Hobo Pat

I felt the funk coming on today. I felt like crawling back in bed and pulling up the comforter. The car stunk like the garbage that I'd hauled to the dump and it needed gas. I drove my husband to work and he rolled down the window at -40. I figured he could walk home. I missed my school appointment because I had so much paperwork organization to do and a 3 hour morning Elluminate Live! session. I had a diet coke and fries for lunch. I forgot to take my lipitor and my leg muscles ached. When I finally got to school, the coffee was cold and I was 10 minutes late. I came home and threw myself on the couch. I needed a lift. Fortunately, we had a date planned for the evening.

Friday night out- Paul and I went with friends to hear Hobo Jim. He did some great songs and had me reminiscing about cabin life and fishing and ordering from the catalog. Ivory Jack's packed them in to hear his annual show. He stands up on a couple of pallets. He's a little scrawny, but he's my generation and I think he's the real deal. When he sings about the guy who's seasick and taking dramamine, he sounds like he's been there.

Hobo Jim's up here on the eve of the start of the Yukon Quest dog race. Usually, I go down to see the mushers off downtown on the Chena River but I might be at Tai Chi. There are 24 teams this year and with temps at -45, it might be a high attrition rate. We hiked at Eagle Summit this summer (see Pinnell Mountain trail) and it is some rugged terrain. When I drove over it in December, the snow and wind made it almost a complete whiteout and the snow was drifting pretty fast. You can follow the progress of the race at http://www.yukonquest.com/.

All those wonderful Alaskan cabin songs reminded me that I need to write down my memories of old Alaska before I forget them.

I came up in 1974....34 years ago in July. I moved up when the pipeline was being built. We (me and my ex-husband) bought an old trailer for $500 that was in a low spot on Badger Rd, about 1/2 mile from Dirty Pete's junkyard. At that time, tent space was about $100/month due to the inflation of employed pipeline workers. The trailer was an old mobile home with an attached wannigan (entry way). We painted it and used burlap sacks for wallpaper in the added on back room. In the winter, it was so cold that the water in the back of the toilet froze up and we had to use a hair dryer to thaw it out. We mostly waited until we got to work to get down to business, if you know what I mean. The only thing keeping us alive was our electric blanket. In the Spring, we woke up one morning to a room full of smoke. The roof leaked right over the controls to the electric blanket and shorted it out....it was smoking badly, but hadn't caught the blankets on fire yet. We had a houseguest (Jan) who came back drunk and was careless about leaving his hand out of the blankets on the couch and almost got frostbite. His hand was white for several hours and hurt for days. We bought a bunch of bananas and froze them on the porch thinking banana bread, but being young and careless, we forgot about them. The Spring thaw caused them to ooze down through the slats in the boards. What a mess!

We had a dog who my husband brought back from Vietnam. He spent his puppyhood running with a wild pack and the fire never left him. We had rabbits that we had to keep on the roof of the trailer so Newty (Newton Pissant Hoenniker)wouldn't get them. When we came home one day, Newty was hanging from his leash between the rungs on the ladder. Don't worry- he didn't die, although he wouldn't mind dying if he'd reached those rabbits. We had the ladder against the trailer so we could shovel off the roof so it wouldn't collapse.

The low land of Badger Rd meant very low temperatures in the winter. I mean about -60. I can remember at least once draining the "oil" into a pan and heating it over the stove and pouring it back in. It plopped into the oil pan like jello. Our Land Rover had a crank start for emergencies, but many times we had to borrow a "weed burner" to heat up the whole engine to get it started. We had "frost shields" on the windows to keep frost from building up on the inside of the car. As now, we plugged it in whenever we could. Unlike now, very few businesses had outlets so we went out of parties, work, etc. to start the car every 2 hours. We would drive with all our winter gear looking out a small scraped area. Fortunately, when it was the coldest, most cars didn't run at all, so there was never much traffic, never mind a highway. I often walked the 2 miles to work in even the coldest weather. We never passed anyone up who was stopped by the side of the road. It was just too life-threatening to leave them. Wardrobe of the day- Army bunny boots, Army green parkas with wolf trim ruffs, woolen knit hats and scarfs wrapped around your face and 2 layers of gloves.

Enough for now.