Sitka

We left all of our baggage in our boat and went to find someone in charge.  We found Lloyd Ripley, a friend from way back when we were both beginning teachers in the community schools.  He and his wife had recently moved from Wrangel, a native community on one of the islands south of Sitka.

“Hello Arnolds, what are you doing here?”

“Probably the same as you are doing now,” was my reply.  He was sitting at the wheel of a large army surplus truck. 

“To whom do we report our arrival?  We pulled in here and docked without much fanfare.  All of our things were in the boat.”

Lloyd said, “Let’s put your baggage here on the truck and drive around to the office.  They’ll register you and assign you to a house.”  The personnel in the office were glad to welcome us and immediately looked up our name in their records. “You are assigned to duplex number 28A.”  She directed our attention to a chart on the desk and pointed to 28A. It was very close to the administration building, but the chart showed the road as going around the hill and approaching the duplex from the other side. 

Lloyd said, “I know which place is yours.”  We got back on the truck once more and went around the administration building.  “There, up on the side hill.” 

The duplex looked like several others here on the flat area, but it was up the side- hill with a short driveway of its own. Lloyd drove up our driveway and helped us move in.  The duplex faced the street with a wide set of steps and a double entryway.  All of our possessions were brought in and placed in the middle of the living room floor. 

Lloyd, was the chairman of the Industrial Arts department of the school and would be my supervisor.  

We spent the rest of the day moving in.  Our three rooms, half of the duplex, consisted of a large living room, bedroom, and kitchen large enough to serve as a dining room.  There was an entry room and a back door from the kitchen.  The entry room had a washer and dryer. In the kitchen was a fridge, with a large freezer compartment.  Overall, the quarters were well furnished.  The rugs on the floor looked new.  From the back door, a step and path lead over the hill to the office building – a very short distance. The foundation of the house, in the back by the steps, was high enough to form a place for the dog.  She could walk beneath the house so we left her on a chain when we went to work.

We brought in Dorothy’s piano that was crated.  It gave us a little problem lifting it on and off of the “SS Woodrow,” but we made it okay.  By the time we had our bed made up we were ready to call it a day.  The new mattress that came with the bed felt very comfortable.         

We were up early the next morning and went off to work a little before eight.  Dorothy was to report to someone in the school office.  I went on down to the big hanger and reported to Lloyd in his office.  The first thing he did was fit me out with a set of keys for my end of the big airplane hanger. 

On my way to my half of the hanger I noticed a ladder near my door, reaching from the floor to the ceiling.  There was also a walkway, with side railings extending across the large room to the opposite wall.  Before I did anything else I climbed that ladder and walked out so I could see what was there.  There were four workbenches and several units of power equipment.  With a little arrangement I would have a place to begin.  The major problem was the row of boxes across the front of the room that blocked the use of the big sliding doors. 

I returned to Lloyd’s shop and told him what I had found and explained to him the need of a power lift.  Lloyd asked me how good I was with a power lift.  My reply was, “Give me a half hour and we will both know.” 

He walked over to his key locker and took another key from its hook.  “The power lift is parked just inside your large front door,” he said as he handed me the key.  I hurried back to my end of the hanger.  There, just inside of the large central door, was the power lift.  It wasn’t there last night, because I would have stumbled over it.

The key fit the machine and I experimented a little to find out how the various levers and pedals worked.  I moved a few small items, and pushed others.  It was more a process of selecting and collecting items that would be suitable for a school shop. Sometime in the afternoon I became aware of Lloyd standing, watching me working with the power lift.  He was satisfied with what I could do with it and said he would try and get me a flat bed truck the next day to haul away some of the surplus. 

By quitting time I was ready to call it a day.   Even though I had spent most of the day riding about in the shop on the lift I was worn out.  I could see by what I had accomplished the first day with the power lift there was hope I could reach my goal by the first of September.

Dorothy was home and in the kitchen by the time I checked in.  She was quite thrilled with her day.  She said she was going to be the Chairman of the English Department.  She also said there were a lot of kids from Deering and Wainwright that were in the first and second grades when we were there.  They remembered her and their rhythm band. 

They also remembered me when I was Santa Claus at Christmas time.  They were glad to see her and also hoped she would be their teacher again.  Henry Negovona, one of the older boys from Wainwright, was here in Sitka.  He was working as a seaman on a small government ship. He did not come into town often.   Dorothy said there were more kids from the far north, but she had not seen them yet.  The Alaska Indian Affairs had taken over two of the large dormitories used by the army.  One was for girls, and the other for the boys.  One of the office buildings was being remodeled a little to serve as classrooms for the high school, and another for a gym.  She was afraid the government was rushing things a little by bringing those kids from the far north down to a civilization they had only read about in books.

We were on the island of Japonsky separated from Sitka by about one hundred yards.   There was an open boat that ran back and forth about every hour.   The cost was five cents each way and it took ten minutes.  Going back and forth to town was no problem if your timing was right, but if your timing was off one minute you stood in the rain for one hour with no shelter on the Sitka side.

On Saturdays, when the weather was nice, we often packed a lunch and went for a long hike.  The government, as part of their defense project, had installed a series of gun emplacements at strategic points around the seaward face of the island.  These usually contained some form of shelter, and were interesting places to stop for a picnic lunch.  Of course, the dog always went too, and enjoyed being free from her chain so that she could run.  Sunday, we were up as usual and walked over to the Sheldon Jackson Junior College to attend their Sunday morning chapel service.  We always made certain we had the right number of nickels to keep the ferryman happy. 

In March we began to receive letters from Dorothy’s parents that her mother’s health was failing.  Dorothy was the only girl in the family and her brother was a missionary in Africa.  Her father was having difficulty coping with the situation.  We had both experienced a good teaching year.  I had my shop well organized.  We built three boats.   Two were from professional blueprints and were built to handle a fair sized motor.  The third was an eastern-type dory from plans developed in the shop.  Parties living in Sitka had purchased the two conventional sixteen-foot outboard boats.   The captain of a government ship on its way to the South Pole area saw the Eastern Fisherman’s dory.  He said it was just the type of boat he was looking for, so our first dory went to the Antarctic.

With the close of school, Dorothy received more discouraging letters from her folks in California.  We began to put our house in order.  We put our powerboat in a corner of the boat shop and Dorothy’s piano back in the original crate.  We asked for a short vacation to go to California to check on things there.  We had an inexplicable feeling that our vacation had been granted.  We continued to pack our personal things in strong boxes, and stored them in our bedroom with the piano.  We later sold the boat for $100 more than we paid for it, so it turned out to be a good investment.  We enjoyed many weekend excursions during our one-year ownership of the Vagabond .

When we saw the Alaska Steamship Company’s steamship the Alaska at the Sitka’s dock, we grabbed our suitcases and the dog on a leash, and hurried down to our own ferryboat.  We paid our nickels, and crossed over to the Sitka side and walked up to the desk with money in hand to purchase tickets.  They would not let us board immediately, but asked us to wait.  There was a low, low tide and the good old “Alaska” was sitting on a sand bar.  We saw it was leaning over slightly to the starboard side waiting for the tide to come to its assistance. 

We found a comfortable place to sit, and waited for an hour or more for the incoming tide to come and float our ship off the sand bar.  The dog was taken below decks and a man in a white jacket showed us to our room.  It was not an exciting exit and we did not know at that time it would be our last farewell to Sitka.

The return to the States through the enchanting islands of southeast Alaska and Canada was very pleasant due to the excellent weather.  We were always thrilled to see the Smith Tower standing overlooking the busy Seattle waterfront.  We made a short stop in Tacoma to see my folks, and then on to California.  We had left our car in storage on our last trip so it was a simple chore to check it out and be on our way south.

Dorothy’s parents were glad to see us walk in.  We did not have to be told they were in need of help for we could see there was a problem.   Our week of trying to cheer them up did not seem to help much.  Time was up for our short vacation.  It was time to start back north again.  Somehow every mile we traveled on our return trip back north did not seem right to either of us.  We made it as far as Redding, California the first day and took a motel room for the night.  The weather was hot on the road and the motel room was even worse.  Sleep was out of the question.

Dorothy continued to say, “I just can’t go back to Alaska and leave mom like that.” I knew there was only one thing I could do. We had spent fifteen years together in Alaska.  I got up, went out to the car and returned with my old portable typewriter.  It was midnight when I sat down and wrote out our resignation to the U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, Juneau, Alaska.  I reread the letter twice and folded it ready to go into the envelope and went back to bed. 

In the morning I let Dorothy read the letter.  She said it looked to her as if that was the only way to go.  I signed the letter, placed it back in the envelope and sealed it. On the way to breakfast we dropped it in the Post Office box.   We were no longer Government Employees.

We turned around and drove immediately to the head office of the California Teachers Association in San Francisco, to inquire about available teaching positions.  They received us with open arms because the war situation had been making soldiers of many of their teachers.  They had several good vacancies. We selected two within the same school system in Salinas not far from Dorothy’s parents home in Santa Cruz, but not too near.  We were accepted and our employment problem was solved.  Our address remained the same for the next twenty years.

Our days in Alaska were over and gone, but not the many pleasant memories which linger yet.