I Was Privileged?

Yes, sir! I was a real privileged young Caucasian. I was able to experience things that the vast majority of today’s youngsters never will.

It was late fall in 1956 when the Sunderland family pulled up to a 3-room shack on the edge of boomtown Fairbanks, Alaska. Fairbanks grew during WW2 from a dirty little town serving the area’s trappers, and miners. (The movie “Ice Palace” was the knick-name of the Northrop Building in Fairbanks.) Now it was a dirty larger town serving 3 military bases. Most of the streets in town were unpaved and during summer dust floated through the air everywhere.

We moved into the shack and dad went to work at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Years later after we had left Alaska for good, Dad said that if he had another $200 we would have turned around and gone back to the Lower 48. As it was it took mom and dad 16 tough years to make it out of Alaska.

Our first home was an un-insulated shack near the Catholic school grounds. The kitchen/eating area was in the back, along with a gas heater and tiny bathroom. The kitchen stove and the hot water heater used propane gas, which created problems that first winter. The living room and a single bedroom were in the front. Mom and dad slept in the small bedroom, as did baby sister Kerry. I slept on a hide-a-bed in the living room. She slept in the bottom drawer of a chest-of-drawers.

Shortly after moving in, we took a quick look around Fairbanks and vicinity. Fairbanks wasn’t much to look at then and you could see all the sights in a about an hour. I can honestly say because of that fast tour I have been to the North Pole. It was a small tourist town on the east side of Fairbanks. And North Pole is its actual name. In the middle of North Pole is the Santa Claus House, all decked out in a gaudy paint job and gingerbread trim. Inside was a store that sold tourist gimcracks with an Alaskan or Christmas theme. A great deal of the mail addressed to Santa Claus, North Pole, ends up getting delivered there.

Fall quickly gave way to winter. It seemed like I had no sooner started second grade at Immaculate Conception School than winter hit. Folks who have never experienced an Alaskan winter in a tiny 3-room shack do not know what a real winter is like. It is cold. Damn cold. For most of our stay in that shack winter temperatures hovered well below zero, like 30 to 50 below zero. I don’t have to wait for hell to freeze over, because that was where we lived that winter and it did.

Many were the mornings when I would awaken with my hair frozen to the wall. When that happened either mom or dad would pour warm water over my ice glued hair until I was unstuck. Up until then I was in the habit of curling up against the wall when I slept. That experience changed my lifetime sleeping habits and I no longer sleep against any wall.

Spare blankets, sheets and other items were stored under the hide-a-bed, as it was rarely folded up. Mom decided one winter day to do some housecleaning and when she folded up the bed she discovered the floor covered with a couple of inches of frost and ice. Sheets and blankets were one frozen solid mass. It took her days to get it all thawed out and dried.

Taking a shower was an interesting experience. When the temperature went to -20 or lower the propane would liquefy and there would not be enough gas to fire either the stove or the hot water heater. Dad draped blankets over the tank and hooked up a heat lamp underneath them. Eventually enough heat would be transferred to the tank and there would be enough gas to light the hot water tank. Showers were taken once a week after supper, so there would be enough gas to cook a meal.

Once there was enough hot water, mom and Kerry would take the first shower and then dad and I would hose off the week’s accumulation of grime. The routine went like this: get into the shower, turn on the water and get wet; turn off the water, soap up and scrub; turn on the water, rinse; turn off the water, get out and get dry as fast as we could. It was cool in there and wet bodies chilled fast. Dad said we bathed navy style. During his tour of duty in the Pacific during WWII there was not enough fresh water on board warships for long showers. The navy way as dad described it was exactly the way we did it. The whole thing lasted less than five minutes.

There were times when dad had to walk to work because he couldn’t get the car started. At those temperatures oil becomes thicker than grease and motors are hard to turn over. The battery would be so cold that it would not be able to generate enough amps to crank over the engine. Dad would bring the battery in at night so that would not happen. Even so he was unable to get the car started on many a frigid morning and he would trudge through the dark to work. He would be about frozen to death by the time he made the three mile trek. Sometime later he did a series of cartoons for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner depicting the travails of operating a car during an Alaskan winter showing the difference in approaches taken by the newcomer and the seasoned resident.

Yes, I was privileged to learn how to survive hardship and poverty. It was all preparation for the next years of my life.