Oct. 10, 1952
Dear Dad, Molly, & Mrs. Millet:
Your last letter was handed to me on the job. I started to read it, and the rain drops made the ink run, and I had to put it in my hunting coat. About an hour later when the asphalt trucks stopped coming, I got a chance to read it …
I get time and a half for all over 40 hours, but do not get double time for Sunday. The government takes out such a big slice that it is foolish to work too many hours. I made $140 last week. The withholding tax amounted to $25. Since I have been up here, I have saved $365 besides paying the $85 I owed Wards and another $30 I spent for logger boots and other accessories. If I watch my step I should have at least $2,000 by next August.
I bought some red print curtains for my room. They really made it look as “homey” as a farm kitchen. After I do my washing and hang up the clothes to dry, how fresh and clean smelling is the air in my little home! And, Molly, I change my underwear every day as I do my socks. I have a big wash every week, but find it easier to get clothes clean if they are not too dirty to begin with.
These letters are not very interesting, I’m sure. But neither is asphalt paving, and that is what my life has been lately—shoveling that steaming stuff and watching the black path stretch in the wake of the tireless machine….
We were paving the other day. Off in the distance the scary, purple clouds began to swell and hide the mountain ranges. You could see the valley begin to haze in the distance and you knew that rain was on the march. The roller operator, who is built surprisingly like a roller with his great, round body, squinted at the sky.
“Pull on your slickers, boys,” he said. “In just about two minutes, it’s going to rain like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock.”
It did, too.…
So long, love to all,
Sam
I HAD EXPECTED THE “NEW MAN” treatment. I was assigned the Sunday garbage runs and the heavy work that others craftily dodged. I was being tested. I was the unknown gunslinger drifting into town, and the top guns had to find out how fast I was, constantly watching and listening for some weakness or flaw.
Although my fingers sometimes cramped on a jackhammer handle, my stomach rolled from the stench of maggot-writhing slop, my back stabbed as if the pick I was swinging was driving its point into me instead of the shale, I hid my feelings behind a smile. They played their little games, and I played mine.
I was determined to live up to my idea of what an Alaskan was. He faced things head on and didn’t whimper. He did the job that had to be done. If he couldn’t, then he didn’t belong. He wasn’t worthy of the name.
The civilian workforce came from all over. Some merely passed through like storm fronts, raised hell, and moved on. Others stayed in spite of their griping. They had set goals for themselves. A fellow called “Rogue River” was going to buy a logging truck and be his own man in the big timber country. “California” planned to save a bundle and set himself up in a landscaping and nursery business. “Arkansas” dreamed for a bottomland farm, free and clear of any bank. “Illinois” was going to drive home down the Alcan in a brand-new station wagon with Alaska plates.
“Big Time” had other notions. “Ten thousand be about right,” he said, a wistful smile spreading over his dark face. “First get me a Cadillac, long and low like them cigar-smokin’ fat cats drive. Here I go to Chicago or Detroit, and watch me spend a thousand a week. Different women every day. Hoo-wheeee! When it’s all gone … I’m gone, and all them women would say, ‘I wonder where that rascal’s at?’”
What struck me was that nobody planned to stay in Alaska. They were here for a stake. The gold rush was still on.
There were others in the barracks, too many of them, whose dreams went only as far as the weekends. They were the lost ones. They would stay as long as they could hold their jobs. On Fridays, the cabs waited for them. The cabbies brought them, smiling and prosperous, into town, then hours later delivered them as defeated hulks that slobbered up the barracks stairs. They sprawled in the corridors. When aroused from their stupors, they hurled curses, struggled to their feet like huge, sluggish turtles righting themselves, and weaved grim-faced and groping along the walls, only to fall against their doors. On Sundays, they pleaded for drinks and fell prey to the loan shark demands of “Oasis,” a man who accepted IOUs, payable the next check, for tapping his plentiful supply. Miraculously, they reported for work on Monday to build up the payday thirst and start the cycle all over again.
Oasis fascinated me. He was a Syrian man who always wore a suit coat and a soft gray Stetson. He kept his shirt buttoned up to the collar. His eyes were brown and sad with dark circles under them. A wart on his forehead was almost as prominent as the diamond that flashed on his finger. He smelled of incense and spoke with an accent out of the Middle East. When he talked in his soft way, I could picture him dealing cards on a Yukon steamer, or spilling dust from a moose-hide poke onto a scale.
In some barracks rooms, wild-eyed, sweating men talked to dice, shook them in their fists, and rattled them off the walls to decide the fate of their paychecks. There were the card games, draw poker and seven-card stud and Black Jack, that attracted players like night creatures to a beacon. They were consumed by a fever. They not only risked what they had, but even what they hadn’t earned yet.
Winning big drove them on. Winning was the smiling siren, always retreating from them. A winner one moment was beckoned to become a loser the next. The next pot was more important than the present gain. I wondered who finally pocketed most of the cash. Were professional gamblers shearing the sheep? I wasn’t about to find out. I didn’t have the kind of courage to throw away hours in minutes.
There was frontier-like recklessness in the air, a “don’t give a damn” attitude that surfaced in checkered woolen shirts, swagger, and bravado. Perhaps it could be traced to the special flavor emanating from the word Territory, as opposed to State. Men talked of going “Outside” or to the “South Forty-Eight.”
It was not only in the language. It was in the Northern Cross in the night sky, on the Big Dipper shoulder patches of the town police, and in the daylight which stretched far into the evening. I was caught up in it. As proud as I once felt of the Marines’ globe and anchor I’d worn, I now felt a similar pride in working to become an Alaskan.
I LEARNED I COULDN’T BE TOO trusting. I’d read too much about the trapper’s code and the unwritten laws of the North. You didn’t have to lock doors—that was only done in cities. Stealing was out of the question.
My first wash jarred me back to reality.
After scrubbing my clothes in the community sink (which I later discovered was also used as a urine can rinse, a mop bucket, a fish cleaner, and a king-sized ash tray), I hung my laundry on the lines in the drying room. When I returned to check it, I noticed that a set of lightweight long johns, a large thirsty towel, and two pairs of socks were missing. That wouldn’t happen again. Back in my room, I strung up a clothesline of my own. I bought a washtub, too. Evidently, cleanliness was a virtue some of the inhabitants enjoyed at the expense of someone else’s efforts. “It’s easy to be dirty,” my mother used to say, “but it’s work to keep clean.”
I didn’t lend any money, either. When I first arrived, I had some Traveler’s Cheques left. I played as
