A Pioneer Alaska Highway Vacation
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A Pioneer Alaska Highway Vacation |
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Chapter V
We sailed again at noon, rounding Digby Island and turning again North. Coming down very late for lunch I found young McCarthy for once ruffled out of his good nature. Apparently, Mrs. Dennis had twitted him too far with the fable, rife among so many English at that time, of all Americans having unlimited money and a very easy time, and he had responded with is own story. Both his parents had been killed in an accident when he was nine and he had been taken in by an uncle who ill-treated him. Forced to do all sorts of chores on his farm, half starved and constantly beaten, his clothes had been two sets of overalls, one for weekdays, one for Sundays. In boots too large and full of holes he walked a mile every day before and after school to bring the cows home, many a time in bitter winter weather, stopping fearfully to thaw his feet in the warmth where they had rested. The reason for his uncle’s behaviour was due to his having been in love with the boy’s mother and because she had not chosen him he nursed a bitter resentment expressed by the ill treatment of her child. After rather more than a year, the little boy had run away. Ten years of age he had walked and run fifteen miles in bitter weather to the nearest town, where he went to the Salvation Army. Questioned about the welts on his back he had told his story, and the case was brought to court. When the judge had asked him if he would rather go to an orphanage or return to his uncle, he had chosen the orphanage where he was to live for five years. Oh yes, they had been good enough – he had food and clothes and was well enough treated, but there was no affection, he had no sense of being a person or of belonging to somebody. He turned to me. “Guess you can’t know what that means to a child. Oh yes, I was well enough treated, but I wanted something more – I knew I was missing something, but I didn’t know what it was. You’ve got to have been brought up in one of those places like I was, to know what it means.” After five years he had run away again and this time had reached Chicago where, wandering along a street in one of the poorer areas, he had seen a shoemaker’s sign above a doorway and something prompted him to go in and ask for a job. The old man who owned the shop had questioned him and again. Something decided the fifteen year old boy to tell him the truth and why he had run away. The old man listened, and having decided that he had already suffered too much, agreed to help him. He took him in, found lodgings for him with a kindly woman, and taught him his own trade, paying him several dollars a week. Four dollars he gave the boy to pay for his keep, the rest he carefully banked for him and in the evenings he had taught him to read.
“I never did get much education”, the boy explained to me now. “Never got much beyond forth grade but he taught me to save, too. In fact, most of what I’ve ever learnt about life I owe to what he taught me. He was real good to me!” I thanked him for telling me about it all and agreed how fortunate it was that in the whole of Chicago he had found that wonderful old shoemaker! “I sure was! My Lord was with me I guess” he replied sincerely. With one of the gusty chuckles that shook his frame he turned to reply to some crack from one of his cronies at the next table. Slewing round again, he nodded at the ascending skirts of Mrs. Dennis, following her husband up the stairs. “She don’t know nothing: Talkin’ as if all Americans were film stars!” He exclaimed, disgusted. “She got me mad, and I just had to tell her!” I didn’t tell him that many English people at this time held similar views. Not many of them thought of going to America as crossing the Atlantic Ocean was a long voyage and so expensive! Only those in public life, that is to say, wealthy folk like film stars could afford it. On hearing I was intending to travel Alaska some of my own friends thought it odd that I was going alone? Young McCarthy had been married now since the War where he had been fighting throughout the long nightmare of Guadalcanal. The night previously he had recounted some of his experienced there. But despite the calm, almost casual detachment with which he spoke, there were too many streaks of grey in his hair and now he was on his way to Skagway because he had been told by a kindly doctor it was essential for him to get a job in the open air. Throughout the early part of the afternoon I sat in a sunny sheltered corner watching the wide wake spreading aft, like a ruffled green path from which the ship seemed always to be sliding downhill. The coastal mountains and outer islands becoming more remote. Six miles south of the international boundary where Green Island Light marks the southern end of Dixon Entrance, the long roll and pitch of the open ocean met us again and for the next hour or two showers and pale sunlight alternated. We were in United States waters now, and shortly before dusk, off Alert Point, we picked up the U.S. Customs and Immigration official. An hour later, after rounding a long point in the Tongass Narrows the line of the Ketchikan canneries came into view, and behind them the little town huddling on the forested slopes of Deer Mountain. Ketchikan, an Indian word meaning ‘the spread wings of an eagle’, was derived from the creek running through the town. A large rock in the creek near the falls used to divide the waters and spread them into two ‘wings’. This rock has since been blasted out to make it easier for spawning salmon to swim upstream. Later that night I went ashore. Invited by two charming sisters from Kentucky, young in all but actual years, we wandered happily around the little town, with the faintly oily, warm odour of salmon cooking permeating its streets. Ketchikan, with its fourteen large canneries, was the centre of the Alaska fishing industry. According to repute it also supported twenty-five liquor shops. Certainly every corner we turned was enlivened by a brightly lit window in which an almost bewildering assortment of gleaming bottles jostled. Although it was late because a ship was in, all the shops were open. There were jaunty little stores displaying hats and scarves and nylon stockings and handbags – a treat after the shops in England. Stores whose wide windows were filled with electrical gadgets and the latest cookers, refrigerators and more silky clusters of furs glistened beneath blue white lights, the doors tantalizingly open. Only an occasional car passed, and the night was filled with the sound of voices in cheerful conversation and footsteps thudding on the boardwalks which, lined the muddy streets. We entered one store filled with ivory and Indian baskets. Files of moccasins lined the shelves, some of moose hide with white and bead embroidered, others of sealskin trimmed with fluffy Arctic hare and lined with reindeer fur that would only stroke one way. Pieces of seal ivory were etched with tiny scenes of fishing and hunting and signed by their Eskimo artists. The smiling woman who let us write postcards on the counter, promising to post them and add an extra stamp if necessary, brought out more lumps of the beautiful mastodon ivory. The ivory was tinted by the mineral action of earth in which it had lain for several thousand years to a mellow richness of colour varying from caramel to a delicate pinkish grey and was patterned with fine black veins. “Goodbye, goodbye – Come back again! I hope you’ll enjoy the trip”, the owner called after us, waving and smiling when at last we tore ourselves away. The ship’s siren sounded at 10:30, mournfully echoing to the hills, as we slipped out across the polished black water. So Ketchikan receded, no longer a world of houses, streets and business, where people lived, worked and played, were dying, being married or sleeping. Where there were churches and a hospital and clubs and a school – and there was the all pervading smell of fish! Now Ketchikan was but a glitter of lights, the coloured lamps of wharves and canneries, the blinking crimson or wireless masts surrounded by untenanted blackness of mountains and forest. At midnight the sky, which had remained overcast with drifting banks of
cloud, cleared suddenly to the Northern Lights, weaving luminous veils
of light. Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
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