STAN
BISHOP—A TRUE SOURDOUGH
Stan: Like I say, I made application for a homestead in there. And they
had to come out and survey it and look it over first. So they figured out that
it was agricultural ground alright. But then they had to go not only to the
Forest Service, but they had to go to the state, too, for some reason or other.
And between the state and the Forest Service they finally gave me permission
to locate it. And then it went through a year of correspondence, lots of red
tape. They’d never done this before down here, you know. There weren’t any homesteads
at that time. There were some right here in town; in fact, this here was a homestead.
Stan: Eighty-seven on the Ooligan.
Stan: To abbreviate it, when I got married, my dad had helped build this
cabin, so I turned that place completely over to him, signed it over to him,
and I took out another homestead. Then I developed the place on the Ooligan.
I brought farm equipment in, and I had 12 head of cattle and six or eight goats.
During the war, I sold $27,000 worth of green stuff to Ozzie Gurstman. He owned
a green grocery, which was located just about where the Alaska Bar is now. And
he took my stuff on consignment. One time I brought in a whole boatload of young
turnips. They made beautiful greens, and they sat around in town here for a
whole week and nobody’d buy ‘em. He didn’t push ‘em at all. He didn’t realize
these young turnips made marvelous greens. And it was just wasted time for everybody.
But I sold lots of rutabagas and lots of radishes and carrots and turnips and
cabbages and cauliflower.
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