If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name Part 10

Klukwan residents Lani Hotch, Marsha Hotch, Ruth Kasko, and Denise Kahklen recently completed training at the Sealaska Heritage Foundation's Kusteeyi Inst.i.tute. Lani and Marsha learned methods for teaching Tlingit language lessons to adults and children. Denise and Ruth took part in Chilkat-blanket-weaving and spruce-root-basketry cla.s.ses.

Mimi Gregg, director emeritus of the Alaska Community Theater Festival, and her daughter K. A. Swiger of Ketchikan attended the International Community Theater Festival at the Mendel Center of Lake Michigan University. The festival featured fifteen plays, including a Russian Romeo and Juliet and a French version of Chekhov's The Marriage Proposal. Mimi says not knowing what the actors were saying wasn't a problem. "The plays were so well done you got the gist of it." Mimi is busy reading scripts and scores for the Lynn Ca.n.a.l Community Players, who are hoping to stage another musical this fall.

The next time you fire up the hot tub, give Elsie Mellot a call. The octogenarian was honored with a gift of a bathing suit at last week's Chilkat Valley Historical Society meeting. Members gave Elsie the aquamarine one-piece suit after she used the old "no bathing suit" excuse when begging off a soak at a previous historical society meeting.

Grand Old Dames

ABOUT TEN YEARS ago I traveled to the Kenai Peninsula with Mimi Gregg for a state community-theater festival board meeting. We flew to Anchorage and rented a car for the two-hour trip south to Soldotna. On the trip, we talked about marriage and family, and Mimi told me that her long marriage to Ted was not an accident. He always let her try new things, and whenever they had a big fight her rule was, Will this matter in ten years? Usually it wouldn't. "Take the long view," Mimi said. "It works." Mimi drove that wet, winding road through Turnagain Pa.s.s like Mario Andretti, chatting as if we were at her kitchen table. I thought I was going to die. I begged to take my turn at the wheel, pleading the case that my young children needed a mother. Mimi called me an "old fuddy-dud." She was seventy-four.

Mimi's friend Mildred Meisch also used to drive fast. She would cruise around town in her vintage Mustang or, later, silver T-bird and invite tourists to come for a ride, promising to show them the sites for free. She may well have been Haines's first tour guide, spiriting delighted and no doubt increasingly alarmed tourists to her friend Nowyta's place ten miles from town. "She druugg more people into my cabin than I can count," Nowyta declared in her Texan drawl. "She knew any friend of hers was a friend of ours, and everyone was Mildred's friend."

Mildred, whose own Texas accent, heavy silver jewelry, tight red leather pants, and cowboy boots made her hard not to notice, died of congestive heart failure. She was eighty-eight years old. "That little woman was all heart," Clint, the butcher and Mildred's fellow Texan, told me. He said he knew summer had arrived when Mildred came in and ordered her chili beef. Mildred first saw Haines when she was eighteen. She came from Texas with her cousin, a military doctor, to care for his children while he was a.s.signed to Fort Seward. She fell in love with another army doctor, H. M. "Doc" Meisch. They were married four years later in Texas. The Meisches returned regularly on vacation. When Doc died in 1980, Mildred decided to spend more time in Haines. As her friend Lola says, "She was a guest who came for the summer and stayed twenty years."

After visiting Haines with Mildred and Doc, Nowyta (p.r.o.nounced No-wheat-ah) decided to make Haines a permanent part of her life, too. Nowyta and her husband, Abe, summered here until he retired from Exxon, and then they moved up for good. When Abe died suddenly, Nowyta was lost. He was the love of her life for fifty years. She had to learn how to make the bed, she told me, because she had never done it by herself before. She sold their cabin, called "Happy Ours," and now spends part of the year in Texas with her daughter and the rest in a rented house on Officers' Row, next to all the Greggs, with an entourage of southerners-friends and relatives from Texas and the Mississippi Delta.

Every July they host the Mississippi Blues Party. Which may explain how I ended up singing "The Beer Barrel Polka" with a retired public health nurse, the Episcopal priest, a tourist from Mississippi, and a friendly guy I'd never seen before who was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of an automatic rifle on the front commemorating some sort of militia warrior weekend. My guess was that one of these old gals around me picked him up hitchhiking to town from the ferry terminal and invited him for supper. We were the opening act. I was there without the rest of my family partly because they all went to a fund-raising spaghetti dinner at Mountain Market. Another reason was that my children are shy about attending a party where the youngest people were Nowyta's nephew Fireman Al, his wife, and me. There was one teenager from next door, but she didn't stay too long. Al is the son of Nowyta's husband's identical twin brother, Babe. Abe and Babe, and their families, lived in matching log cabins on the beach out at Lutak.

It rained all day and was still wet when Nowyta's party began, so while some hardy souls had mint juleps, iced tea, and home-fried salty pecans on the front porch, most of us crowded into Nowyta's living room, balancing paper plates of exotic southern food; no local moose, salmon, or halibut here. Instead, we ate black-eyed peas, sweet-potato salad, spicy okra with rice, jalapeno relish on corned beef, pecan tarts, pralines, and Ritz crackers with a sweet lemon spread (it tastes better than it sounds). It wasn't a potluck either; they made all this themselves.

People were dressed in whatever we Alaskans think Mississippians look like. One guy wore a wide straw hat and new denim overalls. Several women had big hairdos. Nowyta was in a long flowered skirt and matching shawl, a southern belle, her tanned face accented with bright lipstick and shiny earrings. Like her friend Mildred did, Nowyta has a double-take kind of style that the hokey costume couldn't disguise.

The Mississippi Blues Party is partic.i.p.atory. You can't just sit there and drink and eat. Guests provide the entertainment, though some are more prepared than others. Nowyta divided us into sections, counting off one to eight. There were four or five in each group. When none of us in Group 1 volunteered to go first with a song, joke, or story, we were a.s.signed "The Beer Barrel Polka." She handed us the music. Our hearty attempt loosened up the crowd, and the rest of the evening's entertainment rolled forward.

Erma Schnabel and her friend Helen Tengs, representing the crew from the Schnabels' Big Nugget Gold Mine, sang "You Are My Sunshine," holding dancing battery-powered sunflowers that hummed the tune. Maybe it was all the food, or maybe I drank my julep too fast, but I started thinking about another remarkable old dame who really could have stolen this show.

Josephine "Porcupine Jo" Jurgeleit, a one-legged lady gold miner who died last year, was a great storyteller and especially loved to talk about her adventures. She and the Schnabels owned the only active placer mines in the historic mining district on Porcupine Creek, north of town. Jo threatened to settle most of her disputes with a rifle, and just about all of them were with John Schnabel over their mining claims. For years, Jo kept up a running feud with the Schnabels. The bullets she fired whizzed pa.s.sed John's head on many otherwise still woodland evenings. When she failed to kill him, she took John to court. John says he never had much chance against "a one-legged widow," even if she was well known for her grit and independence.

Jo was profiled in numerous publications, including National Geographic. When she was seventy-three and still digging for gold, Jo told the Alaska Geographic Society Quarterly, "I love the mining game.... I feel sorry for people who live in the city and never go out in the woods." During one illness, Jo even got a get-well card from tyc.o.o.n J. Paul Getty. How he met her, I'll never know.

Jo was almost killed six years ago when she backed her pickup truck off a cliff while moose hunting near her claim in Porcupine. She was eighty-five then. John rescued her. I would have loved to have seen the expression on his face as he stood over the ravine looking at her truck hanging on a tree and realized that her life was in his hands. John called his crew, and they got a winch and a loader and hauled her truck up and pulled her out of the crushed cab. John drove the twenty-five miles to town as fast as he could while Erma sat in the back of the pickup with the bleeding Jo on her lap wrapped in blankets. Jo might have died that day if the Schnabels hadn't been there. Instead, she took her last breath a few years later in an uncharacteristically ordinary way, at a rest home near her daughter's house in Soldotna.

Jo never had a prosthesis. Waiting to cross Main Street, she sometimes whacked the side of a truck with her crutch to get the driver to stop, while one empty pant leg flapped in the wind. I used to imagine the story she would tell about losing that leg. Maybe, I thought, it had something to do with a bear attack, or a rockslide, or even a shootout. The truth wasn't nearly as interesting. Writing her obituary, I learned that a misdiagnosis had led to an infection and the leg had had to be amputated. It must have broken her rugged heart.

But it hadn't slowed her down much. "Telling Jo she couldn't do something," her sister Hazel told me, "was like putting a red flag in front of a bull." Jo came from a pioneering Haines family. She and her siblings were so similar that we just called them all by their maiden name: the Vermeire sisters. Besides Jo and Hazel there was Emma, Clara, and Mary. With Jo gone, Hazel is the only one left now. She still lives alone in a picture-perfect farmhouse with a steep gable and a front porch. Sitting in the spotless living room last year, Hazel told me all about her sister, peppering her speech with G.o.dd.a.m.ns and sons of b.i.t.c.hes, and lewder expressions that didn't match her appearance. One unrepeatable story made me laugh, and she smiled, enjoying the "Did this nice little old lady really say that?" look on my face.

Like her sister, Jo had a quick wit and a sharp tongue. The most polite way to describe her was offered by her friend Jane, a retired shopkeeper who gets her white hair done at the beauty parlor and dresses up for lunch at the senior center. She and Jo used to go "four-wheeling" together in Jo's truck on old mining roads in the Yukon. "Many of Josephine's stories were risque," Jane said, "and her language was colorful." That is how you put something that some people might consider a criticism into an obituary that you want the family to still be able to clip and save. You get someone who loved the deceased to say it. Then it becomes a compliment.

Jane was at the party, sipping a julep and talking with Mimi on the sofa. They both looked so small. All these great old dames make me want to be like them when I grow up. I want to spend my life in the same place with the same friends and, after all those years in the same community, still surprise people. This crowd at Nowyta's bash had me looking forward to old age. I can't wait to peer wisely over the top of my gla.s.ses, shake my gray head, and share contrary opinions punctuated with an occasional expletive. I'm going to bring down the house at parties like this when I'm eighty. I may even wear lipstick and get some red leather pants.

Laughter from Father Jim's awful religious joke brought me back to attention. It was about a group of missionaries from several different denominations who were caught, cooked, and eaten by cannibals. "The next morning," the Catholic priest said, "they had the first ec.u.menical movement." Everyone groaned. A banker from Fort Worth made balloon animals and hats, and then a Haines elementary school teacher who is also an opera singer belted out "Summertime."

Nowyta called the next day, to make sure the Chilkat Valley News would cover her party in "Duly Noted." She told me they'd had a memorial service in San Antonio for Mildred. Her ashes will be mixed with Doc's, and half will remain in Texas, but the rest will come back to Alaska and be scattered over Haines. No doubt Nowyta will host the party afterward.

"I love ya, darlin'," she signed off in her singsong Texas lilt.

"I love you, too," I said.

DULY NOTED

Martha Jones may need a vacation to recover from her summer visit with daughter C.J. Jones. Martha flew into Anchorage on June 10; then she and C.J. spent two days driving to Haines, where Martha volunteered at the museum and for the chamber of commerce. For Martha, the highlight of her trip was volunteering as the race marshal for the last checkpoint of the Kluane-to-Chilkat International Bike Relay. "Mom had a lot of fun being a marshal," C.J. said. "She just enjoyed everything."

An unexpectedly quick onset of labor led to a relatively rare home birth in Haines last week. Emmanuel Raymond Hansen was born on Thursday to Valina and Scott Hansen at the family's Cathedral Peaks home. "We had planned to have a home birth down in Washington, but when I went into labor we decided it was best not to go anywhere," Valina said. After a doctor's consultation, family members, including sisters Felicia and Victoria and brother Scotty, as well as two helpful friends, brought Emmanuel into the world. Everyone is doing well, Valina said. "You work when you can and nap when you can."

Scott and Mandy Ramsey welcomed about thirty-five family members and friends to their outdoor wedding ceremony at Moose Meadow on August 9. Neil Ramsey, the groom's father, married the couple. The newlyweds don't plan to honeymoon anytime soon. Scott is busy working as a mountain and rafting guide until September. The couple thank all the friends who provided skiff transportation to the meadow and erected the wedding tent.

Black Mariah's Lunch Date

IN THE OLD Joy of Cooking, the recipe for fish chowder began with fish stock. To make it, you take a fish head, bones, tail, skin, a cheesecloth bag of special herbs, a cup of good dry white wine, a twist of lemon zest, six white peppercorns, four cloves, a shallot, a celery stalk, and a carrot. You add two cups of water and simmer everything for fifteen minutes. Cool, strain, and then clarify it by adding a beaten egg white and the crumpled sh.e.l.l. Simmer it slowly until the whites and sh.e.l.l make a crust on top of the liquid. Don't stir it. After an hour or so, let it cool and strain it again through a wet cloth into a clean pot. Now you are ready to start making the chowder.

Some people would say this is an awful lot of trouble for a bowl of soup. They might even say to themselves, "Oh, forget it, I'll just make an egg salad sandwich." Be warned: The perfect egg salad sandwich takes even longer to make than fancy fish broth. Especially if you are home alone on a cloudy late August day.

First, you need hens. You do not need a rooster to have eggs. Hens are like women; they ovulate with or without a mate. If you want to grow hens from baby chicks, you can keep them for a week or two in the cardboard box-the one in which they were mailed from a farm near Anchorage-safe in your daughters' bedroom. Soon, you will smell them when you walk in the house. If you let them out of the box, they p.o.o.p everywhere and are harder to catch than you'd think, especially if they get under the couch. If a curious dog picks one up, the chick dies instantly of fright.

Free range doesn't mean homeless. It means they walk freely in and out of their st.u.r.dy coop into a fenced pen and on nice days get to peck around in the woods, yard, and driveway before you shut them back securely in the coop for bed. Which for chickens is clinging to a roosting pole four feet off the ground.

You need to feed and water your hens, keep their house clean, and make sure they are warm and dry. Every day you check on them, and shovel out the soiled sawdust and sprinkle new shavings on the ground. To get the chickens out of the coop when you are cleaning it, you dump a pile of kitchen sc.r.a.ps in the pen, and they eat them all. You also make sure their feed container is full and that they have clean water. In the winter, when the water freezes, you use two watering tins. The frozen one thaws in your mudroom while the fresh one freezes in the coop. You care for them like this for six or seven months before they lay the first light brown, surprisingly big egg. When you find it in the straw-lined box that you have made just for this purpose, it is as exciting as if you laid the egg yourself. It is a minor miracle. Soon poached eggs for breakfast and egg sandwiches for lunch are regular fare. But the perfect egg salad sandwich can't be made until the end of August, because that's when you have fresh lettuce and red tomatoes in your garden. The timing is good, because you need an egg salad sandwich most right then. August can be a melancholy month. August is the end of summer in Alaska, a time of beginnings and endings, regrets and thanksgivings. School starts and it rains a lot.

You have plenty of time today. You get dressed in running clothes; it's raining, but a wet run out to the cannery and back will make you appreciate that sandwich even more. Before you can leave the phone rings. It's Christian, who's forgotten his trumpet and needs it for band cla.s.s. You find it and drive over to the school. On your way out of the building, a teacher calls your name. Sandy is concerned about the budget cuts the school board has to make. She knows you care about school issues. She asks if you have a minute. You say sure, and sit on the bench in the hall with her. She tells you about the lack of support she perceives the new superintendent is showing for her department, special education. Twenty minutes later you say you really have to go, you have a lunch date, and remind her that the new superintendent used to be a special ed teacher and is probably more sympathetic than she thinks. "I hope so," she says.

Driving back home, you swing by the lumberyard to say hi to Chip. He reminds you to keep the culvert that channels a creek down to the beach clear of debris so the excess water can run off, rather than overflow and fill the cellar. When you get home you put on rubber boots and go check. Spruce needles have clogged the wire mesh in front of the big pipe. A puddle is growing into a pond in the woods. You get a shovel from the chicken coop and keep the culvert clear for an hour, until most of the water is drained. Before going back inside you step into the coop and grab a pocketful of warm eggs. You check your watch and decide to postpone the run until after lunch.

So you walk over to the garden and pick the lettuce, then across the beach to see how well the culvert is working (great-the muddy water is running out) and back up the path to the greenhouse for a ripe tomato. Inside it's musty and warm. The waves from the beach are m.u.f.fled; all you hear is the weak tap of the last raindrops as the tail end of the storm blows through. In Alaska, tomatoes are much harder to grow than lettuce. You can plant them in five-gallon buckets and put them in a sunny window in early spring. If you don't like the way the vines block the view, build a greenhouse. That is what Chip did after he got tired of the tangle of vines. Now the tomatoes grow in a trough two by two by twelve feet filled with dirt and chicken manure. Even young chickens make plenty of it.

Back inside you pull off your boots and pad into the kitchen with your harvest. You get out the half-and-half, an essential ingredient for the perfect egg salad sandwich. The house is clean and quiet. For the first time in a long time, you are home alone. The geraniums have been moved from the porch to the windowsills; the dogs are sleeping in a pile by the woodstove. You are a little behind schedule, but should still have time for a run before the kids get home from school.

The phone rings. It is your editor at the newspaper. "Black Mariah," he jokes, "you've got a cold one." An older woman who had been dying for a while pa.s.sed away, he tells you, not kidding anymore. The family is ready to talk about her obituary. Right now. He told them you were on the way. You put everything for the perfect egg salad sandwich in the refrigerator and change from running pants to khakis, throw on a nice shirt, comb your hair, and brush your teeth. You grab a steno pad and pen and stuff them in your coat pocket. The rain has stopped, and the sun is starting to break through fast-moving clouds. It looks like the run is off, so you ride your bike. On the way up the hill, the chain falls off. You swear and try to put it back on without getting too greasy. Up at the house you apologize for being a little late and ask if there's a place to scrub your black hands. Turns out it's a good introduction. They are surprised, and happy to help. They offer you coffee, but you say no thanks, unless they are having some. They are, so you take a mug, too, and drink it black, even though you always have milk, because the last thing they need to do right now is get you anything.

You listen and write as they talk about their mother and wife. "The way she saw it, the Lord was going to heal her or take her, and either way she won." She was born in Norway and her early years were hard. When she was eight years old, she traveled alone on a steamship from Vancouver to Juneau to live with her father, a gold miner. She spent the rest of her life in Juneau and Haines. She raised six children, and when her husband and son-in-laws bought an albacore fishing boat she sailed on it through the Panama Ca.n.a.l. When they took it to the South Pacific, she met them in places like Fiji and the Cook Islands. Recently, she took a trip back to Norway. But her daughters don't say their mother was a world traveler. They say their mother loved her family, husband, home, and garden. They offer you some spicy j.a.panese dried peas, but you decline. You are late for a lunch date. You don't say it's with yourself.

As you skid into the gravel in your driveway, you think how great that sandwich is going to taste. You are just stepping in the door when a car pulls in. It's Jan, the priest. What day is it? Oh G.o.d, how could you forget you promised to go over the rental agreement for the Chilkat Center with her? You pretend not to be surprised and ask her in. She says she'd like some coffee, so you make a pot. A half hour later you've cleared up the few sentences in the lease you were uncomfortable with. You both agree that since the borough, not the church, plows the parking lot, the church can't be held responsible financially if someone slips and falls in it. You promise you'll present the church's concerns at the next Chilkat Center board meeting and ask her to remind you the day before, in case you forget.