Wainwright 

      The first thing we wanted to see was the schoolhouse and our living quarters.  Even though we were standing in the sand on the beach, we could not see the village of Wainwright because of the coastal bluffs.  Keaton came to our rescue and pointed out that the trail going up to the village was a little farther to the left than where we had come ashore in the umiack.  That settled our first problem. 

People were coming down the trail and standing in groups along the water’s edge.  We saw Captain Whitlem being greeted by a number of people.  Keaton pointed out two white men.  They were easy to see because of their height: “This one is Dick Hall,” she said.  “His store is right above us here on the bluff and that one standing over there is Jim Allen, and his store is farther over to the left by about a city block.” After looking around, Keaton added, “Ben Evans, the Postmaster is not here as yet.”

An umiak was coming in with the first load of cargo.  The Third Officer on the beach directed it to come ashore farther up the beach where the natural trail came down.  We watched the umiak cut through the low surf with a side-to-side movement and then wash up sideways onto the sand.  Only a native umiak could make a landing in that position.

As we were watching the action, Dick Hall noticed us talking with Keaton and came over.  Keaton introduced us to him.  In the following conversation, I mentioned I was waiting for my dogs to come ashore. 

At the mention of dogs, Dick Hall said, “Dogs, How many?”  When I told him that there were five and my sled, Dick said, “Don’t bother waiting, I will have Felix bring them up to the school.”  He gave a shrill whistle and waved his hand and a young boy came from the group to report to Dick.  He introduced us to Felix as the new teachers and told him that we had a team of five dogs and a sled to come ashore.  “Find five or six of your pals and bring the dogs and sled up to the school and stake the dogs out behind the school shop,” he said. 

As soon as Dick finished with his instructions, Felix said something like “yep” and took off on the run.  The next time I saw the dogs they were staked out in a sheltered spot at the end of the school shop and storage building.  They were glad to see me again.

With everything going smoothly, Keaton suggested we go to the school.  Dick Hall had gotten mixed with the crowd somewhere on the beach, so Keaton was our tour guide as we started up the trail from the beach.  At the top of our short climb, we could see the school building standing back of an open area forming the center of the village.  The building was a sturdy structure that Keaton said was built in 1908.  She pointed out the living quarters on the right end and added that she lived upstairs.  We entered through the storm-shed common to all buildings in the North.  From there, we had a choice of three doors.  One opened into the schoolroom, the next into Keaton’s clinic and the stairway to her apartment, and the third door opened directly into the kitchen of what would be our home.  We had three rooms: a kitchen and dining room, a large living room with a big coal stove near the center, and a bedroom.  The bedroom door was behind the heating stove so some of the heat could escape into that room.  Keaton, pointing to a grate in the ceiling, told us that some of the heat went up to where she lived. 

While the coffeepot was getting ready to burp, we had a look at the schoolrooms.  There were two large rooms separated by a folding partition, which looked okay at a first glance until we remembered there was to be a third teacher.  Where was this teacher going to teach or live?  We asked Keaton about the third teacher and for the first and last time, she let us down.  She had never heard of a third teacher.  None of the passengers of the North Star had been listed as a teacher for Wainwright, and the North Star would be the only ship in this season.  Perhaps there would be something in the mail that would be delivered to the Post Office soon.  We returned to the kitchen to enjoy our fresh cup of coffee.

There was a long blast on the whistle from the North Star.  Keaton gave a jump, “Oh, she is leaving already.”  We rushed out to the brow of the bluff and looked down at the beach.  There were three or four stacks of freight, all neatly arranged above high water on the beach.  We ran down the trail just as the Captain was ready to step into the last umiak.  He took time to say goodbye to the three of us and wished us a good year.  “We will be seeing you about this same time next year,” he said as he stepped into the skin boat. 

We returned to our view spot on the high bank and watched the North Star as she began to gain speed and headed toward the distant horizon.  When she was only a dot out on the ocean, we began to have the lonesome feeling that our only contact with home had been severed.  A ship going over the horizon always produces that feeling in those left standing on the shore.  We were stranded there on the top of the world with no retreat.  Keaton brought us back to present reality with her remark, “Let’s go finish that cup of coffee.”  I have found that the best treatment for that feeling of estrangement is to have a good cup of coffee and then get busy with what has to be done.

Going through the house once more, we discovered a large storage room with shelves on both walls.  To me they looked clean but Dorothy wanted to wipe them down and put on new shelf paper.  While she was doing that, I went out to the shop about fifty feet behind the school building.  The first key I tried fit the padlock.  Inside was a nice assortment of tools.  There were two empty five-gallon gas cans.  After looking around, I came across one more empty can.  This gave me five nice watering cans for the dogs.  “Now where do I find an outside faucet?” I asked myself.  Foolish idea!  I was in the arctic four hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. 

I looked under the kitchen sink and found a water bucket, but no water faucets over the sink: “What do I do now?”  Just then Keaton came in, the solver of all problems. 

“Where do I get water?” I asked.  “That’s all salt water out front!”

“Did you look in that barrel at the end of the kitchen stove?” asked Keaton very calmly.

“Well, how did it get there?”

I lifted the cover and looked.  There was a big oak barrel, full to the top with water, with a spigot at the bottom.  Keaton had scored again. 

“Henry, our houseboy, fills it with blocks of ice every few days,” she said.  “The heat from the stove melts the ice.”

Poor Keaton.  She was in for a time with us “Southerners” from the lower forty-eight. 

By the time I had watered the dogs and gone over to Dick Hall’s store for some dried fish for the dog’s supper, boxes were beginning to be carried up the sandy trail from the beach.  Dorothy and Keaton both had copies of the ship’s manifest and were checking the items off the sheets as they were delivered.  A call came to Dorothy, “Where do you want this?”  Dorothy took one look and called to me, “Ellis, come quick.  Here is an engine of some kind.”  The tone of her voice told me to hurry and I came fast.  There, before me, was an Onan light plant.  I had had no warning that the North Star was delivering a light plant to Wainright on this trip.  I was speechless at first, but upon recovering, told them to store it in the second school room by the back door.

If anything else comes in, like electrical wire and insulators, store them in the same place.  I was so excited about the new electric light plant and occupied with thoughts of where to have it installed, I could hardly keep my mind on what I was doing with the other items being delivered.  “Surely there must have been an engineer somewhere among the passengers who came ashore that has not shown up as yet,” ran my thoughts.  “I am only a schoolteacher; who is going to install a light plant?”

We were ready to call it a day and fix ourselves a snack.  Keaton told us earlier in the afternoon that she took all of her meals with Dick Hall.  There was a knock on our kitchen door.  When we opened the door, there stood our local postmaster, Ben Evans, the only other white man living in Wainwright aside from Hall and myself.  He had in his hand a mailbag and apologized for being a little late.  We invited him in and during the visit we learned a little more about our local mail service.  We would receive only one delivery of first and second class mail during the year when a ship like the North Star ventured up our way.  We would also receive three deliveries of first class mail only, one about Thanksgiving time, and one at Christmas.  The last delivery came sometime in March.  The weather conditions had a lot to do with the timing of those mail trips.  The postmaster wanted his official mailbag back, so we emptied the contents out on the dining room table.  There was such a large quantity of mail that some of the letters slid off onto the floor, but that was okay.  We would have until Thanksgiving to read them and write replies.

Waiting for mail call.

We heard Keaton as she came in one night.  Our bedroom was partly beneath the stairway leading up to her apartment.  We thought it best to be a little discreet and not bring attention to her comings and goings so we held up breakfast a little while until we were certain she was up and around and then invited her down to start the day.  Her response to our offer was enthusiastic, but when she saw the pile of mail on the dining room table, she squealed like a teenager.  She had forgotten all about the North Star bringing in the summer’s mail.

We had our bacon and eggs.  The eggs were fresh right from the ship.  During the meal I asked about the location of the ice cellar.  “Oh,” she said pointing with her finger out the kitchen window.  “It’s right out there.”  We were eating at the kitchen worktable because the dining room table was overloaded with mail.  I looked and there, about twenty feet from our door, was a square wooden box with a hinged lid looking very much like the cover to the old cisterns we used to hold water back on the farm.

While the ladies were doing the breakfast dishes and talking, I went out to inspect the cellar.  Lifting the lid, I saw a hole in the ground and a sturdy ladder leading down.  I decided to try the ladder.  Down about fourteen feet or so was a room ten by twelve feet with a ceiling height of eight feet, chipped out of blue ice.  Racks had been installed with large hooks on which to hang meat.  The light wasn’t too good but I noticed several large objects hanging on the racks.  They looked like they could be used for dog food.  What I did notice, even without a lantern, was that it was extremely cold down there.  As I climbed back up the ladder, I examined the square hole at the entrance.  Workers had cut through three or four inches of topsoil and then chiseled out the blue ice from there on down to the bottom of the excavation: it was just one big ice freezer.  I couldn’t wait to run in and tell Dorothy and get my hands and fingers warm.

While sorting out the mail, we discovered that the postmaster had included all of Keaton’s personal and clinic mail in the same bag with our personal mail and the school’s mail.  We struggled for some time to sort things out, which gave us more time to chat. 

I told Keaton about the new light plant and the problems that I was having installing the motor. “Talk to Dick Hall,” she told me.  “He has a whole lumber yard down on the point about four miles away.”  As it turned out, the lumber was actually by the store.

That afternoon I took on the task of finding everything that had been shipped pertaining to the light plant: instructions, wire insulators, switches, and light globes.  I gathered them all together in one place at the back of the first schoolroom.  Then I went out to the shop and took an inventory of what tools I had on hand to use if needed.  The job didn’t look so difficult after that since I could see what there was to do.

By bedtime that night, I had a blueprint of an addition to the back of the school building, twelve feet wide and extending the full width of the building.  On the east end there would be a partition forming a small room for the new light plant.  Now I was ready to talk to Dick Hall about building materials.

I took my building plans and list of materials over to Dick’s store and he went over the details with me.  He had some good suggestions to make, relating to the foundation construction.  There were no cedar shingles to be had anywhere north of Nome and no windows were in stock, but he did have several rolls of roofing material.

He suggested that I frame the windows in and have the windows shipped up on the next boat.  Dick Hall and Keaton both suggested that I have Felix and Henry Nagavona, two teen-age boys, help me.  Felix had been Dick’s right-hand boy in the store for some time and Henry was Keaton’s helper about the clinic and apartment. 

Dick took me out to see his lumberyard along the side of his store.  It was just across the trail that we had been using as an access to the beach.  “Have Felix keep a record of the materials you use,” said Dick.  “He needs to learn the business.”  We started the next morning at eight o’clock.

About the middle of the week, a small plane with pontoons buzzed the village and landed on the lagoon just over the hill at the back of the town.  As was customary, the natives all rushed over to see who was on the plane. 

It turned out to be our third teacher, Tom Avagah, his wife Anna, and their two small children.  Surprise!  I dropped my hammer, greeted him and the family, and said on the side to Felix, “Go tell Keaton and my wife, quickly!”  If ever I needed Dorothy and Keaton, it was now! 

Glancing up, I saw Dick Hall joining the group.  Pushing his way forward, he approached Tom and, extending his hand, asked, “Are you our new third teacher?”  On being assured that he was, Dick continued,  “Before our former teacher left last June, he made arrangements with me to rent you a house.  I was expecting you to arrive on the North Star but when you didn’t show I assumed the deal was off.  That was to be your house over there.”  Dick was pointing to a frame house close to the school. 

Whew!  That was a close one.  I hoped no one but my wife saw me wiping my brow.  Dorothy and Keaton were meeting Anna and the two children.  She was a native girl from St. Lawrence Island.  We all walked over to their new home so there were plenty of volunteers to help with the baggage. 

I saw Dorothy whisper something to Keaton as we were leaving and then Dorothy said, “We eat about six so we will expect you over.”  The two helpers and I went back to our carpenter work.

Our new teacher, Tom, came over after awhile to visit and see what we were doing.  In the exchange of past experiences, he said he had gone to Chemawa near Salem, Oregon and that some of his Industrial Arts classes were carpentry. He had worked as a carpenter while finishing his education at Oregon State.  I almost dropped my hammer again.  I looked up to see if my special Angel had taken off.  How could I be so blessed as to have a carpenter drop in on me at this time, way up here at the North Pole?  I told Tom to take his time in getting settled in, but that we were working against time to have lights for the first day of school.

We were ready to start on the framework.  I was glad when Tom suggested that he could supervise the framework while I built the support foundation for the light plant and started the wiring.  This included taking down the Coleman lights and wiring the schoolrooms.  All worked out on schedule: the carpentry work was done, the wiring was completed, and the light globes were in place.

We were ready to start the motor when Felix, looking at the radiator asked, “Is this the gas tank?” 

“Radiator!”  I answered.

“Antifreeze?”  He asked. 

“Where was the antifreeze?”  I was frantic!  I asked Felix to run over to the store and ask Dick if he had any antifreeze in stock.  Felix returned with the report that no one in town knew what antifreeze was. 

I left the two boys and Tom cleaning up the floor of the new storm shed and went to my desk to check my copy of the ship’s manifest.  No one had ordered anything to use in our light plant’s engine.  While at my desk, I checked the other items: two small barrels of oil for the crankcase, eight fifty-gallon barrels of gasoline, and one barrel of kerosene. 

“Kerosene, that’s it!”  Rushing back to our project I said, “Stand back folks I’m going to fill’er up with kerosene.”  That’s what I did and for the rest of my time in Wainwright, kerosene kept our light plant cool and running.

On the first day of September, I poured hot oil into the crank case of the new light plant motor and went back to the entryway to pull on the rope, ringing the schoolhouse bell at exactly eight-thirty.  Then I flipped a light switch, which started the light plant motor, and the entire building was flooded with light—the schoolrooms, our living quarters, and Keaton’s living quarters.  It resembled a Fourth of July celebration. 

Henry had come over and started a fire in the big coal-burning stove in the center of the schoolrooms.  I left the partitions dividing the school rooms open for this first day.  At the sound of the bell, the kids came rushing from their homes.  They were thrilled with the new entrance, and the big open room without seats or tables.  They had never experienced such a room, and when they discovered the large grating in the wall letting the heat from the light plant in, their joy was complete.  Later, I left the outside door unlocked as long as the light plant was running.  On a cold evening, the older kids enjoyed having a place to gather.

I rang the nine o’clock bell right on time.  Everyone out in The Play Shed (we changed the name) came pouring in through the two doors in the back of the rooms.  Most everyone found a seat about where he or she had been sitting the year before. 

With Dorothy at the organ (oh, how she missed her piano!), we started with a good old patriotic number that the school kids knew.  Then Dorothy asked for a song they would like to sing, and they came up with an old church hymn.  I could sense right off that we were going to have a musical group.

I asked everyone who thought they were going to be in the eighth grade that year to take the front seats.  At this, I noticed some slight expressions of discomfort on some faces.  Then I asked for a vote from just the eighth grade: “How many would like the back seats?” I asked.  Every hand went up.  “All right,” I said, “you who have been in school the longest, have the first choice.”  With that little problem settled, I seated the seventh grade, then the sixth grade, and finally the fifth grade.

With the help of two boys we pulled closed the partitions and divided the room.  Dorothy was taking care of her side of the room and she had asked Tom to take those who had never been to school and the first graders out to the shop, which had been remodeled into a nice cozy one-room school.

I was a little better prepared this time than I had been for some of the previous “first days.”  A large chart had been prepared—lined off in squares to represent the arrangement of seats.  I asked two of the eighth grade girls to come up and write in the names of the students sitting in each seat.  This did not take long and I soon had the enrollment of the upper grades. 

Then I passed out cards about the size of the square on which their name was written.  The squares had all been numbered on the chart.  They were to write their own name and seat number on the card, and keep the card in their pocket so that they would remember their seat and desk. 

The clock said it was about time for a recess break.  They tried to go out the door all at the same time.  It took a little pushing, but they made it.  Some came up with a little rag ball to kick while others just chased each other around, playing a variant of tag.  I watched for awhile to see that there was no one just standing around by themselves. 

With school off to a good start, there was time to look around to see what else was new.  In our personal freight, arriving with us on the North Star, was a special short-wave radio receiver and a transmitter equipped with a sending key for Morse code. 

I started by reading the instructions and put up the required antenna.  Reception was good during the early morning hours.  Later we learned to calibrate our clock via radio by Big Ben’s tolling from London.  Six o’clock p.m. London time was six o’clock a.m. our time.  We also learned that when the Northern Lights were out, clear and beautiful overhead or down around the housetops, there was no radio reception at all.

After practicing sending with the key, I sent a letter to the army radioman in Barrow telling him what equipment I had and asking for a weekly schedule on Tuesday evenings at seven.  He responded the following Tuesday on schedule and said he would be glad to contact Wainwright, their nearest neighbor, seventy miles away.  He asked if I would give him our weather report each Tuesday.  I talked to him using Morse code, and he came back with voice, on radio. 

Keaton, in her capacity as nurse, was glad to have contact with the doctor and hospital in Barrow.  I was glad to have the antenna up on the roof because it began to snow while I was working up there.

Winter came on with full force and it was only the first week in September.  We received six inches of snow with the first round and a promise of more to come. 

A native man came to my office soon after the first snow and asked how I planned to get my meat for the winter. He said it was a good time to get meat now, right after the first snow, because the sledding was good and the deer were fat. “I cut them up right and hang them in your ice cellar,” he added.

“How many deer did the other teachers use in a year?” I asked. 

“The last teacher bought four deer,” he replied.  That seemed like a lot of meat to buy at one time.  Then I thought about the ice cellar, which I had recently discovered, and the big room with the sparkling ice walls.  Meat would keep forever and there would be no cost for electricity. 

“How much does a good fat deer cost?” I inquired. 

“If I cut them up and hang them in the ice cellar and I keep the skins, ten dollars each,” he replied.

“Okay, will you take a check?” 

“Yes.” 

I was amazed at this Eskimo’s knowledge of how we white people do business and his use of English.  I wrote out a check and as I handed it to him, he said, “I will have to have a permit to kill the deer.”

“Oh, yes,” I said and pretended that I knew what a permit to kill deer looked like.  I hadn’t had a minute to look in that drawer marked “REINDEER” since we arrived.  I reached down, pulled open the drawer, and lifted out a record book.  Underneath was a pad looking like a checkbook but marked “receipt.”  Flipping over a few used pages to a new sheet, I inserted the carbon.  Turning to the customer, I asked his name. 

“John Bodfish,” he said.  I filled in the spaces on the page and handed it to him with the check.  “It will take me three or four days,” he said.  “The deer are still back in the hills.”  We soon had an ample supply of meat.

On Monday morning I saw Keaton’s boy, Henry, bring in a large cake of ice from the storage rack at the end of our living quarters, and put it in the big barrel at the end of the stove to melt.  He said we were running low on ice out on the rack.  He also said that with this first snowfall and the cold weather, he thought the ice on the lake should be ready to cut. 

I asked him for more information about the Ice Lake.  This was the first I knew about the source of our domestic water. Keaton explained about our supply of ice blocks.  She said they were contracted through the Native Store, and that it was a good time to check with them.  When I spoke with the management of the store, they told me that they had just been waiting for my order. 

“How thick does the ice have to be?” I asked. 

“It works out best when it’s sixteen inches thick.  We cut the blocks 16 x 16 x 18 inches,” they told me.

“How many blocks does the school use during the year?” I wondered.  He gave me a number and I asked him to cut and haul in the same number. 

He went on to say that the ice was about that thick already and with the new snow; the sledding would be good.  I checked on the ice rack when I returned and found it in good condition, only needing a little sweeping off.  I was surprised when blocks began arriving that afternoon.

School was going well for Dorothy and I and the beginners and first graders were happy with their schoolroom, but their teacher, Tom, had a problem the very first day.  I had assumed that the Office of Indian Affairs in Juneau had sent me a local teacher from the northern area.  We had been working together for some days and I had failed to ask.  However, he was from some other area and did not know the local language. 

When it was noon and time to send his students home, they did not understand his English sufficiently to realize that he was releasing them.  He sent me a note asking for an older student to come over and act as an interpreter for him to tell his young students to go home for lunch. 

At the first opportunity, I asked him how he managed before the interpreter came over.  He laughed and said, “There was a little girl sitting at their table whose parents spoke English, (the local minister’s daughter).  I had noticed she had been whispering to the others when I was talking, but she was afraid to tell them to go home because she thought she might make a mistake.”

That gave me an idea that might help Tom.  I recalled the ABC blocks I had used on my first day of school back in Iliamna.  He thought it was a good idea, so we made a search and found a few sets of much used blocks and boxes of crayons.

After that, school went along very smoothly until the first of October and then I began to hear the older boys talking about “reindeer roundup.”  I had overheard the word reindeer used back at Deering, but I hadn’t paid much attention because I assumed they were talking about something cowboys dealt with.

On the North Star I knew the Purser was looking for a box of five hundred small bells and straps that were to be sent ashore at Wainwright but I didn’t think that concerned me at the time.  When a man from the Native Store asked me if such a box had been mixed in with my shipment of things, I began to take interest. 

I was glad when a note was sent over from the store saying that the box of bells had been found.  Five hundred bells?  For what, I wanted to ask, but didn’t want to show my ignorance.  Two weeks later word came around that the first group of deer had been corralled.

Reindeer Herd

This was Thursday, so Friday after taking roll, I surprised everyone by saying, “There isn’t going to be any school today. Go home and tell your mamas we are going out to the reindeer corral.  Be sure to wear your parkas and mittens!” 

You should have heard the cheers that went up, and seen the rush for the door.  Dorothy and I went for our fur parkas, trail boots, and mittens before joining them.  The corral was about two or three miles back in the hills.  We had been forewarned not to take our dogteam for fear of frightening the deer.

The corral was located near a lake.  It was constructed of ice blocks, sawed with a special large ripsaw to the dimensions of 18 inches wide and five feet long.  This ice was a little thicker than the ice on our water lake. 

Reindeer Corral made of ice slabs

With all hands helping, the huge blocks were slid along and stood up on end at the marked location.  The openings between the blocks were filled with wet snow from a bucket.  The wet snow soon froze, forming a solid wall five feet high. 

Because of the five-foot ice wall, most of the school kids and visitors could not see over the top.  A second row of smaller blocks was added.  The heads of almost everyone from town could be seen peeking over the large wall of ice forming the corral.  Many of the babies were sitting on the top blocks, supported by their mothers standing on the blocks below.  You may have heard of “hot seats” but these were not numbered among them. 

Two exit gates were established for the deer to go back home.  Solid wings of ice blocks, extending from the entrance, were set up.  Then, to increase the efficiency of the entrance, long strips of burlap cloth were extended out from both sides of the entrance wings.

When all was ready, visitors were instructed not to look over the top of the ice wall since this would scare the deer.  (I would like to add, for the record, that some of the natives could certainly look scary.)  We were further instructed to hide behind a tree or bush so as not to frighten the deer.

A limited number of deer were separated from the large herd by expert handlers and driven towards the entrance.  If a deer hesitated near the burlap screen, a handler, just behind the deer, would stand up and that would send it running toward the entrance. 

When all were inside the corral, the gates were closed.  The deer raced around and around inside the circular enclosure with the larger and stronger bucks forcing themselves to the outer ring—as close to the ice walls as they could manage—until exhaustion forced them all to slow down.

When the deer had slowed to a walk, they were let out one at a time at each one of the gates.  This was when the young men and older schoolboys had their fun.  Those who were able, or considered themselves so, would grab a deer, wrestle it to the ground and call to the scorekeeper the description of the catch, such as “buck,” “ear marking,” “Wainright,” “Barrow,” or “Point Lay.”

Owners had their own marking: Wainwright, a “V” mark in the ear, Barrow, a “U” mark (usually not too deep), Point Lay, the tip of the right ear sliced off.  The scorekeeper had to be organized and fast and alert enough to remember from which gate each deer came.  Cardboard cartons discarded from the three stores in town were salvaged and reused for record keeping: they were lined-off in neat squares and labeled as needed.  In all, there were 250,000 deer handled and recorded in that season’s round up

How did we know this?  Those cardboard squares with neat little holes, made with a sharp nail attached to the end of a stick, punched in units of ten, were then turned over to the school teachers to count during their spare time—all two hundred and fifty thousand of them.  All of which we counted! Once released from the handler, there was no looking back for the deer.  From somewhere their energy and speed returned and they made a beeline back to their homeland. 

After the excitement of the reindeer roundup, the weather turned colder and colder and the wind blew.  Our strongest winds came from the northeast.  The snowfall was light but the high winds caused what snow there was on the ground to drift and pile up against our end of the building.  We watched as the snow reached up to our living room windows and then kept climbing.  When I realized the windows would be covered and our only exit would be through the kitchen door and the front storm-shed, I placed a shovel under our bed just in case we would need to shovel out in an emergency.

School went on as usual.  We kept the back entrance clear of snow and the light motor running.  All the young folk enjoyed the new storm shed: the warmth from the engine room made it comfortable and it was open evenings as long the lights were on.

Before we realized where the days on the calendar had gone, the sun no longer rose.  The full moon took its place and instead of going overhead as expected, it rolled around the horizon big and bright.  There was enough moonlight to carry on the usual activities of the late evenings.  Hunters and trappers made their trips and the northern lights were frequently visible.  The lower the temperature, the brighter they shined–great ribbons of light floating overhead.  At times they were low to the ground and could be seen winding in and out among the buildings. 

One evening, the kids were playing out back on the school grounds, kicking a homemade soccer ball.  Suddenly there was an explosion that really shook the old 1908 school building.  I rushed to the back window of the schoolroom where I could see out over the drifted snow.  There was the first of my empty gasoline barrels going up and up with a flaming tail assisting its progress—the first American rocket to be launched, long before the scientists got around to the idea.  The barrel made a beautiful turn, how high I never tried to guess, and came down with the open end skyward and continuing to blaze.

As soon as I could gain control of my shock, I went out on the playfield.  I was so thankful that the burning rocket-barrel did not come down on the dry shingles of the schoolhouse roof.  Then I inquired if anyone was hurt.  No one was hurt so again I was thankful.  By this time the kids were all gathered around and looking in the end of the still burning barrel. 

“He did it!  He did it!”  All fingers were pointing to my faithful helper, Felix, who was standing some distance away with bowed head and fear showing all over.

I looked over and with a smile said,  “It sure went high, didn’t it?”

With that he came over and stood by me and mumbled, “I didn’t know it would do that.”

“Just how did you do it?”  I asked.  I wasn’t looking for a chance to punish him.  I only wanted to know how he did it without receiving a bad burn. 

“I saw the lug was out.  Then I shook it.  I thought it was empty, so I rolled it out here in the yard [that was what saved the school building].  I saw a little gas leak out, so I stood back, lit a match, and threw it at the barrel.”  Lucky for him!  Years later I was to see our scientists hiding in a bunker before pushing a button to see what would happen in a similar experiment.

I was ready to let the incident stop there, but just then Jim Allen, our number two store man, and U.S. Marshal for the area, came puffing around the corner of the school. He had long since given up running for exercise and so had overdone it a little this time.

“Now, who did it!”  He shouted with what breath he had left.  Caught off guard, every finger was pointed at Felix.

“Felix?  Felix!  You report to my office tomorrow morning before school.”  With that the U.S. Marshal turned and walked away.  The fun was over and everyone went silently home.

I thought the problem was over, but it wasn’t.  Jim Allen and Dick Hall had been rivals for years back.  Now he had caught one of Dick’s men out of line, or so he thought.  Keaton, Dick and Jim got together with their boxing gloves on to settle things that night.  Jim, through his power as Marshal wanted to get even with Dick for some grudges they had been holding for years and he wanted to throw the book at Felix.

Before school the next morning, I received a note from the Marshal that he recommended Felix be suspended from school for one week.  He would be assigned community service, filling up an annoying mud hole that apparently showed up every season at the bottom of the schoolhouse steps, filling it with sand carried up from the beach in a bucket.  Poor Felix received the sentence from the Marshal, not from me; nevertheless he seemed to hold it against me. 

He worked faithfully all week and filled up the hole.  His friends, having fun during the recess period kicking the soccer ball around, chided Felix by calling him “jail bird,” which I thought was very unfair.

The next social get-together was Thanksgiving.  Dorothy and Keaton invited all three traders to have Thanksgiving dinner with us.  When word of our plans spread around through the community with the help of Dorothy’s hired girl, everyone was amazed.  Never had the three businessmen sat down together at the table before.  The wives did not accept the invitation.

Everything went peacefully.  The chief topic of conversation was how they were going to salvage the Bay Chimo.  Back in 1928, a large ship belonging to the English Hudson Bay company tarried too long before going south.  It was caught in the shifting ice pack right there in front of Wainwright.

I had learned about the Bay Chimo soon after coming to Wainwright.  Keaton asked Dorothy and me to accompany her to see a sick patient.  When she threw the blanket back to talk with the sick man I saw, to my amazement, that he was sleeping between two nice large English flags.  I could hardly wait to get outside to query Keaton.

“Oh!  Those came from the Bay Chimo.” 

After that, every unusual object I noticed or inquired about was credited to the same source: “That came from the Bay Chimo.”

I took advantage of our after-dinner conversation to learn more about this mystery ship.  On Thanksgiving day, 1928, the Bay Chimo was anchored in the bay off of Wainwright.  They were stuck in a little ice but the captain did not consider it serious.  On Thanksgiving Day, the crew was invited for dinner with the schoolteacher.  The entire crew came.  Not a single man was left on board the ship.  In the midst of an enjoyable dinner in the living quarters of the school building, there was a knock on the door.  An excited voice called out, “The ice is moving.  The Bay Chimo is going out!”  Everyone at the table rushed out to look.  The ice along the shoreline was all a mass of broken chunks of ice, rolling and tumbling in a dangerous manner.

All that the crew and the people of Wainwright could do was stand and watch.  The Hudson Bay Company was notified.  They recorded it as a total loss and the crew was helped to return home via dogteam to Fairbanks, Alaska.  

A year later, early one morning, the early risers of Wainwright looked out and saw the Bay Chimo out in the bay locked in the same huge sea of ice.  Somehow due to the arctic sea currents, the ship had completed a circle and returned to its starting point.  There was lots of excitement in town that morning. 

Some of the more courageous of the men risked crossing the floating shore ice and reached the ship.  They reported everything was just as things were when the ship moved out with the ice, even the garbage thrown over the side of the ship was still there.  Considering the short time the ship was in the area, and since it was moving with the ice pack, the men returned with their sleds loaded with fur worth a considerable amount of money.

This continued for seven years.  Each year, the men went out and returned with what they could salvage in the short time aboard.  The year we went to Wainwright the people had watched all during the month of July, but the Bay Chimo never returned.

Our guests at the Thanksgiving table had a good time discussing how they would rescue the big ship and have it towed somewhere to be repaired.  They were all gold-diggers at heart and this would be the big strike.  I was much relieved when no personal problems came up for discussion.

Following Thanksgiving, we began to talk about the coming Christmas season.  The sunless season was not quite half over, but I could sense a tension in the community already.  Keaton told us about the problems coming up, especially among the women.  The men were out hunting or running their trap lines since the moon gave light enough for such outdoor activities.  But the women were more or less confined to their small houses.  They would come to Keaton about problems with their neighbors.  Keaton had good success with organizing a Women’s Club, which she called a health club.  They met once a month to discuss problems of health. 

The women elected their own officers and inspectors.  The inspectors visited every home once a week to check on their house cleaning and care and also to report any illness.  Once a month the club had an inspector come to the school.  They would call the students, one at time to come to the front of the room, sit in a chair while the inspector went through their hair looking for head lice.  It was the Health Club’s idea and the mothers liked it.  If I, as teacher, would have suggested the idea, come Monday morning I would have been looking for another teaching position.

As Christmas drew near the local missionary, a young Eskimo man, and a graduate with a Masters Degree from Purdue University, offered to help with our music program.

With time yet to spare, I remembered my Christmas tree problem back in Deering.  When we were talking about a Christmas Tree, one of the students spoke up and said, “We have a tree.” 

Surprised by this statement, I asked, “Where?”

It was Felix.  It was the first voluntary statement he had made since the “moon shot” with the empty gas barrel.  I must have been forgiven.  Pointing with his finger at the ceiling he said, “It’s up there.”

Finding my flashlight, I asked Felix and Henry to go with me to look.  Back under the rafters were two big boxes.

“It’s in that one,” said Felix.

“There is Christmas in that other box too,” added Henry.

Taking the two boxes downstairs, I said we would open them the first thing in the morning.  I overheard groans from various parts of the room, but I wanted to peek in the boxes first to see what surprises might be in store for me.  The next morning, the kids kept me to my word. 

“Can we open the boxes now?” they chorused.

“I’ll check roll first.”  More groans.

In the big box was an artificial Christmas tree.  The limbs were all numbered and assembled easily; the eager beavers soon had it together.  It didn’t look too bad to those who had never seen a real Christmas tree. 

The second large box contained used Christmas ornaments.  The upper grade students knew just where each item was to be displayed.  Dorothy had her group busy making new decorations.  Out in the annex, Tom’s little Santa’s helpers were eagerly contributing their part. 

The absence of sunshine seemed to have been forgotten as the Spirit of Christmas spread throughout the community.  Keaton’s health club got into the act too.  They met in different homes to work on Christmas projects.  The new electric lights added a lot of zest to the atmosphere.

At last the important night (cross out the word night, it had been dark for weeks) time came.  The lights were dimmed, and the stage curtains pulled back.  The footlights lit up the stage and the show was on. 

From my shadowy corner, I surveyed the audience.  The women, many with babies on their backs, were sitting on the floor.  The men were sitting on top of the desks, which had been pushed back against the wall. 

But what was that row of men standing against the back wall all dressed in bright red uniforms?  I wondered. 

I whispered quietly to Keaton, standing near.  “Who are the those men?  Can they be Canadian Mounties?” 

She whispered back, “Those are Canadian Mounties’ uniforms from the Bay Chimo.”

With the applause for the final number on the program came a noticeable disturbance out in the back entrance.  Old Santa was making his annual call.  His sleigh must have been loaded because the area around the Christmas Tree was piled high with gifts.

After all was said and done, someone spoke to me and said, “Leave the desks where they are, we want to use the school this week.”  That was fine with me, but as I was making a routine check before turning out the lights, there, under one of the desks, was a baby wrapped in a fur blanket and fast asleep.  Did Santa forget to deliver one of his presents? 

I took the furry bundle into Keaton and said,  “Santa forgot one of his presents for you.” 

It wasn’t long until there was a knock on Keaton’s clinic door. “Did you find my baby?”

The week from the Christmas program until New Years was fully scheduled.  Something similar to soccer was played every night—the North Athletic Society versus the South Athletic Society.  The dividing line between the North and the South was the schoolhouse.  The two athletic societies were to meet and clash again on the Fourth of July.

Sometime between Christmas and New Years a strange nine-dogteam and sled pulled into town greeted with a chorus from every dog in Wainwright.  It was our Christmas first class mail.  We had almost forgotten there was a world outside Wainwright.  The driver had made the long four hundred-mile trip from Kotzebue and had seventy miles yet to go on to Barrow.  As he left, he said he would be back on his way south the following week.  We “whites” stood in line at the Post Office waiting for the mail to be sorted. 

 Dorothy and I sat up late that night writing our monthly reports from September through to December.  The schoolrooms on the other side of our living room wall were bustling with activity. 

The orchestra was not playing music associated with the usual social dance, but a row of six men sitting on the floor were beating out a rhythm on six large skin drums.  Sitting behind the drummers was a group of young and elderly women singing something in their native language. 

About two o’clock each night things became quiet and I went out back to drain the oil from the light plant motor.  I would bring it to the kitchen and in the morning put it on the kitchen stove to heat.  When the oil was really hot, I would rush out with it, pour the hot oil into the crankcase, and start the motor.  During the dark days, the light plant ran about eighteen hours a day.  I overheard some of the traders complaining: “How are we going to make any money this winter?” they would say.  “That noisy light plant has frightened all the white foxes back into the hills.” 

We had not crossed off many days on the new January calendar when we began to notice light areas on the horizon in the south.  The school building ran east and west.  Dorothy’s room had full window exposure on the south side.  When the sky began to show a tinge of red at high noon, her pupils told her, “Pretty soon now.”  The upper grade students in my room were a little more positive.  They said the sun always came back on the 21st of January.  We had the calendar marked in red.

On the morning of the 21st, the thermometer outside the window registered thirty-eight degrees below zero with a little wind from the east.  There was tension in the room.  I could sense it.  The kids kept looking at the clock.  About eleven forty-five I couldn’t stand the tension either so I sent a note to Dorothy and Tom, “Let’s go watch the sun rise.”  Then I told my kids, “Put your books away.  Let’s go!  No more school today.”  They beat me out the door. 

With the first appearance of the sun’s rim above the horizon, a big shout went up all over town.  Everyone, sick or well, was out to greet the sunrise.  My boys ran up on the school’s snow bank and then up to the ridge of the roof.  This was against my rules, but the sun only made its reappearance once a year.  They shouted, waved, and threw their caps in the air.  Then they did an Eskimo dance along the ridge of the roof while the girls clapped and sang one of their native songs.  While they were all celebrating, I dashed back inside for my fur cap and gloves.  The thirty-degree below temperature was getting to me faster than did the sunshine.

In Dorothy’s classroom, I drew a line with chalk on the floor, marking the spot where the sunshine reached with the date and time of day.

The community of Wainwright came alive with the return of the sun and became an entirely different place to live.  Neighbors were visiting with neighbors and the men were working on their gear getting ready to go out on the ice for seal.  Keaton reported that most of her patients had suddenly recovered, and were up and out in the sunshine.

While I was busy reporting the weather to Barrow, Dorothy had a project going on in her classroom.  On the floor where I had recorded the first day’s sun, she continued to record the time the sun came up each morning.  The class discovered the sun came up ten minutes earlier each morning and went down ten minutes later.

The days were quickly getting longer and with the sunshine, the temperature was dropping.  February was a very cold month, with record lows of minus fifty quite common.  Then came March with high winds and drifting snow from the east.  The west end of our building was drifted over up to the roofline.

On Saturdays some of the boys would go with their fathers out on their trap line or seal hunting on the ice.  They would come to school Monday with frozen spots on their cheeks.  The spots looked like seriously burned skin and Keaton treated them the same as burns.  I found I had to be very careful when I opened the door to go out: if I forgot to put on my gloves before touching even the inside doorknob, I would freeze the palm of my hand.

When Dorothy and I took our dogs for a drive after school or on Saturday, we checked each other’s face frequently.  If we saw any spots turning white, we turned our back to the wind and rubbed the white flesh vigorously with the back of our fur outer gloves. 

Due to the low angle of the sun, there was constant danger of snow blindness whenever we were out for a short run after school hours.  Our snow glasses had metal frames, which presented problems. A little tuft of rabbit skin under the metal nosepiece usually helped with that problem.

It was March and we knew that there would be another delivery of dogteam mail.  It wasn’t the incoming mail that worried us, but what we had to have ready to send out. There would not be out-going mail until August.  First, there was the current inventory in which had to be included everything the government kept in Wainwright.  Secondly, there was the next year’s school supplies.  If we didn’t have our requests in the March mailing, we would not receive the supplies from the August sailing.  Thirdly, we needed to order everything we wanted to eat, wear, or use in the next year.  In addition to everything else, we were responsible for keeping the school program going.  This once-a-year shopping idea was all right, but if we omitted something on our list, we would have to just wait and try again the following March.

Easter break slipped by almost unnoticed. There were no fresh spring flowers, colored Easter eggs, or bunny rabbits.  Dorothy opened a can of chicken for dinner, which was a treat.  The atmosphere was clear of northern lights so short-wave reception was good.  We tuned in to Easter music from London.

                                                 Dorothy on Easter

As the sun came around the globe, we began to tune in to Easter music from the city of New York and on around to the West Coast.  A station in Hawaii was the last that would reach us clearly.  Checking with the map, we found we were west of the Hawaiian Islands.

The severe winds of winter had packed the snowdrifts so firmly that a person could walk almost anyplace and leave only a slight footprint. 

The Department of Health scheduled Keaton to travel the Northeast Coast from Barrow to the Canadian border in order to take the census and vaccinate people along the way.  She was the first medical person, and also the first woman ever to make that trip.  She traveled with sled and dogteam and a driver.  The trip took a little over a month and the town of Wainwright turned out en masse to welcome her home.

Keaton returned just in time to celebrate the catching of the first whale of the season.  The whalers had established a camp about six miles out on the ice.  The season had progressed until there was twenty-four hour daylight.  The whalers’ camp was visible out on the ice, and there was someone on watch in the homeport at all hours. 

About three o’clock one afternoon there was a shout that a signal flag had been spotted out at the whalers’ camp.  A whale had been taken!  Excitement ran high throughout the community.  Those that had dogteams and sleds left town immediately, at full speed.  Other able-bodied villagers started walking or running.  Dorothy and I sent the students home from school and then took our sled and team.

By the time we arrived, the whaling crew was making preparations to pull the whale up on the ice.  It was a big one, sixty-five feet long and weighing tons.  A ramp had been cut in the thick arctic ice pack to enable the men to slide the monster up on to the ice.  Ropes and pulleys, forming triple sets of block and tackle were in place. 

Whale Pull

Everyone, down to the smallest girl and boy, was asked to help pull on the rope.  Even Dorothy and I joined in the tug-of-war.  We managed to slide the head and a section of the body up onto the ramp, at which point the crew decided to cut the head off and pull it up first.  With all of the help on the rope, this part came up fairly easily.  When rolled over right side up, it looked enormous.

An Eskimo friend, taller than I, asked if I would like to see inside the whale’s mouth.  We had to stoop a little to enter but once inside we were in a room whose ceiling I could barely reach.  There was ample standing room for both us. 

Around the lower gum line where one would expect to find teeth was an arrangement of flat, flexible bone structures. These were baleen.  They looked about one-half inch thick by seven or eight inches wide and stood very close together like the teeth of a comb.  They were tall enough to reach to the outer rim of the roof of the mouth.  During the early days of commercial whaling, this was the so-called “whalebone” that commanded high prices on the market.

My attention was directed to the throat of the whale.  There at the back of the throat was a very small opening no larger that my fist.  My friend looked at me and asked, “Do you think Jonah could have gone through there?”  Before I could reply he answered his own question. “No, Jonah was never in a baleen whale, God prepared a special large fish, just for Jonah.”  I thought that some missionary had done a good job of explaining.

Returning to the work of the day, or night (as one was never quite sure), I saw the whaling crew was beginning to cut the blubber from the sides of the section resting on the ice slip.  They were using very sharp long-handled instruments, designed like spades, and were cutting the blubber into sixteen by sixteen inch chunks which were as thick as the layer of blubber was on the side of the whale, about fifteen inches.

Long, extremely sharp and sword-like knives were used to make the back cut.  When a chunk of blubber was cut loose, a workman using a long pole with a hook on the end would drag the chunk to a nearby pile.  When a section of the outside blubber was completely cut, the entire crew, or a representative for the crew, would gather around the pile of blubber or meat that was to be distributed.

Cutting up the whale