Wanting to learn to knit, Marie brought an instruction book and yarn to Alaska. She felt no need to do a practice piece and started right off on her main project, a fancy vest. She finished the back knitting under stress when I was in the Cold Bay infirmary. Later she knitted the front during a calmer setting, but when she put them together, they didn't match. She had knit the back part so tightly that it was way too small. She tore it all out and re-knit the entire piece, but never wore it because the memories connected to it were too painful.
Marie wrote her inner feelings and fears in her diary but never mentioned any of our serious trials or troubles in letters to her parents. There was only light talk and humor as if everything was just fine, when in reality it wasn't. She said since she was just the simple farm girl, she wanting merely to live out a quiet wholesome life so her letters always reflected that.
The simple life! Yes, our life was reduced to the basics. Not necessarily food, shelter and clothing, but three other basics: mental health amid gloom, personal safety amid lawlessness and our career dedication to improve the lives of the students in our care.
Of course, basic survival was always on our minds, but we also searched for beauty and optimism. The native population had a serious alcohol problem and "the isle of free love" environment prevailed in a house near the school. We felt a personal challenge to try to teach these kids a better life. We found our balance and a measure of contentment during trips out into the wild beauty of this treeless island during the few days we had of good weather.
Jan 23rd This is the 5th straight day of gale wind. It goes right through our outside storm door into the classroom. The gusts even shake our strong metallic igloo. This morning before school, the ramp out to the dock blew down and was pulled away by the current into the inner harbor. Emil Anderson's dory broke its mooring at recess time, so the older boys and Sandy went out along the beach to save it. Zanzibar Johnson's dory overturned, Rhule's got busted up, Ben's seine skiff sank, and the Uranus which is now listing to starboard, is still tied to the dock out there. We have no way to get out to the dock anymore until we get a skiff repaired . The dock is like an island out in the center of the harbor. A truism for the Aleutians: If you want to discard something, throw it into the air during a storm and you'll never see it again.
After the first couple of months, we felt good about our adjustment to this island life. I must qualify that and say that I loved it as a modern equivalent of the Wild West, while Marie just wanted a bath tub. We did enjoy certain members of the island folk, though we had little in common with them. Our intellectual conversation was limited. We'd often reminisce the wholesome times of our upbringing, the music of the 40's, the good books or movies we had enjoyed and the many good party times we’d had with friends. Talking of those memories made our life tolerable during that rigid, frigid existence when we went forth to the north.
The bath was pretty primitive
Marie knitted a lot, as well as baked bread and pies every week. However, her genius was creating attractive meals from our monotonous canned and dried food supply. She was able to magically transform powdered milk into a palatable drink, powdered eggs into a reasonable breakfast with Spam, powdered potatoes into mashed potato paddies and work those awful packages of margarine, to make that white lard look like butter. In those days we had to hand squish a little capsule of yellow dye into the white Oleo in order to have it simulate butter.
With a return to a normal routine after all the various problems we endured in the village, came a new attitude of acceptance towards us. We had suffered alongside everyone through each crisis and, even though I was but a first year teacher, I felt clearly in command of my position as the professional educator. Maybe some of the naive Tom Sawyer in me was becoming mature.
Many families invited us into their homes and loved to share the unique island history with us. Those fisher-folk that befriended us were rough living, spirited, frontier people, mostly of AleutNorwegian stock. Even though some were a threat when drunk, they all pulled together when in crisis. They put to sea in a gale for medical aid during our mutual life threatening sickness.
They pulled together to work through the village murder-suicide crisis. Several men made sure all the kids had a Christmas by getting the gifts and supplies to our island home when the mailboat couldn’t make it in. Many men were returned GI's with a longing to be free of society's restrictions. They didn’t consider themselves lawless, but often did what they felt was right not concerned whether or not there was some law concerning it. We were given gifts of fresh salmon and Emperor Geese in midwinter. Legal fishing and hunting seasons meant nothing to them.
I remember a Kenny Rogers song with a verse, "You can't outrun the long arm of the law”, yet Sanak Island seemed to be the exception! In our village were people rumored to be running from various crimes on the mainland. The frontier attitude was clearly alive and well on this island. Over time, we were able to adjust to the island’s insecurity. Marie, from her country girl upbringing of self reliance, gained the confidence needed to survive the pioneer environment without any institutional support. Not unlike these islanders, I may have broken a few rules myself by my John Wayne demeanor in the way I handled one threatening situation. It was completely accepted, however, by this unique breed of Alaskans during those less formal pre-statehood days.
Most all the cabins on Sanak displayed a firearm near their door. Usually it was a 12 gauge shotgun, hung on pegs over the top of the door frame. It was there in the event that the man of the house might need it to rush out and bag a goose spotted flying overhead for dinner. Over the door to our living quarters, which coincidently was also just behind my desk, I had an item that was not the custom to display in a school classroom. It was there for pioneer atmosphere and accepted as such by my students.
A law of the National Rifle Association, Never aim a rifle at anything you don’t intend to shoot.
There was clearly no official enforcer on the island. I made but one community rule for the integrity of the school environment. I posted on the front door of the school a notice in big letters: “WHEN DRINKING HOOCH STAY AWAY FROM THE SCHOOL!”
Maybe he just forgot, or maybe he was testing me, but about mid-morning one school day, I looked up and saw this drunk Aleut busting right through the school house door. Complete silence came over the children as I reached for the 30:06 hanging over the door of my living quarters. I’d never had better classroom attention as I worked the bolt action noisily, putting a shell into the chamber. Then I walked up to the staggering, foul-smelling man, who was father to three of my students. As I came near him I distinctly remembered the National Rifle Association oath I took as a thirteen year old boy. Our Marine Corps instructor made us memorize, "I’ll never aim a rifle at anything I don’t intend to shoot”. I thought about that oath when I shoved my Springfield into his soft belly and growled, “You get out of here!”
His face paled a bit, he grumbled, turned and left the school house. I locked the door, picked up the storybook Adventures of Huck Finn, I’d been reading to the class at the end of each school day and started reading aloud. I thought that to be a good way to calm myself as well as the total school atmosphere at that moment. After the reading a chapter, we all went back to the normal school routine and the day finished without further interruption. Surprisingly, nothing was ever said to me by a parent or student about that incident, at the time nor any other time during the rest of the year. The next week, when he was sober, that drunk and I were congenial friends again, just as we had been before. I never had any trouble with him or anyone else in the village after that.
It became clear that, at times, some of these islanders were a serious threat to Marie and I as well as to each other, yet at other times they would pull together in crisis and risk their own lives to aid any one of us islanders if we