Alaska: Even Better the Second Time Around, Part 3

Our family loved to camp and we would go out a lot during the summer months. Our favorite place to go was Quartz and Crescent Creek Campgrounds. We would go out rain or shine. Mom, dad and Kevin loved to fish but I found it very frustrating as I didn’t have the patience. As a teenage girl, I couldn't figure out where the fun was in standing on the side of a river, waiting for a fish to jump up and take my bait. But there must be something about fishing because so many people liked to do it. My mom and dad loved to fish and it was rare if my mom didn't come back with a bunch she had caught.  So I decided that there was only one way to find out what they saw in this sport and that was to join them.  Before I left Alaska, I was going to catch a fish, no matter how long it took. So I got my rod and headed down to the creek. 

I have to say, it is not something that I would seek out to do now but the thrill of the catch was pretty exciting.  I got a bite and fought my catch for a little while and reeled in my prize.   I had caught a 22 inch Dolly Varden trout.  After that day, I never caught another one near that size but I was happy I had finally seen what everyone loved about fishing.  

We all owned waders in my family.  The tall water boots that you wear to get in the water to fish.  Lots of times we would just wade out in the creek and play in the water or build a dam and then take it down.  

There were a lot of girls in the families we camped with, so we would get together in one of the trailers and play Canasta for hours. Or we would take hikes, never straying far from camp.  We didn't want to run up on any bears.

We had awnings that we would put up over the picnic tables so we could eat outside, even if it rained.  Mom cooked a lot of our meals right on the campfire.  We had a big piece of stainless steel, that was about the size of the fire pit and we would cook pancakes, bacon, eggs, hamburgers, etc. on it.  Some of the best eating came off that big old piece of seasoned metal.  

During the cold months, we didn't camp much but that didn't stop us from being outside, enjoying different activities.  It was not unusual for us to get a bunch of families together and go out to the Rec Area, on base, for sledding or snowmobiling. We would build a fire outdoors and we might cook hot dogs or other things for lunch and would use it for warmth too. We always had so much fun on those outings.

We were very active while in Alaska this second time.  Kevin and I learned to snow ski at Elmendorf's, Hillberg Ski Area, which had beginning and intermediate slopes. It was the perfect place for new skiers.  They had the disk and t-bar lifts, which were a challenge, but before long we had no problems on them.  We used to ski in our jeans.  We would use Scotchguard to help waterproof them but after being out all day, they still got soaking wet.  We didn't care.  We loved it. I think it was $12.00 a day to rent skis and for the lifts.  A real bargain compared with today's lift ticket prices at other places. 

Our family in Alaska the second time.

One of the things we did for PE during the winter was play Broom Hockey, also known as Broomball.  There was a rink right at the school that we would use.  The game is very much like real hockey but with a broom and a ball. You are on skates and you try to get the ball in the goal.  

We liked to roller skate too.  The base had a Roller Rink and it was very popular with the junior high age group.  All our friends would meet up there and we would do all kinds of different fun "skates", like skating backwards.  We would get together with our friends for the holidays and by mid afternoon all of us kids would want to go skating. Our parents would act like they weren't going to take us but would finally give in.  We think they were glad to have us go but were just playing with us.  We always had a blast when we went.  

My Grandfather Hatch passed away in 1972, so we went back to North Carolina for the funeral. I remember there were so many people there that they were standing outside. A lot of people came out to show their love for ole Skybo.  We got to see family while there.  It had been three years since we had been back to the Lower 48 and North Carolina.  I left Alaska with long hair but had my cousin cut it into a shag while back there.  Shags were very popular then.  

I was on the Student Council and served as Secretary.  We got so much accomplished that year but our biggest success, according to the students, was the acquisition of a soda machine.  Everyone loved it.  We also sponsored several dances.  We had a set of twins in our class, Vince and Wayne Watson, and they were both officers too.  They were active in so many things and were lots of fun and always cutting up.  Where are they now?  I would love to know where a lot of the people that went to Orion are now.  (If you happen upon this blog and you were there, let me know.)   

The soda machine we worked so hard to get.
Someone, when signing my yearbook,
wrote in the "Beer" as a joke. (1)

I went on my first "date" in my ninth grade year.  His name was Rick and he was older than I was.  I couldn't car date so we walked to the movie theater to see whatever was playing at the time.  That relationship didn't work out but his family moved to Missouri at the same time we did so we went out again there.  Still nothing.  

I did meet a boy from my grade that I liked and, of course, I fell head over heels for him right before we moved away.  His name was Eddie Bannick. He was a basketball player and very quiet. My heart broke to have to leave him.  I thought my world was ending.  He promised that he would come to Missouri one day to see me.  I thought, yeah right, easy to say now.  But sure enough, three years later, when I was a freshman in college, I got a call that he was in town.  He was driving from Alaska to Texas and stopped by.  He came back through again a few years later but by that time I was in a serious relationship.  It was still great to see him though.  I think he went back to Alaska but I lost track of him along the way.  Unfortunately, that happened with a lot of my friends over the years, during our many moves.  And we were about to make another one.

Today's Terri's Tidbit:  I love doing genealogy and I follow a lot of other genealogists and their blogs.  One of them is Jana Iverson Last and her blog Jana's Genealogy and Family History. Recently she posted the cutest video that I thought was worth sharing.   Watch "Grandparent's Little Secrets", from Studio C, by clicking here.  Do you have a skeleton or two in your family history closet?
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(1)  1973 Arctic Highlights Yearbook, Orion Jr. High School, Elmendorf AFB, pg. 7

Alaska: Even Better the Second Time Around, Part 2

I always loved school and was always involved in something.  Junior high was no exception.   I was a class officer, in the National Junior Honor Society, on the Yearbook staff, on the Pep Squad, and worked in the front office one hour a day. We had so much fun in junior high. I treasured the friends I made while in Alaska and loved just hanging out with them.  Lots of times we would just sit for hours and talk and listen to music.  I would love to know where the girls, in the picture below, are today.  It would be fun to be able to catch up on all the years that have passed since we last saw each other in 1973.  One of these friends moved to Missouri, at the same time we did, but we went to different schools so I very rarely saw her.

Me with some of my friends standing in
front of Orion Junior High School.

I was in Girl Scouts during this time. We had a lot of great times as a troop. We camped out, did projects and cut up. The leader's daughter and I would always get in trouble for talking too much. Can you believe that, me talk to much? One of my friends, Diana Smith, was in the troop with us.  We still maintain contact today.  Our troop went camping one weekend, in tents, and had quite an experience. We worked real hard making no-bake cookies and sometime during the night, a bear came into the camp and ate them. There were empty containers with big ole teeth marks in them. We also saw moose while out there. This camp was right on the base. Elmendorf had a Recreation Area along the backside that was like a big wilderness area, complete with animals and that is where we camped.

I also worked on the yearbook staff with Diana Smith, Laurie Snider (who I would run into in Missouri sometimes) and Rob McKinney.  We had a wonderful teacher by the name of Marian Driskell.  We had a great group of people working on the yearbook and we were able to produce a 80 page book for our Junior High School.  I remember Mrs. Driskell taking us to workshops on things that would help with the production of the book.  One time she took several of us to a restaurant, in Anchorage, at the top of one of the taller buildings.  I think it was the Captain Cook Hotel.  I thought it was so cool how we could see forever from up there.  I still remember that I had a beef au jus sandwich.  Strange that I would remember that but I don't think I had ever heard of such a sandwich before, much less eaten one.

I hated PE! But we had to take it.  In Junior High we had these little one piece things we had to wear during class.  They were navy shorts on the bottom and I think navy and white stripes on top. You would have very little time to get in, get changed, and get out into the gym before class started and then when class was over, you were hurrying to shower, get dressed and off to the next class.  I wasn't the most coordinated one in the class either.  We had the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, we had to do each year, in order to pass PE.  One of the things we had to complete was running a mile in a certain amount of time.  I finally did it at the end of the year, but just barely made it under the required time.  I tried out for the basketball team one year because my mom had been a star basketball player.  I didn't even come close to making the layup, which was one of the key criteria for making the team.  No basketball trophies in my future.

So I didn't like PE but I loved my health class.  I learned so much in that class.  And we had so much fun in there too.  We had this plastic body that had all the parts in it, (heart, kidney, etc.) and the teacher would take them all out and then would time us as we put "Oscar" back together again. We had races and I just loved seeing how fast I could do it.  Having fun while learning!  That worked well for me.

Now that we were in Junior High, we had lockers and changed classes, just like in High School. To this day I still have a recurring nightmare about not remembering the combination for my locker, needing something for class, and not being able to get in to get it.  You had to plan well to get to your locker between classes because of time and the halls were always crowded.  Sometimes it was just easier to carry a bunch of books around.  All the sixth graders from the previous year, came to this school which made it crowded so they put up what they called Relocatables, trailers that provided more classroom space.  They sat right outside the front door of the school.  I had several classes in these trailers.

A picture from my yearbook of the
 crowded halls were at Orion. (1)

Every junior high girl has a crush on one of their teachers and I was no exception. Most of the girls in my class fell in love the day that Mr. Valentine came to Orion. He was young, teaching Boys PE, and very good looking. Needless to say, we all got tongue tied around him too. He probably thought we all were just giggly girls but boy was he cute.  We would have "Mr. Valentine" sightings and everyone would stop and watch.  Teen age girls...what more can I say?  

Today's Terri's Tidbit:  There are so many things you can do on Facebook, even genealogy.  I recently joined the North Carolina Genealogy Facebook page, mainly just to see if there was anything there that would be helpful in my family history research.  I had been looking for genealogy information on my great, great grandmother, on my mom's side.  I had hit a major brick wall and thought, hey, why not throw this out on the NC Genealogy site and see what happens. Within half an hour I had several responses to my post and was able to bring down the brick wall. If you are doing your family history, don't forget to check to see if there is a genealogical society in your state or even the county.  You, too, might just get some information that will further your findings.

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(1)  1973 Arctic Highlights Yearbook, Orion Jr. High School, Elmendorf AFB, pg. 52

Land of the Midnight Sun

There are so many memories of Alaska that it would be very hard to put them all into a blog. We were very fortunate to be stationed at Elmendorf AFB twice, and lots of memories were built both times. The first tour was from 1960-1964, so in today's blog I will share some of those highlights.

When we first moved up to Alaska, we lived in a trailer park in Muldoon, just outside the Anchorage city limits. This was a grand time in the lives of my brother and I. We learned all those fun winter activities, such as ice skating, sledding, building snowmen, igloos and forts. It really was a child’s winter wonderland. 

It was a very cold place to live in the winter, and required some actions that weren’t necessary at many of our other bases, such as plugging in your car at night to make sure it would start the next day. And something that was done a lot… shoveling, shoveling, and more shoveling. But it was also a place where you could make your own ice rink in the back yard and see the awesome Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights).  During the winter months, darkness sets in and stays for the better part of the day.  It is very weird.  It feels like you are wandering around at dusk but all day long.  Then the opposite happens in the summer where you have daylight for long periods of time.  In June, the sun could still be up close to midnight. Because of the long hours of sun, flowers, vegetables and other things that grow in the summer, tend to get very large.  Our friends grew some zucchini one year that were like a foot and a half long.  They made lots of zucchini bread.

The Muldoon trailer park we lived in was Rangeview Trailer Park. It had a little stream that ran behind it. I can remember my parents warning us about the dangers of getting too close, falling in, going under the ice, and freezing from the cold water. Did we listen? Of course not, and one day we were down by the stream when my brother Kevin, fell in. Talk about a scary moment. I just knew that everything that mom and dad had told us was about to come true. However, he was pulled out and although cold and scared, was okay. I’m sure our parents were fit to be tied. Kind of like the time my mother looked out the front window and saw the two of us running across the roof of the neighbor’s trailer. 

Me in front of our Rangeview Trailer Park home

Oh it didn't stop there. The icing on the cake came the day that we went to run errands on the base with my mother.  It was at the time that people were getting off work. Traffic was usually quite heavy at this time, with everyone ready to get home. Mom stopped to fill up the car with gas and went in to pay for it. Famous last words, she told us to not get into the front seat while she was gone. That was the time when cars would go into gear without the brake being set. So, the minute mom was out of sight, my brother jumps into the front seat and hits the gearshift. We are now rolling into the road cutting off traffic at the stoplight. Mom came out and there was no car! Then turning around, she saw the car and figured out what had happened. She came running over, not sure what she would see but found us with no harm or injuries.  She said that when she came up to the car, there stood Kevin, at the wheel, with a big, proud smile on his face.  We had rolled right into a huge snowbank, cushioning our stop.  She was so furious, yet so relieved that we were okay. We had fun and lots of adventures while growing up.  

We eventually moved onto Elmendorf AFB and lived in an apartment type building on Apricot Street. Little did we know that our next time there, we would live on the same street, just at the opposite end.

Do you remember the show Mannix?  I don't remember it well, except maybe what I saw in reruns. Sometime while we were there, Mike Connors came up to Alaska and we were able to see him. Mom got dad to take a picture of her standing behind him.  Look at the smile on her face.  She was thrilled to see him in person.  

Mike Connors from the show Mannix
with mom and Kevin in the background.

My parents were very outdoorsy and loved to camp and fish. My brother and I were out camping with them from a very early age. We started out sleeping in tents and slowly moved up to a tiny little trailer just big enough for one person to turn around. But we thought it was heaven after sleeping in the tent. Mom and dad told us one time that they tied a rope around several trees and put us inside the rope and told us to stay and silly us…we did. During our four-year stay at Elmendorf, we made many trips to the woods. 

Me, Mom, Kevin and our little camping trailer

While at Elmendorf, we participated in our dear friends, Jim and Sandy Paxton’s, wedding. It was a real family affair. I was the flower girl. Kevin was the ring bearer and mom and dad stood up with them. We would later be stationed with them again in Alaska, and I would babysit their boys. To this day we are still great friends with these folks.  They have become part of the family. That happens a lot in the military. Those you are stationed with become like family. Many times, you are too far from your hometown and can’t get back often, especially from places like Alaska, so the people you are stationed with help you celebrate your holidays, birthdays, new babies, etc.  They become lifelong friends!

The Paxton's Wedding

Today's Terri's Tibit:  We became grandparents again last night at 6:57 pm, when our newest granddaughter was born.  Joleyna MaeEllen was 8 lbs 1 oz and 19 3/4 inches long.  She is an absolutely beautiful baby and all are doing well!  Congrats Stephanie (my daughter), Bobby and big sister Hannah! We love you!