Cordova Summer 1962
Grumman Goose (Navy version)
Leaving Copper Valley School for summer vacation was an experience. My father was convinced by Leo, the baker he worked with in Valdez, to move to Cordova and open a bakery. While my Dad had few resources to offer, he was younger and stronger than Leo, who was a short, stocky Santa-like man with a rollicking loud laugh. When Leo offered to foot the bill to purchase the equipment already located in Cordova in a closed bakery there, my father saw an opportunity. He agreed to move our family to Cordova in the late spring of 1962 and become a partner in the bakery business.
Cordova at the time was a land-locked fishing village with no road access. One had to come in by water or air. My trip to join my family there was by float plane, a Grumman Goose that was an excellent Bush plane since it could take off on land and land on water and transport 7 people comfortably. I left the Gulkana Airport and flew down the Copper River to land at Eyak Lake and join my family there.
The village was small.. only a couple thousand permanent residents. Most of the main town was built on the shore, on a steep hill overlooking the docks and fishing fleet. Fishermen brought in salmon and crab, mostly processing king crab, which were fun to view on the docks. The sky was filled with squawking seagulls and occasional bald eagles and smelled strongly of fish. Main Street consisted of 60-year-old two- and three-story wood frame buildings built onto pilings that leveled the buildings against a steep hill. One could find trap doors showing space under the buildings, and wooden walkways led into alleys between the buildings.
Our family found lodging in a small apartment nestled above the town’s old movie theater, accessed by a very long two-story stairway. It was one block from the bakery, which was in the rear of one of the main buildings on Main Street. A sign on the street would direct townspeople down a covered alley to the bakery entrance.
There our family worked with Leo to provide fresh baked goods to the town. Several times a week large amounts of bread and pastries were shipped out to the fishing fleet, creating a very considerable amount of work and business. The bakery was welcome in the town and kept us very busy. I particularly remember filling the donuts as they came out of the oil and cooled. We had a large hopper in which jelly or custard was poured. A pump handle was used as a donut was pressed upon a spigot that passed the juicy contents into the donut. It was great fun to pump up that confection until near bursting and then eat it!
One memory of that time is the visitor who came in once a month, an elderly man who lived alone in the wilderness. A brief discussion with him told me that he was from a small town in NY named Dale, and his last name was Chase. The coincidence was remarkable…. My grandfather’s family had homesteaded in Dale and were descendants of Chases. My grandfather’s cousin still owned the 160-acre homestead there, and as children before our Alaskan adventure we had often gone to the remaining homestead cabin on the original property. I never learned his full name and often wondered what took a man from Dale to the wilderness, alone. (see: short fiction story using this as a basis for the story)
Other events of the time were interesting. My best friend from Valdez, Harry, asked if I could purchase M-80 fireworks for him and send them along. An M-80 is the equivalent of a quarter stick of dynamite. With money sent by Harry, I purchased a quantity of these and mailed all but a few to him. A friend, Jerry, and I went to the Cordova town dump where we blew off our few explosives. They were extremely powerful, and we took care to launch a very large tin can many hundreds of feet into the air. We supposed that Harry wanted these items, which were illegal to sell in Valdez, for use on his father’s fishing boat. Quite illegal also was the use of these items to stun fish surrounded by a net and being pulled into the hold of Harry’s father’s’ purse-seiner. Stunning the fish kept them from flipping over the net as it was pulled in. So, I assisted Harry in a nefarious scheme to catch fish.
Another memory was of the barber in town. His second-floor shop on Main Street overlooked the street and the bay and it was pleasant to look out its large window as hair was being removed. But this barber was sadistic! Below his shop was a wired fire plug. As a free-range dog would sidle up to it to do its business, the barber would alert his clients and walk over and flip a switch. Sure enough, the wayward canine would lift its leg and begin to water the old plug. Somehow, the electric shock of it all was not a killer for the dog, but it sure provided entertainment for the barber who thought his patrons needed a laugh. I found it pathetic but did get a good haircut.
The story of my family in Cordova took a turn toward mid-August. We borrowed Leo’s older car, a large lumbering 50’s-era Chevy, to pack a picnic and drive the 50 miles into the Copper River Delta up to the terminus of a road to the Million Dollar Bridge. This route was the remnants of a rail line to the Kennicott Copper Mines located another 50 miles north, along the Copper River into the Wrangell Mountains. The bridge was intact despite sitting on a S-curve with glaciers on either side of the bridge. Large chunks of ice were taking it down in the early days, and it was a costly effort to build large concrete pyramids in front of the bridge’s pillars, preventing ice chunks from hitting them. The cost was worth the effort since large amounts of copper ore was extracted and moved down that rail line.
But the mine was closed long before 1962, and the rail line non-existent. While a roadway was in place for the 50 miles to the bridge, past that was only a surveyed trail, with future plans to move the road further up the river and possibly connect Cordova to the Chitina extension that led to the main Richardson Highway road system. (The earthquake of 64 moved all the survey points and destroyed those plans. Cordova remains land-locked).
The story now becomes a tale of the Alaskan wild north. In the trunk of Leo’s car, as we removed our picnic supplies, my father found a box containing all the bakery’s financial files. It became clear that Leo had not, as my father was told, filed any income tax forms for the bakery. Something seemed amiss.
My father contacted my Uncle Phil and asked him to investigate Leo and his activities prior to joining my father in Valdez. The investigation revealed that Leo had been involved in several bakeries in some small Alaskan communities. Each had burned down!
In late August, my father informed Leo that he was relocating to Buffalo, NY, with the family. Leo settled with my father for enough money to pay my tuition to Copper Valley School for the next year and to transport my family and their meager goods back East.
I climbed back into the Grumman Goose, promised a seat beside the pilot on a first come-first served basis. I rushed into the plane ahead of an older man also desiring the seat. Bang. I didn’t realize how far to duck to get into the cockpit. I almost knocked myself out, fell back, and the other man took the seat. I nursed my headache all the way up the river back to Gulkana.
The story doesn’t end here though. In May of 1963 a large fire consumed all the main block of buildings, including the bakery. A firetruck shipped in from Anchorage had to travel 13 miles to the fire and broke through a culvert on the way and could not get there. The townspeople watched most of the town businesses burn to the ground, fueled by the open spaces under the buildings.
During the following year, Leo claimed insurance money for all the equipment in the bakery. We later learned two facts: He had previously moved the equipment to a different location and he was in cahoots with the town’s major insurance agent.
WHO, it was discovered, had been pocketing premiums from the town businesses for years, leaving them uninsured. In the resulting investigation, Leo was implicated in the illegal activities and prosecuted. While we believe he was incarcerated in Washington State, we lost track of the jolly old fellow and thanked the Good Lord that our family had cleared out as soon as we discovered Leo’s background.
Not all the people of Alaska were upstanding citizens!
Cordova at the time was a land-locked fishing village with no road access. One had to come in by water or air. My trip to join my family there was by float plane, a Grumman Goose that was an excellent Bush plane since it could take off on land and land on water and transport 7 people comfortably. I left the Gulkana Airport and flew down the Copper River to land at Eyak Lake and join my family there.
The village was small.. only a couple thousand permanent residents. Most of the main town was built on the shore, on a steep hill overlooking the docks and fishing fleet. Fishermen brought in salmon and crab, mostly processing king crab, which were fun to view on the docks. The sky was filled with squawking seagulls and occasional bald eagles and smelled strongly of fish. Main Street consisted of 60-year-old two- and three-story wood frame buildings built onto pilings that leveled the buildings against a steep hill. One could find trap doors showing space under the buildings, and wooden walkways led into alleys between the buildings.
Our family found lodging in a small apartment nestled above the town’s old movie theater, accessed by a very long two-story stairway. It was one block from the bakery, which was in the rear of one of the main buildings on Main Street. A sign on the street would direct townspeople down a covered alley to the bakery entrance.
There our family worked with Leo to provide fresh baked goods to the town. Several times a week large amounts of bread and pastries were shipped out to the fishing fleet, creating a very considerable amount of work and business. The bakery was welcome in the town and kept us very busy. I particularly remember filling the donuts as they came out of the oil and cooled. We had a large hopper in which jelly or custard was poured. A pump handle was used as a donut was pressed upon a spigot that passed the juicy contents into the donut. It was great fun to pump up that confection until near bursting and then eat it!
One memory of that time is the visitor who came in once a month, an elderly man who lived alone in the wilderness. A brief discussion with him told me that he was from a small town in NY named Dale, and his last name was Chase. The coincidence was remarkable…. My grandfather’s family had homesteaded in Dale and were descendants of Chases. My grandfather’s cousin still owned the 160-acre homestead there, and as children before our Alaskan adventure we had often gone to the remaining homestead cabin on the original property. I never learned his full name and often wondered what took a man from Dale to the wilderness, alone. (see: short fiction story using this as a basis for the story)
Other events of the time were interesting. My best friend from Valdez, Harry, asked if I could purchase M-80 fireworks for him and send them along. An M-80 is the equivalent of a quarter stick of dynamite. With money sent by Harry, I purchased a quantity of these and mailed all but a few to him. A friend, Jerry, and I went to the Cordova town dump where we blew off our few explosives. They were extremely powerful, and we took care to launch a very large tin can many hundreds of feet into the air. We supposed that Harry wanted these items, which were illegal to sell in Valdez, for use on his father’s fishing boat. Quite illegal also was the use of these items to stun fish surrounded by a net and being pulled into the hold of Harry’s father’s’ purse-seiner. Stunning the fish kept them from flipping over the net as it was pulled in. So, I assisted Harry in a nefarious scheme to catch fish.
Another memory was of the barber in town. His second-floor shop on Main Street overlooked the street and the bay and it was pleasant to look out its large window as hair was being removed. But this barber was sadistic! Below his shop was a wired fire plug. As a free-range dog would sidle up to it to do its business, the barber would alert his clients and walk over and flip a switch. Sure enough, the wayward canine would lift its leg and begin to water the old plug. Somehow, the electric shock of it all was not a killer for the dog, but it sure provided entertainment for the barber who thought his patrons needed a laugh. I found it pathetic but did get a good haircut.
The story of my family in Cordova took a turn toward mid-August. We borrowed Leo’s older car, a large lumbering 50’s-era Chevy, to pack a picnic and drive the 50 miles into the Copper River Delta up to the terminus of a road to the Million Dollar Bridge. This route was the remnants of a rail line to the Kennicott Copper Mines located another 50 miles north, along the Copper River into the Wrangell Mountains. The bridge was intact despite sitting on a S-curve with glaciers on either side of the bridge. Large chunks of ice were taking it down in the early days, and it was a costly effort to build large concrete pyramids in front of the bridge’s pillars, preventing ice chunks from hitting them. The cost was worth the effort since large amounts of copper ore was extracted and moved down that rail line.
But the mine was closed long before 1962, and the rail line non-existent. While a roadway was in place for the 50 miles to the bridge, past that was only a surveyed trail, with future plans to move the road further up the river and possibly connect Cordova to the Chitina extension that led to the main Richardson Highway road system. (The earthquake of 64 moved all the survey points and destroyed those plans. Cordova remains land-locked).
The story now becomes a tale of the Alaskan wild north. In the trunk of Leo’s car, as we removed our picnic supplies, my father found a box containing all the bakery’s financial files. It became clear that Leo had not, as my father was told, filed any income tax forms for the bakery. Something seemed amiss.
My father contacted my Uncle Phil and asked him to investigate Leo and his activities prior to joining my father in Valdez. The investigation revealed that Leo had been involved in several bakeries in some small Alaskan communities. Each had burned down!
In late August, my father informed Leo that he was relocating to Buffalo, NY, with the family. Leo settled with my father for enough money to pay my tuition to Copper Valley School for the next year and to transport my family and their meager goods back East.
I climbed back into the Grumman Goose, promised a seat beside the pilot on a first come-first served basis. I rushed into the plane ahead of an older man also desiring the seat. Bang. I didn’t realize how far to duck to get into the cockpit. I almost knocked myself out, fell back, and the other man took the seat. I nursed my headache all the way up the river back to Gulkana.
The story doesn’t end here though. In May of 1963 a large fire consumed all the main block of buildings, including the bakery. A firetruck shipped in from Anchorage had to travel 13 miles to the fire and broke through a culvert on the way and could not get there. The townspeople watched most of the town businesses burn to the ground, fueled by the open spaces under the buildings.
During the following year, Leo claimed insurance money for all the equipment in the bakery. We later learned two facts: He had previously moved the equipment to a different location and he was in cahoots with the town’s major insurance agent.
WHO, it was discovered, had been pocketing premiums from the town businesses for years, leaving them uninsured. In the resulting investigation, Leo was implicated in the illegal activities and prosecuted. While we believe he was incarcerated in Washington State, we lost track of the jolly old fellow and thanked the Good Lord that our family had cleared out as soon as we discovered Leo’s background.
Not all the people of Alaska were upstanding citizens!
Cordova burns, May 1963. The bakery at extreme right, behind buildings.