience of cooking for a real crowd before that. At Ft. Gordon, I drew KP, where I spent the morning washing mess trays. Back in those days, the Army had not yet, incidentally, discovered liquid dish detergent. Dishwashing was done by dint of GI soap that was brown and came in 1-pound blocks. One cut a block or so into 1-inch cubes and tossed them into a #10 tin can with holes punched in the bottom and a wire bail attached to the top. The bail was hung over the faucet and hot water was run full blast through the can over the cubes. This actually made suds. At any rate, I had finished the breakfast load and was putting stuff away when I noticed that the cook was pissing and moaning and looking generally downcast.

"What's the matter Sarge?" I asked.

"Liver, bloody liver," he replied, "that's what we're having for lunch."

"Great!" I responded, "I love liver!"

"You do?" he asked sourly, "I hate the stuff."

"It can be a pain to cook," I allowed, "and it it's not cooked right, it can be pretty dreadful."

"Really?" he wondered, "and how do you cook it 'right'?"

"Oh, dredge it in flour with a little pepper mixed in, then fry it hot and quick. You only salt it after it's cooked, or it gets tough."

"Sounds right," he acknowledged, "you want to do the liver for lunch?"

"Sure, why not?" And so I did. I have to admit that I had never seen 60 pounds of the stuff in one place before, and I had certainly never handled that quantity of any food before in my life. The dredging was a problem: very soon great goey (and bloody, of course; liver is a blood-rich organ) gobs of red flour paste were clinging to my hands. I had to wash several times just to keep from bogging down, but I got it all floured and got it all fried off, and it was pretty good, even if I do say so myself. While not everybody shared my enthusiasm for this meat, those that did really liked it. I got compliments, even.

When the last load went into the serving trays, the cook beamed and said, "OK, Martin, you are done for the day; enjoy yourself, and thanks!"

I was done with KP at 12:30. This does not happen very often.

A year or so later, when I arrived at the BEQ in Tok, everybody cooked for himself. The results were variable. After a few months of this, the 11 other guys living there had a meeting behind my back and cleared it with the station commander to offer me a deal: if I would make supper for the whole gang on weeknights, I would not have to clean up and would get off work 2 hours early. I took it, and it worked out well. The great secret of cooking for 12 men is serve them anything--poached hockey pucks--and they will love it so long as it is followed by dessert. Ah, those carefree days before the discovery of cholesterol . . . .

Typically, I cooked beef, not surprisingly, since we got a half of one of the things every month. We bought our own food: each of us put in $40 a month, and we took turns driving the 108 miles to Fort Greeley to pick up the food every month at the commissary. Major items, like the half beef, were ordered in advance and ready, cut and wrapped (for two cents a pound handling fee), when we arrived. For some reason, we always had lots of pot roast, which I used for stews, usually three at a time (the Army had provided lovely large stock pots for our kitchen). Those, with potatoes, carrots, celery, onions (the generally available vegetables), and some sort of veg from cans or the freezer made supper, accompanied by biscuits and followed by dessert and coffee served in soup bowls (the Army hadn't bothered to furnish cups, and coffee in soup bowls was something of a BEQ tradition). Being somewhat roungh and ready in the kitchen, I didn't trouble myself overmuch with presentation. If the peas looked grayish, well, that is the way canned peas looked: get used to it. Young home ec grads get into trouble trying to improve appearances. The most common trick was to add a drop or so of food coloring, which sometimes worked, so long as there were no potatoes or other porous starches about to turn green where they touched the legumes. I remember one woman in Tok who didn't have enough tomato paste for her pasta sauce and tried food coloring. Red spaghetti, anyone?

Since the BEQ was originally a duplex, we had two stoves and two refrigerators in the kitchen, with two large freezers in the kitchen on the other side, which was now a sort of utility room. No increase in counter space, though, which gave me the good habit of cleaning up after myself as I prepped. We only had one inspection during the time I was there, an Inspector General coming up the line from Seattle. (If he supposed he was conducting surprise inspections on anyone, he was remarkably unaware of what communications outfits do well: his progress, inch by inch, was faithfully reported by all the stations to all the stations.) We were all responsible for cleaning our own rooms, and we divided up the common areas. By my deal as cook, I did not have to clean the kitchen; the guys took care of the sinks, floors, and counters but were worried about the ovens. "Don't worry about them," I assured them. Sure enough, the IG arrived on schedule about 4:00 the following afternoon, when I was the only one in the place. He hardly looked at the bedrooms or the common areas, but came straight to the kitchen where I sprang to attention in manner pretty unusual for a member of the ACS. He found the sinks and counters to his satisfaction, and made for oven number one, ready to run his fingers over its doubtless greasy interior. When he looked in, a ham, working up a fine sweat, was looking back. He closed that door and made for oven two; when he opened that door, I bleated, "my cake!" and he sprang back like a shot (his Mother would have been so pleased!). He apologized to me and left to go bother somebody else.

It was not until early spring of 1959 that we found out why we were getting so much pot roast. A new kid came in, a nice guy from Alabama who had worked in a butcher shop. He told us we were being robbed by the Ft. Greeley butchers. A half a beef was supposed to be longitudinal: everything on the cow to the left or right of the midline of the spine. They had been selling us the front half, everything forward of the bellybutton on both sides of the cow. Lots of ribs, lots of shoulder, lots of cheap cuts: your best steaks come from aft of the bellybutton.

The next time we ordered a half beef, we ordered it in quarters. No cutting and wrapping (and no two cents a pound for so doing) and no substitution of front quarters for hind ones (even an amateur can tell them apart). The butchers of Ft. Greeley were not happy about this, but had to comply with the request. I ran around Tok borrowing things from people: a chopping block here, a meat grinder there, a saw from over yonder, a set of knives and a steel from across the way, while the guys on the commissionary run picked up a roll of butcher paper, tape, and wax markers. That evening, under the guidance of the kid from Alabama, we reduced those joints to steaks, roasts, hamburger, and soup bones in about 2 hours, with all of us pitching in.

I've mentioned desserts: it is generally true that American males are suckers for anything containing sugar and cholesterol, but I think there was more to it than that. We were starved for fresh. Fresh fruit and vegetables were rare and expensive, and there was no fresh milk. Liquid milk sold in stores in cartons just like the cartons "outside" had had the liquid part added in Fairbanks or someplace. The milk part had come up in powder form from the lower 48. A half pint of this mixture in a restaurant cost 35¢ and tasted like powdered milk. The stuff that tasted most like real milk was a frozen concentrate we got from the commissary. One 8-ounce block and 24 ounces of water made a quart of near-milk. (It was in Alaska where I learned to enjoy coffee, black, thank you very much.) In the summer, if line crews came upon little shops by the road, we would usually buy cans of fruit cocktail (essentially syrup with recognizeable lumps of fruit in it) to consume straight from the can. We preferred the 27-ounce cans, one each apiece.

The reason fruits and vegetables were so expensive was that they are mostly water, and water is heavy and expensive to ship. I first noticed the effect of this in bars: in Washington State at the time, a beer was usually 35 cents and a whiskey drink 75; in Alaska, both were about a dollar. The whiskey price was about 33% higher, but the beer was nearly 300% more. Billy Mitchell noticed the same phenomenon in 1901 (though in a more upscale comparison), "...beer and champagne were approximately the same price, because the initial cost was entirely secondary to the charge for transportation." (The Opening of Alaska 1901-1903, p 39.)

My pies were popular in part because of the fruit content, but my cakes and biscuits were just as popular with no fruit in them at all. All of them were fresh, and that counted for a lot. Later, when I was learning how to use yeast, I discovered that there is no such thing as bad bread when it is hot from the oven. Even failures are fragrant when fresh.

When driving down the Alcan toward discharge in May of 1959 a partner and I noticed a distinct change in climate about halfway down British Columbia. The trees were larger--much larger--and there was grass, lush grass, in between them. When we stopped for lunch at a little roadside cafe, I asked the waitress whether they had any milk.

"Of course," she replied.

"Is it fresh?" I wondered.

"Of course it is," she seemed insulted at the question.

"Great! Bring us a quart and two glasses."

She did, and not a puny American quart, either, but a good, sturdy Imperial Quart with a fifth more liquid in it. We had no trouble finishing it off in 10 minutes. The most memorable milk I have ever had.

It was fresh.

And it cost 35¢.