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STAN BISHOP—A TRUE SOURDOUGH 

COMING HOME FOR THANKSGIVING

Stan: My dad was trapping with me one winter and we came down to six-mile and encountered a real hard snow. My six-mile cabin was small but very comfortable and we stayed there for two days and the snow didn’t stop, so I started breaking trail towards home, down river, and Dad was pretty old then, he was getting close to his eighties, and he couldn’t take much. So this was just a couple days before Thanksgiving, and I broke trail for about three miles the second day and it was still snowing, so I told Dad, “We’d better start now before my broke trail gets filled up again.” So we got up early in the morning and started out and we did pretty well for about three miles and then we got into snow. I had to break trail and it was pretty hard on Dad and he was getting pretty all-in.

We got pretty close to our cabin--we were still living on the island then--and the Unuk River trail came down right across from where our house was on the island there. And we came down just across the slough and I let loose with my wolf howl, I usually howled like a wolf to let the family know we were coming. And they were all out to see us. But the tide was coming in and the ice on the slough had let loose and it was going upriver, the ice was flowing upriver and so I made a dash across the ice and the ice broke with me when I got close to shore but I was going fast enough I made it to shore alright.

So then I took a ladder and put it on the ice and I wore my skis, the skis I had didn’t have a lock on them--we didn’t lock our skis, we just shoved our toe into a strap--and I stayed on the skis and I pushed this ladder alongside of me over to Dad ‘cause he was just about petered out, he was all-in. I knew he couldn’t go fast enough on the ice to keep from breaking through. Usually on that salt-water ice, it’s kind of limber, it’s tough ice and not brittle.

I got out just about in the middle and the ice gave way beneath me and I had a kerosene lantern in my hand, too, because it was dark--we’d been slogging all day and it was well after dark when we got across from the folks’ house--and I went under. I lost my ski underneath the ice, but, you know...I shouldn’t even tell this part....But anyway just as I went out of sight I heard a scream. It was my mother. And after this was all over I asked Betty, “Did Mother scream when I went out of sight?” They were looking through the window, where we were working was right opposite the window in the big cabin. She said, “No, she never made a sound.”

Anyway, I came back up. I used the skis to get under my arms and I got out onto the ice again and I got the ladder over close to the bank and I had Dad get all ready and then when a chunk of the ice got close to the bank over there, I told him, “Get out as far as you can and get on that ladder.” And then I alternately pulled him and pushed on him and he got from one end of the ladder to the other--he’d go up to the front end and I’d move the tail around and then he’d go to the end. So we gradually got over to the bank and I got him out onto the bank. And I got out myself, but I didn’t have any remembrance of being cold because when you’re doing things like that you don’t feel cold.

Don: Your adrenaline was going, I bet.
Stan: Anyway we got out and staggered up to the cabin and Mother was bustling around getting something hot for us to drink. I got my wet clothes off and Dad got his stuff off, and then she had a hot drink for us, but I remember Dad saying, “What’s the matter with that root beer you were going to make?” And here he was shivering and freezing...so Betty went down and pulled the floor covering up and we dug some root beer out of the basement of the cabin. And then we sat around there with blankets wrapped around us and drank root beer and they’d made ice cream, so we had that, too. (Lots of laughter)

And then we had turkey. It wasn’t turkey, it was goose. Bob had shot a goose about a week or ten days before that and they’d been hanging onto it, cleaned it good and hung it up and Mother was worried sick for fear it wouldn’t last until we got back. And it was as tender and tasty as could be. And we had Thanksgiving dinner...

Louise: It must have been hard for your mother, living up there...
Stan: Yes, my mother was a remarkable woman. She was so happy when her family was happy. ‘Course I built stuff just as convenient for her as I could, so she was real proud of our cabin. We built this cabin over a period of two years and it was a big cabin. Everything was peeled; no bark anywhere, all peeled logs. And we had an upstairs like this...Bob had one side, Betty the other, and downstairs was Dad and Mother’s bedroom on one side and my bedroom on the other corner. And then the big living room and kitchen was on the far end. And it was comfortable and we always had plenty of wood ahead. Dad was good at cutting wood. He never let a minute go by...he was raised in the state of Maine, so he knew what wood was and times like that that we were all together, meant the most to my mother...

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Related Alaskan stories:

"Stan and the Milk Run"

"Tales of Yes Bay, Alaska"