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 were in distress. They indeed modeled the Louie L’ Amour attitude of the Ol’ Wild West.
Feb 13th Was awful cold last night 10* at 5:30AM. School stove froze up, ink froze, drinking water froze, so school was late starting. Sandy then drained the filter of the stove oil. Must have been some water in the fuel oil. Did some more wiring in the ceiling for our light fixtures.
Feb. 25th First day with electric lights. There is a new attitude among the kids in school since the addition of the lights. In the evening we heard, on our radio, an advertisement about TV remote controls saying "Do you have to get out of your chair to tune in a new station on your television set?" It was the first we’d ever heard of that. We jokingly said--" It must really be tough living back home in civilization with their troubles!!" What’s TV?
Feb.27th The Coast Guard ship, CLOVER came in at 6:45 tonight and picked up Katie Holmberg. It was an emergency evacuation. Took them 8 hours to come the last 44 miles in a strong SW gale. It came from Cape Scherioff. We'd been sending school work home for her since November and she’d been getting worse ever since. Think she has rheumatic fever.
During the November trip of the Garland, the Department of Education sent us all brand new school books with specific directions to destroy all the old ones. That seemed a waste to us. Why couldn't we just hand them out to the kids who were starved for reading material? But we did as we were instructed. We had a book burning. I'm sure that the same thing happened to one of the former teachers, creating that legend of "the crazy teacher burning all the books."
Emil verified another legend, when he told of the explosion that happened three years before on his fishing boat. It was caused by a gasoline leak in the engine room of his boat while he was ashore. It completely destroyed the boat, killing the crew-member right there in Pauloff Harbor just before the fishing season started. That crew man was that year’s Sanak school teacher.
Marina, Emil's wife, was the midwife for the birth of a baby for last year's teacher who was pregnant when she arrived in the fall. They were semi-prepared for the event, even though they had hoped to get to a hospital by June 1st in Anchorage. But the time came earlier than expected and the native women here were very experienced in home births, so things went well. (One more legend explained)
Old Chris Halverson cleared up another legend, the story of the lady that disappeared while searching for wild flowers. He said she may have been a mental case. It is true that her body was never found but folks around the village said she had been acting very strange for weeks before that. They were suspicious about the situation because the husband didn't seem terribly upset by her disappearance and didn't press for any investigation into the matter. He just left the island soon after and that was the last anyone ever heard of the episode.
I have since learned that my handling of the murder-suicide episode had become another of the Sanak teacher legends.
One foggy day I felt I'd also become a mental case when I thought I saw a lone horse in the misty distance near the village. I reluctantly mentioned it to one of the older boys and he told me, I wasn't crazy after all and told me the history behind it.
Years before someone planned to bring cattle to the island to start an island ranch. There were no predators, no need for fences, and good range grass. That was even better than the open range of the real wild west! However the deal fell through after he got one horse and two cows shipped up. The costs of shipping cattle up to the island was just too high. The horse went wild and no one had been able to ever catch or tame him. He became "a ghost stallion" that showed up usually on foggy days but always a distance away, making Sanak “The Wild Horse Island.” He clearly became the king of a lonely domain.
After the war, cattle were brought onto neighboring Caton Island that also went wild, so that any beef butchering was more like a running buffalo hunt than a round-up into a corral. We were given a portion of a kill one day in midwinter when our island friends went over for fresh meat. The
