This
is an article Mom wrote for Collins Family History, 1740 to
1977. It was privately published in 1977 by the Collins
Family.
FLORENCE
RUCKER
COLLINS
Maternal
Grandparents
Florence Marian Barlow
Born Sept 20, 1846,
Fairfield, Vt.
Died Mar 8, 1929, San Diego, Calif,
and
Wallace Corning Dickey
Born Oct 7, 1841,
Mentor, Ohio.
Died July 11, 1927, San Diego, Calif.
Children of above
1.
Barlow Corning Dickey, born Aug 20, 1872,
Cleveland, Ohio; married Kathryn Galvin. Child: Wallace John.
Died Sept, 1951.
2.
Edward Soule Dickey,
born July 9, 1875, Cleveland, Ohio; unmarried. Died April 1942.
3.
Helen Barlow Dickey, born Dec 13, 1876,
Cleveland, Ohio; unmarried. Died Mar 5, 1936. Ravenna, Ohio.
4.
Florence Harriet
Dickey, born Aug 11, 1880;
married B. Parks Rucker, Dec 4, 1906 in Chicago; Florence’s
father. Died Nov 27, 1967.
5.
Ruth Soule Dickey, born Aug 28, 1882, Peoria, II;
unmarried. Died Oct 24, 1954, San Diego, Calif.
Paternal
Grandparents
Sarah (Sally) Frances
Parks
Born Sept 8, 1850,
Missouri.
Died Feb 4, 1946, Garrett Park, Md.
And
Benjamin Lindsay
Rucker
Born Dec 3, 1846,
Amherst Co., Va.
Died Feb 9, 1918, Amherst Co., Va.
Children of above
1. Ruth
Elizabeth
Rucker, born
May
4, 1874; unmarried. Died about 1960.
2. Benjamin Parks Rucker, born Feb 20, 1876; married
Florence Harriet Dickey (see above): one child, Florence Parks
Rucker. Died June 30, 1959.
3. Henry Cowles
Rucker, born Apr 3, 1878;
married Lillian Rucker (cousin); children: H. Cowles, Jr.,
Benjamin Ambrose: Sarah Anne. Died 1960.
4. Elizabeth Palmer
Rucker, born Dec 16, 1880;
married Karl Stoehr; children: Karl Rucker, Edward Konrad. Died
about 1960.
5. Mary Nell Rucker,
born Apr 22, 1882;
married Winfield Scott Macgill; children; Emma, Eleanor,
Winfield Scott Jr.
6. Clara Maude
Rucker, born Dec 5, 18…;
unmarried. Died July 12, 1973.
7. Sadie Paulin
Rucker, born Oct 12, 18…;
married Richard H. Akers; no children.
Child of Benjamin
Parks Rucker and Florence Dickey Rucker
1. Florence
Parks
– born
May 22, 1921, New haven Conn; married Richard Hubbard Collins
April 13, 1957, Christiansburg, Va.
In the spring of 1921 my parents were invited to
spend the weekend with friends in New Haven, Connecticut, and I
arrived there unexpectedly, that Sunday, May 22, 1921. Though I
only lived in the Nutmeg State for a month, I’m glad to be a
Connecticut Yankee instead of a New Yorker.
Brooklyn was our home until
I was six, but we spent the spring and summer of 1925 in
Bradenton, Florida, where I learned to read, and remember
sitting in the back yard in a wash tub of cool water, with my
primer propped in front of me. Mother and I went by train to San
Diego, California, three times in those years, to visit her
family, returning east from the last trip, in September 1927. We
went to Montclair, New Jersey, where Daddy had rented a house
with a back yard that boasted a big catalpa tree. For the next
seven years, much of my spare time was spent climbing and
reading in that tree. In early fall, its long green-bean like
seed pods made fine ammunition for “bean fights”; thrown hard,
they would sting, but were too fragile to inflict any damage. We
also had a long plank, painted green, that served as a ramp to
run up into the tree, as a slide to descend from it, as a
see-saw, or, laid
on the ground, as a make-believe boat. The house itself had a
big glassed-in porch, and an attic with two finished rooms.
Lacking brothers and sisters, I spent many rainy afternoons on
the porch making cardboard Indians, explorers and cave men which
I put in the attic room I’d converted into a museum. My chief
hobby, however, then as now, was reading and we were lucky to
live only a half a mile from the public library.
In the depression year of 1935 Dad lost his job as an
electrical engineer (he built some of the earliest dams and
hydroelectric plants in the country). We moved two miles away,
and I rode my bike three miles instead of one, to school. The
next year we went to Washington, D.C., and on 1937 to Atlanta,
Georgia, where I graduated from North Fulton High School in June
1939. That summer Mom and I visited the New York World’s Fair,
which we enjoyed immensely—and we heard, from our hotel window,
newsboys shouting “Extra, Extra” the day World War II started in
Europe.
I spent the following winter at home in Alaska, instead
of at the University of Chicago, because I had undulant fever.
After reading the texts for courses in Humanities, Biological
Sciences, and English Composition, and after making my first
long trip alone, to Chicago to take the “comprehensive exams”, I
was able to enter the University as a sophomore in the fall of
1940. I was sitting in the lobby of the dorm when music on the
radio was interrupted by news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It
seemed the best thing I could do was to continue my education as
a geology major--petroleum and minerals would be more needed
than ever. A full scholarship for my junior year, and a partial
one for the last year enabled the budget to stretch over two
geology field trips, to Wisconsin in 1941 and to Wyoming in
1942. At Baraboo, Wisconsin in Prof. Bastin teamed the
Florences—Florence Robinson and myself—together. Four weeks of
hiking around that area and four more weeks of working together
on the Wyoming field trip cemented a friendship that resulted in
our both taking jobs with Shell Oil Co., in Houston, Texas, as
soon as we graduated. After the first few months there (Houston
didn’t appeal—too hot, too wet, too flat) we made ourselves a
Four-Year plan: work and save our money until 1947, and then
quit, buy a car, and spend the next two summers traveling and
the winters studying for masters’ degrees.
Early in 1945, an exhibit of fighter planes, supposed to
encourage the purchase of war bonds, had a different effect on
us—we took flying lessons, instead! I must have looked strange,
biking madly home to our garage apartment with a huge grin on my
face, after my first solo flight. (We went everywhere on bikes,
as we had no driver’s licenses, no gas, and no car). That
August, I visited the Shell Oil Co., office in Tulsa on
business, and must have met Uncle Wallace there, though I have
no recollection of it. All thoughts of geology evaporated
suddenly—the end of the war was broadcast, and people ran out
into the streets shouting and cheering. Back in Houston that
evening, the scene was the same. No more shooting or bombing,
and the men overseas could come home. Rationing gradually
disappeared, though it took nearly 2 years for many things, such
as automobiles, to become plentiful. Meanwhile, we enjoyed the
opportunity to fly a Piper J-3 Cub cross-country to see more of
Texas. It was disconcerting, though, to see cars on the highway
below us going faster than we could, when there was a headwind!
A two-place Cessna 140, sleeker and faster, took us on a 2
weeks’ trip to southern Florida in January 1946. Early the next
year we learned to drive a car, bought a Jeep Station Wagon, and
in May, fulfilling our plan, resigned from Shell and headed
north. After a month spent making a topographic map of Round
Spring Cave, in Missouri (and an odd-looking map it is, because
overhangs cause the contours to cross and re-cross) we began our
“volcano summer”—so called because many of the places we
visited, such as Yellowstone, Crater Lake and Mt. Lassen
National Parks, and Craters of the Moon and Lava Beds National
Monuments, were caused by volcanic action. Following a school
year back at the University of Chicago, we headed for Alaska,
via the Canadian Rockies. This was the first year the Alaska
highway was open to tourists, and there was lots of red tape and
many warnings (“Have you lots of food? extra gasoline? spare
tires? camping gear?”) from Canadian officials officials, who
weren’t used to civilians, and especially to a couple of girls
in blue jeans. But we found the road in good condition, though
unpaved, of course. We traveled slowly, savoring the wilderness,
the wild raspberries along the roadside, and the campsites we
found, most of which were in recently abandoned gravel pits.
Traffic was scarce, and we had the road to ourselves, mostly—a
contrast to the dusty, comparatively heavily traveled roads we
could reach, we put the station wagon on a boat at Haines, for
the ride down the inside passage to Prince Rupert, British
Columbia. A little dirt track through the Coast Range took us to
Prince George, B.C., (the jumping-off place for Dick and David’s
trip a few years earlier). Then we returned to school at
Chicago, going the long way around-via Arizona. Through that
desert country the multiple points of caribou antlers we were
lugging home made a unique towel rack, and drew a good number of
perplexed stares.
We’d fallen in love with Alaska’s wide-open spaces, and
were both lucky to get jobs with the U.S. Geological Survey in
Fairbanks, after receiving masters’ degrees in geology at the U.
of Chicago in March 1949. Our second trip up the highway, and
our first impression of Fairbanks was described in a Christmas
letter that year:
“We left Edmonton, Alberta about 7.30a.m., March 25th,
and 14 hours later dragged into Grand Prairie, 300 miles away.
The road was muddy—muddy and slick muddy and sloppy, muddy and
sticky. After a couple of hundred miles, the car, license
plates, lights, windows and all were an even drab. We stopped
every few miles to scrub a clear place in the driver’s front
window; the passenger just didn’t see out at all. We were happy,
though, because we’d successfully negotiated the Smoky River
crossing on the ice, our biggest worry in planning the trip. A
bridge over the river was opened this fall, but last spring if
the ice had broken before we crossed, we’d have been stuck for
two weeks. As it was, we just made it. Water was eight to ten
inches deep in the track we followed, and a day or so later it
was closed to traffic.
“West of Grande Prairie we slugged past some grain fields
into British Columbia, and onto a winding, slippery mud road,
the worst stretch of all; it took 4 ½ hours to cover that 100
miles from Grande Prairie to Dawson Creek. Then, beginning at
the Zero Mile Post in town, a smooth-packed gravel highway let
us speed along, over the Peace River bridge and into the
foothills of the Rockies, where we got views of snowy hillsides
and dark spruce-filled valleys, with mountains west of us
shining in the setting sun. Small white wooden posts mark almost
every mile to Fairbanks, their black-painted numbers giving the
distance from Dawson Creek. Homesteaders’ addresses and places
of special interest are remembered by their mile posts: Summit
Lake, at Mile 395, is the highest place on the road—4200 feet.
Around it, rugged peaks rise some 4000 feet higher. At mile 500
is Liard Hot springs, a dim ever-stirring blue pool in the
snowy, silent twilight. At Mile 918 is Whitehorse, the only real
town on the highway, and rail-head for the White Pass and Yukon
Railroad (Wait Patiently Ahead And
You’ll Ride Road)—the one Dick’s father
Ray took on his way to the Klondike in 1906, a narrow-gauge link
to Skagway and the sea.
“ When we reached Fairbanks, on April Fool’s Day, snow
covered the town as it had the country since leaving Edmonton.
The roads since Dawson Creek had been icy, snowy, and dusty by
turns, but traveling was much easier than it had been on the
rough loose gravel of the summer before. We made about 300 miles
a day, stopping each night at a roadhouse, the northern
equivalent of an inn. These were usually large, one-story
buildings, sometimes of logs, and heated by wood stoves. A
dining room seating perhaps a dozen people, and a hall lined
with small rooms containing one or two cots apiece occupied most
of the space. Meals leaned rather heavily toward starches, but
were usually good, and helpings were always generous.
“ Fairbanks is a fascinating town. Subtract the autos,
and First Street, along the Chena Slough, would make a perfect
setting for an old-fashioned Western movie. Cushman St. and
Second St. are both paved (the latter only for one block,
though) and their intersection had a stop light, but the rest of
the town’s streets are gravel—muddy in spring, and terribly
dusty in summer. The post office, a large, buff-colored
structure, is the largest building in town. Other outstanding
items two movie theaters (rather like neighborhood theaters in
size and atmosphere), the N.C. (Northern Commercial) Co. store
and power plant, with its two high smoke stacks and eight o’
clock whistle; Piggly Wiggly, several other food markets, bars,
jewelry, variety and clothing stores, just like any other
smallish town. But nowhere else would you see office workers and
housewives in high heels, nylons and fashionable clothes rubbing
elbows with Eskimo women in mukluks (fur boots with walrus hide
soles) and parkas; or crane your neck, as I did yesterday, to
watch two jet planes whoosh overhead—and glance down just in
time to see a dog team, pulling a sled, trot down the street.
And where, outside of Alaska, is the river front a parking place
for eight or ten small seaplanes. The Chena is often swift, and
is both narrow and winding, so to take off the usual procedure
is to go upstream above the bridge, turn, and roar down, past
the hospital and Catholic church, under the bridge, past the
N.C. store, round the bend on one pontoon, and finally pull out
of the water and climb slowly over the trees. Land planes are
better off; Weeks Field has a 5000-foot gravel runway, and a
control tower, too. It’s used by all commercial and private
flyers except Pan American Airways, whose DC4s land at Ladd Air
Base, just east of town.
“Housing was scarce and we are lucky to have a place in
the housing area beside our office. We live in half a Quonset
hut, which makes a really fine three-room apartment, in spite of
the curving walls. With furniture, water (brownish and
strong-tasting, but safe), electricity and steam heat, it seems
downright luxurious when we think of the low rent of $1.00 a day
apiece. But it’s the only thing that is cheap up here! Clothes
are only a little more than they are Outside (the local idiom
for any place except Alaska), but food is outrageous. We pay
$1.15 for a dozen oranges, 69 cents for a head of lettuce or
cauliflower, 80 cents for four tomatoes, 40 cents quart of local
milk or 60 cents for milk flown in from Seattle. Butter is $1.00
per pound, ice cream $1.00 a quart, bread 30 cents a loaf. Airborne eggs (from
Outside) are $1.25 a dozen, and local fresh eggs are the same.
Canned goods are high, too: 60 cents for Spam, 25 cents for a
can of tomato soup, 38 cents to 48 cents for canned fruit.
(“It’s the freight,” is the standard explanation, but when a
barber uses the same excuse for an exorbitantly priced haircut, one wonders!).
There is some compensation, though, for in late summer roadsides
and open places are carpeted with luscious raspberries,
blueberries, and lingenberries; they are wonderful fresh, or as
jelly or jam. Our tiny vegetable garden kept us in leaf lettuce,
radishes, parsley and green onions, with a few beets and
carrots. A farmer’s field furnished potatoes enough to last
several months. They’ve been sitting in paper sacks in the
kitchen, but like most things, haven’t spoiled, because of the
dryness. Bread dries out in a few days, and food left out may
get leathery around the edges, but crackers stay crisp
indefinitely, and things almost never mold. It’s probably due to
the dryness that we haven’t noticed the cold. Temperatures were
a normal 70-80 degrees in August, but by November the
thermometer often registered minus 40 degrees. But the dry air
doesn’t feel any colder than 20 degrees above does in Chicago.
Fingers, cheeks and nose get nipped, but only enough to make
them stop-light red. Another obliging thing about this climate
is that when it’s clear and cold, the air is still; when it’s
overcast, even with thin clouds, the temperature rises,
sometimes as much as 20 degrees in an hour or so. The sun
nowadays has little effect; it spends its 3 ½ visible hours
making a gaudy sunrise-sunset along the southern horizon—quite a
contrast to the 21 hours of sunlight last June! But the darkness
is far from complete. Snow makes even a little light go a long
way, and a brilliant moon (rising in the north at 2 p.m.!) has
made a silvery fairyland from the snowy landscape. Trees are
like white lace, with frost or snow outlining even the tiniest
twig; snug cabins, with a light in the window and smoking
chimneys, have snow-draped spruce in front, the white river
winds dimly toward the hills. Everywhere you look, a Christmas
card scene is just begging to be painted or photographed.
Christmas carols really sound appropriate here!
“Winter doesn’t seem to stop Alaskans from doing things:
airplanes of all sizes buzz around, and stores and streets are
well populated with shoppers. The post office is always crowded
with people getting their mail (there’s no house delivery—if
you’re not lucky enough to have a box, you have to get your mail
at the General Delivery window), or talking to chance-met
friends. Dog teams trot up and down the Chena, which is solid
enough so that it’s used as a road. The local radio stations are
always announcing meetings and parties—Elks, Masonic Lodge,
Rotary, Odd Fellows, and so on. The radio is a major means of
back-fence gossip here; programs such as “Tundra Topics” and
“Mukluk Telegraph” are devoted to such items as “Mr. and Mrs.
John Smith are the proud possessors of a baby boy, weighing 7
lbs. 10 oz., born this morning at 10.05 a.m. in St. Joseph’s
Hospital,” or “Mrs. Brown, of Tanana, will be glad to hear that
her husband is recovering nicely from his recent operation and
expects to take the Thursday plane back home to Tanana,” or
“Mike and Bob Jackson are in town for a few days, on their way
Outside after summer prospecting in the Chandalar district. They
are staying at the Pioneer Hotel” or “Tom Peterson wants his
brother to meet the plane at Unalakleet Friday morning, to pick
up some freight that will be left there for him by one of the
Northern Consolidated pilots.” Lost dogs are described; cake
sales and bazaars at the local churches are announced; regional
and flying weather, as well as the local forecast, are given
direct from the Weather Bureau several times a day—pilots like
to keep an eye on the weather, and flying is pretty important in
this country”.
We liked our work as well as our location; it consisted
of describing the cores and cuttings (all the rocks, in other
words) from the 84 test holes drilled by the U.S. Navy in Naval
Petroleum Reserve No. 4, in Northern Alaska. Several U.S.
Geological Survey fellows spent many summers mapping the
outcrops, while Florence and I examined the subsurface rocks in
detail—with a microscope!—and other people in our
Insert an
image
Florence—examining
test well cuttings, Spring 1950 U.S. Geological Survey navy Oil
Unit Lab, Fairbanks, Alaska.
laboratory
examined both surface and subsurface material for fossils, large
and microscopic. No one knew anything about the rocks beneath
the surface in that area, before the Navy started drilling, and
very little was known about those exposed on the surface, so it
was exciting to see the bits of information build up slowly, to
create a picture of the geological history of the area. The main
object, of course, was to locate oil. Two small fields were
delineated, where there were oil seeps on the surface (at Umiat
and Simpson Seeps) and two gas fields were discovered—one that
could furnish the village of Barrow with fuel, and a larger one
not far from Umiat. Holes drilled away from these fields were
disappointingly dry, though a few had very slight stains of oil
in very impermeable, silty sandstone. The deepest hole went
through more than 1,000 feet of
Insert an
image
Florence
and her parents, just before she and Florence Robinson left
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for Alaska—the Fourth of July, 1950.
shale! The rocks that are now
producing so prolifically at Prudhoe Bay, many miles to the
east, were not identified in any of the holes in the Reserve.
The results of our work were published by the Survey in the
“one-foot shelf of books” known collectively as Professional
Papers 305.
In 1950 we plunked down about $3,800 of our savings for a
new Cessna 140, and went to Wichita, Kansas, to pick it up. A
quick swing into Texas preceded a beautiful flight back to
Fairbanks. It was exciting to see, from the air, the spectacular
scenery we’d driven through. With the Plane, we could—and
did—visit most of the roadless Alaska, from the Canadian border
to the western tip of the Seward Peninsula, where we could see
east Cape, in Siberia. We first got acquainted with Dick and
Jeanne Collins when we flew to Lake Minchumina for weekends.
Highlights of 1953 and 1954, however, were foloboat trips. The
first took us from Whitehorse, Canada, down the Yukon to Circle,
Alaska, a 700-mile paddle that traced the route Ray Collins
followed, by steamer, in 1906. It was well described by Ginny
Wood in a national Geographic Magazine article entitled “Squaws
Along the Yukon,” published in August 1956. The 1954 trip took
us by plane to Old Crow, Canada, and we floated down the
Porcupine River to Fort Yukon—less than half the distance of the
Yukon River trip, but just as interesting, and entirely above
the Arctic Circle.
By this time, the Navy had finished its work in the
Reserve, and report-writing forced us to move to Washington,
D.C. We felt like “birds in a gilded cage” there—nice place to
live, relative close by, pleasant co-workers, but people
everywhere, and little of the freedom and adventure of living in
the north. How to get back?? Alaska is plane country, and we
could fly. A float plane could get us to sites, for geological
work, that were otherwise inaccessible. So we dug into our
savings again and bought a Supercub on floats. After commuting
to Lake Oneida, N.Y., in the Cessna 140 until we could fly it
well enough, we brought the Supercub to Washington, and in June
1956 took off from a cove of the Potomac River for a summer in
Alaska.
Crossing the U.S., we gassed up at Cleveland, Chicago,
and Milwaukee before spending the night on a small lake in
eastern Wisconsin. The next day took us on northwest to
Minnesota’s lake country. Letters record that “warm sun sparkled
on blue water, pines rustled and scented the cool breeze, and
gray rocks trimmed the green forest bordering the water, where
we stopped for gas and to check through Canadian customs. Then
there was a long blue, sunny flight across a maze of lakes big
and small, shining sheets of water linked, in a few places, by
dashing white waterfalls, and intimately inter-fingered with the
evergreen woodland. Rainy lake, Loon Haunt Lake (an expressive
name), Lake of the Woods—then a thin track of highway, or a
railroad, looped the lakes and followed winding peninsulas, as
we approached Kenora. That’s a tourist town—more American cars
than Canadian, and a big dock surrounded by lots of planes, all
on floats. After admiring the beautiful reflections in the dark
water, we headed for supper and bed. Friday was a little hazy
from forest fire smoke to the east, but we went west into clear
skies, before turning north, following the railroad to Lac du
Bonnet. There, we got lots of good advice (don’t land on lake
Winnipeg in an unsheltered spot—it’s too rough; the place to go
at Norway House is an island with a fire tower on it), and a
little gas (‘Did you put away the eye dropper?’, a man asked, as
the gas man put away the hose—they were used to selling 30 or 50
gallons, at least for bigger planes, and we only needed 6). We
left for Norway House, 260 miles north, following the east shore
of Lake Winnipeg past Pigeon Point, Spider island, Flour Point
and Berens River, landmarks on a rocky shore. Now and then there
were a few houses, a tiny settlement along the shores of a
river, but most of the country was wilderness of spruce forest
and muskeg swamp stretching to the eastern horizon. A slight pop
attracted our attention to the windshield—a crack was starting,
right up the middle. We’d passed the point of no return, and as
mile after mile of wave tossed lake passed beneath us, the crack
crept up and up, until we could feel a tiny draft through it.
The wind was increasing, and we feared the turbulence which
would, if we were unlucky, split the windshield apart, and
result in a sudden descent to the rock edged lake. Fortune was
with us, however, and we landed, a bit bumpily, at the island
with the tower. Two rivers here drain Lake Winnipeg, flowing
northeast to Hudson Bay, and are connected by Playgreen and
Little Playgreen Lakes, island-dotted expanses of water. Our
island is at the mouth of the northern river, where it widens
into the littler lake. We tied the plane to the dock, where we
were met by two girls who said the menfolk, including the
mechanic, were away, but would be back later. Three families
lived on the island, and the rest of Norway House is scattered
for several miles along the two rivers—hospital, missions, two
or three schools, Hudson Bay Post, Mounted Police, Canadian
Central Airways, and Playgreen Inn, with little houses in small
clearings. Dick, the mechanic, brought us to Playgreen Inn, in
the later afternoon, after he drilled a tiny hole in the
plexiglass at the end of the windshield crack (to prevent its
going farther), and lacing it up with wire. No one was in the
front room at the inn, so we walked around to the back and came
in the kitchen door. We had supper, and afterwards were shown to
a spotless room in a freshly-painted upstairs. The whole place
is like a big farm house, with a garden, a lawn, and a dock at
the river, with the forest for a backdrop. A path connects it
with neighbors along the shore, and with the Hudson Bay Post,
where a few of the old buildings of hand-hewn planks still
stand. Norway House was an important center, in the early
1800s—post managers (chief factors, they were called) met here
from all over the continent to decide company matters. Then as
now, the neat white buildings were a welcome sight to travelers.
From Norway House, the route lay west, to Flin Flon and
Lac La Ronge for gas stops, and Fort MacMurray, 600 miles away,
for the night. MacMurray
was a muddy little town, but we enjoyed seeing outcrops of the
famous Athabaska tar sands, which look just like loose sand with
which someone had mixed enough tar so that the whole mass was
blackish, and held its shape like a lump of hard mud. A short
flight down the Athabaska River led to Lake Athabaska, and Fort
Chipewayan. “This country is perfect for float planes—rivers,
ponds, and lakes everywhere. All the country was wooded, but at
‘Fort Chip’, as it’s called trees were small and scraggly and
rocks showed through almost everywhere. They were pink or gray,
and many had bright orange lichens, so they were practically
gaudy. This is one of the oldest settlements in the country. The
Northwest Company (fur traders) established a post there first,
and then the rival Hudson’s Bay Company put one there, and they
fought over the fur trade until the bay bought the first one out. The old
buildings, of hand-hewn logs and homemade nails, are still
standing on the rocky shore, and a monument commemorates the
early events. An old fragment of wood, supported now by iron
rods, was part of sun dial raised by Sir John Franklin, in 1819
and Alexander MacKenzie left from Ft. Chip on the trip that took
him down the MacKenzie River to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789. The
town now is strung along the shore, backed by low, rocky hills.
It includes a few government places—Indian agent, radio
communications, etc.—a warden for the Wood Buffalo Range just to
the north, a Hudson Bay store, and a Catholic mission with its
school and garden. Most of the folk are Indians, trappers, but
some are working at a fishing camp that sends herring-like
smoked fish to Winnipeg for sale.
“From Lake Athabaska we flew down the Slave River to Fort
Smith, a town at the foot of a long series of rapids. Landing in
the fast water was no problem, but when we pulled up to the
dock, one of us had to scramble out and tie the plane to a post
while the other kept the engine going pretty hard to keep from
being swept downstream. You can believe we tied that plane down
extra-carefully that evening. The Anglican minister drove down
to our plane, and took us all around town, as we went to Signals
to close our flight plan and looked for the gas man. He took us
out of town about a mile to a marker which said “Alberta” on one
side and “Northwest Territories” on the other. (In Fort Chip,
the Mounted Policeman talked with us awhile, and showed us
around; in MacMurray it was the druggist’—at Embarras, the
station manager—every stop has had one, or several, people happy
to tell us about the place they live. And as we came north, we
could tell folks all about their friends we’d just talked with
farther south). A little north of Fort Smith we finally spotted
some of the Woodland buffalo, which had spread across the river,
east of their Reserve. They are big, shaggy fellows, eating in
small meadows, between swamps and patches of woodland. Crossing
the huge Great Slave Lake, our next stop was made exciting by
dark thunderheads that, pouring iridescent rain on the lake’s
pearly surface, obscured the far shore, with its tiny pinpoint
of civilization. Running out of gas before we found it would
have been embarrassing at the very least. The storms obligingly
moved on, and at Yellowknife we luxuriated in a hotel room with
bath.
Down the MacKenzie River, overnight stops at Fort
Simpson, Norman Wells (site of Canada’s first northern oil
field, and beginning of wartime’s Canol Pipeline), and Ft. Good
Hope illustrated contrasting ways of life in the north; the
first is partly white, partly Indian, with a fine agricultural
experiment station; the second, entirely white, inhabited by oil
people; the third, entirely Indian, except for one or two
government families and a church that was unique in being
decorated with fine murals by the resident priest. Situated in
the wide, flat delta of the MacKenzie, the little town of
Aklavik was hard to find amid the maze of waterways separating
spruce-covered flats. Once there, it was a struggle to get the
plane tied down and wade ashore across a wide mud flat. A day of
poor weather to the west gave us a chance to fly northeast,
along the ice-covered Arctic Ocean, to Tuktuyuktuk which,
luckily, had a patch of open water big enough for our plane. The
Mounted Police stationed there welcomed us cordially (white
girls weren’t very common) and we enjoyed a quick look at the
tiny Eskimo settlement and its many dogs, before heading back
toward Aklavik. The flat coastal plain near Tuktuyuktuk is
bordered on the south by bluffs, but its only hills are “Pingos”
unique to the Arctic and formed by water that seeps down,
freezes, and forces the overlying ground into conical hills. We
landed in a pond at the foot of a pinge, to photograph its
tundra-covered sides and the pond-filled hollow in the top. The
next sightseeing we did was at Enuvik, a new town being built
“from scratch” on the east side of the delta. Aklavik is slowly
disappearing into swamp, and is flooded nearly every year, so
the government decided to move everyone to higher ground.
Government housing, painted gay pastel colors, and ducts for
steam heat, water, and electricity were outstanding features of
the new site. Twenty years later, it seems to be the town of
northwestern Canada, and I’ve heard only a few folks stayed on
in old Aklavik.
Insert Image
Florence Robinson and
Florence Rucker on parch of cabin at Lake Minchumina, Alaska,
Summer, 1956.
A few days later, having turned southwest at last, we
arrived at Fairbanks, stocked up on groceries, and plunked down
at Lake Minchumina, the long journey down. Why Minchumina? Well,
it was in the center of the area we wanted to study, and we were
part-owners of a cabin there. Living there for the summer, we
saw a lot of Dick Collins—and suddenly I realized that I wanted
to see him more and more. He, luckily, seemed to feel the same
way about me, and we became engaged. Florence and I had to go
back to Washington in the fall, but after the longest, dreariest
winter I ever spent, April first finally came, and I flew to
Tulsa, where Dick had just come from Alaska. I’ll never forget
the hug and smiling welcome “Grandma June” gave me when Dick led
me in the kitchen door at 1515 E. 27th St. I knew
almost nothing about Dick’s family, and she knew little about
me, but she took a strange girl from Alaska into her home as
though she’d known me all her life, and I’ll always be grateful
to her for that first welcome. And then, when we went to Hot
Springs, Arkansas, Uncle Wallace’s welcoming smile when he,
picked us up at the airport was equally warm. Aunt Marion, David
and Monica were all just as friendly, and I could hardly believe
my good fortune—not only was I engaged to the nicest man in the
world, but except for my own folks, he had the nicest family.
Grandma June, David, and Monica as well as several of my aunts
and my uncle were able attend our wedding at my parents’ home in
Christiansburg, Virginia, on April 13, 1957—a happy family
gathering. The good luck that followed us ever since our
marriage began even before our honeymoon—we flew in Dick’s
Cessna 140 east to Virginia, south to the Florida Keys on our
honeymoon, north to Virginia, west to Tulsa again, north to Lake
Geneva, Wisconsin, and then northwest to Alaska, a distance of
some 8000miles—with tail winds all the way.
We reached Minchumina early in May, to be met by a letter
telling Dick to report to Oklahoma City in 10 days, for three
weeks of training. So after a few days in the house that Dick
had spent the winter redecorating, we went back to Oklahoma
again—a real second honeymoon.
The next ten years were spent most happily living in
F.A.A. housing at Minchumina. Dick’s family increased from just
himself in early April, 1957, to six people in September 1959,
with the rapid acquisition of a wife, a son, Ray, born May 2,
1958, a mother-in-law who came in July 1959, and twin daughters,
Florence (Miki) and Julie, born on Septem-
Insert an image
Miki, Julie, Dick and
Ray Collins perched on the branch of a casvarina tree near
Harbor Island, Bahama Islands. Christmas 1962.
ber 22, 1959. He
seemed to survive the sudden increase in noise and confusion
nicely, however. And my mother was a life-saver—she folded huge
piles of diapers, and later, read nursery rhymes by the hour.
For a few years we were up to our ears in babies, but even then
we enjoyed many picnics on the lake shore, boat trips around the
lake and up the creeks, a garden at the old cabin across the
lake, and a few parties with other F.A.A. people. One or two
memorable vacations in the cabin at Shungnak, and a Christmas
trip to the Bahama Islands (accompanied by Grandma June and our
Tulsa friends Dave and Cia Craft) were high spots of those
years, but the everyday enjoyment of a happy and healthy family
was best of all. Added
satisfaction came from the return of Florence Robinson to Alaska
in 1958 and her marriage to Al Weber in August 1959.
Because there were too few people at Lake Minchumina for
a school, the children studied correspondence courses organized
by the Alaska Department of Education. Well-written teachers’
manuals gave day by day assignments, and monthly tests were
graded by teachers in Juneau. Every August each child received
two boxes, one with textbooks and the other full of
supplies—paper, pencils, crayons and paints, and such things as
batteries, magnets, and seeds for science experiments. It was
like an extra birthday. The lessons, like any other job, started
at 9 a.m. each school day, and were over when the day’s
assignment was done, sometimes by noon and rarely as late as 5
p.m., if a subject (or a child) were particularly difficult.
In late 1966, the F.A.A. decided to reduce the staff at
Minchumina, thus eliminating Dick’s job. We didn’t want to go to
Anchorage and climb the professional ladder, as the F.A.A.
proposed, but if we could just hang on until July, 1967, Dick
would be eligible for early retirement. The usual governmental
delays worked in our favor this time; two weeks after he got his
25-year pin and was able to retire, the job was abolished, and
we moved across the lake to the old cabin Florence Weber and I
had bought 12 years before. A low, picturesque, 3-room log
building, it was fine for summer but too drafty for winter. Some
advance daydreaming and a little good luck solved our problem.
In 1965, we had notices an ancient school bus, dilapidated but
apparently sound, for sale cheap. We bought it, spent May of
1966 transforming it into a
Insert an
image
The
bus, “Blue Hound” in front of Uncle Wallace Collins house Tulsa,
Oklahoma. December 12, 1967.
motor home, and took a short weekend trip to
try it out. It was a real shakedown cruise—everything moveable
shook, and a lot, including a heavy water tank, fell down. But
by March of 1967 it was a going concern, and for our vacation
that year the whole family, including Pandy the dog and my 87
year-old-mother, climbed abroad and we started for
Tulsa. School came right along with us, and the
wheels didn’t turn,
on school days, until the assignments were done. And our rolling
home solved
the winter housing problem: for the next three winters, until
our new cabin was
habitable, we spent the coldest months travelling in the “Lower
48”, driving up
and down the Alaska Highway each time.
Building the
new cabin, located beside the old one, occupied most of our
waking hours the
other three seasons of those years. We’d dug the basement hole
in 1966, but it
took the summer and fall of 1967 and half of 1968 to complete
its rock walls
and floor. Raising the log walls took a strenuous six weeks,
but Dick got the
plywood roof on the day snow began to fly, in October 1968.
The interior
was liveable by July, 1969, and the arrival of Bub and Ruby
Collins and their
three children helped us celebrate moving in. The winter of
1970-71 saw the
temperature down to 50°
to 60° below, but our
house stayed cozy and
warm, with its wood-burning, oil-drum stove in the basement
putting heat up
through a grill in the floor, and radiating it from the
smokestack both
downstairs and in the girls’ bedroom. The next winter,
however, was the last
one for correspondence school study, so we decided we’d better
take one last
trip in our bus. Just as we were about to pull out of
Fairbanks, a phone call
from David informed us that airline ticket from Tulsa to
Charlotte Amalie, in
the Virgin Islands, (via Chicago) were waiting for us in
Tulsa, along with
reservations for a bungalow on nearby Water Isle. So we had an
unexpectedly
elegant vacation, spending a week on the island playing with
and getting better
acquainted with David and his family. His younger girls were
the first friends
to walk, literally, between our shy, close-knit twins. And
Dick and David had
time to spend with each other, including one memorable day
they took the
children to neighboring St. John's Island in an outboard motor
boat--a day even
the ferry didn't leave port.
Back in
Alaska, we faced another building job, this time a place in
Fairbanks where we
could live while the children attended high school. Six weeks
of summer, 1971
saw the basement completed, and strenuous month in 1972 got
the log walls and
roof up. All five of us worked hard; the sooner each stage was
completed, the
sooner we could go back to enjoy the summer weather at the
lake. A few days
before school started in 1972 we came back to town, and again
lived in our “town
house”, the bus, while the kids struggled with the first weeks
of attending a
“regular” school and Dick and I tried to get windows, doors,
flooring, furnace,
and plumbing installed before cold weather caught us. We all
just barely made
it, but things improved steadily after those first few months,
and now our
house is complete and comfortable and the children are getting
along well in
school, although Minchumina will always be home.
The town,
though, has changed since I last lived in it. During the early
50’s a big International
Airport was built west of town, and as larger, faster planes
brought more
perishable food from the southern states, prices dropped; only
since the surge
of inflation of the past two years have they again approached
those we paid a
quarter-century ago. New big buildings, several supermarkets,
drive-in eateries,
more schools, a bigger hospital, and other signs of growing
town have been
added. Roads have been paved, both in town and leading to new
suburbs in the
surrounding hills, where once-dark slopes are now dotted with
lights after
sunset.
The coming of
the pipeline, now being constructed from Prudhoe Bay on the
Arctic coast, to
Valdez on the Pacific, has accelerated the changes,
particularly the unpleasant
ones. Heavy trucks crowd the roads, and construction workers
crowd all
available housing. Merchants, many of whom were all for the
pipeline before
construction began, are having second thoughts. Goods are hard
to get and
shipments are often delayed because pipeline freight is
overloading the transport
system; help is hard to get and keep, because so many people
have quit their
regular jobs for the pipeline’s extravagant wages; as
consumers, Fairbanks
people, merchants or not, find prices out of reach, especially
for housing. The
tremendous influx of people has brought more traffic jams, air
pollution, and
crime; we can just hope that when it’s over the get-rich-quick
crowd will head
south and let the rest of us recuperate from the “invasion”.
Our family is
lucky: our Fairbanks home is 700 feet above the downtown area,
and above the
ice fog in winter and the dust and heat of summer. And we can
revive our
spirits by going to Minchumina. But Fairbanks has lost some
things
forever—planes no longer take off under the bridge, and in
winter warm water from
the new power plant keeps the Chena River ice so thin that it
can’t be used for
walking, much less for cars. House and automobile doors aren’t
left unlocked
anymore, and a forest cabin within reach of a snow machine is
likely to be
vandalized. The old-time small town, and
its camaraderie, are about gone.